Indie dev struggles Memes

So you made an indie game and found it on Pirate Bay. Instead of rage-tweeting about lost revenue, you discover there's a VPN ad embedded in your torrent page. Congratulations—you're now technically making money from piracy through affiliate marketing. The real kicker? Zero leechers. Not even pirates want to finish downloading your game. That's a level of rejection that even your Steam reviews couldn't prepare you for. At least you got 10 seeders though, which is 10 more people than bought it legitimately. Fun fact: Some devs actually intentionally leak their games to torrent sites for the free marketing. It's the digital equivalent of handing out flyers, except the flyers are your entire product and nobody's paying you.

The indie game dev's emotional rollercoaster captured in Toy Story form. That split second of excitement when you think someone's interested in your game, followed by the crushing reality that it was just a false alarm. Six months of development, three blog posts, and a Steam page with exactly two wishlists - both from your parents using different email addresses.