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Game Developer Asks To Hear From Pirates
cliffski writes "Indie game developer Cliff Harris has long waged war against games piracy, but has issued a call to pirates to tell him why he is wrong. Assuming that developers are missing out on potential sales from disgruntled pirates, Cliff wants to hear specifically from people who have pirated his games. Not to criticize or lecture them, but to answer a simple question. Why? The reasons people give for copyright infringement/piracy are many and varied, but much of the debate has centred around music and movies, with big 'Triple-A' games an occasional consideration. With specific application to the world of small budget 'indie' games like those Cliff makes, he wants to know the thought processes behind people pirating the games. What puts people off buying? Is it quality, cost, DRM, ease of access? Is there anything that can be done to convert those people to buyers? While many pirates often make good general points about the reasons for the widespread pirating of PC games, it's unusual to get a chance to address specific developers with specific reasons. If you knew 100% that the developer would read your email explaining why you pirated their game, what would you say?"
If I can't try before I buy, I often just don't buy.
I "pirate" a game to see if the damn thing will work on my system.
If it does, and I like it, I buy it. I have about a dozen games like this that I play. Lots more that I've tried and deleted.
I still use the no-cd crack because that shit drives me crazy. It's lousy copy protection and it just pisses me off.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Arrrgh!
i'd imagine that would be the case of many
Here's to finally giving Bush his exit strategy in November
It's easier. Pirates deliver a more convenient product at a better price. Plus there's that whole "information wants to be free" ethos to follow along with.
He's not wrong, and the pirates know that. There are a few excuses that are legitimate (lost/broken CDs) and some that are semilegitimate (abandonware), but most pirating is just people wanting something for free.
Also, pirates do it for fun. No, really, they do. Read some nfos from respectable groups like Razor1911, Deviance or Fairlight, and you're bound to find a note on "why" etc. They also tell warez-users to go buy the stuff they pirate. "If you like it, buy the game - we did!", or something in this context.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
I've never played his games, but usually I "pirate" because some devs/pubs feel it is necessary to install "copy protection".
I get rather annoyed when a game won't play because I have a virtual drive on my computer.
You mad
...and I will buy it, just like I have bought Sins of the Solar Empire, Galactic Civilizations II and Space Rangers 2.
Note that SR2 I originally passed as it was originally published - it had Securom copy protection, so I let it pass.
http://www.impulsedriven.com/ is Stardock's new system, looks very promising (and more friendly than Steam, which is also nice).
I think a lot of the true Pirates will avoid the contact because they'd be concerned about their anonimity. He'll hear from the part-time leechers and the 'try before buying' crowd, but the folks who do the actual work on cracking a game probably won't make a sound.
What if Slashdot did one of those 'ask-the-developer-a-question' forum, and they took the top reasons, then sent them in (with the understanding that the developer would get back with replies and/or rebuttals)?
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
I'm a lazy git who couldn't be bothered to pay if he had the money and wasn't a skinflint. Also, there's lots of games/movies/music out there that I want, I don't have the disposable income to pay for them all, and because I don't want to bother with deciding what's more worthy of my money I just don't pay for anything.
Besides, why should I pay for something I can get for free? Not trolling, I and masses of people think that way. The only way I'd consider buying a game is if it couldn't be pirated, and had a playable demo that made me want to have the real thing really badly. Hasn't happened in at least a decade, so good luck with that!
You just got troll'd!
While not directly pertaining to any Cliff's games - I can't say that I have pirated a single one... and perhaps a bit of a rant...
Take for example the impending release of Bionic Commando Rearmed. According to their own blog, it was always slated to be $10 http://www.bioniccommando.com/en/blog_entries/view/291 - According to them as a result of listening to their customers. However, just this last week, one week before it launches I might add, they go and drop the bomb that the PC version will suddenly cost 50% more. Now before we drop off into excuses (dev/qa costs or promised patch for additional content) or business ideas like "Well, it is worth at least $20 in the first place! and many digital distribution games cost $20 as well!" - let us consider the EMOTIONAL impact that had on me:
"What a bunch of jerks. Why don't they just charge the same across all platforms? What exactly are they trying to accomplish - weed the PC platform out? set it up for the poster child of software piracy?"
I am certain I just going to buy it anyway, and really $15 isn't going to break the budget... but suddenly I am much, much more interested in a "demo" - legitimate source or not - before I plunk down the cash.
He asks what he can do to "convert more people to become buyers". You can't convert people that wouldn't have bought your game in the first place. The only way to stop people copying your game is to provide more value to a so-called pirate such that the "pirate" gets more utility from the game by paying for it than by downloading it. If your game sucks and provides only marginal utility, even if he couldn't play the game for free the game he wouldn't have paid for it.
Not really for any specific reason, but here are some of them:
I earn money now. As a student buying that game was taking food/alcohol money.
I don't have less free time. I have to be more selective. I play less games and the cost to purchase is the least of my worries. In fact it probably saves me cash as if I was out doing something else, I'd undoubtedly be spending more money.
I like on-line a lot. I bought Battlefield 2 for the magic code that let me go online - and I've not chipped my 360 for the same reason.
Cracking stuff makes me feel guilty. I mean yes there's all the arguments about how paying for the game gives you a more restricted copy - but Oh I dunno. If it's a good game somebody has poured their heart and soul into it, and I don't want to make them sad.
Steam - I like steam. I go there, I buy a game (after playing a demo maybe) and there it is to play a few minutes later. I can't be arsed fiddling with CDs, I usally lose/scratch them. If I'd put my thinking cap on and designed my own online distribution system - it'd look like Steam.
I'm not involved in the scene. Getting a pre-Jap release of Metal Gear Solid through the post, complete with japanese stamps on the jiffy bag - that's exciting. Clicking on a torrent link or browsing usenet.. not really a challenge. Strange point this one, but I liked the days when stuff had to be posted, or tracked down to an obscure hidden FTP dir. Too easy now.
How to stop piracy? Well that's a tricky one as I think everybody has their own reasons. If you genuinely can't afford the game - then nothing's going to stop that person pirating it (and if there's been no sale to lose - who cares?). If anything it keeps somebody in the market for future releases and hey they might turn into me and start buying them when they can.
Possibly the other thing is to make the makers of games more important. If you've been reading the blog of somebody who is making something - or eagerly tracking the return of Sam and Max - then you're going to feel more inclined to show support and buy it. When some movie-tie-in appears on 9 formats the day of the films release from 'somewhere' - well I'm not feeling a great emotional attachment to the producers.
Final bit is that I think game makers are starting to be nice to us and understand what we want. We don't have it too bad. Compare what's happening with online distribution of music and movies..
The problem I see is game developers have the same myopic understanding of their products as the MPAA and RIAA have..
In the material world, matter can't be created or destroyed. So in order to sell a widget, you have to make a widget first, and when you DO sell a widget, you only get to keep a fraction of the money you make, since the majority of the price has to go into MAKING ANOTHER WIDGET.
In the digital world, information CAN be created and destroyed. it is very easy to create, and very difficult to destroy once created. So in order to sell a digital widget one merely needs to make a copy and trade material money for it. however, the party RECEIVING the money gets to keep 100% of that money since generating a new digital widget takes no industrial effort at all to make (or allow to be made) more copies.
As the internet spreads around the globe and everybody has faster and faster access to information, there's no scarcity. ONCE a program has been WRITTEN, it can be infinitely replicated by anyone who has a copy. ..So, crying foul because people are pirating or copying your digital products literally makes no sense. No one gets rich by digging one ditch. If you don't want your information copied, don't put it out there for people to access.
I'm not saying I have the solution for "piracy", nor am I attempting to explain the motivations behind "pirates". All I'm trying to illustrate is the physics of what the situation is for software developers, and music and movie producers, and all the other people trying to "capitalize" on the information age.
everybody's motivations in this matter are merely based on physics, not greed or morals.. enjoy the spread of computers, technology, and bandwidth! ^_^
-m
US$0.02++
A lot of programs get pirated because they're not available through legit channels. For instance, Zero Wing gets pirated because it's out of print and the public doesn't know who owns Toaplan's assets. Another case: Over a decade ago, I tried to register a shareware application for Mac. I mailed a money order, but two months later I got it back, marked return to sender. I assume the developer moved without a forwarding address.
Look, I don't want to pirate stuff. I'll happily pay to go see a movie, and I'll happily pay to buy a good game (without even downloading it first to try it!). But here's what I demand in return: treat me with respect.
I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but the above are my non-negotiable requirements for buying software in general. I'm not out to share copies or take anything away from you, but in return I want acknowledgment that I don't owe you any extra favors just because I bought your stuff. I'm your customer and want to have a good relationship with you, so don't treat my like an asshole just because other people ripped you off.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
In those cases, matey, I haves' t' take a short sail down to the Pirate Bay and download a crack or pirated version of yer game which I just bought. An' there ALWAYS IS one, matey!
So yer efforts to prevent pirates be in vain matey! And you're makin' life more difficult than y'should for yer payin' customers. And ye be forcin' me to expose my system potentially to all sorts o' malcontents whose code I'd like to keep as far away from my machine as possible.
Now that we've cleared the air, lad, I'll be takin' that booty.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The percentages of each of these might be interesting to find out. More important, however, is the percentage of people who didn't buy your games who pirated them. Since, I would imagine, most people on this planet didn't buy your game, and only a tiny proportion played it at all, then this number is almost insignificant. The correct question is:
Why did people who didn't buy my game not buy it, and how do I change this?
Whether these people pirated it or not is a side-question - a distraction. I can give you my answer to this:
Beyond that might be the price. I haven't looked at how much you charge for your games - three reasons not to buy them before I even found out what they were about made me stop looking - but a lot of companies charge a lot more for games than I would consider them to be worth (especially in comparison to something like a DVD or a book).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It is also a case of not "wanting something for free", but more of "not wanting to pay upfront for something that may suck". Right now buying a game is effectively a gamble based on whatever other people had to say about it. So it is, of course, easier to download "full version" and see if it lives up to its ratings. But the problem is that there's no easy way and no real incentive to purchase the copy of the game if it *is* good.
In fact, I wonder if distributing a game for free and then having an easily accessible "pay us" button would work. I know that I'd pay this way in an instant if the product is good and I am using it.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
My main reason for pirating games is availability, price is usually not an issue. In this day and age it's a bit silly that I need to go buy a physical box to play a game on my PC. And in the Netherlands, buying the box means you'll have to find the damn thing first, as there are not many good game shops around. Most games are sold in electronics stores, who do not pay much attention to what's new and hot.
I've bought a good many things through Steam. Fast and mostly painless. You let me download your games (or movies / music for that matter) and don't apply too much DRM, I'll pay your fee.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Let's say 500,000 people buy the game, let's say 5,000,000 people pirate it and then play it as much as the people who buy it. Near as I can tell, there 290 million people in the United States who ignored the game. I would be in that latter category. To get 100,000 more sales one needs to convince .2% of pirates or .035% of the population to buy. Which seems easier?
Let's imagine that 50% of piracy is self-help try before buy. Well, there's maybe locking it down harder and hope that that doesn't reduce the 500,000 or increase support costs as honest people stumble into locked down situations. How about a 30 day pay before play policy. Well, some of those 500,000 will second-guess their decision after playing the game for a while. So... can the game beat a 16% conversion rate for the 3,000,000 looky lous? The lower the rate of looky-pirates, the higher the conversion has to be in order to break even.
I gather making a better game is prohibitively expensive?
I kinda smell that this question has the makings of a FreeCiv type of game.
Because 90% of the products on the market fucking suck.
Hey Cliff,
This is going to get modded flame bait but this is probably one of the reasons why your games in particular are getting pirated and not so much bought: people are downloading the pirated version, trying it a couple times, but because the game play is boring and repetitive, they are deleting it.
Your games are all the same with different graphics, they're all the "tycoon" style simulations with minor variations. I know this is probably not what you want to hear, but most people are generally good in that if they play a game a lot they will buy it.
Your games are niche and your intended market isn't going to be going online and downloading them, they won't be that savvy. Your market is looking for them on the shelf at bestbuy and getting roller coaster tycoon instead.
If it is good, and I've got a pirated copy working, I still 'buy' a copy, but never bother installing it (if the cracked version works fine).
that way, I'm supporting the devs and I've got a working game.
Here's my reasons why I do not buy most games - and why I go out of my way to buy some..
1. Copy protection - There should be nothing in a game preventing me from making a copy. There should be nothing in a game that installs 3rd party bullshit on my computer. I would rather not even enter a unique code. Face it, no matter how great of anti-piracy software there is, if I buy the game it inconveniences me - while the pirated version that is easily downloadable on the Internet will not have those inconveniences. If I want to loan the game to a friend, and let him play it a few days, LET ME FUCKING DO IT. I BOUGHT THE DAMN GAME.
- THINK ABOUT THIS: Anti-piracy efforts typically only affect the people that bought and paid for the game. They are always an inconvenience. In all circumstances, the pirated version on the Internet (and it will exist no matter what game, no matter what copy protection), has most of those inconveniences removed - though the game may be missing material, have new bugs due to anti-anti-piracy, and generally have less value to the opinion of the game.
2. Pricing - Every damn PC game comes out at a ridiculous price - $60, $65, even $75.. and every damn PC game is $19.99 bargain bin after 3 months. How about make the price somewhere in the middle and keep it there. I'll buy games on release date if I knew the price wasn't gonna fall by 2/3 in a month. I think $25-30 pricing for games makes it almost more convenient to buy it - provided my other points are considered.
3. Community support - Let the community mod the games - and support them! Nothing is better than a game being released and the community taking over and creating unlimited amounts of new maps/levels.. unless the developer puts some of their own resources back into the community.
4. Pirates buy games - Yes, many pirates also buy games. When I actually had time to play PC games, I pirated many and bought many - and I definitely bought more games that the average person. Consider that. I don't like being called nasty names when I feel perfectly fine with my reasons for pirating - usually too much copy protection.
5. Don't make me have to insert a damn CD when I play the game!!! I bought the game. The pirated version doesn't make me insert a CD, why should the bought-and-paid-for version? My cd player is in my computer on the floor at the corner of my desk - and I'm a lazy gamer that doesn't want to have to open my book of cds, find the right one, and insert it! oh wait.. my cd is scratched. fuck me.
6. Stop being so goddamn confusing with the patches! I have 'pirated' games I bought just because installing the original cds, downloading the patches, installing them in order were so annoying and time-consuming. Here's how you do it. Release a game. It is version 1.0. Patch it. It is called patch 1. Now the version is 1.1. Every new patch should not require the older patch. There should never be a game version like "Awesome Game 1.01.07.0003 p004 with Nvidia enhanced drivers". WTF is that.. That makes me wanna turn my brain off and play Xbox.
7. Offer refunds. Yes, risky.. BUT DO IT. I bought X3 Reunion and was not able to play it for a long-ass time because I only had an external cd burner due to their fucked up copy protection. I posted on their forums. I was told everything was my fault and nothing was their fault. Think I'm ever gonna buy an Egosoft game again? Fuck no. Note: You would most likely have to offer 1/10 as many refunds if the game did not have copy protection. And, 'this game sucks' is not a valid refund request. The reviews are everywhere. If someone buys a game rated at 44%, they deserve to be out the money.
8. Bump up the minimum requirements. Don't say the game will run on a P3 1ghz with 128mb ram if it needs a Core 2 duo at 2.6ghz with a Radeon 4850 just to look decent! Why? Because Joe-dumbass will buy the game and try to run it on his son's shitty laptop with Intel integrated graphics. After doing that once or twice, guarantee he will becom
--- We need more Ron Paul!
1. I was cheap.
As a teenager in the early 90s, I had about 1/30th-1/15th the cost of a then typical game coming in as pocket money each week. If I skipped lunch each day, I could maybe boost it to 1/5th of the cost of a game each week but I went hungry a lot.
Realistically, the only way for me to play the games of the time (Strike Commander, X-Wing, Stunt Island, etc.) was for two or three friends and I to each buy a fraction of the games and let the others take copies in exchange for taking copies of their games, ourselves.
Not noble. But when you're twelve or thirteen, nobility doesn't really factor in when compared to getting or not getting to play all the games the magazines were hyping up.
My best suggestion for this one?
They don't really have the income, nor are they going to get the income. You can't find a way to make people without money more profitable today.
What you can do is find a way to give them an alternative other than piracy so it's not so habitual when they finally do have money. Plus you can build their enjoyment of gaming so, when they do have money, they ultimately spend it on games. Perhaps some kind of a deal with after school computer clubs where the school systems get licenses for the games if the school wants to open them up after hours? Yes, gaming hardware, yadda, yadda... but many indie games don't push hardware in the same way.
2. Quick Network Game At Work
Everyone deserves the right to get a humiliating kill in on their boss from time to time. Getting ten or twenty people to all have a copy of a $50, just so they can play for an hour once a week, is plain crazy.
Games with real demo modes... get played on the demo mode (and those that enjoy it at work go and buy the full game for home use). Games with no demo modes get no CD cracks. With the number of discs needed, quick math has everyone asking, "Do I feel $1,000 bad about copying?" They never buy a copy afterwards as they already know how to crack it.
Solution 1: Good demos. The real old kind. Think Doom where you could play the first third of the whole game.
Solution 2: Charge for the server, online multiplayer, single player content. Give the LAN client away. Add a few extra loading screens to the LAN only install that remind you that the purchase gets you so much more. Let it serve as your advertising where you'd never get the sales anyway. 20 players all tempted to buy the full game if it's good beats the hell out of 20 pirates or 20 people who're playing something else.
3. A Lot Of Games Suck
Sorry, harsh reality check. We've all been burned by games that bought advertising on game review sites and strangely got very prominent placement and a more glowing review than they deserved. You only have to drop $50 for a Matrix game that sucks mightily, a D&D game that constantly fails its saving throw vs. crash to desktop, or Doom 3 that looks amazing yet leaves you staggeringly bored (holy crap, did I just imply I miss Romero?) and you get jaded fast.
In my case, now I'm older, money's less of an issue but time is, I tend to just skip a lot of games entirely. In the past, I'd take a copy just to try it and then... well... I had a copy, what was the point in finding $50?
Solution: Good demos again. Ones with a real, appreciable, chunk of the content.
You want to be even smarter with extra content? If there are eight chapters to your game, give away chapters 1 & 2 so people get a good chance to try it. Then offer the choice... The $40-50 box buy for all the rest or they can just buy what they want at $10/chapter via online activation. This way, your barrier of entry to the next chunk is WAY lower.
4. Nothing In The Box But Digital Data
Digital data can be grabbed from the internet or copied from a disc.
I remember a time when manuals came packed with back story, maps, hints and tips, walkthroughs of the first level or two, tables of information on spe
IMHO, this is THE million dollar question here, it's more important to find out WHO, than WHY.
I remember when Sierra released a multiplayer game called Tribes. It had absolutely NO copy protection. It installed completely to the hard drive. No cd-key was required to install it. It never performed a CD check. Even though it was multiplayer only, it did no online checks. Even the crudest CD-writing software could make a simple backup. I remember reading a developer blog which mentioned that at peak times, there were about 50% more people playing Tribes online than actual CD's sold. However, the game made a decent profit, and Tribes 2 was given the green light for development.
This would be extremely useful information to justify expensive and time consuming DRM and anti-piracy schemes. I have not seen any studies done to see who pirates games.
If you knew from a valid study that 99% of the people who pirate your games are less than 15 years old and live with parents, you might not spend as much money on incorporating DRM in your product.
This would be an excellent PhD topic for some business graduate.
However, if the study returned data that suggested a majority of your pirates are people in their 30's making over $80,000 a year and owned a Prius, then something to prevent trivial copy/burn might be justified.
http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=about&cc=US This is the most effective solution I've ever dealt with for antipiracy. As someone who's pirated software for a very long time, I've spent quite a bit of money, happily, through steam on video games. The benefits of buying through steam however, meet the requirements of most everyone in here. No CD to put in the tray, no keys to enter (if you buy a game online [which i recommend]), constantly updated, and most importantly, the purchase is tied to the account itself, so you can download your game infinite times to infinite machines as long as it's tied to your account. I have Audiosurf on three different machines, legally :)
You are quite correct to apply supply and demand economics to this problem. The "intellectual property" industries (movies, music, and computer software) rely on the artificial legal construct of copyright in order to extract profit from an activity that produces a "product" that, once produced, has an infinite supply and near-zero cost of distribution.
The natural state of affairs is to eliminate the artificial legal construct of "copyright" and just accept that anything that can be rendered digitally is free to copy.
The usual objection is "well then how do artists/writers/producers make money without copyright backing them up"?
The first response to that question is to point out that it is not the responsibility of the state or society at large to see that any industry remains profitable. Once upon a time there was a thriving buggy whip industry, but there was no legal construct erected to protect buggy whip manufacturers from being obsoleted by the forward march of technological development.
Notwithstanding, the question of "how can an artist make a living without copyright?" is a valid one. Happily, there is a historical answer - patronage.
Not so very long ago, it was practically impossible to distribute artistic product at all. Without any form of recording device, the only way to hear Mozart was to go see Mozart. Want to see Shakespeare? Go to the Globe Theatre. Want to read Ovid? Pay the enormous costs of finding a copy and then having a monk copy it by hand.
The flip side to this is that as an artist, given that the costs of producing your art were so very high, the only way to make a living doing art was to find a rich man who would hire you to produce the art - a patron.
The nice thing about zero-cost duplication and distribution of artistic content in the modern age is that it allows the cost of patronage to be spread across a very much wider audience, meaning that the cost of being a patron is very much smaller.
In effect, erect a means where your customers/fans can get money to you, and then let it be known that if they wish to see future product, then they need to contribute to the pool, or development will cease.
Yes, many people will just download the game/song/whatever and never pay. So it goes. But if the product is good enough, enough people will contribute to allow you to continue developing more product - and that's a win. How many of us get to make a living at their passion?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
There's a number of reasons I'd personally need to get a "pirated" copy of a game, even a game I've actually bought. Let me summarize a few of them.
1. Games that require the disc to be in the CD/DVD drive to play. The game isn't the only thing on my computer, nor the only thing that wants/needs that drive. If I have something else that needs the CD/DVD drive, I have to choose between the game and that something else. That ends up annoying me, and if there's a "pirated" version or a crack that bypasses the disc check I may be inclined to get that just to free up the drive.
2. DRM and anti-cheating software. When a game installs that stuff, it usually winds up affecting more than just the game. Remember, the game is not the only thing I use the computer for. If the DRM and anti-cheat software the game requires is nasty enough to interfere with other legitimate things I'm doing on the computer (and it usually is), I'm going to either dump the game or go looking for ways to get rid of the interference. I'm sorry, but I simply can't afford to dedicate a piece of hardware with a 4-digit price tag to the job of playing one single solitary game. I don't care how good the game is, it's not good enough to justify a 4-digit cost. On-line checks are just as bad. Unless the game's specifically a multi-player on-line game, I may not have an active network connection while playing. If the game demands that I do, it may not be physically possible and even if it is I may not want to go to the hassle of running a wire or setting up wireless on a computer that doesn't otherwise need it.
Notice that the two have a common theme: games that assume they're the only thing on the machine and that satisfying their demands is the only priority. That's fine on a dedicated console, but a PC isn't a console. You want to make it less likely I'll have to go looking for a pirated or cracked copy? As a game designer, start taking into account the fact that your game has to live alongside everything else on my computer and not cause problems for me when I'm doing all the things I do with the computer when I'm not playing your game.
3. Economics. Look at the target market for your game, and how much disposable cash members of that market will have. Then look at the price of your game. Can they afford to buy it? If you're pricing your game at $45, and targeting early teens, you're going to have rampant piracy. 13-15 year old kids don't have $45 burning a hole in their pocket. Especially not with the economy the way it is right now. And no, the fact that your game really is worth $45 isn't relevant. As people trying to sell homes they can't afford are finding out, the value of something isn't what it's worth, it's what a buyer can afford to pay for it. If the buyer can't afford the price, you'll have no buyers regardless of how good a deal it is. If you go about deliberately creating a demand for something in a market that can't afford the price you've set, don't be surprised when piracy goes through the roof. Either re-evaluate your target market, or re-evaluate your price.
4. Accessibility. How easy is it for members of your target market to buy the game? Again, if you're targeting early teens, they aren't going to have a credit card to buy on-line. If the game's also not readily available in stores, how are they supposed to buy it? And when it's available on-line, if it requires physical shipping (meaning a wait of several days to a week) people are going to go looking for alternatives like downloading. If getting your game legitimately is annoying, aggravating and takes a long time, and downloading a copy from a pirate site is convenient and fast, don't be surprised when people choose convenient and fast.
Note that this last one's a good example of a rule I got from an old shopkeeper friend: "Whatever you do as a store owner, never ever make it hard for the customer to give you their money.". A lot of on-line stores could stand to listen to that advice. I put my stuff in the cart, go to
It turns out that the article summary presents a very different question than what the actual article author asked. I responded to the SlashDot version first, and the real version second. I also primarily posted this on my blog so that trackbacks would go appropriately to his blog. Still, since there are more people here, I'm leaving the response where I found it, so that I'll get responses.
I've been running and co-running a number of small communities about game development for more than a decade now. Several of them have a real problem with pirates who show up looking for help with piracy. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a pirate and a kid using the wrong terms for things ("how do I build my ROM", etc); as such there's sort of an ongoing competition among the people who run these groups to see who can get these goons to uncover themselves the fastest, usually by feigning sympathy.
As a result, I've seen about three times as many warezers as the human population of Earth. Every single one tries to tell me, after they're removed, how it's not their fault they stole - the game is too expensive, or they don't want to feed EA, or they'll pay for it if they like it. Many of them have already forgotten that during the sympathy phase, they gave us lists of the games they had. Particularly galling are the people who brag that they have ROMs of every single DS game, or what have you, then turn around and pretend that it's just due to cost.
With respect, Mr. Harris, you're asking the wrong question. You could be selling your game for a quarter with a change accepting machine in their rooms; they wouldn't buy your game. They're out there getting every game they can find, often just for the bragging rights of having stolen more than their peers. Many of the people stealing your game haven't even heard of it and will never play it. These people cannot be converted into customers; they are too used to theft to recognize it as such, invariably vomiting up the same tripe about a false and meaningless distinction between copyright violation and theft, because they don't think of themselves as thieves and cannot face the honest nature of what they're doing. These people will never voluntarily give up money for your hard work, and you cannot get them to stop taking your work.
There are two somewhat more legitimate questions you might ask, however.
The first is "how can I profit from these people." That's not the same thing as turning them into customers. For example, though I do pay for my games, I play a lot of free games on the web which I wouldn't pay for (I'd just play more Civ instead.) DesktopTD is a great example: when it was news to me I would not have bought it because it looks poor, and by now I've played it so much that I don't even play it for free anymore. During my addiction I might have paid a couple of bucks for it, but probably not, and the market doesn't offer a sales mechanism that hits that phase.
However, DesktopTD has probably made about $3.50 from me by now. I'm not pulling that number out of thin air; I made an honest estimate of plays based on my best guess about when I found the game and how often I play, and ran it through the numbers for MochiAds. Admittedly, I'm not a warezer, so my example applicability is limited, and indeed I do know a few people who brag that they're running ad blockers so they're not inconvenienced with ten seconds of advertisement to put money in the developer's hands, even though the developer is giving their game away. Most of these people, unsurprisingly, are warezers.
The other questi
StoneCypher is Full of BS
as opposed to stuff they have to pay for
duh
the real story is that there are people out there for whom this is an earth shattering parable bending conceptual leap forward
if we must make an intelligent observation in a thread under a really stupid question, let it be this:
once upon a time, some german dude invented the printing press, and previously uneducated clueless serfs were now able to read on the cheap, birthing the middle class, and fancy ideas from the likes of voltaire and jefferson about equality and democracy. no one intended this, no one planned it, but this is what the printing press did
of course, the previous understanding was there was an aristocratic class, who knew all and decided all, and the uneducated rabble, who were to be herded and put to work, and that is the way god ordained it. there are still people coming to grips with the way the printing press has changed this equation
well, now we have the internet, no less earth shattering than the printing press. and what is the internet going to change?
it destroys the concept of intellectual property
you either get that, or, like those who still believe in the preeminence of a ruling class, you don't get it. and you will be befuddled for many centuries to come
intellectual property is dead. the internet killed it. understand that, or not, but it is the truth whether you like it or not. deal with it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There is a fundamental, philosophical, problem with the traditional means of distribution: the product is abundant.
Cars are not abundant. It takes a significant expenditure of materials and effort to put one together. When I drive off in one, I cannot simply dupe it and give the dupe to my friend. The laws of physics dictate a level of scarcity to this good, and as such it makes perfect sense to expect to receive money from every person who obtains a car.
The world of "data" follows different laws of physics. Once I have the data in my hot little hands, I can dupe it and give it to my friends at zero direct cost to the producer. There is no deprivation of use nor loss of mineral resources nor expenditure of manpower nor anything of the sort on the part of the original developer when I dupe the game. None. And I can keep duplicating this ad infinitum, at the same cost (of zero). Furthermore, my friends can do the same thing with the copy I gave them...there is no quality loss. Once the good exists, it can instantly exist everywhere. It is "abundant."
So, since data follows these laws (rather than the laws of physics as they apply to physical goods) people feel like they are being cheated when they are asked to pretend like data follows the laws of physical matter. They feel like they are buying into a game of control that is unfounded in reality and ultimately to their detriment (since they have to pay money for something that doesn't cost anything to produce *at this point* (excluding initial development costs).
I think that is the crux of the issue. We all know the good is abundant, and we all feel like pretending it is not abundant is just silly, and harmful to us (our money is valuable and if we can get games for free then we have optimized our entertainment budget and have more money left over to spend on things like real cars or educations for our kids or what-have-you).
What about the potential sale that we are "stealing" by copying a game? We tend to respond to such a representation of the situation with great cynicism. We feel like the only reason you feel entitled to every single "potential sale" is because of your insistence in everyone pretending that an abundant good is not abundant. We also feel that the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism doesn't guarantee a ROI on any kind of development project, so when you pound your fist in frustration at your inability to monetize your efforts we just say, "so try something else...thats what every other entrepreneur in the world has had to do...what makes you special? If you can't make money making games, do something else, and stop whining." That is the same answer we get when we complain about being downsized, or having low-paying jobs, or what-have-you...so we are just responding in turn.
Lastly...the age-old mantra that if you can't get money for every copy of a game sold then nobody will produce games. I call BS. Piracy has been alive and well since before the computer games industry even existed...and since long before DRM existed...and the games industry thrived anyway. And it still thrives, despite the continued piracy. Enough people pay for the games (even though they don't have to) that the industry remains profitable. If that model suddenly stops working, alternative models will take its place (subscription-based games and so on). If that doesn't work, and we actually reach a state of utter cultural impoverishment where no games (or music or movies, for that matter) are being produced because nobody can figure out how to make a living doing it (and no hobbiests manage to churn out anything but crap)...which I maintain is an economic impossibility...but if it actually does occur THEN it might make sense to talk about legislation...and there would be a conscious buy-in to the legislation from the masses who are hungry for cultural enrichment. However, this has not happened, and I therefore submit that it makes no sense to try to preemptively pass laws based on the premise that it might happen (given that it is unlikely and that the situation could be remedied after the fact anyway).
its in TFA. :D
www.positech.co.uk
and the link in the summary too
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
The reason people pirate games is because getting games for free is cheaper than paying for them, and because of the thrill. People have been sneaking into movies for years -- it's no different.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
While it may be OK to profit off art, that does not negate the need for some public funding. In a pure free market, art stagnates to a degree. You can hear it on American top-40 radio. Avant-garde art is initially unpopular and can't turn a profit, necessitating state funding, but it can then go on to renew commercial art. Just look at how Karlheinz Stockhausen, that obscure figure working in West Germany's colossal state radio studios, heavily influenced Miles Davis and Tim Buckley, who went on in turn to influence other popular artists. The creations of IRCAM aren't terribly popular outside a cult following, but the technology developed there has come to be widely used by popular artists (without Pierre Boulez's Repons, there might not be one track on Radiohead's In Rainbows). Sometimes it's a good thing for the world when an artist can noodle about without worrying about selling the result.
I identify most with a group which I'll label "The Conditional Pirates". Pirates who see a critical flaw in your product. They can be converted to sales, but you flubbed something significant that's a barrier to their willingness to buy. Game lacks crucial features or was abandoned.
The flaws I notice the most which will prevent me from buying is overzealous tamper protection (like GameGuard, PunkBusters, etc.) which somehow restricts my use of software which I paid for (or would have). As a Linux user I'm particularly offended when developers use tamper protection to make sure I don't run their program in Linux. Once I pay for their software, they shouldn't care or have any say over which computer, operating system, or environment I run it in. Because of that, I won't pay for software which will police how I use it after I buy it.
The other flaw is abandonment of a game. Buying a game comes with an expectation of support because game developers ship games fully aware of the many bugs it contains and intend to patch them later. When I buy a game, I'm not given the option of "abandoning my payment", but game developers/publishers choose to abandon each game at an arbitrary point, sometimes that point is acceptable, many times it's not, and pirating games is really the only weapon people have against abandoned game rot.
If you build a relationship based on lies and deception, expect it to go both ways. Game developers/publishers lie about the fitness of their product, and the consumer lies about their purchasing status.
A few specific cases:
Shadowrun (Windows Vista/XBox 360) - Released June 2007, Abandoned September 2007. Company closed a few months after release, the game still has many critical bugs that lead the game to have about a 20% crash rate. There are no game servers, it's entirely peer-to-peer so the company was able to wash their hands of this mess 100%. Take notice, the game developers felt no obligation to let players know they closed the studio and abandoned the game. For 8 months after the release, the game's web site still had information leading people to believe it was a vibrant an active game supported by the company with a message that you could "play against the developers!"
Giants: Citizen Kabuto - Released December 2000, Abandoned immediately upon release. I bought this game on the day of the release and the game's link to play online brought you to a web page which said they had changed their mind about supporting online play, and recommended you give Gamespy Arcade a shot if you want to play multiplayer. To make a decision to pull a game's support on or before the release date is shady by any definition. It didn't stop them from talking up the multiplayer features on the box or on their official web site.
Tribes: Vengeance - Abandoned upon release. The company even stated in future messages on the forums that support of the game was conditional on the game's success. They knew the game had a lot of flaws when they released it, and even completed development of a patch, but decided not to release the patch because they didn't see a future in supporting the game. That's real hard for my mind to process. That they would actually pay for a patch, get it, and decide not to release it for spite of poor sales. Their refusal to release a patch they had already developed was nothing short of malicious.
When game developers are so willing to treat customers maliciously, why should I feel like I owe them something? To address the argument that "My company doesn't screw people like that..." As an industry, developers and publishers who do screw people aren't ostracized by the ones who don't. The first time Vivendi Universal screwed people, every development company under their umbrella should have turned their backs on them. It should have become virtually impossible for Vivendi to stay in the industry. But companies which have poor practices aren't ostracized, it's seen as business-as-usual or a "toug
Lets face it. When you download a pirated game, you're not doing it for copyright reasons, philosophical reasons, or even ethical reasons. Trying to rationalize one's behavior behind "acceptable" reasoning is pretty bad, and I can guarantee 99% of the people who claim they "buy the game" do not.
Don't be ridiculous... people pirate games because they cost money. I've pirated plenty of games, ever since I was a teenager--why? Because I didn't have the money to buy them. And what's easier, paying money for a game, or not paying money for a game? Seriously, do you really think sites like GCW et al exist because people have huge personal issues with DRM (that are apparently circumvented by theft) or because demos don't exist? Be realistic. Don't hide behind false reasons.
I'll be perfectly honest, since it seems people don't want to be. I'll buy games that I know I'm going to enjoy--I own all the HL2 expansions, TF2, etc., because I enjoyed their successors and had a reasonable expectation that their sequels would be equally good. It wasn't a risk I was taking--it was a sure thing. And even though most of the people posting here won't admit to it, I have the feeling that its that uncertainty--whether or not one will enjoy a $50 game--that makes people more willing to pirate than to take a monetary risk.
Not to mention one of the same excuses I used to hide behind--regardless of whether or not I'm going to pirate the game, if I wasn't going to buy it anyway, is the company really losing money on me?
Here's an honest (non anonymous) answer:
When I was a kid/teenager, pirating was preferred because:
Now there were still games I bought as a kid, but each game was after saving precious allowances over months just to buy a stupid game.
When I was a teenager and working, pirating still occurred because:
However, I will say that legal purchases increased quite a bit for games that were better than others.
Now that I am an adult, and working full time paying for everything. I can afford your crappy games but I know better, I know that most of the time your game sucks so I refuse to buy it unless I can try it either by playing it at a friend's house or pirating it and trying it. If there's a demo I'll try that. But if the quality (time spent for fun received) doesn't justify the asking price ($50 or whatever) then I delete your pirated data from my computer because it isn't worth my time. If it is, I will make a legal purchase to support you and your industry.
Finally there is a phase for some poorer people where they pirate simply to pirate. They collect what they can get for free even though they never use it. It isn't the fact that they are playing your game every day and actually having fun. No, your data just sits on a hard disk somewhere but it is never read. Even if you prevented these people from pirating, they wouldn't buy your product.
The other thing is most of the people pirating (as I've described above) simply can't afford your product. $50 seems like so little yet for someone who's working at McDonalds, $50 is probably a lot. Therefore these people would not buy your game either if they couldn't pirate it because they simply can't afford it either.
So when you see a pirate, each pirated copy does not necessarily mean a sale was lost. Even if you stopped all pirating, you probably wouldn't get good sales, or even worse sales, because the pirates are no longer contributing to word of mouth marketing or hype.
Finally, I will give you the trick to why this is so. If you charge a flat rate for your product, you are alienating out a certain markete while giving another market a price benefit. In a real market, people would not pay a flat rate, instead each purchaser would buy the same product at a different price based on their circumstances. So for example, if I'm as rich as Bill Gates, and I really really am a fan of your product, I probably wouldn't mind throwing you $1000 for your game because I really really like what you did and I feel that your game is worth $1000 I'm throwing at you. Now if I am a poor kid who gets lunch money from my parents and that is it, I'm not going to give you $50 even if I think your product is the shit. As a stupid and poor kid, I don't have the buying power to give you money. But if you lowered your price to $1 or even $2, as a kid, I might be able to make something worth with my birthday and christmas gift money.
So if you are a game developer, sell your product at whatever price the target market you want to hit will pay. If you want poor people to buy your product, sell it for a dollar or two. If you want middle class people to buy your product (be warned, these folks don't have all the free time in the world), sell it for $40 or $50. If you want rich fucks to buy it, sell it for $100 or $1000. Finally if you want to sell to all three markets, then you're going to have to alter your product or marketing in some way: poor people can only download a copy of the game, middle class get a fancy box + cd/dvd + poster or toy, rich bastards get a 5 dvd set, autographed 'gold plated' dvd set and HD movie disk, etc.
But don't come crying when it is obvious your marketing strategy sucks balls and you're whining because you can't deal wi
Let's say you create a game on the assumption that 500,000 people will want to play the game, based on demographics and popularity of similar games. You want to sell it for $50 each so that's a $25,000,000 budget - pretty good!
This is exactly where most games lose me. I work full time, have a family, etc. There isn't much between minesweeper and Unreal for non-dedicated PC gamers. Nintendo game found this market wide open with easy to learn games that doesn't require complex manuals and a large dedication of time to enjoy. Much of the piracy is simply limited time and money budgets and wanting to try lots of games. They are not priced for casual gamers. I've never spent over $20 for a single game. I sometimes pick up recycled games as I don't need the latest and greatest. With online registration and failure of right of first sale, even this has died.
Now days, I stick to older games, Linux games, and other mindless time wasters. (the demo games are fun)
Often the demo is almost playable to encourage you to buy the full version, but the full version is priced for hardcore gamers.
The truth shall set you free!
But the ones who can adapt will choose another business model, based on selling the service of writing software rather than selling a disc in a box. From our viewpoint here in the present, we can't know exactly what that future model would look like. We can, however, see that the fundamentals are all there: programming and game design skill is a scarce resource (unlike data), and it's one that people are already willing to pay for.
So who pays for it? Perhaps a rich benefactor pays for the development of a game for their personal use, then decides to release it to the public free of charge. That seems unlikely though.
More likely is the development of a model whereby the public can pay developers directly for the service they provide. Perhaps this would take the form of commissions, where members of the public get together and pool their money to pay for the development of a new game. But this raises many questions of coordination--how would the decisions be made as to what the game would be, and which developers will get picked to provide the service? As you mention, this would require a huge middleman layer.
or a new payment model to allow millions of individual gamers to fund development rather than a handful of investors
Perhaps the cost of the development service of each game could be broken up into many shares, and each person who plays the game could pay one share. That way only the direct benefactors would pay for the service, which seems fair.
Is this sounding familiar yet?
The unimaginative ones might decide that making games just isn't possible anymore, since they wouldn't be able to look past the business model they've been relying on for the past couple decades. But the ones who can adapt will choose another business model, based on selling the service of writing software rather than selling a disc in a box.
I would say that you are the unimaginative one, since you seem fixated on the disc without realizing that the current business model is in fact the same one you're advocating. Developers are directly paid for their service by the public in the form of "shares" known as game licenses.
You can't have it both ways. If you want to make the point that games are essentially a service not a product, then you have to ask who is the recipient of the service? The person playing the game, obviously. The current business model apportions the service cost to each service recipient through the concept of the software license. Forget the disk, what you are paying for is a small part of the service that developed what's on the disk.
This idea of infinite abundance is totally ridiculous. Yes, after a service has been performed, the end result is already in existence. That does not mean that games are highly abundant in general, it simply reflects the reality of any service, which is that once it has already been performed, there is no natural incentive to pay. Pirating games is like dining and dashing. "Why pay for this dinner? I'm already full." People say, "Why pay for games? I can already get a perfect copy for free." But the very first copy does not just appear out of thin air.
Most people do not dine-and-dash for two reasons. First, people recognize that it took time, effort, and expertise to prepare their food, and feel a moral obligation to pay for that. Even if they did not like the food. Second, this feeling has been codified in the law so that it is a crime to dine and dash. I would say the same concepts apply to game piracy.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I think there's a more general, obvious question: Why do people steal? Software is unique in that there is the *potential* to thwart thieves through the same medium that makes up the goods. I suppose just like Masterlock likely uses its own product to prevent breakins to their warehouses, developers try to adopt the same strategy. However, perhaps this is a lost cause. Thieves will get what they want, despite the technology. However, the useful function is about the percentage of honest people out there. Perhaps the real problem is that software just costs too much. If bread bakers charged $50 per loaf, I would suspect they would suffer the same thievery rates as software. Perhaps Microsoft Office should be $50, not $500. After all, there are more than 100 times the number of honest potential customers than there were when they started that product. Indie games should cost less. There is often a sweet spot where the effort to steal is just not worth the cost of the software.
Because it's easier to download a game than go to the shop and buy it?
Because I'm going to use no-cd crack anyway, since I absolutely hate swapping CDs?
Steam solves quite a few problems for me - when the game is on Steam, I buy it there (though I still hate the fact that it often costs more than buying it locally). Steam doesn't require me to swap CDs to play my games. Steam doesn't even require me to HAVE those CDs - I can uninstall the game at any time and simply redownload it later, when I feel like it.
Yes, it doesn't solve all problems, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.
Ditto.
Until I pirated it, that is.
I had and have no intention of dealing with Steam(-ing pile of crap). I found (and continue to find) the entire concept ludicrous. If I buy a single-player game, I expect to be able to play it whenever, wherever, forever. No SecrapROm, no Online checks, no Nada. I'm willing to punch in a CD Key, provided it is no longer than 32 digits, and even that long is pushing it.
I think game publishers need to understand a few basic truths of business:
1) There will ALWAYS be thieves. No matter what you do, or how much money you spend on stopping them, a small percentage of people will always find a way to steal your products. Some will do it for no other reason than because they can. Don't like it? Too bad, that's business in the digital age.
2) Using DRM, rootkits, Online-checking single player games and spyware-like software to try and "secure" your game against "piracy" is at the very least ineffective and mostly nigh-on useless in actually stopping piracy. (See rule #1)
3) Assuming that ALL your customers will be thieves and thus distributing software with the garbage listed in #2 UPSETS your customers. Surprisingly, people get annoyed when software they paid good money for treats them like a criminal and/or refuses to run due to DRM and/or breaks other things in their PC, up to and including the OS itself.
4) Angry and annoyed customers means both lost revenue through negative word of mouth advertising, and by driving some customers and potential customers to outright piracy. Why should anyone pay for a game that is broken with DRM when the pirated version will come out in a week with the DRM stripped out and will be FREE to download?
5) The best way to keep piracy to a minimum is to serve up a clean game, with no DRM or anti-piracy junk other than a CD key. (One that doesn't require the CD to play would be nice as well). And since you aren't wasting MILLIONS on third-party DRM crapware, you can charge LESS for the game, and still make a higher profit. In other words, Cheap and DRM-free games sell.
I think that just about covers it.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory