5 ms·
Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale
- reynolds 16y agoMachinarium is amazing. I purchased it last December when they had a sale going. I would've gladly paid the full price for it.
- es3754 16y agoEven if you don't wish to play the game (often), the soundtrack is pretty awesome to have as background coding music. $5 is a steal.
- goatforce5 16y agoSo let's go steal it! Yaaaarrrrrr!
- jastuk 16y agoagreed; soundtrack alone is well worth the money
- ynniv 16y agoI just paid my $5 site-unseen for the game and soundtrack. Haven't played the game yet, but the soundtrack alone is worth more than $5.
- rick888 16y agoInteresting. So 90% of the people pirate the game (which has no serial number or protection). I thought the reason people pirated apps was because of draconian protection systems like DRM?!
- noodle 16y agoif there's no registration, DRM, popup messages, etc., then i wonder how they got the 90% number. i didn't pirate it, but i'd probably buy this game at $5. for what it is, a shorter single player, point-and-click puzzle game, i don't know that i'd pay $20.
- patio11 16y agothen i wonder how they got the 90% number. Comparing the number of unique copies of your program running to sales made takes about ~20 lines of code. On first run, ping the website and mark somewhere that you won't do that check again. Count how many times your program accesses the website.
- noodle 16y agowell, i mean, i know that doing that action is trivial, but isn't a pingback a light form of registration/drm/etc.?
- patio11 16y agoI might have agreed with you once. These days, Google Analytics tracks 2/3 of pages on the Internet. I already know you downloaded it -- if you think you have a legitimate reason to not let me track that you turned it on once, send me an email and I'll be happy to discuss the many benefits of paying Big Freaking Enterprise pricing with you. I have no desire to do privacy-increasing mechanisms which only help the privacy of pirates, which is what opposition to phone home is (since all legitimate customers left download and purchase logs).
- noodle 16y agoi'm not really trying to make an argument about privacy and your rights online type of stuff. i'm just trying to make note of the fact that if you do have something that phones home, can you really say that your product is totally free and clear of that drm/registration/etc type of software practices? more similar to false advertising. "our product will NEVER do this. except, it does, but just a little"
- grhino 16y agoIt's also possible to put an online feature in the game like check the high scores or check for updates, and you'll be able to track usage while not having a DRM feature. DRM is about controlling the right to run the software, and I don't think a simple ping back would count as that.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoPeople pirate in general because it's easy. People pirate games with DRM because the pirate version is better than the legit one. You could easily argue that the DRM is increasing both the number and social acceptability of software pirates, which is basically the opposite of what it claims to be doing.
- rick888 16y ago"People pirate games with DRM because the pirate version is better than the legit one." How do we know that the people that pirate games with DRM aren't doing it because it's "easy"? "You could easily argue that the DRM is increasing both the number and social acceptability of software pirates, which is basically the opposite of what it claims to be doing." No, the piratebay is increasing the social acceptability of software pirates. So is the increasing rate of entitlement among people in their 20s. This small example shows me that having no DRM (or any other kind of protection) means an application developer will not make any money on their app because most people will just pirate it. DRM at least helps prevent piracy to some degree. Downloadable apps are on the way out. Because of piracy, I predict most companies will move over to web services in the future. This should make most people happy because now, instead of paying for software once, you will need to pay for it every month/year.
- jsz0 16y agoHardcore pirates will always find a new excuse. Most of them just don't want to pay. They can't be counted as lost sales if they never had any intent to buy.
- patio11 16y agoHardcore pirates will always find a new excuse, but well-implemented DRM is really helpful at encouraging mostly honest people to be as honest as they believe themselves to be. A huge segment of the population will be every bit as honest as you require them to be.
- gamble 16y agoWithin many game companies, the goal of DRM is to prevent people from pirating the game for the first week or two. They know better than anyone it'll be cracked eventually. But DRM definitely has an effect on sales if the pirates have to wait a few days to get the game for free. At least some of them will pay, if they have to.
- noodle 16y agoideological or circumstantial pirates will pirate. they're the people who will never buy your product. you won't make money from them, ever.
- rick888 16y ago"Hardcore pirates will always find a new excuse. Most of them just don't want to pay. They can't be counted as lost sales if they never had any intent to buy." This may be the case, but allowing people to share your application freely will make it that much easier to create more pirates (IE: someone who doesn't know that much about computers searches your app on Google and finds the "free" version instead of your site).
- goodgoblin 16y agoYeah - most of the people pirate because its easy and relatively risk free. They would never think of 'pirating' a car. Who came up with the term pirating anyway? It adds a glamor that 'stealing' just doesn't have.
- bigB 16y agoPirate, or the term for a "copyright thief" was coined somewhere back in the 1800's I think, by a poet or author describing the people who stole and reprinted his works. Its seems to have stuck though. I know I have the link somewhere to back this up, but cant find it right at the moment
- j-g-faustus 16y agoDaniel Defoe (of Robinson Crusoe), 1703: [my novel] is being Printed again and again, by Pyrates But the term was in use as early as 1600: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement
- joblessjunkie 16y agoI have never considered pirate software to be "risk free". I'm not concerned about getting caught. I'm concerned about running arbitrary binaries downloaded from god-knows-where which were prepared by hackers with less-than-honorable intentions. After you've reformatted your hard drive for the 3rd or 4th time, you give up on pirate software.
- grhino 16y agoYep, I always cringe a little bit when my wife uses a download link to Photoshop from a "friend". I know that commercial software isn't without risks, but at least, you can raise a fuss.
- dillydally 16y agoYou can't "pirate" a car. If I took your car, you'd be less one car. If I copy a game, nobody is less anything. It would be as if I had a device that could duplicate your car in 10 minutes, atom-for-atom. Clearly this would spell big trouble for the auto industry. We might even introduce laws which make this act illegal, or otherwise induce artificial scarcity so that the price of a car doesn't fall to zero, because we decided, as a society, that the auto industry is something we want to encourage. Maybe every car would require a special passphrase to start, and the car phones home via the cellular network so that no more than one passphrase can be active at a given time. Hmm. That sounds familiar. On the other hand, I'm not stealing someone's car when I duplicate it, am I? Suddenly there's this third party (the car manufacturer or retailer) who cares a lot about what I do with me car. They'd say, "No, it's bad for you to copy other people's cars" and do what they could to stop me. A very different situation from car theft today, which involves only two parties (me and the person I stole it from) and obviously and directly deprives said person of their car. Copyright infringement isn't theft, not legally, not historically, and not morally.
- tomjen3 16y agoSo those who are honest pay the full price, and those who don't only have to pay 1/4? Yeah that is going to cut down on piracy.
- noodle 16y agoi'm honest, didn't pirate it, and will likely pay the 1/4 price to buy it. i would likely not pay the full price for it.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoIt's $5 for everyone. The piracy thing is a marketing gimmick because you don't get written up in gadget blogs just because you have a sale.
- thibaut_barrere 16y agoIs it $5 for those who already paid ?
- grhino 16y agoAgain, I think it's better to simply look at it as a sale price that comes after the product has become successful plus a little bit of guilting those that haven't paid for it to buy it.
- Keyframe 16y agoI paid 10$ when it was on sale. Game was worth it though and I got another game from them for free for those 10$ - Samorost 2.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- MichaelGG 16y ago" the game doesn’t bother players serial codes or online authentication, but it’s also very easy to copy it " Somewhat misleading. It's also very easy to copy all the super-DRMed games. In fact, the process is identical. Load up a torrent site, search, download. At any rate, claiming 90% piracy (regardless of truth) to run a sale is probably a good marketing move. It's a beautiful game.
- StavrosK 16y agoIt is a good move. I didn't pirate it, but I'll buy it to support them (plus it's just three quid). I only wish it were on Steam...
- stonemetal 16y agoThe game is on steam. Not sure about the sale.
- StavrosK 16y agoYeah, I meant the sale, it's 15 quid on Steam :/
- martey 16y agoI think it is on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/40700/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/40700/
- StavrosK 16y agoIt is, but no sale :/
- rmc 16y agoFor the user this is easy to copy. For the pirate this is easier to pirate than a mainstream game, since the pirate doesn't have to figure out how to crack it or make a keygen. Instead they just upload the file straight from the company.
- 16y ago
- someone_here 16y agoI pirated this game to see if it would work on my N900 as a standalone (since the demo did not). The game was still too slow, so i didn't purchase it.
- theBobMcCormick 16y agoIf that 90% figure is accurate, that's really fucking depressing. That's a beautiful looking game. I sure hope they're getting enough sales to make some decent money.
- jcl 16y ago90% seems to the rate everyone comes up with when they actually measure it, judging from various independent games blogs and feedback from acquaintances in mobile gaming. I wouldn't be surprised if the rate holds for AAA titles as well. On the flip side, I recall at least one set of statistics showing that most pirates don't run a game more than once. Presumably most pirates pirate huge numbers of games and simply don't have the time to play them all in depth -- which certainly supports the idea that they wouldn't pay for them if piracy weren't an option.
- commandar 16y agoI've known a number of people through the years that would pirate hundred of movies, and only ever watch a handful of them. I've definitely seen the odd sort of compulsive hording you're describing.
- ericd 16y agoIt's not that odd, it's basically building a huge on-demand video library. Since videos take such a long time to download, you have to decide to get them long before you decide to watch them. Thus it makes sense to batch DL them all and then decide later.
- commandar 16y agoWell, I've heard that rationalization, but the people I'm talking about tend to have literally hundreds of movies on hand, most of which they'll never actually watch. Actually watching them seems to be far less important than just accumulating as much as possible.
- RBerenguel 16y agoJust bought it, awesome game.
- moomba 16y agoWhat seems to be missing, as usual from these piracy posts is that the 90% who pirated the game most likely wouldn't have bought it. Sure, pirating games is a bad thing. But, it doesn't hurt to have a little perspective on it. There was a post on HN a few months ago doing some analysis on this subject.
- rick888 16y ago"What seems to be missing, as usual from these piracy posts is that the 90% who pirated the game most likely wouldn't have bought it." We will never know this. When I used to pirate software in my younger years, I would buy software that I needed if I couldn't find it anywhere. I suspect that the number of pirates that would never buy are a lot lower than you claim. The problem now is that piracy has muddied the waters. We will never know either way.
- crystalis 16y agoSome companies have done the unthinkable and actually run some numbers... Eliminating 1,000 pirated copies tended to result in 1 additional sale. You turn 10,000 copies into 1,009. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350 http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350
- shasta 16y agoThey put out new versions of their games that fix existing pirating methods and then measure how that affects downloads and sales. How do they know what portion of the pirates are downloading the demo and then applying the crack rather than just downloaded a previous cracked version from somewhere else?
- almost 16y agoThis game is really really good. It's got beautiful artwork, awesome music and endearing characters. It's like everything that was good about the Lucasarts point&clicks without the insane puzzles (the puzzles get hard, but they still make some kind of sense). A bought this game at the full price despite having the pirated version available. I really want to encourage them to make more! For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't have bought it if it had any sort of crazy DRM scheme. There's a wallpaper sized version of the of the pirate robot image and a new song on the official blog post here: http://machinarium.net/blog/2010/08/05/machinarium-pirate-amnesty/ http://machinarium.net/blog/2010/08/05/machinarium-pirate-am...
- StavrosK 16y agoI bought the game because of your comment, but I really really want to add it to Steam, otherwise I'll lose the files and I'll have to download it from piratebay or something... I emailed them twice so far, I wish I had a key I could add...
- almost 16y agoI've lost the game files once so far and emailed them, they let me download them again which was nice. I wonder if it's possible for them to let you add it to your steam account after you've bought it through there website, I think steam has its own payment processing things from which Valve must take a cut.
- StavrosK 16y agoI think you should be able to add a game to Steam if you have a key, they do let you do that... If I lose the files (which I will), I'll just get them off TPB, I guess...
- beastman82 16y agoDeveloper, if you read this, please offer the sale on Steam! I will gladly buy it
- martey 16y agoWhat about http://store.steampowered.com/app/40700/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/40700/ ?
- friendlyhacker 16y ago"please offer the sale on Steam!" As in the sale price. It's still $19.99 on steam.
- martey 16y agoWhen I made my comment, I believe it said "please offer the app on Steam", or something similar.
- sterwill 16y agoMy wife purchased this game last year and we had a lot of fun working through some of the puzzles together. The art and music are great.
- noonespecial 16y agoAt the bottom there might be a choice. 100,000 copies in the wild with 90,000 of them pirated or 100 copies, all legit. If fact, its probably a continuum. Choose your point anywhere along that line. (Of course, you never heard about the one where only 100 sold, the developers decided they'd failed and gave up).
- myffical 16y agoWorld of Goo, another excellent indie game, also reported a 90% piracy rate two years ago. The developers calculated that percentage from the number of users on their high score board, which were much more than the number of actual online sales. They were very gracious about it, deliberately choosing not to put any DRM on their software. Sad as it may be, putting DRM might not increase sales numbers significantly. It just makes crackers more determined. Such was World of Goo's reasoning against DRM. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90.ars http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-wor...