60 Year Old Game Playerbase Spikes Amidst Schedule 1 Pirating Accusations
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- 60 year old video game title Spaceware surpassed 100,000 concurrent players on Steam.
- Spaceware is allegedly used as a ‘safe’ game to pirate multiplayer titles.
- The game is a publicly available tool for video game developers.
Spaceware saw a peak of 138,416 concurrent players on March 30, around the same time Schedule 1 hit 414,166. This sparked speculations from PC gamer that Spaceware is being used to pirate and play Schedule 1 online.
Having released a little over 60 years ago, Spaceware is a very old title that sees play outside of its original purpose. The game is readily available for all with the intent to provide game developers a functioning example of online multiplayer functionality – the code is open source, thereby is an invaluable tool for aspiring multiplayer game creators.
But because it is readily available, PC gamer alleges that gamers online are using Spaceware to mask their pirated multiplayer game titles. Since multiplayer games require accessing an online server, pirates supposedly use a third party app to change their pirated game title to ‘Spaceware.’
As of the beginning of April, Schedule 1 is currently the number one most sold game on Steam. Whenever a multiplayer title, such as Schedule 1, emerges in popularity, so too do the number of Spaceware players. A similar trend occurred with Palworld and Lethal Company’s releases, which saw Spaceware’s concurrent playerbase spike up as well.
Schedule 1 released its early access on March 24, 2025. The game’s early access period is planned to last two years, while the full release is slated to include “a significant expansion of the map, several more drugs and production processes, a larger customer and supplier network, as well as more fun things to spend your hard-earned cash on.”
