The game Game Dev Tycoon was actually based off a game called Game Dev Story. The creators thought of it as "the first tycoon game they really enjoyed on iOS." However, from the beginning they wished it was less random and more realistic.

The game's developers released their own cracked version of the game onto several popular torrent websites. However, playing this version of the game would result in every game you create in-game being pirated to a point of being impossible to progress after a certain point.