99% of this hit Steam games' players are pirates, dev says

When games use digital rights management — or anti-piracy software — the justification is usually that publishers want to protect a game's profits. If anyone could pirate a video game easily, why would they bother purchasing it? Without DRM, the thinking goes, a game played by millions could turn out to be a financial failure. Now, an unlikely cozy Steam game is challenging those assumptions.

Burgie's Cozy Kitchen is an early-access incremental idler where players must serve fast food to a coterie of animals. The game went viral earlier in 2026, after developer HeyNau revealed a piracy mode where customers trolled the player by refusing to pay the full cost of their meals. The game progresses normally at the start, but if Burgie's detects that the game was not properly purchased, making progress with upgrades becomes a slog. The game pokes fun at the player by equipping these customers with tricorn hats and blasting a sea shanty when the mode is activated.

A month after showing off that mode, developer HeyNau was back with some surprising statistics about their game. While finagling the game's backend, the developer noticed many of the players connecting to the game had usernames that referenced a Chinese website known for promoting piracy.

"Every time I hit refresh, at any hour of the day, exactly 22 of the last 25 entries had that name, despite being different Steam accounts," the developer said on Reddit. "Today I had to widen the filter to the last 100 entries to confirm that 99% were pirates."

Image: HeyNau

As evidenced by the piracy mode, players stealing the game has been an issue since its inception. HeyNau tried mitigating the sea of pirates by partnering with a Chinese publisher that helped them market a mobile version of the game. Together, they implemented translations and region-specific features to encourage more purchases. While that helped curb piracy on mobile phones, PC piracy is still an issue.

What's fascinating here is that, despite being besieged by pirates, HeyNau said the game is "still doing well" in the Reddit post. Attention to the game's piracy mode helped Burgie's break sales records in June 2026, a year after its early access launch. A month after hitting that milestone, Burgie's concurrent player peak has nearly doubled.

It may be tempting to use this as evidence that more games should just be released without DRM, but it's not that simple. The numbers work in HeyNau's favor because it is a small indie studio. The developer's games don't need to sell as well as a blockbuster to be sustainable.

HeyNau also makes it clear that, despite the game's success, dealing with it all is still "stressful," the developer wrote on Reddit. The growth in piracy numbers has also shifted the developer's opinion on the subject.

"I never condemned it or looked down on anyone for pirating," the developer says of their initial viewpoint on piracy. "I just live alongside its existence and try to do so in the best way I can as a developer."

But now that 99% of players are pirates and the game's sales have dropped by 40%, the developer has begun doubting that "piracy exists in parallel with healthy growth."

Burgie's pirates may be a legion, but at least the numbers are high enough to work out in HeyNau's favor. "Nobody here needs to buy it," the developer said while sharing their story.