'Pirates Don't Matter' — Mega Crit's Godot Decision Defended in Reddit AMA

The engine-choice debate got its definitive answer from the source. In a Reddit thread on Slay the Spire 2's Godot underpinnings, a user raised the standard concern: open engines are easy to reverse-engineer, which invites cracks, cheats and knock-off builds. Mega Crit programmer Jake Card's response closed the thread's argument: the team understood all of that when it chose Godot — and doesn't care.

The full position, consistent with everything the studio had said since the engine switch announcement:

• The piracy math is a wash. Pirates aren't lost sales; anti-piracy spend doesn't convert them, it just taxes paying customers with friction.
• The upside compounds. Godot's openness is precisely what powers the sequel's modding scene — the mod loader, the console, the community tools — plus engine transparency that lets players inspect and trust the game they're climbing.
• The alternative was the problem. Unity's 2024 fee controversy is why the studio moved; locking the game down again to spite pirates would have rebuilt the exact trust problem the switch solved.

Coming off a three-million-copy launch week, the stance landed less as bravado than as evidence: the best-selling roguelike launch ever, cracked within days, visibly unharmed — while its mod community thrived. The market had, once again, agreed with Mega Crit's risk assessment.

Keep reading:

• Pirates Cracked It; Mega Crit Shrugged
• How to Install Mods