5 ms·

That really doesn't change the argument surrounding piracy - the contention is that piracy doesn't displace sales. If that's true, it is literally not effecting

by slivym 9y ago

That really doesn't change the argument surrounding piracy - the contention is that piracy doesn't displace sales. If that's true, it is literally not effecting whether everyone is paying their share. The people who pirated it simply were never going to pay for it whether they play it or not. I tend to agree with you though, if you make a game that requires incredible attention to detail, hugely time intensive modelling work, and know that the target market is a tiny niche then maybe the product is just not viable.

moomin 9y ago
I think there may be some nuance to this, however. What you're saying is known to be to true at the macro level, but it may be more complicated at the micro level. For instance, it's well known that games companies aren't too fussed about games getting cracked after the launch window. The availability of a crack may not reduce your spend on video games, but it may reduce your spend on specific video games. This situation is made much much worse if your product is expensive, like this one is, and meant to make money over a long period rather than a short launch period. None of this excuses them, but I do wonder about how the piracy data actually pans out for small, expensive shops like this.
- soundwave106 9y ago
  My impression is (based on what I've seen with music plugins and heard from plugin developers, which tend to be also produced by small shops) that piracy data does matter a fair bit if you don't do anything about it. Nonetheless, several plugin companies do seem to be able to nicely balance the ability to protect their software, while avoiding arduous copy protection methods. The method I think seems to work best is a combination "honey pot + time bomb" type method, where you provide an "easy" method for the pirates to "crack" and get on the usual sites, while also including a more difficult to reverse engineer that activates at some point later. (This kind of nudges those who kind of use piracy to "try and buy" but sometimes, er, need a bit of motivation to actually purchase the product. Even people who can afford the software and make a pretty decent living with the product have been caught with pirated plugins in interviews (https://torrentfreak.com/avicii-and-other-djs-produce-hits-using-pirated-software-150223/) https://torrentfreak.com/avicii-and-other-djs-produce-hits-u...). You definitely don't need to include malware to protect your product.
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    > My impression is (based on what I've seen with music plugins and heard from plugin developers, which tend to be also produced by small shops) that piracy data does matter a fair bit if you don't do anything about it. The problem is nobody really knows that because it's nearly impossible to do a controlled experiment for this. What happens in practice is that a company's first product is unprofitable. So they go back and make significant improvements, spend five times as much on marketing, and add anti-piracy code. Then the new version is more profitable. The people who want the solution to have been the anti-piracy code credit it with the improvement, but there is no way to know if it was that or the product improvements, or the marketing, or more favorable market conditions at the time of the second launch, or the fact that the same marketing effort now produces 50% more customers because there is now an existing user base (including the pirates) who are easier to convert because they're familiar with the previous version, etc. To actually know the answer you would need a statistically valid sample of product launches where the determination of whether anti-piracy measures are taken is made at random. But as far as I'm aware no one has ever attempted this, and the choice to use anti-piracy measures has to be randomized or you could trivially be measuring the wrong thing, e.g. larger products with more resources are both more successful and more often include anti-piracy measures but the causation is reversed. So nobody really knows the answer and it's all just wild speculation.
    - soundwave106 9y ago
      What I've heard developers notice is a sharp drop in sales the instant a product is put on the torrent sites (eg, there's a clear "before" and "after" pattern). I also know that there's one plugin developer (u-He) who has posted that the "time bomb" method he uses does drive sales the instant those "time bombs" go off. (https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5762973#p5763060 https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5762973#p5763...). Of course, I only know little bits I hear from developers here and there -- the small shops are the ones that probably have the nitty gritty data details. The impression I get is that coding some degree of protection is worth it, as long as the protection does not impact the user experience that much (and judging from what I see, this is quite possible). There's no excuse however for emulating the warez guys and bundling malware with your software... there's smarter ways to protect products.
ravingraven 9y ago
>The people who pirated it simply were never going to pay for it whether they play it or not. I hear this argument a lot but can't see how it possibly be correct. Sure, not everyone who pirates would buy instead but at least some people would (it probably is a small percentage, but it is not zero). One can imagine that the effect of those few is amplified for titles with high costs per unit.
- simias 9y ago
  If you consider this you also have to consider people who pirate a game and then decide to buy it later when they get the money or they realize that it's worth the price. It happened to me on several occasions. There's also the "photoshop effect", where piracy helps ensure that the application remains the de-facto standard. Admittedly this is less applicable for games but it might help with 3rd party controller support, modding community etc...
  - danielbarla 9y ago
    In the context of niche games with pricey DLCs, I now have a significant collection of TS2018 DLCs. If I was not able to "try out" that game a few years ago in a less than legal fashion, I likely never would have gotten into it in the first place. I have a similar trend with books; on several occasions I've ended up owning (legally) the entire work of some author, simply because a friend gave me their copy of a book. I also believe that in the age of Steam specials, refunds, etc, people who pirate your game are not "lost sales". They are usually doing it because their appetite for games outstrips their budget, and they were highly unlikely to pay for it in the first place. But there is a significant chance may convert to a paying customer, or at least market the game by word of mouth.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dkersten 9y ago
    I’ll add my anecdote here. I haven’t pirated a game in ten years, but when I was a student, I pirated most of my games. Almost all of the ones that I played for more than a few days, I now own legally. Some of these games, I’ve become a big fan of the series and buy all new games (I pirated the original Witcher game for example, I now own it, the collectors edition of the second, the third game and am eagerly awaiting basically any game the developer releases. While it’s likely I would have eventually played The Witcher 3 anyway given how successful it was, I’d likely have missed the Witcher 2 and probably wouldn’t be such a blind fanboy of anything CDPR release) I also regularly NOT buy games (but nowadays also don’t pirate them, in the past I might have) if they hnave intrusive DRM
H1Supreme 9y ago
That argument is bullshit, frankly. Before the advent of CD-Burners and Napster, you found a way to buy a CD if you really wanted it. Everyone had their own copy of an album. A select few would make cassette tape copies, but you were never satisfied with that. I've seen numerous people who could absolutely afford games, stealing them. Hacked Xbox's filled with every game imaginable. These people would have bought some of these if they couldn't steal them, without a doubt. Would they have just gave up video games? No way. So, it absolutely displaces sales.
- Brockenstein 9y ago
  The reason why your comment is being downvoted is because of your ignorance, because you're trying to float widespread piracy as a recent phenomena and it's not. You just don't know your history. Before CD-RW lots of games were available on floppy disk, which were simple to copy. And even without a CD-RW you could copy the data off the CD. Perhaps you don't know about no-CD cracks? They were everywhere. There were plenty of ways to pirate CD based games without a CD-RW. It might seem difficult or complicated compared to 2018, but only if you didn't live through those times. At the time that's the way it was, and it was relatively easy. >Everyone had their own copy of an album. A select few would make cassette tape copies, but you were never satisfied with that. Forgive me, I never say this, but it's appropriate in this case: LOL

by slivym 9y ago

moomin 9y ago

I think there may be some nuance to this, however. What you're saying is known to be to true at the macro level, but it may be more complicated at the micro level. For instance, it's well known that games companies aren't too fussed about games getting cracked after the launch window. The availability of a crack may not reduce your spend on video games, but it may reduce your spend on specific video games. This situation is made much much worse if your product is expensive, like this one is, and meant to make money over a long period rather than a short launch period. None of this excuses them, but I do wonder about how the piracy data actually pans out for small, expensive shops like this.

soundwave106 9y ago
My impression is (based on what I've seen with music plugins and heard from plugin developers, which tend to be also produced by small shops) that piracy data does matter a fair bit if you don't do anything about it. Nonetheless, several plugin companies do seem to be able to nicely balance the ability to protect their software, while avoiding arduous copy protection methods. The method I think seems to work best is a combination "honey pot + time bomb" type method, where you provide an "easy" method for the pirates to "crack" and get on the usual sites, while also including a more difficult to reverse engineer that activates at some point later. (This kind of nudges those who kind of use piracy to "try and buy" but sometimes, er, need a bit of motivation to actually purchase the product. Even people who can afford the software and make a pretty decent living with the product have been caught with pirated plugins in interviews (https://torrentfreak.com/avicii-and-other-djs-produce-hits-using-pirated-software-150223/) https://torrentfreak.com/avicii-and-other-djs-produce-hits-u...). You definitely don't need to include malware to protect your product.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  > My impression is (based on what I've seen with music plugins and heard from plugin developers, which tend to be also produced by small shops) that piracy data does matter a fair bit if you don't do anything about it. The problem is nobody really knows that because it's nearly impossible to do a controlled experiment for this. What happens in practice is that a company's first product is unprofitable. So they go back and make significant improvements, spend five times as much on marketing, and add anti-piracy code. Then the new version is more profitable. The people who want the solution to have been the anti-piracy code credit it with the improvement, but there is no way to know if it was that or the product improvements, or the marketing, or more favorable market conditions at the time of the second launch, or the fact that the same marketing effort now produces 50% more customers because there is now an existing user base (including the pirates) who are easier to convert because they're familiar with the previous version, etc. To actually know the answer you would need a statistically valid sample of product launches where the determination of whether anti-piracy measures are taken is made at random. But as far as I'm aware no one has ever attempted this, and the choice to use anti-piracy measures has to be randomized or you could trivially be measuring the wrong thing, e.g. larger products with more resources are both more successful and more often include anti-piracy measures but the causation is reversed. So nobody really knows the answer and it's all just wild speculation.
  - soundwave106 9y ago
    What I've heard developers notice is a sharp drop in sales the instant a product is put on the torrent sites (eg, there's a clear "before" and "after" pattern). I also know that there's one plugin developer (u-He) who has posted that the "time bomb" method he uses does drive sales the instant those "time bombs" go off. (https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5762973#p5763060 https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5762973#p5763...). Of course, I only know little bits I hear from developers here and there -- the small shops are the ones that probably have the nitty gritty data details. The impression I get is that coding some degree of protection is worth it, as long as the protection does not impact the user experience that much (and judging from what I see, this is quite possible). There's no excuse however for emulating the warez guys and bundling malware with your software... there's smarter ways to protect products.

ravingraven 9y ago

>The people who pirated it simply were never going to pay for it whether they play it or not. I hear this argument a lot but can't see how it possibly be correct. Sure, not everyone who pirates would buy instead but at least some people would (it probably is a small percentage, but it is not zero). One can imagine that the effect of those few is amplified for titles with high costs per unit.

simias 9y ago
If you consider this you also have to consider people who pirate a game and then decide to buy it later when they get the money or they realize that it's worth the price. It happened to me on several occasions. There's also the "photoshop effect", where piracy helps ensure that the application remains the de-facto standard. Admittedly this is less applicable for games but it might help with 3rd party controller support, modding community etc...
- danielbarla 9y ago
  In the context of niche games with pricey DLCs, I now have a significant collection of TS2018 DLCs. If I was not able to "try out" that game a few years ago in a less than legal fashion, I likely never would have gotten into it in the first place. I have a similar trend with books; on several occasions I've ended up owning (legally) the entire work of some author, simply because a friend gave me their copy of a book. I also believe that in the age of Steam specials, refunds, etc, people who pirate your game are not "lost sales". They are usually doing it because their appetite for games outstrips their budget, and they were highly unlikely to pay for it in the first place. But there is a significant chance may convert to a paying customer, or at least market the game by word of mouth.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dkersten 9y ago
  I’ll add my anecdote here. I haven’t pirated a game in ten years, but when I was a student, I pirated most of my games. Almost all of the ones that I played for more than a few days, I now own legally. Some of these games, I’ve become a big fan of the series and buy all new games (I pirated the original Witcher game for example, I now own it, the collectors edition of the second, the third game and am eagerly awaiting basically any game the developer releases. While it’s likely I would have eventually played The Witcher 3 anyway given how successful it was, I’d likely have missed the Witcher 2 and probably wouldn’t be such a blind fanboy of anything CDPR release) I also regularly NOT buy games (but nowadays also don’t pirate them, in the past I might have) if they hnave intrusive DRM

H1Supreme 9y ago

That argument is bullshit, frankly. Before the advent of CD-Burners and Napster, you found a way to buy a CD if you really wanted it. Everyone had their own copy of an album. A select few would make cassette tape copies, but you were never satisfied with that. I've seen numerous people who could absolutely afford games, stealing them. Hacked Xbox's filled with every game imaginable. These people would have bought some of these if they couldn't steal them, without a doubt. Would they have just gave up video games? No way. So, it absolutely displaces sales.

Brockenstein 9y ago
The reason why your comment is being downvoted is because of your ignorance, because you're trying to float widespread piracy as a recent phenomena and it's not. You just don't know your history. Before CD-RW lots of games were available on floppy disk, which were simple to copy. And even without a CD-RW you could copy the data off the CD. Perhaps you don't know about no-CD cracks? They were everywhere. There were plenty of ways to pirate CD based games without a CD-RW. It might seem difficult or complicated compared to 2018, but only if you didn't live through those times. At the time that's the way it was, and it was relatively easy. >Everyone had their own copy of an album. A select few would make cassette tape copies, but you were never satisfied with that. Forgive me, I never say this, but it's appropriate in this case: LOL