3 ms·

> a bit of piracy Don't know about other content industry, but at least in video games, "a bit of" and "piracy" are oxymoron. Any semi-popular game has a signi

> a bit of piracy Don't know about other content industry, but at least in video games, "a bit of" and "piracy" are oxymoron. Any semi-popular game has a significant number of pirated copy players. Example: World of Goo claims 90% of players play pirated copies.[1] This is a game distributed without DRM and the price isn't high ($15 and region-based). 90% piracy rate is how customers respond to no DRM. [1] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/world-of-goo-vs-piracy https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/world-of-goo-vs-piracy

smallnix 3y ago
> we divided the total number of sales we had from all sources by the total number of unique IPs in our database, and came up with about 0.1. that’s how we came up with 90% Did they account for dynamic IPs? If not that number is way off.
nmz 3y ago
The price is quite high for a jobless minor, of which most gamers are.
izacus 3y ago
Note that those % numbers don't convert into sales or profits. Those are just the biggest numbers found to defend DRM. (Similarly how being able to share a BluRay with your family doesn't lose the content industry N sales of discs.) This issue is a lot more nuanced than reading some skewed stats and declaring that it's a problem. The core issue is that this is a hugely emotional issue - the content industry (and artists of course) are constantly playing the "oh poor us, everyone is stealing, those criminals!" note to make pirates look bad... while in the same sentence establishing outright abusive DRM practices and trying to extract maximum money of every single shmuck that actually bought their content legally. DRM has a massive negative effect on legitimate consumers - instead of quoting "90% piracy that", instead think about just how much of that piracy ACTUALLY hurts anyone and how much the attempt to fight it ACTUALLY hurts people who legitimately pay for their content and hardware.
Adverblessly 3y ago
Have a look at http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy <large number>% of copies are pirated, but only <tiny number>% of players pirate, it is simply that (some of) those that do pirate will tend to pirate a whole lot more games. Meaning that that 90% piracy rate means e.g. 5% lost sales. And if you follow https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 then 90% piracy rate could also mean 5% extra sales.

smallnix 3y ago

> we divided the total number of sales we had from all sources by the total number of unique IPs in our database, and came up with about 0.1. that’s how we came up with 90% Did they account for dynamic IPs? If not that number is way off.

nmz 3y ago

The price is quite high for a jobless minor, of which most gamers are.

izacus 3y ago

Note that those % numbers don't convert into sales or profits. Those are just the biggest numbers found to defend DRM. (Similarly how being able to share a BluRay with your family doesn't lose the content industry N sales of discs.) This issue is a lot more nuanced than reading some skewed stats and declaring that it's a problem. The core issue is that this is a hugely emotional issue - the content industry (and artists of course) are constantly playing the "oh poor us, everyone is stealing, those criminals!" note to make pirates look bad... while in the same sentence establishing outright abusive DRM practices and trying to extract maximum money of every single shmuck that actually bought their content legally. DRM has a massive negative effect on legitimate consumers - instead of quoting "90% piracy that", instead think about just how much of that piracy ACTUALLY hurts anyone and how much the attempt to fight it ACTUALLY hurts people who legitimately pay for their content and hardware.

Adverblessly 3y ago

Have a look at http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy <large number>% of copies are pirated, but only <tiny number>% of players pirate, it is simply that (some of) those that do pirate will tend to pirate a whole lot more games. Meaning that that 90% piracy rate means e.g. 5% lost sales. And if you follow https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 then 90% piracy rate could also mean 5% extra sales.