Now if they game stinks and no-one buys it they have an excuse for why it bombed.
But this is so dumb. If this piracy is really going to kill of a load of sales for a game, then there are steps a developer can take.
For any game maker, they aught to make the code so it is only playable on their internal machines by some sort of token system network authentication system until it goes gold. That would stop people sending out early versions as they would not work outside of the company.
Even in the later Q/A stages they should be play testing the game with all the DRM in place just like a normal buyer, so then if that version leaks it is no worse that when a purchaser uploads their DRM copy and keys.
Developers need to lock down their code as for the amount of investment going in can you really trust absolutely everyone that will come in contact with the code during it's development, now titles need a mini army to create.
And saying oh the community are so bad cause everyone is downloading. That is completely naive as if it is posted for free it will be downloaded. It is law of nature almost.
So as a legitimate buyer, I will now have to wait as the PC version will be delayed while they change keys, etc. What would be a good idea is for them to stick in a bit of extra content etc during the delay so that the legit version is still worth the money.
Also if it is a really unstable beta then I say publicity stunt or now we have the demo the PC people were after.