5 ms·

Surely, this has nothing to do with the fact that live service and subscription games generate more revenue, whether or not piracy is involved.

MrBuddyCasino 5mo ago
To give you an idea of the scale of the problem: Greenheart Games famously released a "cracked" version of their own game (Game Dev Tycoon) onto torrent sites on launch day. In this version, the player's in-game studio eventually goes bankrupt because "pirates" steal their games. The Data: Within 24 hours, 93.6% of players were playing the pirated version. The Consequence: The developer's blog post highlighted the irony of pirates posting on forums complaining that the "in-game piracy" was unfair and "ruining" their fun. The experiment proved that even at a low price point ($8), a massive majority of the PC audience will choose "free" regardless of the developer's size or struggle. https://web.archive.org/web/20161118042043/http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/game-dev-tycoon-developers-give-pirates-a-taste-of-their-own-medicine/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161118042043/http://arstechnic... https://web.archive.org/web/20131214165241/http://aussie-gamer.com/news/australian-game-developer-trolls-internet-pirates/ https://web.archive.org/web/20131214165241/http://aussie-gam... P.S.: It bears repeating that the game cost only 8 dollars.
- kakacik 5mo ago
  Thats playing with statistics and you know it. Why such game? If they would release only the paid game, there wouldn't be 93% + 7% of the gamers playing, far from it. Cost is almost irrelevant to pirates, either its free or its not, like it or not. There is mix of folks who do it for the lulz, some do it to have higher performance gaming without denuvo taking resources and computing power, and some are outright poor. Even 8-usd-is-too-much poor. I've lived like that. Don't judge too easily. Don't do stupid mistakes and count those as otherwise-paying-gamers. Thats PR for denuvo and similar, not a fair discussion.
- cermicelli 5mo ago
  Unhinged take I checked that was 2013 and the game cost almost as much as you you would pay in a month's rent in India in small towns. Most pirates aren't people who could pay for this stuff. This is utterly meaningless. So much in fact I don't even want to link counter examples to it. No/very few paying user pirates even single player games these days if they can afford it as a luxury please understand that. I would likemy regular updates bug fixes patches and new feaures ASAP. And on sale at 8$ for a game is less than 0.01% of my income so sure. But if it costs 800 USD I will get it for free because I am literally too poor for it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is beyond deluded. Instead of denuvo you can use simple steam drm, non trivial to pirate for small games cracks will take days or weeks to appear and updates won't be available instantly. It's safe simple and easy. And doesn't hurt any one. Denuvo is just invasive bullcrap that deluded people think helps anyone.
  - MrBuddyCasino 5mo ago
    [flagged]
  - ZekeSulastin 5mo ago
    "simple steam drm, non trivial to pirate" Steam DRM is trivial to the point where you may as well not use it and just release on GOG. Until the one actual cracker in combination with the hypervisor guys showed up a few months ago Denuvo had been unassailable for years.
    - cermicelli 5mo ago
      Alright I will like to ask you for the exact steps for every language other than steam DLL swtichroo which can easily proofed against. It's not as trivial to crack for a relatively non invasive and easy to enable feature. Denuvo is hardly uncrackable there's a big reason Rockstar went to their own anti piracy tools. Seeing unhinged takes about Denuvo shilling on HN is nutz. Honestly well what I would expect from folks here.
- choo-t 5mo ago
  The number of pirated copies doesn't translate to missed sales. Someone playing/watching/listening to something for free doesn't mean they would still do it if they had to pay for it.
  - lokar 5mo ago
    It’s certainly not a 1:1 loss, but it’s also not zero
    - rowanG077 5mo ago
      Sure it can be zero. It can even be negative. As larger player numbers, including piracy, are a natural form of marketing. That means it's not hard to see this additional marketing could lead to larger sales figures compared to if piracy was not possible.
  - duped 5mo ago
    One reason anti piracy companies make a living is because companies that buy it see concrete increases in revenue as a result. It may not be every pirate who converts to a customer but DRM solutions are priced to be below the expected additional revenue. And it's not always cheap.
    - everyone 5mo ago
      Do you have any data to support that? I'd actually be really interested to see. There are a lot of weird ass games with Denuvo (like Handball 17, Bus Simulator 18) I think at least sometimes paying a big DRM subscriptions is part of a money laundering scheme.
      - pocksuppet 5mo ago
        There's data against it. The EU conducted a study then suppressed it until an MP eventually made a FOIA request to get the results, because the results weren't what they wanted it to say. https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact.html https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-pira...
- josefx 5mo ago
  > The experiment proved that even at a low price point ($8), a massive majority of the PC audience will choose "free" regardless of the developer's size or struggle. Several points: * A pirate can pirate infinity +1 games for free, that will skew any statistic compared to legitimiate buyers that have to manage a finite budget. It also means that you aren't looking at 93% lost sales. * It wasn't a new indy game, but a port of an existing mobile game, so I wouldn't be surprised if legitimate buyers weren't in a rush to get their hands on it on day one. The steam statistics from the first month mention a peak concurrent player count of over 7000 so it certainly didn't stay at 200 copies.
  - wincy 5mo ago
    I basically just Hoover up every new game on the pirate sites once a week. I spend thousands a year on video games. I own a 5090. I’m kind of obsessed.
keyringlight 5mo ago
For a long time now I've found it weird that people who like single player games on PC (and to a lesser extent older consoles which had piracy enabling mods) didn't acknowledge the long game consequences of their actions, or at least were willfully ignorant to them because everyone loves getting something for free. It seems to be a variation on Goodhart's law - you get what you reward - if the reward for a company (big or small) in spending lots of time and money isn't as good as other options, those other options will get more investment in the future and the ones you do like will get less. The other option I can see for the large companies is that any project involving tens or hundreds of millions of dollars is likely to be insured, and a condition of that insurance is they take all reasonable options available to get the most success out of it that they can. If they don't they need to reduce the risk which probably means less resources allocated which again may not be interesting to the companies capable of making grand experiences versus other options.
- MrBuddyCasino 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - stereolambda 5mo ago
    This looks weird in the context, because the grandparent comment's argument was purely interest-based? You probably mean there's a propensity for tragedy of the commons. Regardless I'd argue gaming may be the one media category left (after the recent decade's value decline) where piracy remains to seem like more hassle than buying a copy^W license. I would also guess it is more concentrated on a few popular titles compared to music or films. Nowadays I hear more of people collecting games on Steam, to never play them, than of legitimate pirates.
    - buran77 5mo ago
      He's a racist [1] with an agenda, don't try to read too much into that kind of comment. > Brown hands typed these words. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48001160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48001160

MrBuddyCasino 5mo ago

To give you an idea of the scale of the problem: Greenheart Games famously released a "cracked" version of their own game (Game Dev Tycoon) onto torrent sites on launch day. In this version, the player's in-game studio eventually goes bankrupt because "pirates" steal their games. The Data: Within 24 hours, 93.6% of players were playing the pirated version. The Consequence: The developer's blog post highlighted the irony of pirates posting on forums complaining that the "in-game piracy" was unfair and "ruining" their fun. The experiment proved that even at a low price point ($8), a massive majority of the PC audience will choose "free" regardless of the developer's size or struggle. https://web.archive.org/web/20161118042043/http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/game-dev-tycoon-developers-give-pirates-a-taste-of-their-own-medicine/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161118042043/http://arstechnic... https://web.archive.org/web/20131214165241/http://aussie-gamer.com/news/australian-game-developer-trolls-internet-pirates/ https://web.archive.org/web/20131214165241/http://aussie-gam... P.S.: It bears repeating that the game cost only 8 dollars.

kakacik 5mo ago
Thats playing with statistics and you know it. Why such game? If they would release only the paid game, there wouldn't be 93% + 7% of the gamers playing, far from it. Cost is almost irrelevant to pirates, either its free or its not, like it or not. There is mix of folks who do it for the lulz, some do it to have higher performance gaming without denuvo taking resources and computing power, and some are outright poor. Even 8-usd-is-too-much poor. I've lived like that. Don't judge too easily. Don't do stupid mistakes and count those as otherwise-paying-gamers. Thats PR for denuvo and similar, not a fair discussion.
cermicelli 5mo ago
Unhinged take I checked that was 2013 and the game cost almost as much as you you would pay in a month's rent in India in small towns. Most pirates aren't people who could pay for this stuff. This is utterly meaningless. So much in fact I don't even want to link counter examples to it. No/very few paying user pirates even single player games these days if they can afford it as a luxury please understand that. I would likemy regular updates bug fixes patches and new feaures ASAP. And on sale at 8$ for a game is less than 0.01% of my income so sure. But if it costs 800 USD I will get it for free because I am literally too poor for it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is beyond deluded. Instead of denuvo you can use simple steam drm, non trivial to pirate for small games cracks will take days or weeks to appear and updates won't be available instantly. It's safe simple and easy. And doesn't hurt any one. Denuvo is just invasive bullcrap that deluded people think helps anyone.
- MrBuddyCasino 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- ZekeSulastin 5mo ago
  "simple steam drm, non trivial to pirate" Steam DRM is trivial to the point where you may as well not use it and just release on GOG. Until the one actual cracker in combination with the hypervisor guys showed up a few months ago Denuvo had been unassailable for years.
  - cermicelli 5mo ago
    Alright I will like to ask you for the exact steps for every language other than steam DLL swtichroo which can easily proofed against. It's not as trivial to crack for a relatively non invasive and easy to enable feature. Denuvo is hardly uncrackable there's a big reason Rockstar went to their own anti piracy tools. Seeing unhinged takes about Denuvo shilling on HN is nutz. Honestly well what I would expect from folks here.
choo-t 5mo ago
The number of pirated copies doesn't translate to missed sales. Someone playing/watching/listening to something for free doesn't mean they would still do it if they had to pay for it.
- lokar 5mo ago
  It’s certainly not a 1:1 loss, but it’s also not zero
  - rowanG077 5mo ago
    Sure it can be zero. It can even be negative. As larger player numbers, including piracy, are a natural form of marketing. That means it's not hard to see this additional marketing could lead to larger sales figures compared to if piracy was not possible.
- duped 5mo ago
  One reason anti piracy companies make a living is because companies that buy it see concrete increases in revenue as a result. It may not be every pirate who converts to a customer but DRM solutions are priced to be below the expected additional revenue. And it's not always cheap.
  - everyone 5mo ago
    Do you have any data to support that? I'd actually be really interested to see. There are a lot of weird ass games with Denuvo (like Handball 17, Bus Simulator 18) I think at least sometimes paying a big DRM subscriptions is part of a money laundering scheme.
    - pocksuppet 5mo ago
      There's data against it. The EU conducted a study then suppressed it until an MP eventually made a FOIA request to get the results, because the results weren't what they wanted it to say. https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact.html https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-pira...
josefx 5mo ago
> The experiment proved that even at a low price point ($8), a massive majority of the PC audience will choose "free" regardless of the developer's size or struggle. Several points: * A pirate can pirate infinity +1 games for free, that will skew any statistic compared to legitimiate buyers that have to manage a finite budget. It also means that you aren't looking at 93% lost sales. * It wasn't a new indy game, but a port of an existing mobile game, so I wouldn't be surprised if legitimate buyers weren't in a rush to get their hands on it on day one. The steam statistics from the first month mention a peak concurrent player count of over 7000 so it certainly didn't stay at 200 copies.
- wincy 5mo ago
  I basically just Hoover up every new game on the pirate sites once a week. I spend thousands a year on video games. I own a 5090. I’m kind of obsessed.

keyringlight 5mo ago

For a long time now I've found it weird that people who like single player games on PC (and to a lesser extent older consoles which had piracy enabling mods) didn't acknowledge the long game consequences of their actions, or at least were willfully ignorant to them because everyone loves getting something for free. It seems to be a variation on Goodhart's law - you get what you reward - if the reward for a company (big or small) in spending lots of time and money isn't as good as other options, those other options will get more investment in the future and the ones you do like will get less. The other option I can see for the large companies is that any project involving tens or hundreds of millions of dollars is likely to be insured, and a condition of that insurance is they take all reasonable options available to get the most success out of it that they can. If they don't they need to reduce the risk which probably means less resources allocated which again may not be interesting to the companies capable of making grand experiences versus other options.

MrBuddyCasino 5mo ago
[flagged]
- stereolambda 5mo ago
  This looks weird in the context, because the grandparent comment's argument was purely interest-based? You probably mean there's a propensity for tragedy of the commons. Regardless I'd argue gaming may be the one media category left (after the recent decade's value decline) where piracy remains to seem like more hassle than buying a copy^W license. I would also guess it is more concentrated on a few popular titles compared to music or films. Nowadays I hear more of people collecting games on Steam, to never play them, than of legitimate pirates.
  - buran77 5mo ago
    He's a racist [1] with an agenda, don't try to read too much into that kind of comment. > Brown hands typed these words. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48001160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48001160