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It was covered on Slashdot too. Here's their article about it

first, and most importantly, how we came up with this number: the game allows players to have their high scores reported to our server (it’s an optional checkbox). we record each score and the IP from which it came. we divided the total number of sales we had from all sources by the total number of unique IPs in our database, and came up with about 0.1. that’s how we came up with 90%.

it’s just an estimate though there are factors that we couldn’t account for that would make the actual piracy rate lower than our estimate:
some people install the game on more than one machine
most people have dynamic IP addresses that change from time to time

there are also factors that would make the actual piracy rate higher than our estimate:
more than one installation behind the same router/firewall (would be common in an office environment)
not everyone opts to have their scores submitted

for simplicity’s sake, we just assumed those would balance out. so take take the 90% as a rough estimate.

By what measure of success? Effectiveness, sure. But what is the market share of all the Linux distros put together? What is the ratio of Windows to Linux boxes globally or in the US?

How do you define success? Apparently for you, at least in this context, it's market share. That's a bit spurious considering the fact that Linux is Free. What is the market share of Linux anyway? Probably a lot higher than you realize. Oh, you thought only desktop computers ran operating systems? Ever heard of Tivo? Android? Routers? Embedded systems? Servers? I'll bet if you put every device that runs Linux vs. every device that runs Windows you might be surprised about the "ratio of Windows to Linux boxes globally". Besides, Ferrari has low market share. They're a success right?

Says you. You're omitting how many devices don't work on Linux due to a lack of drivers or simple inoperability with Linux. It's improving, but there's a long way to go.

Linux supports more peripherals than OSX; I don't see you bringing that up? You wouldn't happen to have an agenda would you? Besides, I've installed quite a few Linux boxes in my day. It's the very rare exception that I find a device that doesn't just work out of the box. Contrast this with literally every other operating system ever made. And everytime that has happened, I waited a few months for the next kernel update and it did work. A lot of hardware actually works better in Linux. For example, my Verizon USB aircard. In Windows, you have to wait over 30 seconds for it to do its thing and connect and it disconnects requiring pulling it out and reinserting it about once an hour. On Linux, it connects in about 5 seconds and works perfectly for as long as you want. Funny story, I was at my brother's house a couple of weeks back and his Windows 7 box bluescreened so many times, I lost count. Finally, I was like, dude, what does the error say when it crashes? Come to find out the problem was the USB network adapter he had was crashing his box. Plugged it into my netbook running Ubuntu 9.10 and it worked perfectly.

The main flaw i find in Linux is the opposite. It's small because it's small. Developers don't want to double their efforts to sell to a handful of neck beards.

I don't see Linux's smallness as a flaw. Actually, that tends to increase the signal to noise ratio quite a bit. There are quite a few quality software projects that only develop for Linux and/or OSX and refuse to port to Windows because of the inevitable flood of clueless users that would pull in thus swamping the project in handholding. This is a good example. Very high quality software.

As for the "handful of neck beards" comment, didn't you say something about the supposed childish and condescending tone of the GP? Besides, there are quite a few commercial projects that develop for Linux. But, if you stop and think about it, why would there be large amounts of commercial Linux development in any case? One of the possible reasons developing commercial software is such a niche for Linux is that practically anything you need is in the repositories anyway. And quite a bit of Free sofware spanks the commercial alternatives. K3B smokes Nero. Pidgin smokes YIM, AIM, and MSN Messenger. Firefox and Chrome smoke IE, Opera, Safari, what-have-you. And for the stuff where the Free stuff isn't as good as the proprietary bits, it's still pretty good. OpenOffice is pretty good, GIMP is pretty good, Eclipse is pretty good. Why pay for proprietary software when my needs are already met for free?

Wine isn't there either. i use as much FOSS as i can.

That

"The Goo"? 2D Boy might have a problem with that, sir.

For a good read on this, check out 2dboys recent "pay what you want" sale on World of Goo.

A game that is not only fun and challenging but also gives you the mac, pc and linux version at the same time and what do most people want to pay for it, $2.03, of which they lost about 15% to paypal in fees for processing such small transactions.

A note, you had to enter a non-zero value, so the starting price, $0.01 also happened to be the most popular.

For the record, I paid $20 when it first came out on steam, and still consider it to be worth every cent.

For a good read on this, check out 2dboys recent "pay what you want" sale on World of Goo.

A game that is not only fun and challenging but also gives you the mac, pc and linux version at the same time and what do most people want to pay for it, $2.03, of which they lost about 15% to paypal in fees for processing such small transactions.

A note, you had to enter a non-zero value, so the starting price, $0.01 also happened to be the most popular.

For the record, I paid $20 when it first came out on steam, and still consider it to be worth every cent.

Have to nit-pick a few things: Prince of Persia was published by Br0derbund (ref 1) and The Secret of Monkey Island by LucasArts (ref 2), hardly any different than the current crop of game publishers such as EA, etc. Sierra Online was another of the great publishers of their day (before they were bought and turned into what we despise, but that's what happens when the original owners sell out), but then they started from the ground up as developers - and I think that's the key to "getting it."

Developers really do have a choice, though. In the old days it was publishing under the Shareware method or fronting money yourself to get into game shops (yeah right). Today, it's the do-it-yourself model that the 2D Boy folks who made World of Goo used thanks to the internet and Paypal. Oh, and it's even better than that, because they can publish independently for PC/Mac/Linux and then try their hand at publishing via Nintendo WiiWare at the same time. There is minimal risk other than hard work with no profit.

The folks that always bought the published box titles will continue to do so. The folks who went the Shareware method have found OSS and won't drift to the non-free side often (myself, I wait 2-3 years to get a Wii title for $15-20).

I, like you, despise WalMart. As a small business owner, I get it, but as a person trying to keep expenses down, I still go to McDonald's/Burger King and partake of the dollar menu. When we "splurge" it is going to In-n-Out Burger (privately owned burger chain in California who treats employees good and just does it right). I actually would go to In-n-Out more and pay double for the burger if I wasn't feeding a family of 6 while on the go to football games and such and they were closer and not 40 minutes out of the way from home/games.

But I do think really hard before shopping at WalMart, and usually it comes down to not being able to find what I want somewhere else, and not being willing to drive all over town to 2-3 stores to make 4-5 purchases. If I can, I go to WinCo, who again, treats their employees right (interesting how they can be profitable and have an Employee Pension Plan with a Foods Employee Stock Ownership Trust - try that, WalMart).

But that's just it, I make conscious decisions to prefer companies that are doing the right thing over companies that don't. The problem is that most American's do not do this, and they "vote" with their dollars the wrong way. If people really cared about people (cared about the employees of WalMart, for instance), we could change WalMart in less than a month with a boycott demanding they offer real health care plans, refuse to allow (let alone promote) their employees to be on government assistance by paying a real wage, give all workers who want to work 40 hours those hours. One month of a well-organized protest and people helping people coming to WalMart to understand why WalMart in its present form is bad and where they can shop for nearly as cheap, but without the economic hurt to their communities, and things could be turned around.

Ok, so we have 2 responses here... one says that 10% of users are pirates. The other says 10% of users aren't pirates.
So I took a moment to look up the information available: http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/
Maybe it's accurate, maybe it's not, but I'd like to know where the "only 10% are pirates" guy got his information from. The game has good reviews, no DRM, and is fairly popular so it seems all the usual arguments for a high rate of piracy are out the window, leaving behind only "we're a bunch of cheapskates." Oh well.

Either I'm reading things wrong or people are doing it because they feel they should support the developer. Their World of Goo page says:

This will get you the Windows and Mac and Linux versions downloadable right away

In a way it is good and bad that you get it for all platforms. I want it for Linux, so it'd have been nice to specifically say "look, I'm supporting your port to Linux", but at the same time it is good to get it on whatever platforms you want without having to pay multiple times.

Now, I had this on my Christmas list. Do I tell my family so that they can get it cheap and do the developers out of some money when a lack of DRM and an innovative game should be welcomed, or do I just let the "pay what you want" period go by and give them the money they deserve?

more than one installation behind the same router/firewall (would be common in an office environment)

not everyone opts to have their scores submitted

Taken from the 2D Boy website: http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

In that blog post 2D Boy makes a more rigouous investigation of the subject, and comes out with a result of 82% piracy taking into account many factors.
From this they deduced that the level of piracy is probably less than 90%, but probably not much less.

It is interesting to note that the 2D Boy developer's stance on DRM is such:

i'm hoping that others will release information about piracy rates so that everyone could see if DRM is the waste of time and money that we think it is.

yeah right

From a technical point of view I'm sure your right but remember, Oracle is not really about the technology. For Oracle it's about the cash. Think of Oracle like a rapper and Sun like, well, a nerd. The nerd is smart but but in the end he will get slaughtered by the rapper, yo!

Really though, technically better doesn't mean a company will back it esp when it means backtracking on previous 'we are better than they are' comments.

My big problem is that most games go for prettiness over content, i felt this way about crysis (mirrors edge/final fantasy 10+ and many more). Crysis was beautiful to look at but at the same time it was just too tedious. If you ignore the graphics you had a standard shooter with average ai and nothing to set it apart from other (better) fps games. Cranking up the graphics/physics doesn't help a game, just look at World of Goo. World of Goo is a simple game with basic 2d graphics, a very humorous story and more addictiveness that heroin. Check out the demo here http://2dboy.com/games.php . Sure it's more a casual gamer thing but shouldn't developers be catering to the audience instead of forcing more repetative crap at us and then whining that it doesn't sell?

If more companies tried to make games that cost a little less (both to make and sell) but added some innovation they would do so much better, Portal is a prime example, they used an existing game engine to make a game that (for me) was better than anything else released that year.

I guess what im trying to say is i am bored of seeing the same games with new names or an increment stuck to the end of the title, why would i want to buy a new shiny fps game when i can get a good fps made 2 years ago for half the cost and has been patched so it actually works the way it should (or close to). Ive just realised that all the above can be said with a much simpler statement,

Street Fighter 2 on the snes > Street Fighter 4 on the xbox360

This is good since I know support Indie games more like; World of Goo, Multiwinia and the Penny Arcade game.

Boxed Ubuntu sets on the shelves at Walmart by this summer? OEMs-a-plenty? Hey, at least someone is finally making excellent games we can finally buy! I mean, how much longer are we going to have to word-of-mouth this OS before it finally has a life (as in: IRL) of it's own?

You might want to check out World of Goo. Costs $20, no DRM and even runs Linux!

Nice plug, but I'm fairly when people think about games they're thinking about something a little more polished than somebody's hand-drawings.

There are plenty of decent, DRM-less games though. It was recently noted to me that world of goo (which I'm not affiliated with) even has a Linux version available, so for those that are anti-windows in addition to anti-DRM... have at 'er.

God spare you from the horrors of spending 30 seconds to find out before posting.

[2D Boy's] swanky San Francisco office is whichever free wi-fi coffee shop they wander into on a given day.

Obviously I did, or a) I wouldn't have made the coffee reference, and b) I wouldn't have mentioned the open source software part.

So since you seemed to have found magically invisible information at the page you linked, perhaps you can share it with the rest of us?

As I said, $10K is hardly enough to live on so they either had money coming in from somewhere else, developed the whole game in a week, or they are not human.

[2D Boy's] swanky San Francisco office is whichever free wi-fi coffee shop they wander into on a given day.

I would have found out before paying my $20.00 .. World of Goo is distributed only for Linux distributions based on the IA-32 architecture

Look closer:
http://2dboy.com/sneakyPaypal.gif

http://2dboy.com/mailman/listinfo/linux_2dboy.com

Not likely to happen anytime soon with rumours that Brighter Minds Media have filed for bankruptcy.

... Except Brighter Minds never developed World of Goo in the first place -- that distinction belongs to the tiny 2D Boy dev house. They note on their blog that the Linux version is coming along. Sure, it's been slow as molasses, but I'd say that it might actually be "likely to happen some time soon". :)

Cheers,

A good example of this is the game World of Go. It's a great little puzzle game, and the first 1/4 of the game is available for free. If you like that much, it's a no-brainer to drop $20 on the rest of it, since you can download and install it in all of 10 minutes on a good connection. They make it easy to try, and easy to buy. No stupid DRM, and multi-platform. (Linux port is still in beta, but progressing fast.)

If anything, it shows that all there's all kinds of ways to market your game and if it is enjoyable, people will pay for it.

Now, looking at this year's possibly popular indie games, I think Crayon Physics Deluxe will be a hit, and I hope Fez (video here), which I haven't heard of since February 08 will post some news, and finally there's Braid again, which is coming on the PC!

Additionally, if you include game mods as indie development, I'm looking forward to Neotokyo, a total conversion mod for HL2 that has its inspiration in Ghost in the Shell, and Black Mesa Source, another total conversion for HL2 which is the original Half-Life ported onto the Source engine.

If that's what you think of Indie games, then I suggest that you check out World of Goo. It's very refreshing.

Agree. I can't wait to see where World of Goo goes, a game better than most in 2008 made by a team of... 3.

My wife's the accountant, so I can't comment about Sarbanes-Oxley myself.

2D Boy already did a comparison between two of their games, one released with DRM and one without.

They concluded that "there seems to be no difference in the outcomes" in the level of piracy, which for both games sat near an estimated 90% at first blush. They do revisit the numbers and end up with 82% for the non-DRM'd game, but it's likely that the same method was used for both games, and that the changes in methodology would have the same impact to the DRM numbers.

There's also Reflexive who tracked sales growth when compared to changes in DRM, who conclude that "for every 1,000 pirated copies we eliminated, we created 1 additional sale". While this reduces the value of DRM to many publishers (those people aren't going to buy the game in the first place), it is also provides a business case for DRM to those companies that offer downloads of their games (and where bandwidth is a notable cost).

If you want good, non-DRM games at reasonable prices, I have two good ones for you:

World of Goo: The demo is the first 1/4 of the game. It's a blast. Silly building/puzzle game. Well worth the $20 they're charging. Made by 2 guys.

Sins of a Solar Empire: A Fantastic RTS game, based on building orbital structures around planets, and massing fleets of spaceships, some with unique abilities and leveling increases. It's got great music, but the controls are the pinnacle of what I've seen in any RTS game, EVER! It's worth buying it just to see how controls should work.

...which will save me lots of money.

I'm more and more and turning away from major game companies. There were quite a few games I really wanted to buy (Bioshock, Silent Hunter 3, Spore, GTA 4, and quite a few others) and then couldn't, due to ridiculous copy protections (Digital Restriction Management going nuts, no thanks).

Thus I sniffed around the indy games market more and more, and found some really nice ones. Simple Flash shoot-em-ups like Robokill (http://www.rocksolidarcade.com/games/robokill/) or wonderful enjoyment like World of Goo (http://2dboy.com/games.php, PC, Mac, soon Linux). Much cheaper, get it immediately, no copy protection at all, and... better. Yes, better. Not because of the graphics (although WOG is amazing), but because of the pure fun.

So: thanks. A lot. No, really. I'm spending less money, and enjoying myself more.

True.

Another good reason for indy games. Have a look at the discussion from the (three) developers of the (indy) game "World of Goo":
http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

They released their (amazing) game without any DRM, allowing anybody to also play the sub-game "Who makes the highest tower". Thus they could find that piracy amounts to about 90%.

This will always be the case. Always. You add DRM, it's not going to lower this percentage, because even Joe Dumb knows about cracks these days, and thus even your consumer majority can/will copy your game. Concentrate on the 10% legally buying your game, support them. They will like you for it, and support you.

I've been lookig forward to this game for quite some time (played all previous versions and liked them). But by now I've found that I much rather prefere Indy games - the cash goes straight to the developers, no DRM at all, lower prices, and (often) actually a lot better.

A classic example would be The World of Goo http://2dboy.com/games.php - I've been playing computer games since 1981, and I've never laughed as much while playing one ;)
Cheap, fun, no DRM idiocy, good support - tell me again why I should bother with the multi-million-dollar companies?

So, it's actually a Good Thing that the management fools have decided to use the hated SecuROM - it'll cause me to not spend time and money on Grand Theft Auto anymore. I can buy several indy games with that money, and enjoy myself a lot longer.

Besides, for ALL games there's a simple keyword: "SecuROM". Simple response: don't buy.

I'm playing the Wiiware version now. It's a lot of fun if you like puzzle games. It reminds me of Armadillo Run or The Incredible Machine (if you're old enough to remember that game). I'd prefer a mouse over the Wiimote, so I'm considering getting the PC/Mac version which allows you to download the Linux beta now.

How could World of Goo not be on there?

I can play Sins without needing the disc. Without shitware being installed on my system. Without a company that knows better treating me like a goddamned thief.

This is also one of the reasons I bought world of goo (the other reasons being that it's one of the most fun games I've played in years, and that paying for the windows version will give you access to the linux one when it comes out of beta \o/)

I was charmed by the way 2D Boy handled copy protection with their "World of Goo".

The purchase email came with the following claim:

"We are trying an experiment: World of Goo has absolutely no copy protection or DRM at all, since we want to give you (and everyone) the best experience we can. Thanks for not distributing this, and helping us make this possible!"

Besides: buying the the Windows version also entitles you to download the Linux and Mac version (once they're finished...).

Apparently there's a Steam version of the game as well, but it's not clear from the website if a Steam purchase entitles you to the Linux version as well.

Last I checked, spouting outright lies is a key feature of trolling. 2 seconds of research would have found out that Poor sales of Thief did not kill Looking Glass and that 2D Boy has had no serious piracy. In fact, the Looking Glass post-mortem explicitly says:

This hasn't even a grain of truth. Thief sold well and, according to Tim Stellmach (Gamespy interview), Looking Glass made millions of dollars from it. If Thief had failed to be a hit, Looking Glass would have died. Instead, Thief kept the company going.

If his post acts like a troll, sounds like a troll, and smells like a troll, it's a troll.

"For example, a lot of indie games are PC exclusives because the developer isn't a big enough company for a WiiWare license."

are you kidding me? http://2dboy.com/ 2 people developed that game, its on wiiware right now

I don't know about Thief, but I've been following 2DBoy since first hearing about World of Goo a couple months ago, and they've been very up-front about deliberately avoiding DRM to make things easier for actual end-users. And they've posted on their blog about how happy they've been with the results of opting out of the DRM insanity.

Comment posting history aside, Cliffski's GP post is poorly misinformed at best, and it does seem to lean in the trollish direction...

Cheers,

I don't know about Thief, but I've been following 2DBoy since first hearing about World of Goo a couple months ago, and they've been very up-front about deliberately avoiding DRM to make things easier for actual end-users. And they've posted on their blog about how happy they've been with the results of opting out of the DRM insanity.

Comment posting history aside, Cliffski's GP post is poorly misinformed at best, and it does seem to lean in the trollish direction...

Cheers,

Bit like Lemmings with physics. I'm not an affiliate of any sort, just someone who pre-ordered, played the beta of chaper 1 and loved it. :)

http://www.2dboy.com/

Unfortunately, though, having "gone gold" means "will be available in November", AFAICT. *sob*

.. to read, as this goes to show what a creative deadline can help produce. Simple, elegant games that don't require your life to play or millions to develop. In fact, they now are aiming to turn these ideas into products, for their own company.

Some of the games are already context winners from other competitions from what I hear. If people search online they can find for some more pictures of the games.

Cool action shooter game
http://www.napoleongames.cz/main.php?language=2&section=24

Interesting 1st person view physics puzzle action game.
http://www.penumbra-overture.com/media.php

Nice art and another original idea in an action game.
http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2008.php?id=167

Interesting physics game like last years entry
http://2dboy.com/trailer.php

Fast action 2 player eye candy game with a twist, despite that you can only play with another player only.
http://www.torpexgames.com/games.php