8 ms·

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 pirate

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 14y 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 14y 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...
  - eropple 14y ago
    This line of thinking is what happens when you take barely overlapping populations and attempt to extrapolate between them. For a more related data-point that you can get from public data (because the 20-25% comment was inside baseball from folks I know personally), the average conversion rate across all titles on XBLA hovers around 18%. When you take into account the general demographics on XBLA versus something like Steam (where the folks I was referring to previously generally roll), a small bump from there doesn't strike me as overly conservative. You can't really compare what amounts to a SaaS conversion rate to a purchase of a completely realized product with significant media presence (like, even indie games get a ton of eyeballs and an implicit seal-of-quality when they hit Steam or XBLA). It just doesn't shake out that way.
    - belorn 14y ago
      Source for that 18% on XBLA? Through, you don't answer the question on why games designed for high conversion rate should fair worse than games that aren't. You also add a additional questions when putting distinction to the population in question. Are we saying here that pirates are more likely to convert to a pay-to-play model than non-pirates are to go from a freemium model to pay? Whats the basis of such statement? All I see is a claim of inside knowledge, which in 2013 means as much (or little) as anecdotal evidence. If all we have is unverified claims about high conversion rates, and in opposing side we have studies that shows low conversion rates for identical products, I will go with the study until proven different otherwise. I find the idea that the population in question would have a 2000% effect on the conversion rate, and that pirates are part of that group, to be a very large and unverified claim. The wilder a claim is, the more is it up the commenter to provide evidence to support it.
      - eropple 14y ago
        > Source for that 18% on XBLA? [1] says it was 18% in 2007. I very, very strongly doubt it's gone down. XBLA de-lists games with a Metacritic score below 65 (which is basically impossible) and a conversion rate below 6% (which is apparently really hard, huh?)[2]. Ken Lobb has referred to 20%-40% conversion rates for in-house games at MGS. And you once again are bound and determined to ignore the differences between the markets you want to compare (hint: they're not identical products, they're not even substitutable products!), I think I'm going to bow out because there's no progress to be made here. HAND. . [1] - http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15117 http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15117 [2] - http://www.joystiq.com/2008/05/22/underperforming-xbla-titles-to-be-delisted/ http://www.joystiq.com/2008/05/22/underperforming-xbla-title...
versk 14y ago
"when in reality there maybe 1% of pirates that would have otherwise bought the game" Your number is ridiculous, and no-one assumes every pirated game is a lost sale either. Do you have any evidence to support this number?
- jeltz 14y ago
  1% is not totally unreasonable. See belorns post about conversion rates in freemium games for an explanation.
  - versk 14y ago
    Comparing freemium game conversion to Triple AAA piracy is ludicrous, and the argument that a freemium game should convert more because its designed to convert people is the most textbook definition of a specious argument I've ever seen. Successful Free-to-Play games like League of legends are suspected to convert greater than 10 percent of players to paying customers. Of the millions of players who pirated Bioshock infinite, I seriously doubt that only 1 percent could have afforded to pay for it and had a desire to play it.
    - lelandbatey 14y ago
      In all honesty, I gave the %1 number based purely on my own experience. When I was a kid/teenager, I didn't have much money and I certainly didn't have a way to buy things digitally (debit or credit card). So I pirated games that I wanted because that was the only way I could get access to them. And so did the people I knew and interacted with. If we couldn't pirate something, we just didn't ever end up playing. It seems like the amount of money any one person will spend on games/gaming is very stable. So what game devs are really trying to do is to be a part of each of their customers game-spending pie. I know that's how it is for me and the people I interact with.
    - robryan 14y ago
      You also have to take into account those that are pirating anything in sight and might only have a slight interest in playing if they every get around to it or might play for half an hour. These people count towards the piracy number on hundreds of games yet would only ever buy a small fraction.
CJefferson 14y ago
The important figure (for developers) is not what proportion of pirates would buy the game, but what proportion of possible buyers will pirate instead. My experience with my social group is that this second group is quite high. I know (for example) people who have bought many xbox 360 games (as these are hard to pirate) and have never bought a PC game, despite playing similar number of games on each.
- chii 14y ago
  so in other words, they pirated PC games, and used their limited resources to buy the games they couldn't pirate. Thus, the total amount of money they spent had been the same whether they pirated or not (just distributed differently, to different platforms). Had they not been able to pirate PC games, they might've spent a few more coins on PC games, and a few less coins on the xbox games - the industry wouldn't have seen more profit. However, having the ability to pirate meant that they are more enriched culturally, where as had they needed to pay the full price, they would've had less culture to immerse themselves in. I say that's a good result.
  - rubinelli 14y ago
    Yeah, they rewarded the companies that hose their customers with crippling DRM and release the same old FPS and sport game with prettier graphics year after year, and penalized those that trust their fans and are trying to push the envelope in gameplay and storytelling. That's a fantastic result. (EDIT: sorry for the rant, but this stuff really gets under my skin. If you are too cheap to spend 8 bucks on an indie game, SAY SO, don't come up with rationalizations about how the world is a better place for it)
    - everyone 14y ago
      I dont buy games with DRM and I make a point of buying ones without it (for instance on GOG).. My rational is that if the games publisher doesn't trust me then I dont trust them! I also make games and I personally dont mind about piracy.. Its free advertising imo
temp453463343 14y ago
"when in reality there maybe 1% of pirates that would have otherwise bought the game." Not saying you're wrong, but recognize that you're completely pulling this out of your ass.

eropple 14y 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 14y 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...
- eropple 14y ago
  This line of thinking is what happens when you take barely overlapping populations and attempt to extrapolate between them. For a more related data-point that you can get from public data (because the 20-25% comment was inside baseball from folks I know personally), the average conversion rate across all titles on XBLA hovers around 18%. When you take into account the general demographics on XBLA versus something like Steam (where the folks I was referring to previously generally roll), a small bump from there doesn't strike me as overly conservative. You can't really compare what amounts to a SaaS conversion rate to a purchase of a completely realized product with significant media presence (like, even indie games get a ton of eyeballs and an implicit seal-of-quality when they hit Steam or XBLA). It just doesn't shake out that way.
  - belorn 14y ago
    Source for that 18% on XBLA? Through, you don't answer the question on why games designed for high conversion rate should fair worse than games that aren't. You also add a additional questions when putting distinction to the population in question. Are we saying here that pirates are more likely to convert to a pay-to-play model than non-pirates are to go from a freemium model to pay? Whats the basis of such statement? All I see is a claim of inside knowledge, which in 2013 means as much (or little) as anecdotal evidence. If all we have is unverified claims about high conversion rates, and in opposing side we have studies that shows low conversion rates for identical products, I will go with the study until proven different otherwise. I find the idea that the population in question would have a 2000% effect on the conversion rate, and that pirates are part of that group, to be a very large and unverified claim. The wilder a claim is, the more is it up the commenter to provide evidence to support it.
    - eropple 14y ago
      > Source for that 18% on XBLA? [1] says it was 18% in 2007. I very, very strongly doubt it's gone down. XBLA de-lists games with a Metacritic score below 65 (which is basically impossible) and a conversion rate below 6% (which is apparently really hard, huh?)[2]. Ken Lobb has referred to 20%-40% conversion rates for in-house games at MGS. And you once again are bound and determined to ignore the differences between the markets you want to compare (hint: they're not identical products, they're not even substitutable products!), I think I'm going to bow out because there's no progress to be made here. HAND. . [1] - http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15117 http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15117 [2] - http://www.joystiq.com/2008/05/22/underperforming-xbla-titles-to-be-delisted/ http://www.joystiq.com/2008/05/22/underperforming-xbla-title...

versk 14y ago

"when in reality there maybe 1% of pirates that would have otherwise bought the game" Your number is ridiculous, and no-one assumes every pirated game is a lost sale either. Do you have any evidence to support this number?

jeltz 14y ago
1% is not totally unreasonable. See belorns post about conversion rates in freemium games for an explanation.
- versk 14y ago
  Comparing freemium game conversion to Triple AAA piracy is ludicrous, and the argument that a freemium game should convert more because its designed to convert people is the most textbook definition of a specious argument I've ever seen. Successful Free-to-Play games like League of legends are suspected to convert greater than 10 percent of players to paying customers. Of the millions of players who pirated Bioshock infinite, I seriously doubt that only 1 percent could have afforded to pay for it and had a desire to play it.
  - lelandbatey 14y ago
    In all honesty, I gave the %1 number based purely on my own experience. When I was a kid/teenager, I didn't have much money and I certainly didn't have a way to buy things digitally (debit or credit card). So I pirated games that I wanted because that was the only way I could get access to them. And so did the people I knew and interacted with. If we couldn't pirate something, we just didn't ever end up playing. It seems like the amount of money any one person will spend on games/gaming is very stable. So what game devs are really trying to do is to be a part of each of their customers game-spending pie. I know that's how it is for me and the people I interact with.
  - robryan 14y ago
    You also have to take into account those that are pirating anything in sight and might only have a slight interest in playing if they every get around to it or might play for half an hour. These people count towards the piracy number on hundreds of games yet would only ever buy a small fraction.

CJefferson 14y ago

The important figure (for developers) is not what proportion of pirates would buy the game, but what proportion of possible buyers will pirate instead. My experience with my social group is that this second group is quite high. I know (for example) people who have bought many xbox 360 games (as these are hard to pirate) and have never bought a PC game, despite playing similar number of games on each.

chii 14y ago
so in other words, they pirated PC games, and used their limited resources to buy the games they couldn't pirate. Thus, the total amount of money they spent had been the same whether they pirated or not (just distributed differently, to different platforms). Had they not been able to pirate PC games, they might've spent a few more coins on PC games, and a few less coins on the xbox games - the industry wouldn't have seen more profit. However, having the ability to pirate meant that they are more enriched culturally, where as had they needed to pay the full price, they would've had less culture to immerse themselves in. I say that's a good result.
- rubinelli 14y ago
  Yeah, they rewarded the companies that hose their customers with crippling DRM and release the same old FPS and sport game with prettier graphics year after year, and penalized those that trust their fans and are trying to push the envelope in gameplay and storytelling. That's a fantastic result. (EDIT: sorry for the rant, but this stuff really gets under my skin. If you are too cheap to spend 8 bucks on an indie game, SAY SO, don't come up with rationalizations about how the world is a better place for it)
  - everyone 14y ago
    I dont buy games with DRM and I make a point of buying ones without it (for instance on GOG).. My rational is that if the games publisher doesn't trust me then I dont trust them! I also make games and I personally dont mind about piracy.. Its free advertising imo

temp453463343 14y ago

"when in reality there maybe 1% of pirates that would have otherwise bought the game." Not saying you're wrong, but recognize that you're completely pulling this out of your ass.