The lack of funding for traditional marketing is one of the greatest challenge for an indie developer. If they can come up with a (legal) way for getting attention, all the more power to them.

Definitely not knocking it, I've been in and out of the indie dev scene for quite a few years now, just calling a spade a spade is all.

> just calling a spade a spade is all

Why though, what does it add to the discussion? Why does it matter if a tiny indie developer gets a bit of exposure to his tiny little game? "It's just an ad" sounds needlessly cynical and dismissive.

I mean, if you want my honest opinion because this kind of post is brutally pervasive on reddit, and I come to HN for content of a higher caliber?

HN is often just as bad, if not worse with the thinly veiled blog posts.

I for one appreciate learning a truth about the world, even if someone else thinks it's cynical & dismissive. Kinda like your second sentence is.

This is fine for this guy, but not repeatable. When it's one guy its a fun story - a performance piece almost. When it's repeated, staged or even just fabricated then you have the beginnings of a new form of clickbait.