7 ms·

Interesting. 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 draconia

by rick888 16y ago

Interesting. 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 ago
if 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 ago
  then 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 ago
    well, i mean, i know that doing that action is trivial, but isn't a pingback a light form of registration/drm/etc.?
    - patio11 16y ago
      I 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 ago
        i'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 ago
        It'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.
        noodle 16y ago
        again, that isn't my point. i'm not arguing about what is or isn't DRM. here: >"We released the game DRM-free which means it doesn’t include any anti-piracy protection, therefore the game doesn’t bother players serial codes or online authentication, but it’s also very easy to copy it," Amanita's Jakub Dvorsky explained. "Our estimate from the feedback is that only 5-15 percent of Machinarium players actually paid for the game." 1) they claim to not have any DRM, registration, pingbacks, etc.. they're saying that the 90% (average) number is purely based on feedback. how reliable is this number? i know i ignore most feedback mechanisms by default. 2) if they said all of this, and it turns out that the product does have a pingback or some form of automated feedback, is that not dishonest?
        jcl 16y ago
        they claim to not have any DRM, registration, pingbacks, etc. If you read what they wrote, they made no statement at all on pingbacks. They define what they mean when they say the game is "DRM-free". And since this definition does not preclude counting up the number of IPs from which the game accesses a particular online resource in the course of normal operation, I would have to say: No, it would not be dishonest of them to do that. Perhaps another example would help: The Fedora Project estimates the number of active users of Fedora by counting the IPs accessing their update servers. Yet I don't think this causes Fedora to contain DRM, nor do I think collecting this information is particularly dishonest.
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
People 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 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.
- patio11 16y ago
  Hardcore 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 ago
    Within 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 ago
  ideological 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 ago
Yeah - 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 ago
  Pirate, 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 ago
    Daniel 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    Yep, 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 ago
  You 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.

by rick888 16y ago

Interesting. 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 ago

if 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 ago
then 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 ago
  well, i mean, i know that doing that action is trivial, but isn't a pingback a light form of registration/drm/etc.?
  - patio11 16y ago
    I 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 ago
      i'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 ago
        It'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.
        noodle 16y ago
        again, that isn't my point. i'm not arguing about what is or isn't DRM. here: >"We released the game DRM-free which means it doesn’t include any anti-piracy protection, therefore the game doesn’t bother players serial codes or online authentication, but it’s also very easy to copy it," Amanita's Jakub Dvorsky explained. "Our estimate from the feedback is that only 5-15 percent of Machinarium players actually paid for the game." 1) they claim to not have any DRM, registration, pingbacks, etc.. they're saying that the 90% (average) number is purely based on feedback. how reliable is this number? i know i ignore most feedback mechanisms by default. 2) if they said all of this, and it turns out that the product does have a pingback or some form of automated feedback, is that not dishonest?
        jcl 16y ago
        they claim to not have any DRM, registration, pingbacks, etc. If you read what they wrote, they made no statement at all on pingbacks. They define what they mean when they say the game is "DRM-free". And since this definition does not preclude counting up the number of IPs from which the game accesses a particular online resource in the course of normal operation, I would have to say: No, it would not be dishonest of them to do that. Perhaps another example would help: The Fedora Project estimates the number of active users of Fedora by counting the IPs accessing their update servers. Yet I don't think this causes Fedora to contain DRM, nor do I think collecting this information is particularly dishonest.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

People 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 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.

patio11 16y ago
Hardcore 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 ago
  Within 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 ago
ideological 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 ago

Yeah - 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 ago
Pirate, 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 ago
  Daniel 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Yep, 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 ago
You 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.