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Music Inc is a music producer sim for iOS and Android with a subtle anti-piracy message

They're stealing your records

Music Inc is a music producer sim for iOS and Android with a subtle anti-piracy message
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| Music Inc

It isn't stated anywhere in particular in Music Inc, but there is certainly a subtle anti-piracy stance in this game.

It's no wonder, either, considering that it's a collaboration between UK Music, the Intellectual Property Office, and Aardman.

On the game's product page, you are simply told that you play a music producer for a start-up label.

Pirate sway

You have to recruit new artists, make them compose songs, and try to get into the charts.

There's no mention of any intent or purpose behind the game. And there needn't be, really.

But it's quite clear upon playing Music Inc that you're supposed to learn more about the negatives of music piracy by experiencing them first hand in the game.

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Before putting your record on sale, you get to choose whether to sell it in stores, via a download, or on a streaming site. You can try all three if you like, but it'll cost you.

You're told before choosing where to sell the record that the piracy rate will go up if you select certain options.

True enough, when your record goes on sale, you'll see a graph displaying how many legal copies you sold and how many were pirated.

While playing, I also had one person under my employment that nearly lost me my rapper "Beminem". It was discovered that said person was pirating Beminem's records before they were released, losing us precious sales.

Walk the plank

The potential problem here is that the creator of Music Inc equates a pirated copy of the record with a lost sale. That's not necessarily true.

Just because somebody pirates something, it doesn't necessarily follow that she would have bought it through legal means.

Some who choose to pirate say that they do so because there's no other way of testing the product. By pirating a product, you can find out if you want to spend any money on it, and can then support the creator by making a purchase if you do.

That's one argument, anyway. And it's an argument that the creator of Music Inc doesn't really address in the game. Rather unsurprisingly, it does tend to skew towards the negative view of piracy.

If you want to check Music Inc out for yourself, you can download it (legally) for free on Google Play [download] or the App Store [download].

Engadget
Chris Priestman
Chris Priestman
Anything eccentric, macabre, or just plain weird, is what Chris is all about. He turns the spotlight on the games that fly under the radar.