14 ms·

While I think this is a very clever idea, it's also somewhat dishonest. In the game world, pirates cause studios to go bankrupt. In the real world, the causal l

While I think this is a very clever idea, it's also somewhat dishonest. In the game world, pirates cause studios to go bankrupt. In the real world, the causal link is not as clear. People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ignore the fact that those who pirate don't necessarily have the means to buy many games; their choice is purely between pirating and not playing. Of those 90% or more who pirate the game, it's probably less than 10% who can be persuaded to actually buy it. Anyway, I'm curious to see how this attempt unfolds.

eropple 13y ago
> People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ignore the fact that those who pirate don't necessarily have the means to buy many games And people who defend pirates routinely ignore that pirated products are also pirated by people who will take what they want for free if they can, because they can. Don't pretend to a higher level of intellectual honesty or moral strength. Your position can lay claim to neither.
- epsylon 13y ago
  Yep, I've always found ridiculous when pirates claim they don't have the financial means to buy a $3 game to play on their $600 smartphone with a $30 per month data plan.
  - kefka 13y ago
    Hmm. I "love" your inflated numbers. I paid $75 for my iphone 3GS. I bought it from some dude that had to buy the iphone 4 when it came out. I then proceeded to jailbreak and unlock the phone to run any software and use any carrier. I then got onto a carrier that charges $30 for unlimited phone/text/data ~ family mobile. And I don't buy any app at all. I'll save my money for tangible things instead.
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  I'm not sure you're actually disagreeing with the post you replied to. People that take things because they're free end up downloading things they're not particularly interested in and may never even watch/play. Those people aren't potential customers. This isn't a moral issue at heart, it's about the impact of piracy on sales.
- lelandbatey 13y ago
  It's not really a claim of moral honesty as it is just one bit of factual data. A large majority of pirates won't buy the game. Ever. If they can't get a pirated copy, then they just won't play, but it's not as if they'll buy it instead. It's a sad but true fact. I only bring this up because there's often an underlying assumption that every pirate is a lost sale, when in reality there maybe 1% of pirates that would have otherwise bought the game. I'm in no way trying to say pirating has any moral leg to stand on.
  - eropple 13y ago
    Yeah, I get you--I apologize to poster^3, I'm used to hearing that line out of people more interested in rationalization than anything else. That said, in my experience the assumption that each pirate is a lost sale went out the window about a decade ago. And the idea that it's only "1%" of pirates who'd have bought the game, on the other hand, is ridiculous on its face. There's about 10,000 seeds and leeches of the various Skyrim torrents on The Pirate Bay, do you seriously think that only 100 of them would pay for it? (Most folks I know who deal with game piracy figure a hypothetical conversion rate around 20-25%, which, especially for companies of the article writer's size, is easily the difference between make or break.)
    - belorn 13y ago
      20% sound ridiculous high, and I would ask where in the world of sanity that people got that number. If we look at freemium to paid conversion rates, 20% seems out-of-this world large. Almost no one has that high. Looking around, 1% or 2.5% is said to be the average for games[1][2][3]. Why would a pirate be 10 times more likely to be incited to buy a game, rather than those who play a game designed from the ground up to encourage high conversion rates? It sound to me that logic demand that games with features designed for high conversion rates will do better than games that don't. Ie, to sum up, the conversation rate for pirate->paying should be far less than 2.5% in average, and nowhere near 20%. [1]: http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/11/04/running-a-freemium-web-app-heres-a-big-reason-were-growing http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/11/04/running-a-freem... [2]: http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/11/conversion-rate/ http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/11/conversion-rate/ [3]: http://www.gamesbrief.com/2013/03/arpdaus-conversion-rates-and-other-new-datapoints/ http://www.gamesbrief.com/2013/03/arpdaus-conversion-rates-a...
- smosher 13y ago
  You know, GP acknowledges those people and makes a good point about it at the same time. You're just being argumentative.
- vy8vWJlco 13y ago
  Are people who go outside and drink from a stream (through a filter/firewall, of course), stealing? What about people who take in the scenery, or people who breath? Is nature a starving artist? I'm not for dumping toxic waste in the river, or stealing property, but the Internet is my environment, and copying data is not only cheap, that's what I pay my ISP to be able to do. IMHO, that makes copying as moral as breathing. That said, I do support artists and research, etc, only I do it after I evaluate them and feel like I got something - similar to how I choose to upvote/downvote on HN, only there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like. FWIW, I do think that "sharing is caring" is a higher level of intellectual honesty than "trust me - you'll like it," especially when the former does nothing to damage attribution.
  - Sandman 13y ago
    That said, I do support artists and research, etc, only I do it after I evaluate them and feel like I got something - similar to how I choose to upvote/downvote on HN, only there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like. And luckily, a lot of games (this one included) come with a free demo, so that you can try them before buying them. So fortunately for all of us as customers, we don't need to download a cracked copy. We can play through the demo, see if welike it, and buy it if we do.
    - claudius 13y ago
      The demo for Linux said something like ‘coming soon’ earlier (the page seems a little slow at the moment) and I was unable to find any information whatsoever regarding hardware and software requirements before being asked for my credit card details.
  - eropple 13y ago
    > there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like I'm not going to fisk your post, which is largely self-serving rationalization. But I am going to touch on this. The choice is not "pirate it" or "pay for it". You can also--shocker incoming--not pirate it and not pay for it. Don't like that a publisher doesn't have a demo? Don't buy it. Don't like that the demo's not long enough? Don't buy it. But that's hard, and you can just take it for free. So, under the guise of "evaluating", that's what you do. And, yeah, I'm assuming some bad faith here, because the next person who actually compensates creators, without exception and at the price they ask for the content they pirate and use will be the first.
- np422 13y ago
  People who defend copyright take copyright for given, as that would be the normal state which can not be questioned. Don't pretend to a higher level of intellectual honesty or moral strength. Your position can lay claim to neither. Culture, creativity and art have existed long before copyright and will continue to do so after it has been abandoned.
  - eropple 13y ago
    Er...no? Like, completely no? I don't care if you question it. Question it all you like. But if you want to claim it doesn't work, you have a long road to hoe. Personally, "I get other people's work for free" is outweighed by "I get other people's work that I actually want to play." Skyrim doesn't come out of a Kickstarter.
    - np422 13y ago
      (I actually had to google skyrim, I'm that old ...) Please take a few minutes to rethink copyright from the ground up without any regards to what you have been told by anyone... Where does copyright originate? What purpose does it serve in the society of today? Does it serve that purpose well? How does it match up to what most people would consider to be fair use in regards to personal and commercial use? Does copyright sometimes get abused and misused? Are there better solutions to the issues we are trying to address? You don't need to tell me or anybody else what conclusion you reach. But you owe it to yourself to think it over and stop repeating what you have been told by others as most people here on HN does every time copyright gets discussed.
- hxa7241 13y ago
  What precisely is wrong with people copying things for free? Since these are non-rival, non-finite goods -- that is, as many people can use or reproduce them as want to without obstructing anyone else -- there is no basic physical reason for restriction. It is illegal, but that is not the same as immoral. For illegality to imply immorality the law would need to be shown to be itself moral. But unfortunately the law has (like the game concerned) been rigged by particular interests for their own purposes. No-one has so far produced good evidence to show the current laws are economically beneficial overall. So the intellectually honest and moral position is to admit the law is unfounded, gradually abolish it, and try to figure out other better economic arrangements that allow people to do what is the obviously moral thing: freely use and copy non-rival, non-finite goods.
  - bradleyjg 13y ago
    If you don't like the law try and overturn it. If you don't think the government is just try and overthrow it. That need not be violent, if you want to go the civil disobedience route, there's some rich history. But it isn't civil disobedience to secretly pirate a computer game (!) while doing everything possible to be avoid being caught and punished. The law isn't a buffet for you to pick and choose from.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  You are assuming that some one using pirated software would have bought it. I think pirates actually harm people who make free and cheap software, by using expensive "pirated" software instead. Had they not used the pirated software, they would possibly be using the free stuff and boosting the use of that free stuff. The big boys don't lose out, because they wouldn't have bought it in the first place. As such, the high moral ground the big boys think they occupy is equally suspect. IMHO, given the lack of large software houses going out of business actually due to piracy, I don't believe piracy has any real effect. All that is happening is that people are using the software, and the software houses remain profitable. If I am ever yo believe in piracy losing business money, I want proper proof that the vast majority of people which pirated software on their machine would have paid for that software. I suspect not. I suspect that if there really was a way to stop piracy, many more people would use Linux and all it's alternatives for free. In that scenario, MS and co would really start losing money and market power. Addition Edit: Also, most people spend the money they have. If they did buy all the stuff they pirated, software, games, music, movies, etc, there would be another sector that lost out. For example, pirating Far Cry 3 instead of buying, means £40 (whatever) to spend on clothes, food, cinema, fuel, etc. Its the same money, there is no extra. It just goes to different places.
  - doktrin 13y ago
    > You are assuming that some one using pirated software would have bought it. If you replace "it" [that particular good] with "something" [that good, or a similar one], then yeah. People used to buy music, after all. > "I suspect that if there really was a way to stop piracy, many more people would use Linux and all it's alternatives for free. " How many people pirate their OS? Windows comes bundled with just about every retail PC out there. Enthusiasts who assemble their own devices are in the minority. > "IMHO, given the lack of large software houses going out of business actually due to piracy, I don't believe piracy has any real effect." That makes no sense. Simply because the largest companies aren't literally going out of business piracy therefore has "no real effect"? That's a bit like saying the financial crisis in Europe isn't having any effect because Germany isn't deep in recession. > Addition Edit: Also, most people spend the money they have. If they did buy all the stuff they pirated, software, games, music, movies, etc, there would be another sector that lost out. For example, pirating Far Cry 3 instead of buying, means £40 (whatever) to spend on clothes, food, cinema, fuel, etc. Its the same money, there is no extra. It just goes to different places. Yeah, but so what? Not only is that statement irrelevant, but it obfuscates that where resources are allocated is just as important as whether or not they are allocated to begin with. The allocation of resources (money) is a reflection of what society deems important. For illustration, a society that spends 20% of disposable income on alcohol & tobacco is radically different from one that spends 20% of disposable income on tools, woodworking sets & raspberry Pis. Moreover, for the protectionists out there, allocating resources domestically is different than abroad.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
yaarrr1 13y ago
I can't afford to buy games. So i pirate them. digital goods are not like physical goods, no harm done whatsoever. Game i didn't play: Diablo 3, SimCity 3, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2 etc... All from major studios and have millions of paying users, not for me.
mjn 13y ago
That's a common approach to using gameplay for rhetorical purposes; the fact that you can code causal processes as you want is one of the main ways you can get videogames to push a point. As a more overt example, in the game Bacteria Salad [1], created after one of the E.coli scares, profits trade off directly against food safety: bigger farms are more profitable but also spread contamination more quickly. This may or may not be an accurate explanation of the causal mechanism (at the very least it's an oversimplification), but it's the causal mechanism the game's author has chosen to implement in an attempt to make a point. The author of that particular game also wrote a book about the use of games to make points like that [2], which this piracy mode seems like a good example of. [1] http://www.persuasivegames.com/games/game.aspx?game=arcadewireecoli http://www.persuasivegames.com/games/game.aspx?game=arcadewi... [2] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262514885/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0262514885&linkCode=as2&tag=kmjn-20 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262514885/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...
- vidarh 13y ago
  Sim City is another good example of this. Even as a child when I first played the original, I remember reacting to the tax model in the game and how it affects net migration, as it was nothing like what I knew from Norway (and indeed, it bears little resemblance to how things works in most of Europe). A newspaper in Norway recently had to social economists play the most recent Sim City game to review the economic model, and their response was pretty much that they saw it as what in Norway would be considered a far right populist fantasy based on a range of economic assumptions that pretty much only the furthest right party in our parliament believes in. So to successfully play the game, you will need to accept a range of economic theories far outside the European mainstream, that to a certain extent is directly contradicted by real-life experience. I found that unsettling even at an age when I didn't know much of the politics, given that the manual even of the original presented it as a simulation and went into great detail about the techniques they'd applied to make the simulation more realistic...
  - mjn 13y ago
    That's pretty interesting; I knew there was some criticism of SimCity's simplified tax model in the U.S. some years ago (a simple inverse relationship between tax rates and business growth), but the Norwegian analysis sounds quite interesting. Any idea where I might dig up a reference to the article? I think in SimCity's case it was probably not intentional, at least originally. The first version of the game seems to have just been Will Wright coding up some ad-hoc city-simulation rules to make a fun sandbox game, not him trying to make a point about urban planning or economics on purpose. But nonetheless these interesting assumptions end up in there.
krichman 13y ago
Instead of making high quality games in the game, the pirates should make crap knockoffs of already popular games and then spend most of their effort on publicity stunts; that seems to be a better strategy.
Indyan 13y ago
This is actually true. I used to pirate games during my school and college days, since I couldn't afford to shell out 3000 INR on a single game. I still did buy a few original games (whenever my parents allowed me to), but 95% of the games I played was pirated. But, after getting a job and becoming financially independent, I switched to purchasing copies on Steam. Now, I have around 50 titles in my library.
Millennium 13y ago
We ignore it because it has no relevance. You are not Jean Valjean, stealing a loaf of bread to save your sister's child.
ekianjo 13y ago
Yeah, and its more or less the same thing as Hollywood claiming piracy or copying destroys their industry. I think in general game developers miss the point about piracy: - its free advertising. Just like radio is for music. - maybe pirates will not buy your game this time but they may buy the next. - simply your game is not attractive enough and most people dont want to spend any money on it. It's not because your game is cheap that it's worth buying. If you complain so much about piracy, go in free to play mode and make your fans buy extensions or addons. This is known to work well if your game is designed around it.
- shpiel 13y ago
  This is a false equivalency. Musicians can opt out of having their music played on the radio. If they do choose to have their music played on the radio, there is a genuine attempt made by radio stations to track how often their music is played and make a commensurate royalty payment to the artist. (source I worked on college radio).
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    Well, OK, but then nothing prevents anyone from copying the radio stream in one way or another and playing it over and over again for free without telling the artists. It still remains "free" in that sense.
rrouse 13y ago
My favorite are the people who pirate the game at release and then buy it when it's in the bargain bin for $5, as if that undoes the initial act of piracy: "See? I bought it!"
- Cakez0r 13y ago
  Well that at least shows the pirate was willing to part with some cash to buy the product. I know games are incredibly expensive to produce, but perhaps cheap sales at volume could bring in more cash than a few sales at a higher price point. Especially if you have DLC available to cater to players who're willing to pay a little more. I guess that's dancing on the edge of a free-to-play model though, which seems to be widely despised...
  - chc 13y ago
    This dude was charging $8. Pirates are endemic regardless of price point.
- touristtam 13y ago
  What is the message carried by this action? I read that as: I liked your product but not above the $5 price limit.
johnward 13y ago
This is certainly interesting but I agree that most pirates won't purchase anyway. When I was younger I pirated EVERYTHING. I downloaded music, pc/console games (modded every console I ever could), movies, software. There was no way I could afford to buy all these things at the time and neither could my parents. Now I have a nice paying job. I buy all my games. I pay for software. A few days ago an artist I like released an album on iTunes and other sites for free. I paid the $9 for it. I'm not saying that pirating because you don't have the means to purchase something is right, but I am saying it happens.
Garoof 13y ago
"People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ignore the fact that those who pirate don't necessarily have the means to buy many games; their choice is purely between pirating and not playing." Yeah. It's like these guys totally don't get that there are "individuals who either can’t make a legal purchase because of payment-issues or who genuinely cannot afford the game." People don't ignore that fact.
chasing 13y ago
Care to cite where your stats on piracy affecting game developers came from? Or did you just hear it somewhere on the internet somewhere and it sounded good?
soci 13y ago
I agree with you that piracy doesn't have to end in bankruptcy, however I don't have any evidence of it besides this survey [1]. Nevertheless, I think that the developer wanted to make a point and hi did it in a very powerful way. [1] http://goo.gl/vagAt http://goo.gl/vagAt A survey comissioned by Google for the American Assembly -research center at Columbia University- has been published recenetly where it basically concludes that users who download content from peer to peer sites buy 30% more than the ones who don’t.
Poyeyo 13y ago
Totally indisputable in the year 2000. But less and less true everyday. Today, we have Steam, the Indie Bundles, etc.
homosaur 13y ago
"Of those 90% or more who pirate the game, it's probably less than 10% who can be persuaded to actually buy it." True, and also one had even heard of this thing yet, which is a big reason why the major distro was all pirate. Some of these folks who pirate grab any and everything new to try. There's also a large population who refuse to purchase anything that's not on Steam. I'd like to see the numbers on this with current users in a few months once the Steam version comes out. This is a good marketing ploy though, and a unique solution considering the content of the game. I'm guessing they will sell a lot of copies due to this publicity. I've never heard of it before this, but it looks like an improved version of Game Dev Story, which I really enjoyed on mobile.
- csense 13y ago
  > refuse to purchase anything that's not on Steam And there are people like me, who refuse to purchase anything from Steam.
edude03 13y ago
I think this is a disingenuous argument that comes up all the time. I was once a teen who was a heavy pirate and although I said it was because I couldn't afford games (I didn't have a job in highschool) I had a $400 modded Xbox, I had a 1800 gaming computer I had a few real games. I managed to afford these things by getting money and gifts from family and working odds jobs here and there. Really the only reason I was pirating was because I needed games right away, I was entitled to have them on release day. I simply couldn't wait to get money to buy it. Unfortunately now that I'm a bit older I realize that a lot people have this mind set. Its not that they can't afford it, its that they need it right away.
- Loughla 13y ago
  That has been my experience as well. Once I reached the age of obligation to work, I noticed that my midnight pirating/release week pirating has dropped to zero. Subsequently, losing the 'I must have it right now, and deserve to have it no matter what' attitude has actually saved me money and frustration (with over-hyped games -- Diablo 3, I'm looking at you).
sanjiallblue 13y ago
It should also be noted that there's pretty much zero evidence that piracy actually hurts the sale of a game. Any research done by third-parties on the subject has shown that piracy generally helps the sales of the products being pirated due to: A) Raising awareness of the product and giving the product exposure to a larger group of fans raising awareness of the product and studio responsible for the production. B) Converting a minority of pirate-based customers with limited financial resources into paying customers for current and future projects. C) Establishing in the player community's mind that the media being pirated is a worthwhile competitor to other forms of entertainment. D) Finally, the most important factor: The majority of pirates pirate material because they are the highest-paying and most discerning group of purchasers of media (Source: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Another-Study-Pirates-Are-Industrys-Biggest-Paying-Customers-122852 http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Another-Study-Pirates-Are...). So fighting against piracy is a losing battle. DRM punishes paying customers and sure, some games might suffer as a result of piracy. It's just that if more people are pirating your game than buying it, then nine times out of ten, your product probably wasn't worth purchasing to being with, which is a cold reality that the data supports that indie studios really don't want to hear. No one wants to be told their baby sucks, especially when they see what they perceive to be a "large number" of people playing it.
- nathanb 13y ago
  That said, it seems like there are enthusiastic players who enjoy the game and who continue to play the pirated version (see the forum posts he cites in his original article). I think this is an interesting measure, because presumably if you got far enough into the game that you saw this message you like the game reasonably well. You've gotten past the point where you're not sure if the game is worth the money (nevermind that there's already a demo exactly for that purpose) and you have chosen to continue playing the pirated version. He didn't mention whether or not savegames from the pirated version can be loaded by the legitimate version, but if they can then pirates who then buy the game wouldn't even lose much in the way of progress.
- rl3 13y ago
  I agree. It's certainly more prudent to go with the flow [of piracy] rather than waste time and resources struggling against it. The Hotline Miami developers did just that.[1] Although the 93.6% piracy rate the Greenheart Games article references initially seemed shocking, I was reminded of the stance Gabe Newell has repeatedly taken over the years, of piracy being a service issue.[2] Part of that can be applied to this situation. a) Convenience With third party content distribution, the customer is likely purchasing the game via an interface they're already familiar with. They are used to acquiring their content through this interface on a regular basis. For the sake of argument, if you were to compare: Steam, torrents, and a checkout form on the developer's website, the latter sadly doesn't stand a chance in the contest for convenience. Since Game Dev Tycoon isn't on Steam yet, which distribution method wins out? Piracy. There's actually nothing wrong with the game's website purchasing process; it's quite nicely streamlined and requires no login. However, a lot of people tend to loathe buying games directly from a developer's website, because it results in fragmentation of their games library, and it's one more purchase to keep track of. Some users are militant about keeping the entirety of their games on one platform for just this very reason. b) Exposure Game Dev Tycoon is currently on Steam Greenlight but not yet approved. If they have the good fortune to be green-lit, the piracy rate may just turn on its head. The game is also available via Windows Store. To put it gently, Windows Store isn't exactly Steam. That said, I'd be interested in the ratio of sales between their website and Windows Store (my money is on the site). c) Benefits If you search this story, you'll quickly notice that it has spread like wildfire across the gaming press. The game is receiving large amounts of publicity as a result. Said publicity may end up being what tips the Steam Greenlight scales in its favor towards availability on the Steam platform, which in turn would ostensibly result in a massive boost in sales. Not to detract from the cleverness of Greenheart's experiment and subsequent article, but I find it more than a bit ironic that the egregious 93.6% piracy rate may in fact be what indirectly results in Game Dev Tycoon game making it on to Steam in the first place. [1] http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/10/25/hotline-miami-devs-endorse-pirate-bay-torrent-of-their-own-game-provide-helpful-suggestions/ http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/10/25/hotline-miami-devs-endorse... [2] http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe...
awesomeasfxxk 13y ago
^^ This Confession.... I own a modded Xbox and only use it to play pirated games, Why? I simply do not play it enough to justify cost, when buying it my consideration was simply hacked Xbox vs no Xbox. I last turned it on about 3 months ago for about 30 minutes. Games are way too expensive, I would gladly pay some money but not the crazy prices of most games vs my usage.
- csense 13y ago
  If only there was some way you could pay a small amount of money, to have access to a game for a few days or hours... Most video rental stores used to rent games, before they were pretty much all killed by the triple whammy of streaming, Netflix, and the recession. There actually may be a market segment of people like you, who are willing to pay small amounts for short-term access to games, which is being more-or-less ignored by most of the gaming industry. If the market segment is big enough, could it be an unexploited startup opportunity?
doktrin 13y ago
> "... it's probably less than 10% who can be persuaded to actually buy it." Elsewhere in this thread I've seen other figures bandied about, ranging anywhere from 1-30%. Where are they coming from? Was there ever any actual market research performed, or are we collectively inventing figures that sound reasonable to us?
Tbj3Y 13y ago
It's dishonest in that the paid-for version has a different model of piracy. Is that one accurate, or is the model in the for-free version correct? The reality is that piracy does have some effect on game sales, but for the non-game designer it's not clear how much this effect is. Having a realistic unbiased simulation of the effects of piracy would likely do the most to convince those who can afford games to reconsider their choices.
qu4z-2 13y ago
One of the bigger tragedies of piracy, in my opinion, is that people get hung up on the pirates and work to reduce piracy, not increase their customer-base. I feel like, especially in this case, the number of people who might buy the game but have never heard of it is higher than the number of people who pirated the game but would have bought it if they couldn't pirate it.

eropple 13y ago

> People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ignore the fact that those who pirate don't necessarily have the means to buy many games And people who defend pirates routinely ignore that pirated products are also pirated by people who will take what they want for free if they can, because they can. Don't pretend to a higher level of intellectual honesty or moral strength. Your position can lay claim to neither.

epsylon 13y ago
Yep, I've always found ridiculous when pirates claim they don't have the financial means to buy a $3 game to play on their $600 smartphone with a $30 per month data plan.
- kefka 13y ago
  Hmm. I "love" your inflated numbers. I paid $75 for my iphone 3GS. I bought it from some dude that had to buy the iphone 4 when it came out. I then proceeded to jailbreak and unlock the phone to run any software and use any carrier. I then got onto a carrier that charges $30 for unlimited phone/text/data ~ family mobile. And I don't buy any app at all. I'll save my money for tangible things instead.
Dylan16807 13y ago
I'm not sure you're actually disagreeing with the post you replied to. People that take things because they're free end up downloading things they're not particularly interested in and may never even watch/play. Those people aren't potential customers. This isn't a moral issue at heart, it's about the impact of piracy on sales.
lelandbatey 13y ago
It's not really a claim of moral honesty as it is just one bit of factual data. A large majority of pirates won't buy the game. Ever. If they can't get a pirated copy, then they just won't play, but it's not as if they'll buy it instead. It's a sad but true fact. I only bring this up because there's often an underlying assumption that every pirate is a lost sale, when in reality there maybe 1% of pirates that would have otherwise bought the game. I'm in no way trying to say pirating has any moral leg to stand on.
- eropple 13y ago
  Yeah, I get you--I apologize to poster^3, I'm used to hearing that line out of people more interested in rationalization than anything else. That said, in my experience the assumption that each pirate is a lost sale went out the window about a decade ago. And the idea that it's only "1%" of pirates who'd have bought the game, on the other hand, is ridiculous on its face. There's about 10,000 seeds and leeches of the various Skyrim torrents on The Pirate Bay, do you seriously think that only 100 of them would pay for it? (Most folks I know who deal with game piracy figure a hypothetical conversion rate around 20-25%, which, especially for companies of the article writer's size, is easily the difference between make or break.)
  - belorn 13y ago
    20% sound ridiculous high, and I would ask where in the world of sanity that people got that number. If we look at freemium to paid conversion rates, 20% seems out-of-this world large. Almost no one has that high. Looking around, 1% or 2.5% is said to be the average for games[1][2][3]. Why would a pirate be 10 times more likely to be incited to buy a game, rather than those who play a game designed from the ground up to encourage high conversion rates? It sound to me that logic demand that games with features designed for high conversion rates will do better than games that don't. Ie, to sum up, the conversation rate for pirate->paying should be far less than 2.5% in average, and nowhere near 20%. [1]: http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/11/04/running-a-freemium-web-app-heres-a-big-reason-were-growing http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/11/04/running-a-freem... [2]: http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/11/conversion-rate/ http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/11/conversion-rate/ [3]: http://www.gamesbrief.com/2013/03/arpdaus-conversion-rates-and-other-new-datapoints/ http://www.gamesbrief.com/2013/03/arpdaus-conversion-rates-a...
smosher 13y ago
You know, GP acknowledges those people and makes a good point about it at the same time. You're just being argumentative.
vy8vWJlco 13y ago
Are people who go outside and drink from a stream (through a filter/firewall, of course), stealing? What about people who take in the scenery, or people who breath? Is nature a starving artist? I'm not for dumping toxic waste in the river, or stealing property, but the Internet is my environment, and copying data is not only cheap, that's what I pay my ISP to be able to do. IMHO, that makes copying as moral as breathing. That said, I do support artists and research, etc, only I do it after I evaluate them and feel like I got something - similar to how I choose to upvote/downvote on HN, only there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like. FWIW, I do think that "sharing is caring" is a higher level of intellectual honesty than "trust me - you'll like it," especially when the former does nothing to damage attribution.
- Sandman 13y ago
  That said, I do support artists and research, etc, only I do it after I evaluate them and feel like I got something - similar to how I choose to upvote/downvote on HN, only there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like. And luckily, a lot of games (this one included) come with a free demo, so that you can try them before buying them. So fortunately for all of us as customers, we don't need to download a cracked copy. We can play through the demo, see if welike it, and buy it if we do.
  - claudius 13y ago
    The demo for Linux said something like ‘coming soon’ earlier (the page seems a little slow at the moment) and I was unable to find any information whatsoever regarding hardware and software requirements before being asked for my credit card details.
- eropple 13y ago
  > there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like I'm not going to fisk your post, which is largely self-serving rationalization. But I am going to touch on this. The choice is not "pirate it" or "pay for it". You can also--shocker incoming--not pirate it and not pay for it. Don't like that a publisher doesn't have a demo? Don't buy it. Don't like that the demo's not long enough? Don't buy it. But that's hard, and you can just take it for free. So, under the guise of "evaluating", that's what you do. And, yeah, I'm assuming some bad faith here, because the next person who actually compensates creators, without exception and at the price they ask for the content they pirate and use will be the first.
np422 13y ago
People who defend copyright take copyright for given, as that would be the normal state which can not be questioned. Don't pretend to a higher level of intellectual honesty or moral strength. Your position can lay claim to neither. Culture, creativity and art have existed long before copyright and will continue to do so after it has been abandoned.
- eropple 13y ago
  Er...no? Like, completely no? I don't care if you question it. Question it all you like. But if you want to claim it doesn't work, you have a long road to hoe. Personally, "I get other people's work for free" is outweighed by "I get other people's work that I actually want to play." Skyrim doesn't come out of a Kickstarter.
  - np422 13y ago
    (I actually had to google skyrim, I'm that old ...) Please take a few minutes to rethink copyright from the ground up without any regards to what you have been told by anyone... Where does copyright originate? What purpose does it serve in the society of today? Does it serve that purpose well? How does it match up to what most people would consider to be fair use in regards to personal and commercial use? Does copyright sometimes get abused and misused? Are there better solutions to the issues we are trying to address? You don't need to tell me or anybody else what conclusion you reach. But you owe it to yourself to think it over and stop repeating what you have been told by others as most people here on HN does every time copyright gets discussed.
hxa7241 13y ago
What precisely is wrong with people copying things for free? Since these are non-rival, non-finite goods -- that is, as many people can use or reproduce them as want to without obstructing anyone else -- there is no basic physical reason for restriction. It is illegal, but that is not the same as immoral. For illegality to imply immorality the law would need to be shown to be itself moral. But unfortunately the law has (like the game concerned) been rigged by particular interests for their own purposes. No-one has so far produced good evidence to show the current laws are economically beneficial overall. So the intellectually honest and moral position is to admit the law is unfounded, gradually abolish it, and try to figure out other better economic arrangements that allow people to do what is the obviously moral thing: freely use and copy non-rival, non-finite goods.
- bradleyjg 13y ago
  If you don't like the law try and overturn it. If you don't think the government is just try and overthrow it. That need not be violent, if you want to go the civil disobedience route, there's some rich history. But it isn't civil disobedience to secretly pirate a computer game (!) while doing everything possible to be avoid being caught and punished. The law isn't a buffet for you to pick and choose from.
alan_cx 13y ago
You are assuming that some one using pirated software would have bought it. I think pirates actually harm people who make free and cheap software, by using expensive "pirated" software instead. Had they not used the pirated software, they would possibly be using the free stuff and boosting the use of that free stuff. The big boys don't lose out, because they wouldn't have bought it in the first place. As such, the high moral ground the big boys think they occupy is equally suspect. IMHO, given the lack of large software houses going out of business actually due to piracy, I don't believe piracy has any real effect. All that is happening is that people are using the software, and the software houses remain profitable. If I am ever yo believe in piracy losing business money, I want proper proof that the vast majority of people which pirated software on their machine would have paid for that software. I suspect not. I suspect that if there really was a way to stop piracy, many more people would use Linux and all it's alternatives for free. In that scenario, MS and co would really start losing money and market power. Addition Edit: Also, most people spend the money they have. If they did buy all the stuff they pirated, software, games, music, movies, etc, there would be another sector that lost out. For example, pirating Far Cry 3 instead of buying, means £40 (whatever) to spend on clothes, food, cinema, fuel, etc. Its the same money, there is no extra. It just goes to different places.
- doktrin 13y ago
  > You are assuming that some one using pirated software would have bought it. If you replace "it" [that particular good] with "something" [that good, or a similar one], then yeah. People used to buy music, after all. > "I suspect that if there really was a way to stop piracy, many more people would use Linux and all it's alternatives for free. " How many people pirate their OS? Windows comes bundled with just about every retail PC out there. Enthusiasts who assemble their own devices are in the minority. > "IMHO, given the lack of large software houses going out of business actually due to piracy, I don't believe piracy has any real effect." That makes no sense. Simply because the largest companies aren't literally going out of business piracy therefore has "no real effect"? That's a bit like saying the financial crisis in Europe isn't having any effect because Germany isn't deep in recession. > Addition Edit: Also, most people spend the money they have. If they did buy all the stuff they pirated, software, games, music, movies, etc, there would be another sector that lost out. For example, pirating Far Cry 3 instead of buying, means £40 (whatever) to spend on clothes, food, cinema, fuel, etc. Its the same money, there is no extra. It just goes to different places. Yeah, but so what? Not only is that statement irrelevant, but it obfuscates that where resources are allocated is just as important as whether or not they are allocated to begin with. The allocation of resources (money) is a reflection of what society deems important. For illustration, a society that spends 20% of disposable income on alcohol & tobacco is radically different from one that spends 20% of disposable income on tools, woodworking sets & raspberry Pis. Moreover, for the protectionists out there, allocating resources domestically is different than abroad.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

yaarrr1 13y ago

I can't afford to buy games. So i pirate them. digital goods are not like physical goods, no harm done whatsoever. Game i didn't play: Diablo 3, SimCity 3, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2 etc... All from major studios and have millions of paying users, not for me.

mjn 13y ago

That's a common approach to using gameplay for rhetorical purposes; the fact that you can code causal processes as you want is one of the main ways you can get videogames to push a point. As a more overt example, in the game Bacteria Salad [1], created after one of the E.coli scares, profits trade off directly against food safety: bigger farms are more profitable but also spread contamination more quickly. This may or may not be an accurate explanation of the causal mechanism (at the very least it's an oversimplification), but it's the causal mechanism the game's author has chosen to implement in an attempt to make a point. The author of that particular game also wrote a book about the use of games to make points like that [2], which this piracy mode seems like a good example of. [1] http://www.persuasivegames.com/games/game.aspx?game=arcadewireecoli http://www.persuasivegames.com/games/game.aspx?game=arcadewi... [2] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262514885/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0262514885&linkCode=as2&tag=kmjn-20 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262514885/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

vidarh 13y ago
Sim City is another good example of this. Even as a child when I first played the original, I remember reacting to the tax model in the game and how it affects net migration, as it was nothing like what I knew from Norway (and indeed, it bears little resemblance to how things works in most of Europe). A newspaper in Norway recently had to social economists play the most recent Sim City game to review the economic model, and their response was pretty much that they saw it as what in Norway would be considered a far right populist fantasy based on a range of economic assumptions that pretty much only the furthest right party in our parliament believes in. So to successfully play the game, you will need to accept a range of economic theories far outside the European mainstream, that to a certain extent is directly contradicted by real-life experience. I found that unsettling even at an age when I didn't know much of the politics, given that the manual even of the original presented it as a simulation and went into great detail about the techniques they'd applied to make the simulation more realistic...
- mjn 13y ago
  That's pretty interesting; I knew there was some criticism of SimCity's simplified tax model in the U.S. some years ago (a simple inverse relationship between tax rates and business growth), but the Norwegian analysis sounds quite interesting. Any idea where I might dig up a reference to the article? I think in SimCity's case it was probably not intentional, at least originally. The first version of the game seems to have just been Will Wright coding up some ad-hoc city-simulation rules to make a fun sandbox game, not him trying to make a point about urban planning or economics on purpose. But nonetheless these interesting assumptions end up in there.

krichman 13y ago

Instead of making high quality games in the game, the pirates should make crap knockoffs of already popular games and then spend most of their effort on publicity stunts; that seems to be a better strategy.

Indyan 13y ago

This is actually true. I used to pirate games during my school and college days, since I couldn't afford to shell out 3000 INR on a single game. I still did buy a few original games (whenever my parents allowed me to), but 95% of the games I played was pirated. But, after getting a job and becoming financially independent, I switched to purchasing copies on Steam. Now, I have around 50 titles in my library.

Millennium 13y ago

We ignore it because it has no relevance. You are not Jean Valjean, stealing a loaf of bread to save your sister's child.

ekianjo 13y ago

Yeah, and its more or less the same thing as Hollywood claiming piracy or copying destroys their industry. I think in general game developers miss the point about piracy: - its free advertising. Just like radio is for music. - maybe pirates will not buy your game this time but they may buy the next. - simply your game is not attractive enough and most people dont want to spend any money on it. It's not because your game is cheap that it's worth buying. If you complain so much about piracy, go in free to play mode and make your fans buy extensions or addons. This is known to work well if your game is designed around it.

shpiel 13y ago
This is a false equivalency. Musicians can opt out of having their music played on the radio. If they do choose to have their music played on the radio, there is a genuine attempt made by radio stations to track how often their music is played and make a commensurate royalty payment to the artist. (source I worked on college radio).
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Well, OK, but then nothing prevents anyone from copying the radio stream in one way or another and playing it over and over again for free without telling the artists. It still remains "free" in that sense.

rrouse 13y ago

My favorite are the people who pirate the game at release and then buy it when it's in the bargain bin for $5, as if that undoes the initial act of piracy: "See? I bought it!"

Cakez0r 13y ago
Well that at least shows the pirate was willing to part with some cash to buy the product. I know games are incredibly expensive to produce, but perhaps cheap sales at volume could bring in more cash than a few sales at a higher price point. Especially if you have DLC available to cater to players who're willing to pay a little more. I guess that's dancing on the edge of a free-to-play model though, which seems to be widely despised...
- chc 13y ago
  This dude was charging $8. Pirates are endemic regardless of price point.
touristtam 13y ago
What is the message carried by this action? I read that as: I liked your product but not above the $5 price limit.

johnward 13y ago

This is certainly interesting but I agree that most pirates won't purchase anyway. When I was younger I pirated EVERYTHING. I downloaded music, pc/console games (modded every console I ever could), movies, software. There was no way I could afford to buy all these things at the time and neither could my parents. Now I have a nice paying job. I buy all my games. I pay for software. A few days ago an artist I like released an album on iTunes and other sites for free. I paid the $9 for it. I'm not saying that pirating because you don't have the means to purchase something is right, but I am saying it happens.

Garoof 13y ago

"People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ignore the fact that those who pirate don't necessarily have the means to buy many games; their choice is purely between pirating and not playing." Yeah. It's like these guys totally don't get that there are "individuals who either can’t make a legal purchase because of payment-issues or who genuinely cannot afford the game." People don't ignore that fact.

chasing 13y ago

Care to cite where your stats on piracy affecting game developers came from? Or did you just hear it somewhere on the internet somewhere and it sounded good?

soci 13y ago

I agree with you that piracy doesn't have to end in bankruptcy, however I don't have any evidence of it besides this survey [1]. Nevertheless, I think that the developer wanted to make a point and hi did it in a very powerful way. [1] http://goo.gl/vagAt http://goo.gl/vagAt A survey comissioned by Google for the American Assembly -research center at Columbia University- has been published recenetly where it basically concludes that users who download content from peer to peer sites buy 30% more than the ones who don’t.

Poyeyo 13y ago

Totally indisputable in the year 2000. But less and less true everyday. Today, we have Steam, the Indie Bundles, etc.

homosaur 13y ago

"Of those 90% or more who pirate the game, it's probably less than 10% who can be persuaded to actually buy it." True, and also one had even heard of this thing yet, which is a big reason why the major distro was all pirate. Some of these folks who pirate grab any and everything new to try. There's also a large population who refuse to purchase anything that's not on Steam. I'd like to see the numbers on this with current users in a few months once the Steam version comes out. This is a good marketing ploy though, and a unique solution considering the content of the game. I'm guessing they will sell a lot of copies due to this publicity. I've never heard of it before this, but it looks like an improved version of Game Dev Story, which I really enjoyed on mobile.

csense 13y ago
> refuse to purchase anything that's not on Steam And there are people like me, who refuse to purchase anything from Steam.

edude03 13y ago

I think this is a disingenuous argument that comes up all the time. I was once a teen who was a heavy pirate and although I said it was because I couldn't afford games (I didn't have a job in highschool) I had a $400 modded Xbox, I had a 1800 gaming computer I had a few real games. I managed to afford these things by getting money and gifts from family and working odds jobs here and there. Really the only reason I was pirating was because I needed games right away, I was entitled to have them on release day. I simply couldn't wait to get money to buy it. Unfortunately now that I'm a bit older I realize that a lot people have this mind set. Its not that they can't afford it, its that they need it right away.

Loughla 13y ago
That has been my experience as well. Once I reached the age of obligation to work, I noticed that my midnight pirating/release week pirating has dropped to zero. Subsequently, losing the 'I must have it right now, and deserve to have it no matter what' attitude has actually saved me money and frustration (with over-hyped games -- Diablo 3, I'm looking at you).

sanjiallblue 13y ago

It should also be noted that there's pretty much zero evidence that piracy actually hurts the sale of a game. Any research done by third-parties on the subject has shown that piracy generally helps the sales of the products being pirated due to: A) Raising awareness of the product and giving the product exposure to a larger group of fans raising awareness of the product and studio responsible for the production. B) Converting a minority of pirate-based customers with limited financial resources into paying customers for current and future projects. C) Establishing in the player community's mind that the media being pirated is a worthwhile competitor to other forms of entertainment. D) Finally, the most important factor: The majority of pirates pirate material because they are the highest-paying and most discerning group of purchasers of media (Source: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Another-Study-Pirates-Are-Industrys-Biggest-Paying-Customers-122852 http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Another-Study-Pirates-Are...). So fighting against piracy is a losing battle. DRM punishes paying customers and sure, some games might suffer as a result of piracy. It's just that if more people are pirating your game than buying it, then nine times out of ten, your product probably wasn't worth purchasing to being with, which is a cold reality that the data supports that indie studios really don't want to hear. No one wants to be told their baby sucks, especially when they see what they perceive to be a "large number" of people playing it.

nathanb 13y ago
That said, it seems like there are enthusiastic players who enjoy the game and who continue to play the pirated version (see the forum posts he cites in his original article). I think this is an interesting measure, because presumably if you got far enough into the game that you saw this message you like the game reasonably well. You've gotten past the point where you're not sure if the game is worth the money (nevermind that there's already a demo exactly for that purpose) and you have chosen to continue playing the pirated version. He didn't mention whether or not savegames from the pirated version can be loaded by the legitimate version, but if they can then pirates who then buy the game wouldn't even lose much in the way of progress.
rl3 13y ago
I agree. It's certainly more prudent to go with the flow [of piracy] rather than waste time and resources struggling against it. The Hotline Miami developers did just that.[1] Although the 93.6% piracy rate the Greenheart Games article references initially seemed shocking, I was reminded of the stance Gabe Newell has repeatedly taken over the years, of piracy being a service issue.[2] Part of that can be applied to this situation. a) Convenience With third party content distribution, the customer is likely purchasing the game via an interface they're already familiar with. They are used to acquiring their content through this interface on a regular basis. For the sake of argument, if you were to compare: Steam, torrents, and a checkout form on the developer's website, the latter sadly doesn't stand a chance in the contest for convenience. Since Game Dev Tycoon isn't on Steam yet, which distribution method wins out? Piracy. There's actually nothing wrong with the game's website purchasing process; it's quite nicely streamlined and requires no login. However, a lot of people tend to loathe buying games directly from a developer's website, because it results in fragmentation of their games library, and it's one more purchase to keep track of. Some users are militant about keeping the entirety of their games on one platform for just this very reason. b) Exposure Game Dev Tycoon is currently on Steam Greenlight but not yet approved. If they have the good fortune to be green-lit, the piracy rate may just turn on its head. The game is also available via Windows Store. To put it gently, Windows Store isn't exactly Steam. That said, I'd be interested in the ratio of sales between their website and Windows Store (my money is on the site). c) Benefits If you search this story, you'll quickly notice that it has spread like wildfire across the gaming press. The game is receiving large amounts of publicity as a result. Said publicity may end up being what tips the Steam Greenlight scales in its favor towards availability on the Steam platform, which in turn would ostensibly result in a massive boost in sales. Not to detract from the cleverness of Greenheart's experiment and subsequent article, but I find it more than a bit ironic that the egregious 93.6% piracy rate may in fact be what indirectly results in Game Dev Tycoon game making it on to Steam in the first place. [1] http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/10/25/hotline-miami-devs-endorse-pirate-bay-torrent-of-their-own-game-provide-helpful-suggestions/ http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/10/25/hotline-miami-devs-endorse... [2] http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe...

awesomeasfxxk 13y ago

^^ This Confession.... I own a modded Xbox and only use it to play pirated games, Why? I simply do not play it enough to justify cost, when buying it my consideration was simply hacked Xbox vs no Xbox. I last turned it on about 3 months ago for about 30 minutes. Games are way too expensive, I would gladly pay some money but not the crazy prices of most games vs my usage.

csense 13y ago
If only there was some way you could pay a small amount of money, to have access to a game for a few days or hours... Most video rental stores used to rent games, before they were pretty much all killed by the triple whammy of streaming, Netflix, and the recession. There actually may be a market segment of people like you, who are willing to pay small amounts for short-term access to games, which is being more-or-less ignored by most of the gaming industry. If the market segment is big enough, could it be an unexploited startup opportunity?

doktrin 13y ago

> "... it's probably less than 10% who can be persuaded to actually buy it." Elsewhere in this thread I've seen other figures bandied about, ranging anywhere from 1-30%. Where are they coming from? Was there ever any actual market research performed, or are we collectively inventing figures that sound reasonable to us?

Tbj3Y 13y ago

It's dishonest in that the paid-for version has a different model of piracy. Is that one accurate, or is the model in the for-free version correct? The reality is that piracy does have some effect on game sales, but for the non-game designer it's not clear how much this effect is. Having a realistic unbiased simulation of the effects of piracy would likely do the most to convince those who can afford games to reconsider their choices.

qu4z-2 13y ago

One of the bigger tragedies of piracy, in my opinion, is that people get hung up on the pirates and work to reduce piracy, not increase their customer-base. I feel like, especially in this case, the number of people who might buy the game but have never heard of it is higher than the number of people who pirated the game but would have bought it if they couldn't pirate it.