I can only imagine how cathartic it must've been for some of those developers to write those messages, even if it ultimately didn't help them much in the end.

I can only imagine how cathartic it must've been for some of those developers to write those messages, even if it ultimately didn't help them much in the end. When people pirate stuff today it's easy to write it off as sticking it to (mostly) faceless corporations, but back then, most of these games were written by "hobbyists-turned-pro" or tiny outfits. Not unlike today's indie developers, though I'd say people back then probably had fewer opportunities to bounce back and even fewer ways of distributing their software. Especially in Europe where a lot of Amiga users (and creators) lived. It's ironic, in some ways, that the very BBSes these guys rail against in the messages were the best channels for distributing games far and wide --- shame it came about in an era where most developers had no means to sell it "online" on the selfsame platforms.