NieR: Automata is easily one of the best games of 2017, and the mod from well-known modder Kaldaien only makes its subpar PC port better, boosting the game up to a genuine 1080p and locking the framerate at 60fps. And since it is free, everyone can enjoy the expansion without need of breaking the bank open.

Well, everyone who bought the game legitimately, that is. Kaldaien’s mod runs a check for piracy, and if it finds gamers are running a cracked copy, it locks them out of all the added goodies. Those who are playing the stolen version of the game are subsequently shut out of their game and have to uninstall the mod if they want to access it again.

Naturally, this sent self-righteous pirates into a tizzy, and their tirade spread across popular venting outlets like Reddit, Steam, and Twitter. Kaldaien didn’t exactly soothe out the situation either by taunting his critics by suggesting that they should “Uninstall the mod and accept that you’re not entitled to everything in this world,” and told them to stop acting “like a giant baby because you don’t get your way is immature.”

He even got to the point where he was temporarily banned from Steam for his comments.

However, he says that the piracy-block in the software isn’t there to cast a moral judgement on others. He’s just looking out for himself.

My anti-piracy measures actually have nothing to do with my personal views on individual piracy. I don’t condone the practice, I don’t generally think highly of people who do it, but this is not done to punish them. It is to protect me against asset injection of copyrighted material.

The mod is also open source, and he suggested that if you want to bypass his piracy check, by all means, do it yourself. He won’t be distributing the code without it though.

Buy your games, people!

NieR: Automata is a lovely video game, one that we very likely almost did get given the lack of critical and financial success the previous games in the series saw. A game this brilliant needs to sell well if we want other brilliant games of this kind to be made in the future.

Every pirated copy is one less argument for Square Enix to take this kind of risk again. Just think of it that way.