There's really not a way to twist this around and make independent game developers the bad guys. You can try all you want but the fact remains that they're just trying to sell a product they put time and money into. This is a semantic that completely misses the point if you actually believe it.First off, no one pirated the game. The company put a copy up itself, you can't have anyone steal what you gave away.
Please, the "pirates" were unwitting participants in a marketing campaign. If you want to pick on semantic bullshit look no further than the dev's anti DRM screed while they only allow three installs. The developers will continue to talk about how much "pirating" is going on which will mostly be a result of their clever marketing campaign. I'm not saying that the dev's are bad guys, hell they are very clever guys, but one thing I'm not going to do is feel bad for them. This game will do much better because of it's marketing. The marketing is an obvious ploy if you would just look at the fact that the "pirated" version's save is convertible to a paid version. You say I'm making a semantic argument, I say you are naive. These guys have struck upon a good way to get press and free demo installs for their game. They have preyed upon hot button topics like piracy and DRM to do it, topics which are automatic front page fodder on most game and tech sites.
No, no, ignore the DRM argument. Separate issue. The ""pirates"" were just trying to download a game so they could play it for free. I'm not particularly judging them -- I'm just saying the fact that it was a component of a (brilliant) marketing scheme doesn't change that they were stealing the game and definitely aren't the victims that you make them out to be. Meanwhile, yes, I can still feel bad for the devs, because they had a good idea and will make some money/get exposure because of it -- but what about the last five games they've released? What about the next few? Just because they had a good idea doesn't mean they lose my sympathy.