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The Humble Bundle statistics are not the only source that points to the direction that Linux users are more eager to pay for quality software. I seem to recall that the people behind World of Goo released similar statistics. Yes, here they are.

Thank you for making my point. According to your 2dboy article Linux users didn't buy more software, they made more donations. The word "sales" does not appear in their article. Donations are not sales, they're political statements, saving whales, bunnies, trying to scream "woo penguin power", etc.

Those don't translate into day to day sales for devs. And as long as Linux users won't pay for software, devs are stuck with Windows, consoles and OSX. But who knows? Let's watch Ouya and see how devs fare outside of Homebrew Channel ports and emulators running pirate ROMs.

The Humble Bundle statistics are not the only source that points to the direction that Linux users are more eager to pay for quality software. I seem to recall that the people behind World of Goo released similar statistics. Yes, here they are. One factor might be that Linux users might have more buying power than average Windows users. This has probably been researched somewhere. Actually, it's easy to argue quite the opposite what you're saying: Since the Linux software market is not yet that mature, it's easier to attract new customers for your product.

So, respectfully Sir, I think your argument is full of shit.

I would suggest reading this and this. Preventing piracy generally doesn't do much to increase sales.

DRM may help reduce piracy in some circumstances, but the vast majority of pirates aren't going to buy the artist's content regardless of whether they can or cannot pirate it.

DRM doesn't protect the artist's profits. It just limits the potential audience that the artist could be reaching.

I can target Wii, PS3 and 360 with Unity.

Provided that you're a large enough organization to qualify for the devkit. Otherwise, the only console you can dream of targeting is the 360's Xbox Live Indie Games environment.

Like 2D Boy a team of 2 guys?

Make something compelling and company size doesn't matter. The previous history of consoles there was nearly 0 interest in having indie titles, now indie gaming is really coming into its own and the big console companies are coming around to that.

I think Ouya would have been more successful in the era of PS2, Gamecube and XBox. Of course producing a console on the cheap didn't really become possible until the proliferation of SoC.

Linux from the manufacturer has never been about the technical difficulty of shipping a pre-installed Linux box. It's always been about the unwillingness to support two different operating systems and, above all, the reluctance to offend Microsoft for an uncertain and probably small payoff.

Historically your statement is bang on. Microsoft has always run roughshod over it's partners and competition alike. Maybe it's getting too arrogant...
http://2dboy.com/2011/10/03/xbla/

Most developers agree that Microsoft has squandered the leadership position they had with XBOX Live Arcade, but most XBLA developers (with the exception of a brave handful like Mr. Fish & Mr. Carmel - http://2dboy.com/2011/10/03/xbla/) don't complain publicly, because they still have to to get approval and beg for placement on the dock to escape the 360's horribly designed UI which makes games so hard to find now.

Props to Mr. Fish and his big balls for putting his foot down and bringing the patching issue to fore. Yes, Mr. Fish could have nailed the bug before ship, and I'm sure he's just as frustrated with himself as with MS, but shit happens when you're an indie. Indies have a lot on their plate, and they need to be able to patch. Sometimes they can't find bugs until the game goes live and they have enough people playing that the bug gets triggered.

The hard to find games and high cost and overhead of patching games on XBLA are just the beginning btw. For instance, developers can't ship a game on XBLA themselves. They have to go through a "publisher" that will take an additional 15% for performing a questionable "service" that no other platform requires. The 360 also did very poorly in Asia, where most humans live and where the PC dominates. You're also not allowed to release your game on any other platform before XBLA or offer features on other platforms that aren't on the XBLA version. XBLA is also the only platform where a self-funded game doesn't get you a 70/30 split, and the irony is that XBLA introduced the 70/30 split. Now, it starts at 50/50, goes to 60/40 and only to 70/30 after you hit enough sales. Also, on XBLA and unlike Steam, iOS, and Android, they have to separately secure those "decency" and age ratings in every territory they want to release in. It costs many thousands of USD if you want to actually want to support multiple languages and territories.

It's death by a thousand cuts on XBLA. None of these issues alone would condemn it, but together, they make a bloody mess. As a result of the arrogant policies, XBLA has lost key ground, and Steam, iOS, and Android are now getting the games that would once have been developed for XBLA. I think XBLA's mismanagement is partially responsible for the unlikely success of the Ouya Kickstarter campaign, and Steam is the proof that Microsoft doesn't know how to manage a game portal. With all their resources, Microsoft should have pwned Steam, but Games for Windows was dead on arrival which allowed Steam to dominate.

I think Mr. Ballmer is ultimately to blame. He lost his way and forgot the steps to his Developers-Developers-Developers dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE

He has a shot at redemption with the Windows Store on Windows 8, but I don't think any game developers out there are expecting much.

Not at all. Let's use an example, shall we?

World of Goo is one of the most highly-acclaimed independent games in history. Nobody can argue it's crap or in any way worthless, nor can any claim be made that its developers are "evil" in some way. It was released DRM-free and had awards piled onto it. There is an extensive demo available in the form of the first few levels, with a couple of hours' worth of gameplay... plenty of opportunity to find out exactly what the game is all about.

Piracy rate: 90%. So much for "DRM is why piracy exists".
Price: 20 bucks, and on sale it frequently goes as low as 5 bucks. So much for "piracy exists because games are too expensive".

There simply is no excuse for not paying for World of Goo if you play it. It's very high quality, it's not released by a big-bad-boogeyman megacorporation, there is zero need to pirate the full game to learn what gameplay is like, it's dirt-cheap. Every pro-piracy argument: shot down. Yet 9 out of 10 players pirate it anyway. Pirates don't care about price; the cost of ANY game for a pirate is zero. Hell, people pirate 99-cent apps on phones (somehow, they can afford 80 bucks a month for their data plan but can't afford 99 cents for an app, and somehow there are apps that are worth having and keeping but aren't worth 99 cents). All the arguments presented by the pro-piracy crowd simply are not true, and this is proven beyond any doubt by cases like World of Goo. Seriously, people pirate games and media because they're too cheap to do the right thing at any cost, and can be certain there are no consequences for this (regardless of whether there actually are consequences... enjoy your malware, torrent-crawlers!).

Anything else is just an attempt to justify taking something you should be paying for without paying for it.

What? App Store developed from iTunes Store, XBLIG has nothing to do with it. By the way XBLIG/XBLA is a half-baked rip-off of Steam: 2DBoy (creators of World of Goo) made this interesting survey about XBLA. Actually PSN is more open than XBLA, as in "more accessible".

Surely their objective is something like iTunes, that is something that appeals a snobbish crowd, and not a XBLA, that is the Zune of the online store services.

It's an indi PC game, by 2Dboy, I don't think they've even ported to the smartphone market, it is available for windows linux and mac http://2dboy.com/games.php, from what I've played of it I could see it working very well on a tablet, I'm not sure about on a phone (may be a bit too small)

That's why I prefer indie game companies who bring out really interesting games.

Some I have been playing lately: World of Goo, Cogs Game, VVVVVV.

No affiliation with these games, I just love what they do. They remind me of when games first appeared for the PC, when creativity motivated game design, not the quest for uber realism.

As we know, "its super cool to be uber realistic on hardware because it's just a simulation and not really real. So it's cool that way."...

Gimme a break! Gimme a real game.

http://2dboy.com/games.php

these guys have made more money by being HONEST than your company has ever hoped to make.

That's the problem, Game makers prefer to be dishonest and criminal instead of honest. If your game sells for more than $25.00. You are dishonest.

Pirates are not "customers", even on the very best games the market has to offer. Perfect example: World of Goo. Depending upon who you talk to and how you calculate it, its piracy rate is between 82 and 90 percent. That's right, only one in ten gamers are honest. The rest? You shouldn't leave your wallet alone in the same room with them, and you certainly shouldn't believe a word they say. "Free advertising"? Do people seriously believe that software pirates are doing developers a favor and should be praised for it?

Pirates are also not "prospective customers". The conversion from dishonest to honest is, from the same source as above, a "very small percentage". The "I try before I buy" thing is an excuse. There may be a very small percentage who do, but the overwhelming majority do not, and by the act of piracy this handful of "prospective customers" loses any right to complain or claim moral certainty, regardless of whether they buy later. Someone may assuage their guilt by later paying for what they illegitimately took, but that doesn't justify the original act, or future illegitimate acts. Contrition is not just in making good on the "original sin", it includes "and sin no more".

Therefore, the opinion of pirates on what should and shouldn't be done with DRM should be ignored, in the same way that we don't ask shoplifters what the penalties for petty theft should be. Whether a shopkeeper endures pilferage is entirely up to the shopkeeper, and the shoplifter has no say in whether they are excused, fined or jailed. Similarly, any attempt by a pirate to justify their behavior should be met with "shut up, boy, the adults are talking", especially when the talk is about what to do to punish pirates. The only people whose opinions count are potential customers, publishers and developers, and dear friends, pirates are nowhere on that list.

If a game is functional on a paying customer's system but is unusable on a pirate's system (whether intentionally or not), who cares? Don't like it? DON'T PIRATE.

I'm aware of this. I have helped out many uninformed people when doing IT support. There is a big difference between the morons, and those that choose to learn. They both start off in the same place, but the morons stay at the "don't want to know, just make it work already damnit!" level, while the not-morons ask questions and try to help themselves first before relying on others.

Have a look at this interview. Here are some nice comments from some true morons:

“I don’t know how the heck you do this!!!!!!!!!! “Drag and drop to build the pipe”? WHAT???? Somebody please tell me how to do this!”

“I’m only on the 6th level and I hate this game. Levels are ridiculously hard from the start and are just stupid. I spent an hour on one level and still cannot beat it. Screw this crap. Worst. Purchase. Ever.”

“Don’t get it, it will get you very frustrated if you don’t beat a level bottom line don’t get it”

In the gaming market, Linux isn't profitable.

http://2dboy.com/2009/02/12/world-of-goo-linux-version-is-ready/
http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

Funny thing about that example. In his 2009 IGS keynote 2DBoy's Ron Carmel, speaking about World of Goo specifically, indicated that Linux ports aren't actually profitable by themselves, but the Linux community is so vocal whenever a major game is released on Linux, it can significantly boost sales on profitable platforms like Mac and PC.

In the gaming market, Linux isn't profitable.

http://2dboy.com/2009/02/12/world-of-goo-linux-version-is-ready/
http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

Funny thing about that example. In his 2009 IGS keynote 2DBoy's Ron Carmel, speaking about World of Goo specifically, indicated that Linux ports aren't actually profitable by themselves, but the Linux community is so vocal whenever a major game is released on Linux, it can significantly boost sales on profitable platforms like Mac and PC.

[citation needed] and I don't know many Linux users who do.

Equally [citation needed]

http://2dboy.com/2009/02/12/world-of-goo-linux-version-is-ready/
http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

Annecdotal evidence, so still [citation needed].

Two can play that game (and on Linux too, coincidentally).

[citation needed] and I don't know many Linux users who do.

Equally [citation needed]

http://2dboy.com/2009/02/12/world-of-goo-linux-version-is-ready/
http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

Annecdotal evidence, so still [citation needed].

Two can play that game (and on Linux too, coincidentally).

[citation needed] and I don't know many Linux users who do.

What I think he meant was "it's the only option linux users have".

Huh? The only?

http://2dboy.com/2009/02/12/world-of-goo-linux-version-is-ready/ http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

To be fair those numbers were inflated by people who wanted to show that a game on linux can be profitable.

[citation needed]. And please DO your homework first

[citation needed] and I don't know many Linux users who do.

What I think he meant was "it's the only option linux users have".

Huh? The only?

http://2dboy.com/2009/02/12/world-of-goo-linux-version-is-ready/ http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

To be fair those numbers were inflated by people who wanted to show that a game on linux can be profitable.

[citation needed]. And please DO your homework first

[citation needed] and I don't know many Linux users who do.

What I think he meant was "it's the only option linux users have".

http://2dboy.com/2009/02/12/world-of-goo-linux-version-is-ready/
http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

To be fair those numbers were inflated by people who wanted to show that a game on linux can be profitable.

[citation needed] and I don't know many Linux users who do.

What I think he meant was "it's the only option linux users have".

http://2dboy.com/2009/02/12/world-of-goo-linux-version-is-ready/
http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

To be fair those numbers were inflated by people who wanted to show that a game on linux can be profitable.

a large section of Linux users dual-boot into Windows for gaming anyways.

[citation needed] and I don't know many Linux users who do.

In the gaming market, Linux isn't profitable.

http://2dboy.com/2009/02/12/world-of-goo-linux-version-is-ready/
http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

a large section of Linux users dual-boot into Windows for gaming anyways.

[citation needed] and I don't know many Linux users who do.

In the gaming market, Linux isn't profitable.

http://2dboy.com/2009/02/12/world-of-goo-linux-version-is-ready/
http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

Profit also depends on income. Mirror's Edge dropped in price quickly after release and you could pick up a copy for about £5 now. Additionally it has been on sale on Steam and at other online retailers several times. Copies sold at a discount obviously provide less income.

While each copy sold at a discount provides less income, software has a very low cost of goods sold (especially with digital delivery) so it's possible (even likely) to make it up with volume.

From http://2dboy.com/2011/02/08/ipad-launch/ (emphasis mine):

It’s possible that $5 might have been a better price point to begin with. While $10 is less than most people pay for a movie ticket, or lunch, it’s still seen as a very high price for a game on the App Store and turns many people off. As you can see from the daily revenue chart below, World of Goo generates significantly more revenue at a $5 price point than it did at $10 (price was halved on January 14).

I used to be one as well - after being burned enough times I never bought a game without first getting a working cracked version. Then that became too much of a hassle. Fortunately about the same time as publishers started switching to DRM there has also been a rise in good games being sold without DRM or copy protection (high profile examples: Good Old Games, World of Goo, the Humble Bundles and the Indie Bundles). Now I don't even consider buying a game unless I can use it on my own terms.

Rather buy more DRM Free games to support the Indie devs in this market, even if they're small puzzle games. This way we can support and grow a market that one day will provide an alternative to DRM locked games.

And apparently DRM Free games aren't any worse off than locked down games, so we might as well support them and they can use that extra time and resources to add great game features, instead of useless DRM!

Try here --> http://2dboy.com/games.php

You can, take the proprietary game world of goo for example, you extract the .tar.gz and click on the world of goo script and bam, you are playing.

..it wasnt always that way.. for instance when you ran a 64-bit Linux, WoG wouldnt run without extra work (at a minimum you needed to manually compile 32-bit version of its dependencies)

Here is a citation.

Obviously doing it "right" means that the WoG people have intimate knowledge of lots of environment variations and account for them at runtime in a script .. if thats the "right" way.. then fuck being right. I'd rather have a CDE-style thing do the heavy lifting for me.

How many games from small companies are available to rent at your nearby rental place? If you want an example of a small game developer that doesn't seem to need DRM to survive, check out 2D Boy. After trying World of Goo, I paid for it specifically because I could download a version for any of the platforms I wanted to run it on without stupid restrictions. Maybe it's beyond the ken of the average console gamer, but downloading and installing a cracked version of just about any popular Windows game is extremely easy. Why do developers spend so much effort releasing so Windows if they can't "protect" their investment?

I remember reading a blog post by 2D Boy, makers of World of Goo, that stated that they calculated a piracy rate of 90%. That's on an independent game, that only cost $15. It's a great game, and well worth the money. There's also absolutely no DRM on the game so there's no reason to assume that people are "pirating" because they need to get around copy protection for a game they already bought. They added corrections to the blog post, later, correcting the number to around 82%. So 67% doesn't seem all that bad in comparison.

How do the World of Goo numbers compare to those of heavily DRM'd games, though? I find it very, very hard to believe that those numbers would be any better; as a pirating end-user, you simply do not see any of the DRM. All the DRM stuff is usually 'fixed' even before it's uploaded. At least, that's what it was like a few years back. I haven't downloaded games in a while- things might be different now.

I remember reading a blog post by 2D Boy, makers of World of Goo, that stated that they calculated a piracy rate of 90%. That's on an independent game, that only cost $15. It's a great game, and well worth the money. There's also absolutely no DRM on the game so there's no reason to assume that people are "pirating" because they need to get around copy protection for a game they already bought. They added corrections to the blog post, later, correcting the number to around 82%. So 67% doesn't seem all that bad in comparison.

Once it got into the public perception that pirating games was easy and virtually risk free, I think you'd see a whole new floodgate open that really would destroy the gaming market.

ROFL

What alternate universe did you come from? Pirating software is and always has been easy and virtually risk free. Look at the experiences of Reflexive and 2D Boy, for example. Reflexive released a game with DRM and 2D Boy released one without... both found piracy rates were around 90%. Reflexive estimated that, for every 1,000 pirated copies their DRM eliminated, they gained 1 sale.

Do you think the 90% of people who pirated those programs suffered any reprisal at all? Can you find even a single instance of someone being punished for copying either program? Of course not. Piracy is virtually risk free.

Breaking DRM may be difficult, but it only has to be broken once. The vast majority of the people who download pirated software are just grabbing a copy that's already broken and know absolutely nothing about DRM. For the majority, it's as easy as clicking a link.

And yet... not only has the gaming industry continued to exist, it has grown enormously. Your declaration that piracy being easy and risk free would destroy the game industry is completely, utterly wrong because piracy IS easy and virtually risk free and the game industry has not been destroyed.

The undeniable truth is that the vast majority of pirates aren't interested in buying software. No amount of DRM is going to change that. It's just as true that removing DRM doesn't turn the 10% or so who do buy software into pirates. The figures stay the same regardless of DRM.

Despite what you believe, it seems that about 10% of humanity is selfless enough to support a thriving software market on what is, in fact, mostly an honor system.

1) The games themselves will more or less not care about Cocoa because they'll use the least that they can to get an OpenGL window open and usable.

2) Non-issue, if it's closed source and the person who buys it complains about the driver being closed but the game not, there are bigger issues that person needs to work on. The 100% FOSS users obviously aren't going to want either. So again, they're not going to complain that a closed source game needs a closed source driver to work. As for the closed drivers themselves, AMD/ATI are descent (if you have hardware that they support) & nVIdia's Linux drivers are quite good. The OpenGL renderer for the games will likely need little to no changes to run on these drivers.

3) Short answer: yes http://www.wolfire.com/humble http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/ Long answer: more than likely. The most common complaint I've heard over the years from Linux users is the lack of commercial/popular games that are only available on Windows (or Windows and OS X)

Even then, from what I recall, 2D Boy also reported that World of Goo has around 90% piracy. But I don't think they really care, because they still sold a ton of copies.

http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

I haven't played the game, nor purchased it, but I have a big problem with their statistics: They basically took the unique IPs and divided by the number of sales. That might have been somewhat accurate in the 1980s.

It's utter rubbish. People often have laptops. Today, my laptop will have at least 2 IPs. There are days that I've had 5 different ones, from different locations. (Actually probably more than that, considering that the university likes to subnet by building, which probably means that there are another 2 IPs. (possibly per day, unless their DHCP assigns the same one))

So if I'd purchased the game, and played it on my laptop at various times throughout the day, over a week, I could very easily account for 10 IPs alone. The same methodology applied to Steam, could easily lead to Steam being well over 50% pirated.

It worked for 2D Boy's World of Goo.

Quotes:
"It’s only been 2 days since the release of the Linux version and it already accounts for 4.6% of the full downloads from our website."
"More copies of the game were sold via our website on the day the Linux version released than any other day. This day beat the previous record by 40%. There is a market for Linux games after all :)"

Because that doesn't work. Cheapskates are cheapskates, and nothing will change that.

Example: The good folks responsible for World of Goo ran a special "Pay What You Want" promotion for a little while. And you know what? The largest single datapoint was one penny, with the vast majority of people paying less than two dollars for a fantastic game. And of course, since the game was distributed DRM-free, an untold number of copies were downloaded via TPB and never went through this channel.

No matter how good a game is, if you offer people a choice to get it for free (or nearly for free), they'll take it.

Have you even read the article?! It just has a high piracy rate. No stopping, no failing, no bankrupting, at all. Not even using DRM in the future.

... people who pirate our game aren’t people who would have purchased it had they not been able to get it without paying.

in our case, we might have even converted more than 1 in a 1000 pirates into legit purchases. either way, ricochet shipped with DRM, world of goo shipped without it, and there seems to be no difference in the outcomes.

(2D Boy: "90%")

This was also seen (perhaps inspired by?) 2D Boy and World of Goo. The wrapup page is http://2dboy.com/page/4/

Except that the rules are slightly different in software. Specifically, there is minimal marginal cost involved after the initial creation, which isn't true with physical goods.

So, with the World of Goo experiment you can see that they sold over 83,000 copies with an average payment of between $2.00 and $3.00 over a 13 day period. That works out to about $160,000 to $240,000 over just that 13 day period. Blizzard they ain't, but that isn't a bad haul for 2 weeks. While a typical game of their type may sell for $20, what percentage of that goes directly to the developers as opposed to marketing, distributors, duplication, etc.?

http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

That'd be "customers are customers and should be treated as such". That was more just a general commentary, though, rather than any claim to it being their specific claim on what their view is.

Well, I don't know. It looked differently in the comment: "they're happy to have no or minimal DRM because pirates could be customers and customers are customers and should be treated as such."

Someone said that music/film was more like niche games and that niche games were equally strong on inconveniencing the legitimate customer for the sake of delaying the pirates by a few hours or so.

Right. And that was another reason they weren't using DRM - because it gets broken.

As far as 2dBoy's and Stardocks opinions towards pirates, here's what they've said in the past:

"Demigod is heavily pirated," writes Stardock boss Brad Wardell. "And make no mistake, piracy pisses me off." "If you’re playing a pirated copy right now, if you’re one of those people on Hamachi or GameRanger playing a pirated copy and have been for more than a few days, then you should either buy it or accept that you’re a thief and quit rationalizing it any other way."
http://www.destructoid.com/demigod-dev-to-pirates-accept-you-re-a-thief-131731.phtml

"ricochet shipped with DRM, world of goo shipped without it, and there seems to be no difference in the outcomes. we can’t draw any conclusions based on two data points, but 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."
http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

I've seen 2d boy say elsewhere that they didn't think pirates bought games, so there was little point in trying to block or convert pirates.

My point being that, neither of them have a positive view towards pirates. 2dBoy is somewhat neutral - seeing them as non-actors in the whole system, and Wardell hating pirates, but seeing the futility of trying to stop them. Their reasons for not using DRM didn't have to do with seeing them as potential customers.

Valve has said some things in the past about seeing pirates as potential customers. Admittedly, they also use DRM, and I think their "pirates are potential customers" is way of creating a constructive attitude towards the whole thing, and shouldn't be seen as thinking well of pirates.

If you want to compare the industries, it makes sense to compare the media industry to the niche game software industry. But here you'll find very similar actions. Anti-piracy is the norm. Expensive packaged software (or downloadable paid software) and expensive CDs/DVDs are analogous. Even the antagonistic attitude between the customers and the producers is similar. It's just inherent in any industry that needs to protect its IP because that is precisely what it is selling.

Which "niche games" market is that? Presumably not the independent-yet-original-and-good games market like 2dBoy (World of Goo) and Stardock (Sins of a Solar Empire) compete in, where they're happy to have no or minimal DRM because pirates could be customers and customers are customers and should be treated as such.

I'm glad to hear that. Those folks deserve all the cash that they can get rolling into them.

2D Boyis a shining example of how to produce a solid game, and then distribute it like reasonable human beings. The demo was extensive, not time limited, and fully 1/4 of the game. The purchase price was reasonable, and was available for all platforms, with no DRM.

I've rarely been as impressed as I was when I found the World of Goo. I bought 4 copies for myself, my family, and friends.

Baldur's Gate II was released during time when internet piracy wasn't so widespread. Another point is that publishers like to go the sure route instead of taking big changes with games like Baldur's Gate II. If piracy wasn't there, then publishers would most likely be able to take more risks too. Same goes for indie developers too, and they usually do that. Even World of Goo had piracy rate of around 90%.

> In fact, if I had my way, only citizens from the U.S. would be able to use the software.

If the piracy rates of your software are high outside the US, just look at it as your real customers are already and effectively only the ones in the USA.

But see also Bill Gate's opinion:

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9

"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though," Gates told an audience at the University of Washington. "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

It's a famous/infamous quote. The Chinese people and government took note of it especially the "addicted" part - they still remember when the Brits did the gunboats+opium stuff on them. The Chinese government then tried to push for Linux and open source (not sure how well that's worked ;) ).

Do also see the "World of Goo" example ( http://2dboy.com/2009/10/19/birthday-sale-results/ ) - they sold a lot in their "pay whatever you want" anniversary celebration - they got a fair bit of publicity. I paid USD5 or USD10 (can't remember) and I only played it for a few minutes - haven't played it since last October. Yes I'm a cheap bastard who didn't pay the full original price (USD20?), but they got $$$ from me that they would not have otherwise. I'd never have paid their full original price for it. You may wish to read some of the comments by others on the world of goo thing too.

Then there was also Doom as shareware... Which was a big success.

FWIW: In my previous job I wrote software for a living too, but I wrote it for a company - and the company provides the stuff as part of their service to hotels etc. So piracy was not an issue. I've also put one of my programs on sourceforge for free.

I'm not sure what sort of market you are targeting, so far I do know of people who spend quite a lot on iphone games. Sure many pirate it, but as long as enough buy it you're OK.

Radio stations play music to listeners who don't pay a single cent for it, as a result many (not all) listeners buy the music. They don't buy some indie musician's stuff - because there are thousands out there, many are crap or not to their tastes - so how would listeners know what they like? So they just buy what they or their friends have heard and liked.

So depending on your software, you might need to market it differently. Nowadays many market their products (jewelry, cakes, etc) via facebook or blogs, if you're lucky it can work quite well. Make it easy to find and buy...

The XBox 360 is most certainly not the only console which gives access to indie developers. I know of a number of games in or coming to WiiWare straight from indie developers. World of Goo, for one.

Well, for indie games that actually can't afford to not be multi-platform, Linux had pretty much the same amount of sales as Mac: http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/
Also note this was a "name your own price" and if you go by how much Linux users on average paid/donated more for the game.

Linux users tend to rarely want to pay for anything.

Wow, you couldn't be more wrong... "We were expecting the average price paid to be highest for Linux users and lowest for Windows users, but the gap was larger than we thought it would be..."

There are lots of game companies that don't use DRM...and what's more they have come out and made a point of it. Examples: Wolfire, 2dBoy, and Unknown worlds, just to name a few.

You simply don't have a clue what you're talking about. Pirates haven't driven PC developers to consoles. Consoles are simply more popular hence the flock of developers looking to cash in. It is simple economics, more market share means more money to be made. It has nothing to do with piracy.

Console games get pirated just as much as PC games, even more so. In my county most people own two xboxes. One for live and one for everything else.

Also funny you mention world of goo because this is exactly what they said on that 90% figure..

One thing that really jumped out at me was his estimate that preventing 1000 piracy attempts results in only a single additional sale, this supports our intuitive assessment that people who pirate our game aren’t people who would have purchased it had they not been able to get it without paying.

Also this from the same World of Goo blog post..

either way, ricochet shipped with DRM, world of goo shipped without it, and there seems to be no difference in the outcomes.

It's obvious you've never been into an investment meeting with a publisher. The first thing they want to know is market share and ROI, with those things as the major factor it's a no brainer that everyone has moved to consoles. Piracy has nothing to do with it.

They didn't calculate it based on torrent sites, but by copies of games that submitted high scores to top lists (opt-in option, stupid pirates). Here is their article about it, here slashdot coverage.

Also, that 500 seeders, 300 leechers is just one torrent, not combined total.