Independent Dev Reports Over 80% Piracy Rate On DRM-Free Game

An anonymous reader writes "Developer 2D Boy has written that they are seeing an 82% piracy rate for everyone's favorite DRM-free physics puzzler, World of Goo . Surprisingly, this rate is in-line with what they were expecting. The article also features a fascinating comparison with the piracy rate of another game that was shipped complete with DRM, at 92%. There seemed to be no major difference in the outcomes of the rate regardless of whether DRM was used or not ... well, no difference other than the cost to implement such nonsense."

Comments

Only sane conclusion

[Xiroth]

Which is all just proof that the DRM that the other game shipped with clearly isn't strong enough.

Or at least, this is how I'm predicting most industry execs would interpret this. There's always wriggle room for those who'd rather not face reality (particularly those who have their livelihood staked on it, such as StarForce).

Re:Only sane conclusion

[AKAImBatman]

Which is all just proof that the DRM that the other game shipped with clearly isn't strong enough.

That's far from the only sane conclusion. The problem with World of Goo is that the "honest" customers may take advantage of one of the more convenient and easier download options. These additional options that do a better job reaching the target audience may artificially inflate the piracy figures for PC downloads. i.e. It's not that the game is heavily pirated, it's that the PC version is less popular among paying customers and thus at a statistical disadvantage.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Aphoxema]

These additional options that do a better job reaching the target audience may artificially inflate the piracy figures for PC downloads. i.e. It's not that the game is heavily pirated, it's that the PC version is less popular among paying customers and thus at a statistical disadvantage.

That's the kind of the objective thinking the world needs more of.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[davester666]

DRM is just moving to the game creator's server. You make the game multi-player over the internet, and then it doesn't matter if the disk gets copied left right and center. The important part is the serial number, so they can readily track that number on the server that it has been sold, isn't being used by multiple people at the same time, and is generally used from the same geographic area.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

A quick search at PirateBay easily shows how full of shit your reasoning is. Between paying for digital content vs downloading, people prefer the later. But we've seen with much more expensive items that aren't so easily downloaded people will pay for them (ie iPods, iPhone, console games, console systems etc)

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Ostracus]

I'm sorry but how does Steam and Wiiware fall under the "counted as piracy" figure?

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Hurricane78]

Hey, I'm sorry, but I have to tell you, that there is no such thing as objectivity.
What you meant, was that it fits your own personal world view of what is fair and right.
In other words: You said "I agree, and I want more people to agree with me."

This is perfectly valid, because everyone exists to spread his genes and views (the two methods of reproduction), and I with you good luck with it, as long as it does not hurt my reproduction.
But don't lie to you and to others by acting, as if this had anything to do with objectivity.

Please don't feel offended. I got this mixed up too, until some time ago. I thought there were some absolute "right" and "wrong" and "true" values.
The closest thing to this are physics laws and mathematics. But hey, in reality, what meaning does the number "3" or the word "gravity" have, if there is nobody (by definition with his own point of view) defining it? What is the definition of reality?
Maybe the only thing we all can agree on, is that everything in this universe/reality, whatever it is, is relative.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[pcolaman]

Which is why Blizzard really doesn't care about the distribution of their games. They care about the distribution of the serial keys.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Hurricane78]

Aah... I wish you luck. :)

Next time I'll try that "preview" thing. ;)

Re:Only sane conclusion

[AKAImBatman]

A quick search at PirateBay easily shows how full of shit your reasoning is.

That doesn't even make the slightest bit of sense. Either you don't understand the argument, or you think that Pirate Bay somehow tracks the number of copies pirated. Either way, there's no way that searching Pirate Bay disproves the argument I just made.

Just for fun, let's make up some numbers to demonstrate. Let's say I create a game for only the PC. Let's say that 500 people buy it. Later on I'm able to prove that 500 people pirated it. What is my piracy rate on the PC version? 50%.

Now let's say I create a game that can be distributed via the Wii, Steam, or a PC Download. Let's say that the Wii version sells 1500 copies, the Steam version sells 1000 copies, and the PC version sells 100 copies. Later on I'm able to prove that 500 people pirated the PC Download. What is my piracy rate on the PC download? 83%.

Except that in the second scenario, we can see that many of the previous customers shifted to the alternative content streams. If we assume that those other streams are well protected, this means that the ratio between pirated copies and PC Downloads is now out of whack with actual sales. Overall sales are great and piracy rates have not changed. Yet through some interesting misapplication of statistics, we have managed to create a 33% increase in piracy.

What that suggests is not that piracy kills all video games and that they should be destroyed. What it suggests is that the PC Download stream is far less profitable when alternative streams are available.

"There are three types of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics" --Mark Twain

Re:Only sane conclusion

[AKAImBatman]

They don't. In fact, they're not counted at all. That's the problem.

Read this post for an example scenario.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[a whoabot]

If causation is not correlation, then what is causation? Can you give me an example of causation that isn't merely correlation?

Cigarette smoke causes lung cancer? Where's the causation apart from correlation there? Smoke goes in habitually and cancer forms. They are just correlated. Or you can say that the smoke molecules cause the disruption of molecules in the cells. But where's the causation apart from correlation there? The smoke molecules enter in proximity to the cell molecules and then the cells molecules are changed. That's just correlation. Or you can say that those molecules are caused to do that because of electromagnetism. But where's the causation apart from correlation there? Opposite charges attract and similar charges repel. What causes that? That's just correlation.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[deniable]

And 'pirate' servers.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[KDR_11k]

Not every game takes all of its value from online multiplayer though and for many markets that's not feasible to do (e.g. something like Wii Music would massively hurt its audience if it was worthless without an online connection).

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Firehed]

That doesn't even make the slightest bit of sense. Either you don't understand the argument, or you think that Pirate Bay somehow tracks the number of copies pirated.

TPB may not show it, but the number of finished copies is easy enough to get from most sites, not to mention the number of seeders that all trackers show.

Is it accurate? Not particularly, but bad data is (a little) better than no data. The two most active torrents for World of Goo, at posting, have a combined total of about 625 seeders, and another 60 or so leechers. The busiest torrent at MiniNova has 837 seeds, and claims just under 32,000 completed downloads (though the one that seems to be more consistent in terms of filesize with what's correct has 367 seeds and 21k downloads).

Take it for what you will. Those numbers are definitely the low end of things, but for reference, Spore shows 2500 active seeds and 300k downloads at Mininova alone. Obviously their 'superior' DRM didn't do squat, other than have people like me boycott all of their future products.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Firehed]

Which is what Blizzard has done for at least the best part of a decade (probably longer, but my first Blizzard game was D2 which I bought shortly after its release).

That works great for multiplayer games, but all of the antisocial types like me would have a pretty easy time going through campaign with a pirate copy if it was so desired, unless they required online connectivity even for single-player activity. And that always pisses users off - especially those on crappy connections (or those like me that want to have a little something fun to do installed on my laptop when I'm on the road but may not have consistent/reliable net access).

So while that's a perfectly viable solution for multiplayer-oriented games, it does nothing to address campaign-heavy stuff (e.g., HL series), or even games with a decent balance of both (most, I'd argue).

Re:Only sane conclusion

[lysergic.acid]

just because you don't understand what objectivity is doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. and just because people are inherently biased doesn't mean that we are incapable of being objective, or that everyone is equally biased. that's like saying that just because people aren't 100% rational all the time that logic doesn't exist, or that a creationist is as rational/irrational as an evolutionary biologist.

some things subjective, but not everything is. and it's certainly possible to be objective when it matters. adherence to sound scientific principles helps one to be objective in the search for truth. after all, objectivity is the fundamental measure of scientific & intellectual integrity. if objectivity doesn't exist, then all you have is useless rationalization/sophistry.

for instance, if i want to determine the effectiveness of a particular drug treatment, i can choose to conduct controlled experiments in a fair and aboveboard manner, or i can choose to accept bribes from pharmaceutical companies and fudge the data to fit predetermined results. similarly, if i'm conducting an experiment in which i know that my personal biases could affect the results, i can design double-blind tests to negate such biases whether they are conscious or subconscious.

the whole "everything is relative/subjective" played out cliche is just intellectual laziness.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[rsmith-mac]

the Steam version sells 1000 copies, and the PC version sells 100 copies. Later on I'm able to prove that 500 people pirated the PC Download. What is my piracy rate on the PC download? 83%.

Steam is not an "alternative content stream", it's a PC download. Valve will gladly tell the dev how many people bought it and quite often it's exactly the same game (as in it connects to the same score server). 2DBoy even accounted for it in their stats we divided the total number of sales we had from all sources . There is no significant systematic inflation for the PC version in their method that I can identify, outside of unsubmitted scores. 82% of PC players have stolen their game.

It's also worth noting that WiiWare games can be easily pirated too, and should be able to be counted in a similar fashion.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[CarpetShark]

particularly those who have their livelihood staked on it, such as StarForce

Ah, don't worry about Starforce. Just wait 'til the Federation hears about this.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[HadouKen24]

It may be a sign of intellectual laziness, but "everything is objective" is just as much.

Think about it for a second. What does it mean to say that a statement or a position is "objectively true?" By what standards could one make such a statement?

One common way to define it is to say that the objective is what is in accordance with reality as it is, but this renders "objective truth" entirely unreachable. We can only perceive the world through five meager senses. We can certainly infer beyond them, but even then we are limited by our own mental capacities. It is impossible for us to know--and must always remain impossible for us to know--whether or not there might be critical defects in our reasoning process which cause us to make errors which we cannot ourselves spot.

So let's move down to the next most rigorous definition of objectivity: what independent, intelligent, unbiased observers can come to agree on based on all the information. This, too, is plagued with problems. A group of people can only come to agree on something insofar as their faculties and mental processes are in accord.

This definition works very well for small things. We can easily come to objective agreement about, say, whether or not there are tigers in India or whether or not Mattel makes toys. It tends to break down where differences in faculties and mental processes become too great. Whether or not one believes in a God depends on what kind of rationality one uses to answer the question. It's not entirely clear how the "objectivist" (not to be confused with an Objectivist) will adjudicate such questions.

Compounded with this problem is the question of empirical underdetermination. It does not ever seem to be the case that there is only one possible explanation for a series of events. There may be only one explanation worth taking seriously, but this, again, is much easier with small stuff, and very difficult with big stuff.

And that's not even getting into the question of what it means to say that science is objective. Every serious experiment is designed based on theoretical principles, and thus all experimental results are inherently theory-laden.

The twentieth century made it very clear that dramatic conceptual shifts and reinterpretations of previous theories can occur. We cannot say that they will not happen again. By the second definition of "objectivity" it seems to be the case that what is objective changes with time.

Recognizing the inherent subjectivity in just about everything is not an excuse for lazy thinking, however. We can still say with a degree of certainty that certain ideas are self-contradictory or in direct contradiction to experiential fact. And indeed, the task of navigating between, correlating, and interrelating various viewpoints becomes much more difficult. The answer is not to give up on thinking, but to challenge oneself think harder and more incisively.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[atraintocry]

If there's no truth, how can you be right?

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Goldberg's Pants]

I "pirated" World of Goo. I downloaded it when a friend raved over it, tried it for five minutes, thought "Is this it?" and deleted it. I wonder what percentage of this "piracy" is actually people just trying the game after hearing about it, since I wouldn't have bothered had someone not raved about it. (I don't even know if there is an official demo available.)

I wouldn't have kept the game even if it had been free.

Far too many companies assume one pirated copy is one lost sale. (Unless you work for Starforce who once claimed one pirated copy was MULTIPLE lost sales.)

My attitude to stuff I've created is so long as you don't pass it off as your own work or make money off it, go nuts and copy it all you want.

I guess a lot of the attitude depends on why you create. Do you do it because you enjoy it? Or for the money? Sure, you can do both, but which is your primary motivator? I think attitudes toward piracy will be influenced by which side of the fence you fall.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[RichiH]

> It's also worth noting that WiiWare games can be easily pirated too, and should be able to be counted in a similar fashion. I always assumed that between TLS and unique console IDs, that is pretty much impossible. What did I overlook?

Re:Only sane conclusion

[RichiH]

> It's also worth noting that WiiWare games can be easily pirated too, and should be able to be counted in a similar fashion.

I always assumed that between TLS and unique console IDs, that is pretty much impossible. What did I overlook?

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

just because you don't understand what objectivity is doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. and just because people are inherently biased doesn't mean that we are incapable of being objective, or that everyone is equally biased. that's like saying that just because people aren't 100% rational all the time that logic doesn't exist, or that a creationist is as rational/irrational as an evolutionary biologist

You had me until you attempted to inject your non-objective opinion in there with the creationist verses evolution. First of all, Evolution does not disprove creation, it doesn't even speak to the same subjects. There are even people who want to claim Evolution it a tool of creation. Evolution does not speak to the key factors of creation like abiogenisis itself or even the beginning of time and the universe or the planets and so on that a;; scientific theory eventually throw's it's arms up and eventually say "we don't know", "it was always there", or a combination of both. And this isn't even starting to mention the problems with the study of evolution like Gaps in the Fossil records that we just have faith in our assumption that our theories are correct because it validate the other theories and evolution in it's entirety to some degree. There are more problems but we don't need to focus on that. I mean the common person will never see the fossils, will never be able to duplicate any of the experiments, all the common person can do is take faith in that the source is accurate enough for their usage and to be right or correct in the stated interpretations. To the average person, and I'm talking about 99 percent of the world's population, it comes down to who or which authority is more convincing to them. The important thing is that you have become irrational and lost all objectivity in your allusion of evolutionist being more rational then creationist.

some things subjective, but not everything is. and it's certainly possible to be objective when it matters. adherence to sound scientific principles helps one to be objective in the search for truth. after all, objectivity is the fundamental measure of scientific & intellectual integrity. if objectivity doesn't exist, then all you have is useless rationalization/sophistry.

And again, you have demonstrated that you have lost your objectivness with this statement. You are presenting your opinion as if they are a fact or something.

for instance, if i want to determine the effectiveness of a particular drug treatment, i can choose to conduct controlled experiments in a fair and aboveboard manner, or i can choose to accept bribes from pharmaceutical companies and fudge the data to fit predetermined results. similarly, if i'm conducting an experiment in which i know that my personal biases could affect the results, i can design double-blind tests to negate such biases whether they are conscious or subconscious.

Or you could skip the bribes and fudge the data just to make yourself famous. :look at me, I have a cure for the cold, take this and in two weeks you will be all better.

There is nothing keeping you honest. Even your honesty has a prices. The only think making sure that we can trust your findings is the ability for others to repeat your experiments and review your data. Again, for the average person, this is out of reach and improbable. Hell, even for scientist this is a hard thing to achieve. Look at all the attempts global warming skeptics made to get data being used to promote Global warming theories just to find that they couldn't get to the data or had other data included to skew the testing and so on. Do you really think you can get the data on any drug trials yourself and review them? I didn't think so either, you might be able to get some but not any which is why we have a government office to lend credit to the system.

he whole "everything

Re:Only sane conclusion

[chrispycreeme]

Recently they announced that rainy areas of the country have a higher rate of autism than sunny areas. That is a correlation.

Now if it turns out that rain actually has nothing to do with causing autism and it turns out that it was caused by a certain kind of food consumed in rainy areas then it is not a causation. In that case the rain did not cause the autism. Hence no causation, but it retains the correlation.

Causation!=Correlation or in the more common form: Correlation!=Causation

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

To start with a bit of armchair philosophy, there are valid arguments that there is not an objective truth or that there is no way for us as individuals to know the objective truth because our perspective is *always* personal to us. In this line of thinking, I cannot know your perspective - only my perception of your communicating of your perspective, which is already blemished enough by the translation of thoughts to words to thoughts and which can be destroyed by my inability to prove that you exist outside of my own mind.

The above lines of thinking are certainly not intellectual laziness, however, what you seem to be talking about is people who are not questioning reality at that level. Instead they look at facts and say "these facts are not facts, they are opinions", which is of course complete and utter bullshit. At this level of conversation, facts are facts - they may be true or they may be false, but they cannot be transformed into opinions.

Now, there is also the other matter of injecting bias into the presentation of facts. I would argue that bias is normal in almost any reporting, and more endemic to reports the more lengthy or complicated they are and the higher the percentage of non-statistical material in their presentation. This is not to say that such biases are necessarily significant and, regardless, so long as all the facts are presented, they can only influence the way a person interprets the objective truth and not the ability to observe and interpret it.

(I should, of course, be doing work right now.)

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand whoabot's comment. He's not making the simpleton "correlation = causation" mistake (c'mon, this is slashdot, not digg). He's saying that you cannot have causation without correlation. In other words, causation is a subset of all correlation, and no causation exists outside of correlation.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[William Baric]

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you download the demo instead of pirating the full version?

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only your scenario is pointless since it doesn't apply in this case, but... quoting yourself really makes you look like an idiot.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[QuantumG]

intellectual laziness

Like, say, not using punctuation?

Re:Only sane conclusion

[prockcore]

Yeah, if only the developer knew how many they sold across all platforms.. oh wait, they do.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Aphoxema]

Just say you are!

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want the demo if you can have the full version???
Ethics?
The demo usually is also DRM infested

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Because then if he did like it, he could have come up with some other excuse to keep it without paying for it.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[jez9999]

I don't know why they're complaining. The piracy must be doing their company a World of good.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[trytoguess]

"Cause I don't know if I'll like till I played the whole thing!" Well, that's one rationale I heard...

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you need to work on your reading comprehension.

"(I don't even know if there is an official demo available.)"

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Because when a demo is almost the same size as the full game iso, you might as well get the game in case you like it.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Goldberg's Pants]

Did you not read my post? I didn't even know if there WAS a demo. Friend raved over it. Saw it on a torrent site, gave it a go, deleted it.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Goldberg's Pants]

Well I played all of 3 levels before I dumped it.

And if I pirate something and like it, I DO buy it.

There are a few of us out there who legitimately do that and don't just claim it.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Goldberg's Pants]

Steam is also broken as well and stuff that is exclusively on there is pirated.

And I bet dollars to donuts Left 4 Dead will be pirated and on torrent sites in under a week to prove that, once again, while Steam IS a great service (I have about 20 titles I've bought from there myself), it's not the ultimate lockdown many seem to think it is.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[MooUK]

In some places, a doughnut may well cost more than a dollar.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[ThePhilips]

Many people miss the point here: execs are slaves of shareholders (*). If you want to find who is behind the DRM crap, start looking for who own (and rules) the publishing company.

Once piracy was raised as an issue once, as executives of public companies, they are obliged to evaluate the risk and if necessary introduce measures to alleviate it.

And heck, with numbers like '82%' and '92%' - Good Luck explaining to shareholders and SEC that business is doing fine.

(*) Unless of course status of public company is (1) abused to hide true ownership or (2) used as a fence against potential liabilities. And that pretty much sums up state of publishing industry in general, and game publishing industry in particular. What in the end means that small group of people (if not single man) makes all decisions.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Venerable Vegetable]

As correlation is a statistic which describes how strong two variables are related, this can't be the causation by definition (correlation is an observation afterwards, causation is why something happens).

I think your question is more of philosophical nature though. You can break down every causation into more detailed and specific parts until you're on a molecular level, and then what? Your example is an excellent illustration of this. In the end you'll run out of knowledge about how stuff works.
    I don't agree with the "this is just correlation" phrase you throw in at every step though. As soon as you identify a direct link between two variables, it isn't "just correlation" anymore. It'll be "possible cause", "probable cause" or even just "cause".
    For practical purposes we'll say that something is a causation when something else follows from it. This doesn't mean that one causation can't have a causation itself. It usually doesn't matter that you can break a causation down into a bunch of molecules either. Unless you're doing pure theoretical research, you'll stop delving deeper into the chain of causations once you've reached a good causation, which you can use for practical purposes.

    Apart from this, I think it's rather unnecessary to tag every article that speaks of a correlation with "correlationisnotcausation". The only time when this tag is really warranted is when someone (politicians...) wants to take action on a piece of research which only identified a correlation, but not a causation. In all other cases, a newly discovered correlation is just interesting, as it almost always gives food for thought and can lead to new insights, even when there is no causation. Tagging with "correlationisnotcausation" has become a knee jerk reaction.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never met anyone who could be perfectly objective about something that they are emotionally invested in.

I've met plenty of people who are capable of recognizing that they are emotionally invested in something, but they end up under or overcompensating for it when they try to be objective.

The more I observe people, the more I see that all of our failings are essentially the same. Of course there are some pathological cases, but the points of failure are all the same.

Human error can even affect your double-blind study. If the results of the study come back inconclusive, can you resist the temptation to say "Ok, well maybe I can get a conclusive result if I use this data to test some other hypotheses." If you rephrase the question enough times, your chance of producing a spurious result increases.

Of course in medicine there should be multiple studies by multiple people to reduce the impact of this sort of thing, but in most other matters we don't have that luxury. Clearly an objective truth exists, but, when considering topics outside of the hard sciences, how will you know it when you see it? Propose to me an algorithm for determining who is right in a political argument that isn't contingent on the definitions of terms that you accept.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

I think the point the GP wanted to make was that, while Objectivity as an ideal is necessarily absolute, objectivity as a human trait is a relative quality.

As an example, consider the case of the physicst who times falling objects all over the earth and concludes that the acceleration due to gravity on the surface of the earth is generally 9.81 m/s, with given margins for regional variations.

Now let's suppose he has a colleague who claims the true value is 11.0 m/s, because that was the value revealed to him in a dream by the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Since the first physicist's observations are mediated through his own senses, it's possible to claim that they are therefore subjective, and therefore that neither researcher is being objective. On the other hand, I think most reasonable people would agree that the first physicists work, (being grounded in careful observation and reproducible by anyone who follows the methodology) is considerably more objective than that of the second.

All IMHO, obviously :)

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

that a creationist is as rational/irrational as an evolutionary biologist

You had me until you attempted to inject your non-objective opinion in there with the creationist verses evolution.

Why does a (mis)stated example affect any of the other statements the GP made? And to clarify the GPs example: "that someone who relies on a text of unknown origin is as rational/irrational as someone who relies on multiple separate texts of known origin"

First of all, Evolution does not disprove creation, it doesn't even speak to the same subjects. There are even people who want to claim Evolution it a tool of creation. Evolution does not speak to the key factors of creation like abiogenisis itself or even the beginning of time and the universe or the planets and so on

Agreed. But please stop with the miscapitalization of regular words, it makes you look like a zealot.

that a;; scientific theory eventually throw's it's arms up and eventually say "we don't know", "it was always there", or a combination of both.

And why is "we don't know (yet)" not a satisfactory answer?

And this isn't even starting to mention the problems with the study of evolution like Gaps in the Fossil records that we just have faith in our assumption that our theories are correct because it validate the other theories and evolution in it's entirety to some degree.

You had me until you randomly started capitalizing words in mid-sentence. So, you're perverting "our proof is incomplete" to "the incomplete proof means that you're wrong", and you're accusing the GP of not being objective?

There are more problems but we don't need to focus on that.

Please do.

I mean the common person will never see the fossils

Ever been to a museum?

will never be able to duplicate any of the experiments

Which experiments? Anatomy experiments are duplicated every day by common people of the medical profession, genetics experiments are duplicated every day by common people of the farming profession. Any other examples you'd like me to give you?

all the common person can do is take faith in that the source is accurate enough for their usage and to be right or correct in the stated interpretations. To the average person, and I'm talking about 99 percent of the world's population

That's wildly overstated.

it comes down to who or which authority is more convincing to them. The important thing is that you have become irrational and lost all objectivity in your allusion of evolutionist being more rational then creationist.

The important thing is that you have become irrational and lost all objectivity in your allusion of evolutionism not based on every-day phenomena.

After all, objectivity is the fundamental measure of scientific & intellectual integrity. if objectivity doesn't exist, then all you have is useless rationalization/sophistry.

And again, you have demonstrated that you have lost your objectivness with this statement. You are presenting your opinion as if they are a fact or something.

Which opinion would that be? I mean, it's not like you are providing a counter-opinion to be found equally valid, thus disproving the GP.

for instance, if i want to determine the effectiveness of a particular drug [...] i can design double-blind tests to negate such biases whether they are conscious or subconscious.

Or you could skip the bribes and fudge the data just to make yourself famous. :look at me, I have a cure for the cold, take this and in two weeks you will be all better.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Draek]

Think about it for a second. What does it mean to say that a statement or a position is "objectively true?" By what standards could one make such a statement?

That the experiment leading to such conclusion is easily reproducible. If I state that 70% of people weight over 200 pounds, then all one has to do to corroborate my statement is to weight everyone, and calculate the percentage of people over 200 pounds themselves, or they could do it in a smaller sample and accept some error margin based on statistics, etc. And of course, anything that can't be proven or disproven by experimental results (such as the existence of God) becomes a subjective matter.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[ultranova]

Far too many companies assume one pirated copy is one lost sale. (Unless you work for Starforce who once claimed one pirated copy was MULTIPLE lost sales.)

Well, since you're giving a negative review of the game here, it seems they were correct. Of course, you'd likely give a similar review even if had bought the game. That rises a philosophical question: if a single sold game means multiple lost sales, are you in fact selling a negative number of them ? Obviously, this would only be a concern for really shitty games, but then again, that includes most of them.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[malkavian]

Actually, I hope some marketer is reading your answer.

As another question, just out of curiosity, if you saw two versions that were available on Torrent (one labelled as the "Free demo" and one that was the "Full version", would you actually be tempted to grab the demo version, or would you leap for the pirated full version?

Re:Only sane conclusion

[moranar]

Because -and no offence meant- his dick wouldn't have felt bigger in that case.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you download the demo instead of pirating the full version?

Its usually easier to dl scene release than to get the demo. Also, you get full speed download there. Especially on private torrent trackers...

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you download the demo instead of pirating the full version?

Why? The demo might give an inaccurate impression of the full game, and there's no difference in how hard they are to obtain.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, hello? The whole point of the story is that World of Goo doesn't have any DRM at all.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[ultranova]

I always assumed that between TLS and unique console IDs, that is pretty much impossible. What did I overlook?

That some scum might let their friends play on their console, or even sell it used. The nerve of that filth !

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Ginger Unicorn]

scientific theory eventually throw's it's arms up

If by "throws it's arms up" you mean "is intellectually honest enough to be clear about areas where there is more to be learned" then yes. Conventionally "throwing your arms up" is intended to convey as sense of premature futility - just giving up out of frustration. Science absolutely does not do this.

As you point out, the theory of evolution is not formulated to explain cosmology or abiogenesis. You seem to regard this as somehow weakening the theory of evolution - that because doesn't attempt to explain everything that it is no good at explaining the phenomena that it is attempting to.

Will science have a more complete understanding of the universe once a theory is composed that unites gravity with quantum effects? Absolutely. Is the current theory of gravity dubious because it doesn't explain quantum effects? Absolutely not - it doesn't need to explain quantum effects in order to highly accurately describe gravity.

The same goes for evolution and abiogenesis - a more complete picture will be uncovered once science has a rigorous theory of abiogenesis, which would obviously need to integrate well with evolutionary theory to form a coherent picture. But that has no bearing on the accuracy of evolutionary theory with regards to the subject it actually attempts to explain, which is the way life has developed from the first primitive organisms. This topic can be modelled, investigated and described without needing to know about abiogenesis.

..Gaps in the Fossil records that we just have faith in our assumption that our theories are correct because it validate the other theories and evolution in it's entirety to some degree. There are more problems but we don't need to focus on that.

I think you do need to focus on that, because the two examples you just gave and the entire gamut of evolution denialist "problems" with evolution are demonstrably false. Unless you know of some new ones, but as far as I've seen the evolution denial movement hasn't come up with anything new for a long time. I don't say this to be arbitrarily dismissive, If you think you have some genuine counter-evidence to the theory of evolution i'd happy to argue it on its merits.

To the average person, and I'm talking about 99 percent of the world's population, it comes down to who or which authority is more convincing to them.

This is true, and it's a problem that science is designed specifically to tackle. The way science obviates this problem is by only accepting data and conclusions that are reproducible by others, and that have been tested using formal methods to such a large extent and by so many independent people that it precludes objective bias to a reliable extent. Of course this process can never establish anything to 100% certainty, but the more it is applied to a particular question, the higher the percentage of certainty is pushed. Evolutionary theory has undergone this process for 150 years. Ironically, a large enough percentage of the population do not realise this, and write the scientific consensus off as carrying no more weight than the opinions of the small group of people all of whom have an undisguised (most of the time) agenda to defend the inerrancy of one particular religious text.

Which group of people do you think has the higher probability of being an objective and unbiased source? Honestly? The scientific community, which consists of millions of people of all races and beliefs, who independently and openly are free to question and disprove any of these claims over and over again at any time? Or the tiny minority of evolution denialists (the people who actually come up with these arguments, not the people who merely accept them) who almost universally admit to an agenda?

Of course, the argument from authority is not a valid logical approach, but accepting scientfic consensus is not the same thing as bowing to an authority. The scientific consensus is the culmination

Re:Only sane conclusion

[orasio]

Arrr.

If you are downloading from a torrent, even if it's named "free demo" you haven't read the license terms so you are probably making an unauthorized copy in both cases, so there is no difference between the two.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[windsurfer619]

Actually, 2D Boys post says they recognize that for every 1000 pirates, they would be lucky for 1 sale. They do realize that piracy != lost sales.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[maxume]

Look for the spoon.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[stbill79]

Which is all just proof that the DRM that the other game shipped with clearly isn't strong enough. Or at least, this is how I'm predicting most industry execs would interpret this.

Unfortunately for many on Slashdot, the 'execs' are at least partially correct here. I know that it's heretical to even mention something like this on Slashdot, but the more difficult and bothersome the DRM is, the more likely it is that at least some of us will actually buy the game. The execs know, as do we, that no software will ever be 100% hack-proof, but the execs are smart enough to know that the issue is not black-or-white.

I'll be the first to admit I'm getting older; a few years ago while in college I had so much free time, spending a complete day to find a working version of Call of Duty on the torrents, getting the crack to work, making sure it was virii free, etc. was no big deal. Unfortunately, I do not have so much free time anymore, but instead a lot more disposable income. Sometimes I just want to play the damn game without spending my entire weekend (my only free-time now) reading forums looking for that tidbit of info to get the game working. $50 for a game that I get hours of enjoyment out of is no big deal, considering the cost of so many other things in the 'real world.'

Note to Microsoft/RIAA - this doesn't mean I'll ever buy a legit copy of MS Office or pay $15 for a CD. Openoffice is fine, and the shitty tactics and music of the RIAA have turned me off to your products for life.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Ravon Rodriguez]

I'm of the opinion that DRM's aren't there to be unbreakable protections anymore, but to give users pirating the game the biggest hassle possible. It may not be a problem for the tech savvy to download and implement a complicated DRM workaround, but the average user would balk at anything more complicated than overwriting executables.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you not read my post? I didn't even know if there WAS a demo.

I'm fairly certain he did read your post, just that you completely missed his point. He was pointing out to you that you are a LAZY SHIT that DID NOT EVEN LOOK. I'm fully against DRM but it comes to no surprise to me that companies feel it necessary when there are people like you out there not even bothering to find an easy legal way to try out a game. Did you even go to their website and see what the game was about before pirating it?

There are arguments for downloading a copy of a game: the lack of drm, wanting to make sure that you get more than just the demo after paying for it, but you're meant to try the bloody demo out first to see if you like the game

Re:Only sane conclusion

[rugatero]

Time? For me, the demo downloaded at a paltry 25kB/sec. In spite of it being a larger file, it would probably have been quicker to torrent the full game.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[ral8158]

Actually, in your worldview there is no such thing as objectivity.

It's a perfectly reasonable viewpoint to believe that an objective, consistent reality exists outside of one's own consciousness. One who believes this would say that things like '3' and 'gravity' are simply terms which are used to investigate the outside objective reality, and are not necessarily 100% correct fascimiles of the actual reality.

Has it dawned on you that saying the universe can have absolutely no absolute values is contradictory? The more accurate thing for you to say would be, "In my world view, there probably are not absolute right and wrong or true values"

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

(I don't even know if there is an official demo available.)

Who's modding this insightful? Sheesh.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, pretty much anything is easy to say, especially if it makes you feel better inside.

Keep trying to convince people you aren't a dirtbag. Someday it may work. See, I can lie too!

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

You should know that the demo was only available a few weeks after the release of the game, so I can imagine that some people were interested in the game, but didn't want to buy it immediately, so they downloaded an illegal copy.

After all, the gameplay is quite original, so it's hard to say whether anyone likes it without actually trying it out and playing a little. I do think the 2D Boy developers should definitely have made a demo available from the start, but I don't think it would have affected piracy all that much.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[cliffski]

"My attitude to stuff I've created is so long as you don't pass it off as your own work or make money off it, go nuts and copy it all you want."

Interesting. Is this stuff that took you two years hard work, full time, which you did as your primary way of paying the bills and putting food on the table?
Because thats what 2DBoy did. And yet you seem to be equating this with something you might knock up for laughs in your spare time.

Theres nothing magical about creative 'entertainment' works which means the people making them do not have to pay rent and buy food. I bet you don't have th same carefree attitude to your employers paying your salary "as long as you admit I did the work, I don't mind how much you pay me".

Re:Only sane conclusion

[cliffski]

maybe the implication si that you should respect the wishes of the people who made that game, and the fact that they clearly want you to try the demo. People are less likely to pay for something they already swiped for free, and you know it.

But I guess if you get to rip some off over the internet anonymously, you don't really give a damn about their wishes, feelings or how it affects their business...

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure: if everytime your girlfriend drinks a bottle of Tequila she wakes up with her ass sore, a painful ass can said to be correlated with a bottle of Tequila. However, if she hides a video camera in the room before passing out, she will determine that the causation of her ass pain is not the Tequila, but you poking her in the pooper after she passes out. Correlation != Causation.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Angostura]

It may be a sign of intellectual laziness, but "everything is objective" is just as much.

Why is presumably why the original poster didn't say that. (S)He merely suugested that some things are objective.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Respectfully, I believe you are missing the point.

You can try to be as objective as possible in your experimentation, by eliminating potential sources of error where you see them. But that does not mean you can ever find an absolute truth. By definition, the scientific method is based on the premise of falsifiability: your theories are only ever as sound as your latest experiment, and no matter how many times you may repeat that experiment and get consistent results, you never know in absolute terms that your theory is complete and correct such that future experiments will always yield the same result. Deities, stealthy aliens or undetected cosmic rays may be manipulating your experiment every time and one day not be there any more, for all you know, or can ever know. The only absolute truths are those axioms that we can define to be true, such that no experimental validation is required; this is what separates mathematics from science.

I'm not really sure what all this has to do with game piracy, though. I would have said the use (or otherwise) of DRM was more a question of ethics, as is how to deal with people who copy games illegally. Any legal system based on the use of courts is ultimately just trying to make the best informed decision it can under the circumstances, which is why we have standards of evidence to guide how much uncertainty is considered acceptable given the implications of the possible outcomes of a case.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[ucblockhead]

Unless you went out of your way to "submit your score", you would not have been counted as a "pirate" by the World of Goo devs.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

God is the universe. The universe is God. When I say "Don't covet thy neighbours wife or God will strike you dead", that's the same as saying, "Always look both ways before you cross the street, or the inherent nature of the universe will lead to your being struck dead."

People who argue back and forth about the existence or non-existence of God are like people arguing about if it's Po-tae-toe or Po-tat-owe. God is a word that describes all of existence through the abstraction of personification.

Arguing about the nature of God/Universe is a much more fruitful approach that allows real exchange of ideas and doesn't cause people to be immediately divided by a stupid linguistic misunderstanding. Give it a try some time.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

Since the first physicist's observations are mediated through his own senses, it's possible to claim that they are therefore subjective, and therefore that neither researcher is being objective. On the other hand, I think most reasonable people would agree that the first physicists work, (being grounded in careful observation and reproducible by anyone who follows the methodology) is considerably more objective than that of the second.

I see what your saying and somewhat agree, but what if the Physicist came to the 9.81 m/s instead of 6.381 m/s because his dream of the FSM said it was closer to 10 so he ignored early findings until he could somehow validate what he wanted to be true, well where would we be then. There are plenty of scientific discoveries and hurdles that were overcome or came to light because of a dream and so one. Of course the mind sort us rehearses the problems and what your worked on the previous day and so on in dreams which can validate some dreaming. But then again It's sort of like the old Big objects float while small objects sink in water which was partially true but incorrect without saying something to their density or the density of the water (IE, sea water verses fresh water).

You simply have to have the ability to step back and evaluate your objectivity in the course of any action you or others take. This doesn't mean that your not objective or subjective, it means that you can be if you don't recognize that possibility. Simply labeling something as science then claiming objectiveness is really creating more of a problem with objectivity or subjectivity. You have to constantly be aware of it. What the GP ended up saying with all his examples was, because I believe, it is the way I say or think which was completely contrary to the points he was making.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

You disagree with the great and powerful Flying Spaghetti Monster?
May he smite you with his mighty noodley appendage!

:-)

Re:Only sane conclusion

[moderatorrater]

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you download the demo instead of pirating the full version?

Because he never had any intention of buying it would be my guess.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[coolsnowmen]

But that does not mean you can ever find an absolute truth. By definition, the scientific method is based on the premise of falsifiability: your theories are only ever as sound as your latest experiment

Of course, that is why scientists don't just stop experimenting. But rarely do years of experimentation result in a complete reversal of theory. It usually is a slight expansion.

Deities, stealthy aliens or undetected cosmic rays may be manipulating your experiment every time and one day not be there any more, for all you know, or can ever know.

The problem with that thinking is that it renders everything meaningless. If gods/aliens are changing my experiments with out me knowing it, then they could be changing anything (even what I'm typing, or is this all just a dream). But strangely enough, when results of experiments are reproducible by different people, then we expand on it by forming a theory of why this is true. Then different scientists form a different theory and design experiments that fit theiry theory but would disprove the other. These theories battle it out and we have a survival of the fittest.
    Every once-in-a-while, religion or politics backs one theory over another and it takes a couple extra years for the true victor to rise.
    Science isn't like history, you can't just make it up and expect noone to ever notice. This is the basis for the scientific method. The thing that let you reply on /. in the first place.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[X0563511]

Because there is no Linux demo yet?

Not to mention that I couldn't find system requirements.

I'm not going to pay for something that I don't know:
1. It will work
2. It will be fun

I haven't pirated it myself, but I would if I was that thrilled with the idea of the game. That's not to say I wouldn't purchase after (like I did with Fallout 3... stole to try (no demo at all...) and purchased when sure)

Re:Only sane conclusion

[X0563511]

You also can't read either, apparently.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[pbaer]

Sorry, but apriori truths are objectively true. For example p or not p is always a true statement. That is an objective truth. The definition of 3 is the third sucessor of 0.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[mysidia]

No. The average exec will just read the headline, not the body of the article.

"Independent Dev Reports over 80% Piracy rate on DRM-Free game

See? Proof we should make it corporate policy that all our games with DRM as draconian as possible, and research new ways to enhance the effectiveness of our DRM.

You don't want 80% of our games users to be pirates, do you???

Re:Only sane conclusion

[pbaer]

THAT God exists since the universe exists. However, I could also define God to be cheese, and say God exists so stop arguing over his existence, but that's missing the point that's not what people are arguing over. When people talk of God they normally mean an omnipotent being that takes personal interests in the lives of humans, and has revealed himself to others.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it enough say that, within any reasonable language(1), all things are subclassed from Object(2), and therefore objective?

(1) - Sure, maybe not so in English or Pakistani, but also true in any debates given in the format of grunting and head-clubbing. We have to go to the other end of the communication spectrum, Smalltalk, to pull out that bias.

(2) - Yes, even nil.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Kagura]

Wow, way to get angry for no reason. Answer me this, what's the difference between "downloading the full game to try it out" and "downloading the demo to try it out"? The only claimable difference is that there is a chance he will keep the full game if he likes it and won't bother paying for it.

But he said he deleted the full game. In this given situation, what is the difference? You are getting angry at him for no reason.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

I think born-again Christians are ample proof of the non-existence of intelligent design: no intelligent designer could possibly design anything so completely impervious not merely to reason, but even to common sense.

I think maybe you should spend a little more time understanding what born again means as well as intelligent design. Then again, you are bringing up reason when talking about a set or subset of people who will never be able to validate the science and in the end have to pick and chose who or what to believe in. That's like faulting a kid for thinking blue is his favorite color instead of red which might be your favorite color just because neither of your can explain why you like the colors you like. In the end, and even with this specific statement, you are simply saying that because you believe something, you are more right and more reasonable without ever understanding or even attempting to understand what drives the other person.

Of course evolution doesn't disprove creation. Of course evolution and creation aren't even addressing the same issue: the theory of evolution addresses 'how', whereas theories of creation address 'why'. However, the theory of evolution is supported by a great deal of evidence. Theories about creation are backed by no evidence whatsoever.

A great deal of evidence that you have personally found or discovered or evidence that someone else has found, cataloged and hidden away for safe keeping then wrote about it in books and journals so you can understand what they were doing and what they discovered. Because you know, the later describes the bibles of many different religions as well as how we work on previous discoveries with science. Now, another thing, A great deal of evidence doesn't mean all the evidence and there are gaps in the evidence as well as competing theories of evidence like taking millions of years verses the punctuated equilibrium theory verses the new protein switch quickness theory and even the Bubble theory of evolution which rules out the inter-species evolution problems but generates it's own problems.

On the other hand, Creation does not say that evolution didn't happen, it just says that it didn't happen with 2 humans, Adam and Even. Of course there were more people on the earth then Adam and Eve or the animals in the garden of Eden. As for evidence, this is just nonsense because you have no evidence of abiogenesis in evolution nor do you have any evidence that two people couldn't have been created by some omnipotent being. But this gets even more complicated because in evolution, you have no evidence that species evolved into other species other then someone's interpretation on what they think are the facts presented to them at the time of the interpretations. So we are actually on the same footing with Creation to a degree- we are listening to someone else's authoritative accounting of the events. You have chosen to believe one over another. Nothing more- you have faith in that your rendition is more accurate then other renditions and you will probably never get access to any of the evidence directly yourself as well as you will most likely never find your own evidence or have your own digs to discover the fossils. I take it that you haven't looked at the mechanics behind your opinions and beliefs much.

Yes, JHYH sitting on his cloud could have decided that he wanted some obedient minions to worship him (reality check time, folks: can you imagine an immanent, eternal, omnicompetent being who is so psychologically insecure that (s)he needs worshippers?). Yes, the universe could have been sneezed into existence by the Great Green Arkleseizure (thus replacing the Big Bang with the Big Blow). These things are possible. They are equally possible, and they are each equally possible with an uncountable infinite of other possibilities. But given that they are all equally probable and that they are uncountably infinite,

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

I see what your saying and somewhat agree, but what if the Physicist came to the 9.81 m/s instead of 6.381 m/s because his dream of the FSM said it was closer to 10 so he ignored early findings until he could somehow validate what he wanted to be true, well where would we be then.

We'd be waiting for researchers to try and verify his data and replicate his results. Barring the existence of a covert FSM agenda among gravitational physicists, it seems likely that a more objective value will quickly be adopted. :)

Simply labeling something as science then claiming objectiveness is really creating more of a problem with objectivity or subjectivity

Well... again, objectivity is a relative quality. In the example I gave, the one physicist's findings were more objective than those of his his pastafarian colleague. If the pattern repeats across the careers of the two researchers, we could reasonably describe the first of them as more objective in his work than the second.

Similarly, we can generalise this further, and say that if we have one discipline that draws conclusions based on reproducible observations and logical deduction, and we have a second that bases its deductions on received wisdom and articles of dogma, we can reasonably say that the first discipline is more objective than the second.

That's not to say that all scientists are always correct, any more than I mean to say that all clerics are always wrong. Neither am I saying that all scientists always follow the rigours of the Scientific Method, nor that the religious debater will always ignore the evidence of his own eyes where it conflicts with the tenets of his faith.

But if you're looking for an objective conclusion about a subject, objectivity is what science is all about. Religion on the other hand tends to be about faith and dogma first, and objectivity when it doesn't get in the way of dogma.

For that reason, if you want objectivity, then (IMHO) I'd say that science is by far the better bet.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[ShieldW0lf]

THAT God exists since the universe exists. However, I could also define God to be cheese, and say God exists so stop arguing over his existence, but that's missing the point that's not what people are arguing over. When people talk of God they normally mean an omnipotent being that takes personal interests in the lives of humans, and has revealed himself to others.

Unless you're recognized by others as a Holy Man, you can't define the word God in any meaningful sense, but merely spout opinions about the nature of reality and misuse an already defined word. Until and unless you're dead and people are still recognizing you as a Holy Man and accepting your definition, you're just a cult leader. It's only when you're dead and in the ground and unable to support your opinion with the strength of your personality, yet still people are using your definition that you get to define God.

None of which is relevant to the fact that it's more productive to communicate with people using their existing metaphorical framework and have them abandon or adjust it of their own free will when their growing enlightenment causes them to run into its limitations than it is to attempt to attack them because you think their metaphorical framework is shit. When you do that, you basically refuse to listen to any of their views because you don't like their accent.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[ImOnlySleeping]

objectivity does not require absolute truth If identical conclusions about something are reached by independent observers, it becomes objective truth. Absolute truth is for crazy people.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

If by "throws it's arms up" you mean "is intellectually honest enough to be clear about areas where there is more to be learned" then yes. Conventionally "throwing your arms up" is intended to convey as sense of premature futility - just giving up out of frustration. Science absolutely does not do this.

Yes, I mean by saying there isn't enough data to compute therfor we can't give an answer. I didn't mean giving up on the search but with every discovery or theory, there is the inevitable what was before that. In one instancde, it was always there or it was just there seems to be the end of the beginning.

As you point out, the theory of evolution is not formulated to explain cosmology or abiogenesis. You seem to regard this as somehow weakening the theory of evolution - that because doesn't attempt to explain everything that it is no good at explaining the phenomena that it is attempting to.

No, I regard that as in it doesn't say anything about X so it can't prove X wrong. It's quite simple of a concept. I'm surprised you didn't see it, imagine I said the black sheep are interesting while pointing to a field with black and white sheep. Now imagine someone else attempting to twist this to claim that I said all black sheep are interesting or that black sheep are more interesting then all white sheep or that they are somehow better or worse then each other or anything other then what I said. When we take something like evolution and attempt to apply it to things it was never intended to show or compare against, we aren't accurately representing the issues.

Will science have a more complete understanding of the universe once a theory is composed that unites gravity with quantum effects? Absolutely. Is the current theory of gravity dubious because it doesn't explain quantum effects? Absolutely not - it doesn't need to explain quantum effects in order to highly accurately describe gravity.

Ahh.. your starting to think along the same lines. So if the current theory doesn't explain the quantum effect, would it be proper to use it to make an assertion that a quantum event isn't possible when it doesn't even incorporate the mechanisms necessary to make that statement?

I think you do need to focus on that, because the two examples you just gave and the entire gamut of evolution denialist "problems" with evolution are demonstrably false. Unless you know of some new ones, but as far as I've seen the evolution denial movement hasn't come up with anything new for a long time. I don't say this to be arbitrarily dismissive, If you think you have some genuine counter-evidence to the theory of evolution I'd happy to argue it on its merits.

Well, actually, no they aren't false. There are gaps in the fossil record which is why about once a year you see stories, even here on slashdot, that claim this discovery of a fossil closes the door on some gap. Now, these gaps might not be big enough for you to question but they are big enough for someone else to question- especially if they aren't already of the belief that science is somehow more right.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing Creation of science or evolution, I'm arguing that the mechanisms behind the excapetance of either are almost identical to the vast majority of people and whichever you chose to believe has came from the same trust built into whatever influenced your decisions. Most people incorrectly attempt to use Evolution to disprove creation which only shows their lack of understanding of either.

This is true, and it's a problem that science is designed specifically to tackle. The way science obviates this problem is by only accepting data and conclusions that are reproducible by others, and that have been tested using formal methods to such a large extent and by so many independent people that it precludes objective bi

Re:Only sane conclusion

[cliffski]

so fuck the developer. If you can get a game 4 minutes faster by stealing it, fuck em eh?

Re:Only sane conclusion

[chrispycreeme]

Aye, then I did misunderstand. That one is a bit more tricky.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[ImOnlySleeping]

"an omnipotent being that takes personal interests in the lives of humans" If that's true, God is a first rate asshole.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

"There are three types of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics" --Benjamin Disraeli

Fixed that for you. And yes that does annoy me, and yes I am petty.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say they're both quacks, they don't even use proper units for acceleration.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[db32]

Ok now I can tell you are just a pirate shill. First you admit that you are a pirate in the first place. Then you try and talk dirty about Starforce claiming one pirated copy was multiple lost sales. Here is some news for you asshole, one pirated copy IS multiple lost sales. You dirty pirates don't have to buy new copies of the game after your online activations are used up, you don't have to buy new copies of the game if it gets scratched and it can't validate the CD. So yes...one pirated copy IS multiple lost sales.

Just because you are some kind of communist hippy douche waiting for handouts for giving out your "creations" for free doesn't mean the rest of us are interested. My primary motivation is that I enjoy having food, clothing, and shelter. Of those I only ever see those commie hippies even come close to getting one of those right, they grow stuff, but it usually isn't food.

Everyone should be thrilled with DRM! It keeps us paying $50 for $20 games instead of paying $100 for $20 games because those poor starving developers are having their works stolen from them!

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Mateo_LeFou]

"That the experiment leading to such conclusion is easily reproducible"

Yes, and the term for scientific meaningfulness is not "objectively true" but "intersubjectively confirmable" for this reason.

"Objective" versus "subjective" is kind of an old, dead dichtomoy IMO

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel really sorry for you

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Ash-Fox]

I'm of the opinion that DRM's aren't there to be unbreakable protections anymore, but to give users pirating the game the biggest hassle possible. It may not be a problem for the tech savvy to download and implement a complicated DRM workaround, but the average user would balk at anything more complicated than overwriting executables.

If you implement a DRM system that requires genuine keys on user owned servers, genuine copies binded to a single account, allowing only one account online at a given time. Require a genuine account to get a server listing on top of it.

You've pretty much won. The pirates suddenly have to create their own darknet/server listing system, patched servers to play on. Meaning they cannot interact with genuine users.

Additionally, genuine users get the advantage of possibly permabanning specific people as each user is identified uniquely with the genuine copy of their game.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[HadouKen24]

That is a special case of the second definition of objectivity I mentioned. I did not restrict the definition to scientific objectivity because I think one can be "objective" about questions that do not fall within the purview of science. Nonetheless, you're still talking about the same kind of objectivity, differing only in methodological specifics.

The problems I outline all apply in science to some degree or another. Underdetermination is an especially big problem in saying that science is objective. How are we to be objective when the same experimental results can be explained by multiple theories?

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Apotsy]

"There are three types of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics" --Mark Twain

Obviously this quote means that the science of statistics is invalid and that nothing can ever be measured!

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Well, since you're giving a negative review of the game here, it seems they were correct. Of course, you'd likely give a similar review even if had bought the game.

That is not necessarily true. People have a natural inclination to more highly value something which was 'expensive' to them. That is the reason behind fraternity hazing - if the pledge has to 'pay' to join the frat by going through all that hazing, then they end up valuing membership in the frat much more highly which builds team spirit, group loyalty, etc, etc.

It is entirely possible that if he had actually paid real money for the product, he would have put more effort in to 'liking' it to justify the personal cost and might have come up with a positive review instead.

Personally, I would consider a positive review under those circumstances to be false. Others might disagree.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

so fuck the developer. If you can get a game 4 minutes faster by stealing it, fuck em eh?

Pretty much, yep!

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

And you'd be right. m/s/s, obviously :)

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

We'd be waiting for researchers to try and verify his data and replicate his results. Barring the existence of a covert FSM agenda among gravitational physicists, it seems likely that a more objective value will quickly be adopted. :)

Sure. And it would be a valid check if the researchers verifying it didn't have the same dreams or worse yet, some neo-quasi-political reasoning to find his research valid. Like I said, you have to trust the system to be free of things like that and when someone chooses which to soak their confidence into, it is a matter of who is more convincing at the time.

For that reason, if you want objectivity, then (IMHO) I'd say that science is by far the better bet.

I would agree in general but when you have people claiming that creationist are rational or objective because of their own views which seem to be no more rational or objective, I find cause to call shenanigans on them. I don't dispute the premise that in an ideal world, science will remain more objective and rational but as we have seen, or at least I have, the people wrapped up in it are neither and they directly influence the outcome of the experiments when they are availible or the interpretations of the evidence when experiments aren't availible.

I'm sure I could illustrate this better with a car analogy and seeing how this is slashdot it seems more then appropriate. The laws and rules of the road are designed that in an ideal world, if everyone payed attention and followed the rules, we wouldn't have any fatal accidents. But because people who have been entrusted with following the rules don't seem to want to all the time, we have accidents that shouldn't occur and some of them are fatal. Well, it's the same with science in the principle of what is being presented, if the rules are followed, we can assume it to be objective and commonly accurate. Then people say stupid stuff like Science classes in school should teach Creation and religion to be fraudulent and the evolution disproves religion or creation and in the end, you have people who are not convinced that everyone on the road is following the rules and that you will be safe to drive down the street with them. In the end, the process of making the decisions one way or another will be pretty much the same when you examine the mechanics behind it from a objective point of view.

Now, I do believe Science is more accurate, I also believe that different realms of science handle themselves differently and you can't really take the whole as a reflection of a specific science. But my decisions to trust science to a degree over religion is no more rational or more elite then someone else's decision because in the end, I will never be able to reproduce the studies, verify the date, validate the conclusions, or come to any conclusion other then if someone's claim is creditable or not. Remember, for years we thought the sun revolved around the earth or that a chariot driven by a god chased the sun across the sky or that some war between good and evil happened on a daily bases and we still kept time, we still knew what the seasons were and so on. So even proving that something built off some flaw doesn't mean that the flaw is now valid, it means we were able to build off of it. So saying look, it explains everything up to this day still doesn't mean it is more right or wrong. The only thing that can do that is the integrity of the systems which I am starting to doubt slightly in some cases when more and more idiots stray from religion and latch onto science.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Threni]

> But that does not mean you can ever find an absolute truth.

I predict that if you jump out of the window from the 50th floor, you will be pulled by gravity to your death. This fact has nothing to do with belief, religion, opinion etc etc - it's just an undeniable fact - an absolute truth, if you like.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Draek]

You can try to be as objective as possible in your experimentation, by eliminating potential sources of error where you see them.

There are no "potential sources of error" in experimentation, only unaccounted variables ;)

you never know in absolute terms that your theory is complete and correct such that future experiments will always yield the same result.

Actually, thanks to Godel's Theorem we can objetively know that no theory will ever be able to be both complete and correct and the same time, which is why the scientific method is mostly about getting things "less wrong" by making assumptions, then deduce stuff from them, and testing for either to see where they separate from reality. However, that's the only, uhh, "problem" with them, any logically-consistant system is correct and allows for objective deductions to be done within it, they just may not reflect our reality and, therefore, future experimentation (insert String Theory joke here).

The only absolute truths are those axioms that we can define to be true, such that no experimental validation is required; this is what separates mathematics from science.

Those, and those that we can logically deduce from them. However, we can also assume other things as true and prove that, if those assumptions hold, then so do other facts, and that knowledge is also an objective one. Now, as to how to determine whether our assumptions match reality, we could use statistics of experiments. I mean, if the sun has risen every single day throughout all of my life, the possibility that it'll do so tomorrow ought to be pretty high and, therefore, any postulate that relies on the assumption that the sun will, in fact, rise tomorrow has the same probability of being valid.

I'm not really sure what all this has to do with game piracy, though. I would have said the use (or otherwise) of DRM was more a question of ethics, as is how to deal with people who copy games illegally.

And on that, we agree 100%, but it's still an interesting debate, IMHO :D

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

What?? Informative?

Man, there is some *dense* slashdoters here. New to the "intertubes" are we??

  google.com => World of Goo Demo

man. "How could I know there was a demo! I only search the underground engines!"

Re:Only sane conclusion

[slashtivus]

I'm curious, why would those count as 'piracy'? I have Steam, but can only play if I pay. I am using the demo of World of Goo right now, and have no problem giving them the 20.00 for the full version when I get there (I program for a living myself).

I don't see how those would be measured as Piracy (since they presumably get paid), but also if there is no "Phone Home" system embedded in the game, how in the world to they actually measure piracy in the first place?

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Jeng]

In his comment he states that he does not know if one exists, therefore one could assume that he did not check for a demo first. If one does not know if a demo exists how would one download it?

I'm rather surprised you were modded up for missing that.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is perfectly valid, because everyone exists to spread his genes and views (the two methods of reproduction), and I with you good luck with it, as long as it does not hurt my reproduction. But don't lie to you and to others by acting, as if this had anything to do with objectivity. Please don't feel offended. I got this mixed up too, until some time ago. I thought there were some absolute "right" and "wrong" and "true" values. The closest thing to this are physics laws and mathematics. But hey, in reality, what meaning does the number "3" or the word "gravity" have, if there is nobody (by definition with his own point of view) defining it? What is the definition of reality? Maybe the only thing we all can agree on, is that everything in this universe/reality, whatever it is, is relative."

You sir, are an asshole. No, I won't explain this comment. I'll bet you already know that you're an asshole, and you don't care. Why should I waste my time explaining all the evidence of your asshole-ness? I will not. Asshole.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, thanks to Godel's Theorem we can objetively know that no theory will ever be able to be both complete and correct and the same time,

Until something is found to violate Godel's Theorem. In that sense, it is still subjective knowledge.

Those, and those that we can logically deduce from them. However, we can also assume other things as true and prove that, if those assumptions hold, then so do other facts, and that knowledge is also an objective one.

Only under certain subjective interpretations of truth and proof. Your sun example is an axiomatic truth, as we define a day as the period between sunrise and sunset, therefore by definition if there is day there has been a sunrise. It is still a subjective judgement using your data points.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you do need to focus on that, because the two examples you just gave and the entire gamut of evolution denialist "problems" with evolution are demonstrably false. Unless you know of some new ones, but as far as I've seen the evolution denial movement hasn't come up with anything new for a long time.

i'm not denying macro-evolution, rather i see some questions that it fails to answer in a reasonable way.

1. why do no transitional entities exist today? there are millions of species, yet i'm supposed to believe that there is a 100% extinction rate across all species? that sounds absurd. just because one evolved iteration of an entity is more adapted doesn't mean the less developed entity is unsuited for survival. yet, not a single transitional entity out of millions... hmmmmmm...

2. how did eyes develop before teeth that don't rot?

3. how did the whale's aquatic ear develop? it is believed the whale evolved from a terrestrial animal with a terrestrial ear... but a hybrid aquatic ear is a disadvantage on both land and sea... and no example has ever been found.

4. one of the most highly trumpeted transitional entities is the Archaeopteryx.

the problem is that it very likely isn't transitionary at all... or so says an evolutionist bird expert...

http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html

if you read these questions and have a hostile reaction... you are treating evolution as a religion and not with a scientific approach.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

That's good. I don't feel anything for you. I do however see how your lost in a few places. It's ok though.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[cliffski]

That's the exact attitude by pirates that has led to DRM, lawsuits and a push for tougher laws.
Nice work kid.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

The second article. 1000 pirates == 1 lost sale.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

"It doesn't matter how many scientist you have claiming that we know more or this is more accurate because of 150 years of collected and interpreted evidence then something that has not been "disproved" in the last 6000 or more years."

Of course, after 6,000 long years... it still hasn't been *proven*, but that's just a detail. Evolution has had 150 years to create it's current body of evidence, and creationism has had six millenia, but still nothing conclusive. Funny, that.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

Sure. And it would be a valid check if the researchers verifying it didn't have the same dreams

I think that I didn't fully address your point last time. It doesn't matter where a scientist gets his initial ideas from as long as he follows the scientific method when he comes to test his theory. He can guess, dream, roll a dice, or read the entrails. The difference between the scientist and the oneiromancer is that that the scientist doesn't accept the dream without question.

or worse yet, some neo-quasi-political reasoning to find his research valid.

Well, if you assume that science, (or at least some branches of it) are institutionally corrupt then you'd have cause to doubt their findings. All the same, the scientists I've met tend not to be political animals. They're just interested in the research.

I would agree in general but when you have people claiming that creationist are rational or objective because of their own views which seem to be no more rational or objective, I find cause to call shenanigans on them.

In actual fact the poster in question didn't make any claim about creationism. This is what he said:

just because people are inherently biased doesn't mean that we are incapable of being objective, or that everyone is equally biased. that's like saying that just because people aren't 100% rational all the time that logic doesn't exist, or that a creationist is as rational/irrational as an evolutionary biologist.

So he's not claiming that creationism is more (or even less) rational or objective than science. He's just objecting to people trying to claim that the two are both more or less equivalent, and that it all boils down to a matter of personal preference. I can't fault him for that, personally.

But my decisions to trust science to a degree over religion is no more rational or more elite then someone else's decision because in the end, I will never be able to reproduce the studies, verify the date, validate the conclusions, or come to any conclusion other then if someone's claim is creditable or not

I think the key here is that "rational" != "objective". If you want "objective" go to science because even with fallible human researchers, science as a disciple aims to be objective, while religion aims for an inherently subjective experience. Whether it's a more rational choice depends what you're trying to achieve. If you happen to be a monk, isolated from the world and striving to bring yourself closer to God, then accepting the Bible as the literal truth may be a more rational choice than looking for the Almighty in the behaviour of quarks. On the other hand, if you want to set send a manned mission to Mars, building the spacecraft based on divine inspiration and sacred writings may well get you a trip to the nearest funny farm.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

I think that I didn't fully address your point last time. It doesn't matter where a scientist gets his initial ideas from as long as he follows the scientific method when he comes to test his theory. He can guess, dream, roll a dice, or read the entrails. The difference between the scientist and the oneiromancer is that that the scientist doesn't accept the dream without question.

I don't think you understand the point I was attempting to make. It builds off you point in that someone who alters the results because of a dream involving the FSM and comes to a certain conclusion will only be invalidated if and when someone who doesn't alter the results because of the same reasons or not does the testing. There isn't a guarantee that this would happen. It might be probable that it would but that probability requires your trust in it's happening in order to use it as a basis for knowing something is right or wrong just because of the scientific method.

Well, if you assume that science, (or at least some branches of it) are institutionally corrupt then you'd have cause to doubt their findings. All the same, the scientists I've met tend not to be political animals. They're just interested in the research.

Everyone is corruptible and has the potential to be corrupted. Of course this doesn't mean they will be corrupted or whatever, but nothing is stopping them from being so any more then anyone else. Now some branches of science are more political then others and this potential can increase or decrease.

So he's not claiming that creationism is more (or even less) rational or objective than science. He's just objecting to people trying to claim that the two are both more or less equivalent, and that it all boils down to a matter of personal preference. I can't fault him for that, personally.

After rereading it, I take his statement to mean more of what you claim. But when I originally read it, and I have some reservations of abandoning this, was that the part in which said "a creationist is as rational/irrational as an evolutionary biologist." to mean that they aren't just as rational. This concept I believed was wrong but in the entire context, I appears that he was saying it was wrong too which makes me off or wrong.

I think the key here is that "rational" != "objective". If you want "objective" go to science because even with fallible human researchers, science as a disciple aims to be objective, while religion aims for an inherently subjective experience. Whether it's a more rational choice depends what you're trying to achieve. If you happen to be a monk, isolated from the world and striving to bring yourself closer to God, then accepting the Bible as the literal truth may be a more rational choice than looking for the Almighty in the behaviour of quarks. On the other hand, if you want to set send a manned mission to Mars, building the spacecraft based on divine inspiration and sacred writings may well get you a trip to the nearest funny farm.

Well, the point I was attempting to make was that neither objectivity or rational thought can be different for the vast majority of people because they aren't interpreting history or doing experiments of anything of the sorts, they are deciding who to believe and who not to believe. The problem deepens when you look at the bible and realize that a good portion of that is a history book, especially the later-new testament. Sure, some far out claims might have been made but knowing because of the same science your exposing to be the most objective and accurate, that Galatians actually existed and that Paul actually sent letters to them in order to correct false teachings or that Pontius actually existed or that other things actually happened or existed like the cities of Jericho, Babylon, king Salomon, Peter convincing the Greeks that the single unnamed god the

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Joe Jay Bee]

I hear there's a good way of finding out whether a demo of something exists. It's called Google. Searching for "world of goo demo" popped up 2dboy's site, and from there it's about 20 seconds of clicking to get to the demo itself.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

I don't think you understand the point I was attempting to make. It builds off you point in that someone who alters the results because of a dream involving the FSM and comes to a certain conclusion will only be invalidated if and when someone who doesn't alter the results because of the same reasons or not does the testing. There isn't a guarantee that this would happen. It might be probable that it would but that probability requires your trust in it's happening in order to use it as a basis for knowing something is right or wrong just because of the scientific method.

Well, yes. I have to trust that the scientific community is doing science, as opposed to conspiring to delude the rest of humanity in pursuit of some private agenda. I think perhaps I'm still missing your point, because that doesn't see a particularly unreasonable assumption, to me.

Everyone is corruptible and has the potential to be corrupted. Of course this doesn't mean they will be corrupted or whatever, but nothing is stopping them from being so any more then anyone else. Now some branches of science are more political then others and this potential can increase or decrease.

Isn't life strange sometimes? A couple of weeks ago, you devoted quite a lot of time and energy to trying to persuade me that politicians were fundamentally good, wise, compassionate responsible people who had the best interests of their electorate at heart. Now you seem to be suggesting that several branches of scientific research are institutionally corrupt because scientists are too, umm ... political.

I doubt I'll ever share your worldview, my friend :)

After rereading it, I take his statement to mean more of what you claim. But when I originally read it, and I have some reservations of abandoning this, was that the part in which said "a creationist is as rational/irrational as an evolutionary biologist." to mean that they aren't just as rational

Well, for what it's worth, I though he was saying that evolutionary biology was far more objective than creationism, until I realised we were talking at cross purposes, and went back to see what he really did say. Certainly, I've no intention of arguing the case for creationism or ID.

Well, the point I was attempting to make was that neither objectivity or rational thought can be different for the vast majority of people because they aren't interpreting history or doing experiments of anything of the sorts, they are deciding who to believe and who not to believe

A lot of people won't appreciate the distinction, certainly, but that doesn't mean to say it doesn't exist, nor that we should disregard it. I think I'm still missing your point, here.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[badkarmadayaccount]

RE:Sig - Im virgin, you insensitive clod!

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

Well, yes. I have to trust that the scientific community is doing science, as opposed to conspiring to delude the rest of humanity in pursuit of some private agenda. I think perhaps I'm still missing your point, because that doesn't see a particularly unreasonable assumption, to me.

Well, you hit on the point in your next statement where you mention our previous discussion about the politicians not being evil. Somewhere along the lines, you made the decision to trust your source of information which is why you seem to think scientist won't skew their results for some ulterior agenda but you didn't think the politicians would have the people's interest at heart. It is this thought process that makes you trust one thing over another verses someone else's that makes both the same in rational/irrationality or intelligence. There is no guarantee that the science will be shown to be right or wrong because there is no guarantee that anyone checking it wouldn't have the same goals in mind.

Isn't life strange sometimes? A couple of weeks ago, you devoted quite a lot of time and energy to trying to persuade me that politicians were fundamentally good, wise, compassionate responsible people who had the best interests of their electorate at heart. Now you seem to be suggesting that several branches of scientific research are institutionally corrupt because scientists are too, umm ... political.

I doubt I'll ever share your worldview, my friend :)

Well, you have to remember that I am stretching the point in order to illustrate the concept. Basically, I took your argument about politicians serving their own interest or being corruptible and turned it into the same thought process over scientists. However, when I did so, I was not thinking of our previous conversations, just that it could happen. Now, I think I have made it clear, and if I haven't, I need to, I don't believe that scientists are inherently evil or self serving or corruptible or any of what I said, I believe the possibility for that is there and there is nothing I or most people could ever do to tell the differences. Take Global warming for instance, skeptics are fueled by the inability to explain or address the concerns of others. In the US, the more the scientists refused to answer the points of critiques and the more political the process became, the more skeptics there was and the more questions were be answered. This became especially discouraging in attempting to believe that science wasn't being manipulated when things like Solar forcing/activity and Water vapor which was some of the most early questions raised about the positions in the science were included into the modeling and so on after flat out refusals to consider or complete rejections simply because of the source of some connection to oil or something. And then when the models adjusted for water vapor and the power of the sun, the scientists who admitted to the necessity played it off like it was some empirical brainchild of their own and all the skeptics were still wrong no mater what any of them said. I mean if gets even more difficult to trust when you consider the other things like not being able to get access to the working data to validate the experiments and one scientist even going as far as telling on skeptic that he wouldn't give him the data because all he would do is pick the study apart and he wasn't going to aid in that. So right there, at least in appearance, the entire trust factor and protections of the Scientific way went out the window even if only briefly. I mean the Y2k bug in temperature readings that sort of reverse or breaks the MANN hockey stick graph was discovered by someone reverse engineering the date and finding a flaw in the math used to compile it not from observing the data which was being hidden from him, but by looking at the claimed results and having to collect a lot of his own data. This is something that c

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong. I could make an objective non verifiable statement, with or without some sort of implied tautology: Stalin had moustaches. Is it objective? Could you verify it? You base assumptions on history, conditions, environment.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

Somewhere along the lines, you made the decision to trust your source of information which is why you seem to think scientist won't skew their results for some ulterior agenda but you didn't think the politicians would have the people's interest at heart

I don't trust scientists, as such; I trust peer review, and I trust the fact that for every prof out there who sells his soul to Vested Interest X, there's a dozen grad students looking to get easy PhDs by demonstrating that he's full of it. If we're going to mirror one another's position from last time, think "checks and balances" :)

The question and decision in this raw position of life is really a lot like you having to decide which of two flavors of IceCream you want to order when you have never tasted them. In one ear, I'm saying the double fugde pecan, vanilla swirl is excellent, in the other ear, someone is saying that the Pistachio garlic crunch is the best (they are actually both very good). Somewhere, you have to decide something based solely on what someone else tells you.

Well yes, ok. I'll grant that the recent politicisation of science has damaged the reputation of science in a lot of people's eyes. I'll grant that people have to decide what information sources they're going to trust. I'll even grant that blindly trusting what some talking head tells you that "scientists" have discovered is not on the whole a wise move.

The point I'm missing still is ... so what? If you want objectivity, look to science rather than religion. That doesn't change just because we have a lot of widely sponsored bad science. And if you want a Mars lander that works, prayer wheels are not the technology you should be looking at.

It's not so much that I can't see your point. But I'm having difficulty seeing why it's relevant to the point at hand.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

I don't trust scientists, as such; I trust peer review, and I trust the fact that for every prof out there who sells his soul to Vested Interest X, there's a dozen grad students looking to get easy PhDs by demonstrating that he's full of it. If we're going to mirror one another's position from last time, think "checks and balances" :)

But you would agree that you had to make the decision to trust someone or some side in this over another. Well, maybe not over another, the other side may never have been presented until well after you decided that something was worth trusting. But if we examine what you trust, it is actually a little far fetched in that someone barely out of school would correct someone established in the science over something they did that was incorrect and perhaps intentionally disguised the portions to lead to the incorrect results. Now eventually, you will probably be right in that it will happen and eventually someone will discover it. Of course then again, your also trusting that it happens in a relatively quick fashion so that the incorrect information doesn't poison something else causing a flood of issues. But something convinced you that how you think was proper which is the mechanism I was talking about.

Well yes, ok. I'll grant that the recent politicisation of science has damaged the reputation of science in a lot of people's eyes. I'll grant that people have to decide what information sources they're going to trust. I'll even grant that blindly trusting what some talking head tells you that "scientists" have discovered is not on the whole a wise move.

The point I'm missing still is ... so what? If you want objectivity, look to science rather than religion. That doesn't change just because we have a lot of widely sponsored bad science. And if you want a Mars lander that works, prayer wheels are not the technology you should be looking at.

I'm not sure If I will ever be able to explain the point in a way that you can understand. Objectivity is no more guaranteed from one source to the other, it all depends on the honesty of the people involved. But the rationel behind the choice to take creation over evolution or vice verse or even in combination with each other is based on the same principles regardless of the outcome. Therefore in the religion verses science debate over evolution, each commitment is subjective for the vast majority of people and just as rational too.

I'm not necessarily talking about the message produced by the subject (on either side), but the messages delivered to make the decisions to discover the belief in it itself. As I mistakenly took the parent post to claim evolutionist and creationist held different levels of rationality, in fact they are the same levels because of the mechanisms used to decide to trust one view over the other.

What makes this difficult to explain is the fact that we already discovered I was taking something out of context when I made my original statement. My point is only to the out of context parts where an evolutionary biologists and a creationist show the same amounts of rational thought regardless of which theory they chose to trust and accept because the basic essence of the questions is the same, who's version do you trust and why. For 99 percent or better of the people, they will never be able to confirm the science behind it or perhaps even understand it enough it. In then end, they have to somehow trust the person saying X is right or Y is wrong and the same goes on with the history of the bible and the miracles and the existence of God and so on. I know you can't test for the existence of GOD or the will of GOD, but you can observe records of events that happened and so on that support those concepts and so on. It seems like the constant barrage of fresh meat into the sciences and the ability to further themselves when they find a fraud is enough to convince you tha

Re:Only sane conclusion

[chrish]

IMHO the sane conclusion is to only develop games for "closed" systems and sell them only online through another closed system (like XBox 360 + XBox online store or Wii + WiiWare). :-\ Or write Flash/Silverlight games and make money via advertising.

Or, if you don't want to do it as a career, give it away. Most people appear to prefer to work for money though.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[alecwood]

It certainly does here

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

But you would agree that you had to make the decision to trust someone or some side in this over another

Actually, I think I trust the process to generate information that is consistent, reliable and useful.

Scientists have disagreed with one another before. There was a tremendous row two hundred and fifty years ago, for instance. Joseph Priestly had this idea that something called "oxygen" made things burn, and he was attacked on all sides by supporters of the then popular phlogiston theory of combustion. Eventually someone found the right test to settle the debate and these days most people have never heard of phlogiston.

The scientific method has given us the vast majority of the tools we use in the world around us. It's been tested by time and shown to work well. And, when it comes to describing the way the world around us behaves, it works rather better than religion. I don't think any of these points require any great justification.

Objectivity is no more guaranteed from one source to the other, it all depends on the honesty of the people involved.

Sorry, but I don't accept that. That's like saying that the chances of a corporation making money are about the same as they are for a charity, simply because you can find poor managers working for both businesses and charities.

Religion is inherently subjective and encourages people to make decisions based on their own subjective experience. Science does not. So if we assume that there's no greater level of intellectual dishonesty on either side, then we can still expect a greater level of objectivity from science.

Objectivity is what science does. With religion, if it happens at all it's happy accident.

And to complicate the rationality argument

Rationality for what purpose? You can't just say "action is X is rational", because the concept is relative. You need to say "action X is a rational way to achieve objective Y". Also, rationality is still not the same as objectivity, and the fact that many people may understand the distinction does not mean we can dispense with it here.

So you would or could have someone using a prayer wheel as well as Physics, chemistry, Biology and other sciences to create the mars lander and actually put it on mars.

I'm not against having a prayer wheel in the lander if it helps morale and doesn't weigh more than a few grammes. What I'm against is using it as the landing mechanism because it says in the Holy Book Of Spode that prayer is a cushion against all the shocks and hardships of life. It's a question of which discipline has priority for a given purpose.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

Actually, I think I trust the process to generate information that is consistent, reliable and useful.

Well, I meant the concept or process too. Somewhere along the lines you said I can trust this which turned out to be the basis for the willingness to trust other things.

Scientists have disagreed with one another before. There was a tremendous row two hundred and fifty years ago, for instance. Joseph Priestly had this idea that something called "oxygen" made things burn, and he was attacked on all sides by supporters of the then popular phlogiston theory of combustion. Eventually someone found the right test to settle the debate and these days most people have never heard of phlogiston.

The scientific method has given us the vast majority of the tools we use in the world around us. It's been tested by time and shown to work well. And, when it comes to describing the way the world around us behaves, it works rather better than religion. I don't think any of these points require any great justification.

Back in the early to mid 80's I saw my grandmother suffer from stomach ulcers in which she would actually spit up blood in pain at times. I attempted to find out as much as I could in an attempt to help her because I didn't think that taking antacids or acid controllers like Prilosec or Xantax (I may have the names wrong) was working. I stumbled across a guy from the AU who was claiming that the majority of Stomach Ulcers were caused by a type of bacteria that actually thrives in the stomach acids. His approach to fixing this issue was to use a two pronged approach, limit the secretion of acids while taking an antibiotic in two stages. Everyone called him a kook and claimed he didn't deserve his medical degree. I obtained a copy of a study he attempted to introduce into several medical journals that rejected it on the concept alone and submitted it my grandmothers doctor. He claimed it was witch craft or some hogwash like that and refused to even read it citing something like Medical science is a real science and the idea that bacteria could live in the stomach was a pseudoscience. He did this entire science is accurate because of this and that and so on. I threatened a lawsuit if he didn't try it which caused him to start the treatment (after all, it was more or less just the addition of two antibiotics to her regular treatment) but then refuse to see her again. Of course I caught hell for that but her Ulcers were gone by the time she saw her new gastro-intestinal specialist. It took another several years before I started hearing about the new treatment being discovered on the news.

That was my first instance in doubt in the system. It goes along with the ideas you presented with the Oxygen and you have to ask, what if no one could figure out the test? Would you have considered the system or process to have been broken, Paused, or just not complete? Should I also add that the people at her church was praying for her health and I was able to stumble across some obscure and almost fringe science that turned out to be a cure? I don't put connections between the two, but members of her church sure as hell did.

As for religion, We aren't really talking about using religion to figure out thermal dynamics or complex weather systems or the chemical composition of a nuclear reaction without radioactive materials present during the start of it. We are talking about it being used over science in a very small subset of all sciences in which the points of contention between the two are so small that it doesn't even conflict with the entire field or subset of the field. It's not like someone who has chosen to believe in creation is automatically obligated to reject all of science, they don't even have to reject evolution, just parts of evolution on the end where the evidence is just as much in doubt as others.

Well, that is unless your claiming someone can't use science and have a belief system o

Re:Only sane conclusion

[another_twilight]

Speaking personally, there was no demo ("coming soon") when the game launched.

I downloaded a copy from Pirate Bay, played for 5 minutes, _loved_it_ and immediaetly paid for and downloaded an identical copy from the developer's site.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Ginger Unicorn]

1. You have to be specific about what you mean by transitional - evolutionary theory regards all individuals are intermediate. Perhaps you mean species that have developed into other species? here are some examples of still existing species that have given rise to other species that are alive today. But perhaps species is too close as in "a brown bear and a polar bear are still bears", perhaps you'd like something more intuitively striking - how about a fish that can breath air and crawl on land? Or perhaps a platypus which is half way between between mammals and reptiles. There are so many ways to define transitional that you have to be specific in order for me to address your question specifically

2. The evolution of the eye is explained adequately elsewhere. What aspect of this is incompatible with the timeframe within which teeth are thought to have evolved?

3 . The evolution of the whale ear is outlined here If you google whale ear evolution there is a wealth of explanations of how whale ears evolved.

4. Again you have to be specific about what you mean by transitional. Archaeopteryx is descended from reptiles, and has some bird features and some reptile features, but does not have any living descendants. Modern birds share a common ancestor with Archaeopteryx. The article you link (from the mid 90's) to is talking about Alan Feduccia's theory that birds did not develop from dinosaurs, but instead developed from ancient reptiles that predate dinosaurs. Up till the mid 90's it was thought that Archaeopteryx was a direct descendant of modern birds. Fossil evidence around this time of feathered reptiles found in china established that Archaeopteryx was not a direct ancestor of modern birds, but instead was a cousin of the lineage that did eventually become modern birds.

This revision has no impact on the validity of evolutionary theory. There are a large number of well documented evolutionary progressions that apply to current living populations, such as land mammal to whale evolution, and there are other intermediate forms such as tiktaalik which are more obviously intuitive "half-way" examples that are useful as intuitive examples, which was the primary advantage of Archaeopteryx.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[pcolaman]

Well, this is an entirely different issue. But in the end I don't believe that pirate servers really affect them all that much. Cheating in game has a larger impact on the majority of players, and this they do a good job overall of keeping in check. I'd say with all of the heavy queue times in WoW, they aren't having too much of a problem getting people to play on their servers. I had to wait 40 minutes the other day to log into WoW, and my server is not considered crowded enough to qualify me for a free realm transfer. (all of the non-wow people just went "WTF did he say?")

Re:Only sane conclusion

[deniable]

You may not believe it, but look at all of the noise about Blizzard and bnetd. Blizzard doesn't like it.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[pcolaman]

Oh I'm sure Blizzard doesn't like it. Why would they? I just think it's less of an issue that it might appear.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

Actually, I think I trust the process to generate information that is consistent, reliable and useful.

Well, I meant the concept or process too. Somewhere along the lines you said I can trust this which turned out to be the basis for the willingness to trust other things.

mmm... I may be misreading your intent entirely here, there's something about the way you use the word "trust" that suggests to me you mean "trust" in a "blind faith" sort of way; that you meant to imply that the decision to trust one side or another is essentially arbitrary. I don't accept that.

On the other hand, if you mean trust in the sense of having seen the process in operation and having good grounds to trust the process of scientific research to deliver reliable, objective real world results, then ok, I'll agree with you.

But it's still an odd choice of words to my way of thinking. It's like saying, "I trust the sun to come up in the morning" or "I trust gravity to keep me from flying off into space".

Back in the early to mid 80's I saw my grandmother suffer from stomach ulcers ... It took another several years before I started hearing about the new treatment being discovered on the news.

It takes time for new ideas to become widely accepted in any human activty - science is no exception. And that's not a bad thing - I mean do you really want a medical community that leaps to accept each and every new idea, no matter how superficially outlandish it may appear? Or do you want a community of professionals who follow best practice?

It took another several years before I started hearing about the new treatment being discovered on the news.

yep. Now we know a lot more about extremeophile bacteria in general, and the notion is widely accepted. Now, how do you think it got that way? Did the Pope, perhaps, issue a papal bull on the subject? No, he did not. Did God appear in a vision to the president of the AMA? I very much doubt it.

The idea gained accpetance because scientists did the hard work to mass sufficient evidence to convince their rightly sceptical peers.

That was my first instance in doubt in the system. It goes along with the ideas you presented with the Oxygen and you have to ask, what if no one could figure out the test? Would you have considered the system or process to have been broken, Paused, or just not complete?

I'd have said "in progress".

Look at it this way. I can remember when the libertarian movement was a half dozen guys, self publishing pamphlets, and hauling them round to every head shop and counter-culture outlet going, because no-one else would youch them with a barge pole. Give it ten years or so, and libertarian theory is suddenly driving economic policy for half the western world.

Was politics broken because the new idea wasn't instantly accepted? No? Then why should science be any faster to accept a revolutionary new idea?

As for religion, We aren't really talking about using religion to figure out thermal dynamics or complex weather systems or the chemical composition of a nuclear reaction without radioactive materials present during the start of it

Says you :)

I'm talking about which discipline is best at delivering reliable, objective, real world results. I'm still not sure what you're trying to establish, except that it seems to revolve around religion being just as good at delivering objective results as science, which is the point at which I run into difficulties.

Well, even if we ignore the charities that operate businesses or the ones that invest in businesses to guarantee a steady income, if you limit the corporation to one that provides non essential goods and or services, the chances would be simi

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

I think we are getting a little long winded so I will do my best to start toning the replies down an if you want to skip over something or whatever, I will understand to.

mmm... I may be misreading your intent entirely here, there's something about the way you use the word "trust" that suggests to me you mean "trust" in a "blind faith" sort of way; that you meant to imply that the decision to trust one side or another is essentially arbitrary. I don't accept that.

On the other hand, if you mean trust in the sense of having seen the process in operation and having good grounds to trust the process of scientific research to deliver reliable, objective real world results, then ok, I'll agree with you.

But it's still an odd choice of words to my way of thinking. It's like saying, "I trust the sun to come up in the morning" or "I trust gravity to keep me from flying off into space".

Ok, suppose that you have to people that you have never met. You will have to trust one of them with your life before the day is over. Each one of the people offer difference approaches to different things somewhat but not totally related. Lets call them him Mr. Creation and Mr, Evolution. The only way you can find out about each one, by asking a limited number of people around you. After they tell you the limited amount of knowledge that they know only because someone else told them, you will have to decide which person to trust with your life. Now keep in mind, these people you are asking are all authority figures to you. Be it your parents, the teachers in school, the babysitter, your grandparents, aunts and uncles, the guy your dad looks up to and speak highly of and so on. Also keep in mind that each one of these people will say something different about the two while some might be similar. Somewhere along the lines, you will have to decide which one is more valid or whatever, which person you are going to side with. It's that mechanism right there that I'm talking about.

In one hand, you have a all knowing all powerful god who is claimed to have created man, his the evidence is that you are here, it says so in this book, this book has been true and accurate for thousands of years and science has even found civilizations it speaks of as well as confirmed some of the events. In the other, you have a it all started somewhere else, I don't concern myself with cosmology or abiogenesis, but once that happened, we all evolved into what we see today by small changes, no wait, big changes, well, no both big and small changes over long, no wait, short, well long and short periods of time. But you can review all my work, it's a lot like reading his book but mines right because you can read it. And one day, if your smart enough and apply yourself and learn what we want you to know, you might be able to validate my works except you can't really rediscover the same fossils in the same time lines were they were originally found but you can find new ones and interpret their meaning based of our previous work.

So you make the choice in which one makes the most sence, then you spend the rest of your life listening to someone saying the other guy isn't right, they are trying to trick you, then you realize that you won't be able to validate anything, you can only trust what people tell you to be right enough that you made the right decision.

It's the same process or concept for either. The rationality of the decision is the same for either and it is all subjective. The person who doesn't know and will never be able to do the science or observe the miracles and so on will always have to trust someone elses words on it. This differs then with other parts of science because you can't put a cell phone that evolves into a monkey into my hands, you can't put a 2000 year old extinct creature in my back yard to play with me, you can't accomplish the "I have it or I can benefit from it, or I can see it right now when it's happening, when it was alive" that other sci

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

Ok, suppose that you have to people that you have never met. You will have to trust one of them with your life before the day is over. Each one of the people offer difference approaches to different things somewhat but not totally related. Lets call them him Mr. Creation and Mr, Evolution.

Actually, I know them both quite well, but I appreciate that's not your point.

The rationality of the decision is the same for either and it is all subjective. The person who doesn't know and will never be able to do the science or observe the miracles and so on will always have to trust someone elses words on it.

meh. They get evidence that science works every time they flick a light switch or get in a car. The best evidence for religion they've see is in all probability a preacher who tells them every Sunday that they have to have FAY-uth, or they'll burn in HAY-ull.

This differs then with other parts of science because you can't put a cell phone that evolves into a monkey into my hands, you can't put a 2000 year old extinct creature in my back yard to play with me, you can't accomplish the "I have it or I can benefit from it, or I can see it right now when it's happening, when it was alive" that other sciences end up with

But then you have to have already accepted the "corrupt evolutionary scientific community" conspiracy theory or else why else do you assume that the nice Mister Science who makes your car go, and your cell phone ring should be jerking your chain when the subject changes to fossils?

Incidentally, I don't think you can limit the debate to purely evolutionary biology. If we take the Bible as the literal truth, then we limit the age of the universe as six-thousand-and-something years. So we have to stop teaching a whole chunk of astrophysics right there. We can estimate the age of stellar objects by the amount of red shift they show. What do you propose we stop teaching? Do we have to junk the speed of light and most of relativity with it? We already lost carbon dating. Where do we stop?

But politics isn't claiming to be the end all truth finder. It is nothing more then opinion from people with opinions about things.

Science isn't the be all and end all truth finder, either. It's a way of understanding the universe, But even if it was, it isn't infinitely fast, or else we'd have colonies in the Andromeda Galaxy and be having this discussion via telepathic interfaces.

Also, if you ever try and advance a political theory yourself, do try and find something in support of your ideas. I don't think you'll get very far if all you have to say "it's an opinion about a thing".

It's that when people have no other way of knowing, they have to trust someone in that what they are saying is more true then the person saying the opposite against it.

So, basically you're saying that people aren't stupid? I'd agree with that :)

Of what? Designing Mars landers using the Holy Book of Spode?

Of attempting to use their religion and or rituals to manifest things into existence.. In other words, the mars rover.

That was never my point, as I suspect you're very well aware. My point was that religion would be a poor choice of discipline for such a project. From what you say elsewhere in this debate, I rather doubt you disagree.

The conflicts with them in schools stem from science teachers teaching evolution saying that the bible or someone's religion is wrong, incorrect and so on.

I'll tell you what: I just founded the First Church of Christ Flatlander. It is a sacred tenet of my religion that the Earth is flat. All evidence to the contrary, up to and including moon landings and satellite photography must therefore be the

Re:Only sane conclusion

[gotem]

And of course, anything that can't be proven or disproven by experimental results becomes a subjective matter.

Ok, then surely that statement can be proven or disproven by experimental results

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

meh. They get evidence that science works every time they flick a light switch or get in a car. The best evidence for religion they've see is in all probability a preacher who tells them every Sunday that they have to have FAY-uth, or they'll burn in HAY-ull.

Sigh.. And the other gives evidence that stuff in the bible is historically accurate too or that sister sarah prayed to relief and won the lottery the next day. But as I already addressed, turning on the lights (which originally wasn't a scientific endeavor) doesn't prove that your a monkeys uncle or that evolution has happened or even explain why macro evolution has stopped.

The problem is that in the field of evolutionary biology, nothing- is verifiable in the same ways as turning something on or recording an event on film and playing it back. You should also look at how Mr Evolution is not all of science and it is a logical fallacy to think that because something related is right that everything else is if it is related. You are basically saying right here that, evolution is science, since finds the truth, therefore evolution is true. Now take this to the examples of the fallacy, Cake if food, food it nutritious, cake is nutritious. But as we know, cake isn't really nutritious.

But then you have to have already accepted the "corrupt evolutionary scientific community" conspiracy theory or else why else do you assume that the nice Mister Science who makes your car go, and your cell phone ring should be jerking your chain when the subject changes to fossils?

No, you don't have to accept anything, you don't have enough information to know otherwise though. The alternate to not accepting something as the truth is not believing it as a lie, there are all sorts of ranges in between where you don't even decide either. This isn't a yes no answer, and it especially wouldn't be one if you didn't know anything about it and had to rely on someone else to explain it. You will be doomed to never seeing the point if you can't mentally assume the premise that you don't know what you already know when developing what you know. That isn't a trick statement either, I'm asking you to imagine how you would make a decision without the luxury of knowing what you already know because you made that same decision in the past. In other words, look at this as if you didn't already know the jets upset the cowboys in last nights game and were going to place a bet 2 months before the game. Otherwise your participation in that exorcise is pointless because it is designed to show how the bias is created while you are already answering with the bias we are talking about.

Incidentally, I don't think you can limit the debate to purely evolutionary biology. If we take the Bible as the literal truth, then we limit the age of the universe as six-thousand-and-something years. So we have to stop teaching a whole chunk of astrophysics right there. We can estimate the age of stellar objects by the amount of red shift they show. What do you propose we stop teaching? Do we have to junk the speed of light and most of relativity with it? We already lost carbon dating. Where do we stop?

Well, actually no we don't limit the age of anything. The English translation of the bible says days but the original word yowmmeant periods of time as well as days. The term day is the common understanding of the use of the word but even if the bible is 100% accurate, it doesn't mean that our use or implementations of it are. Now, as for the rest of the bible verses the rest of science, again, your in the same boat, You don't know that science or even the explanation of the science behind the cell phone is accurate any more then you do the bible, again, you aren't capable of verifying anything for yourself, you have to believe what someone else has said. You s

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

Incidentally, I don't think you can limit the debate to purely evolutionary biology. If we take the Bible as the literal truth, then we limit the age of the universe as six-thousand-and-something years.

Well, actually no we don't limit the age of anything. The English translation of the bible says days but the original word yowm meant periods of time as well as days

Yes, that came up recently in another discussion. The most interesting question there is: who do you mean by "we" in that sentence?

For instance, you don't mean Christians as a whole, because I know loads of them who are quite happy with the notion of Genesis as either allegory or creation myth. You don't even speak for all creationists, since there are factions within fundamentalist Christianity that will tell you that if it says "days" if means "days". I seem to recall a couple of them posted to that same thread where "yoim" came up.

Also, you rather appear to have abandoned the devil's advocate/neutral-point-of-view stance you adopted in your earlier posts.

Perhaps this is a good time to declare an interest?

So, when little Timmy comes home and tells me that the heathen schoolteacher told him that the Earth is round, what then? Must we now stop teaching geography as well?

Little timmy comming home saying the teacher claims the earth is round isn't the problem. Little timmy is comming home telling you that the teacher said your religion is a bunch of lies.

Not a problem for you, but like I say, I don't think you speak for all Christian fundamentalists. Some of them are indeed going to object to the teacher saying "evolution is true". Some are going to insist that only creationism is taught. Some of them want that exercise in intellectual dishonesty known as intelligent design to be taught as science. And that's without even considering the more extreme fringe cults, like little Timmy's Church of Christ Flatlander.

We can't accommodate every religious conviction under the sun. How do you decide whose religious convictions need explicit equal time in the classroom, and which we can quietly disregard?

There is a difference between saying this is science, science does things this way and saying your religion is wrong (even if it is). Science doesn't even speak of religion and there is no need ever for someone in the course of teaching science to make a statement about religion at all

This actually sounds like a productive approach. So when the teacher gets out a globe, and Timmy sticks up a hand and says "please miss my church says the earth is flat and globes are the tool of Satan" what does the teacher say in reply?

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

Yes, that came up recently in another discussion. The most interesting question there is: who do you mean by "we" in that sentence?

For instance, you don't mean Christians as a whole, because I know loads of them who are quite happy with the notion of Genesis as either allegory or creation myth. You don't even speak for all creationists, since there are factions within fundamentalist Christianity that will tell you that if it says "days" if means "days". I seem to recall a couple of them posted to that same thread where "yoim" came up.

Also, you rather appear to have abandoned the devil's advocate/neutral-point-of-view stance you adopted in your earlier posts.

No, I haven't abandoned anything. We have just strayed into another topic with that. As for speaking for creationists, That's sort of not what I was attempting to do. I was attempting to show that even if something is right, it doesn't mean we understand is as that. For instance I know people who think you can use the alternator on your car to split water and then feed the hydrogen and oxygen into the intake so somehow you gain more energy then you would normally have. Now despite the fact that it ignores the laws of thermodynamics, they attempt to claim proof when they build excess gases up and turn the gasoline off and the car or engine stays running long enough to deplete the alternate fuel and the gas in the carb bowl. Sure, it's true that Oxygen and hydrogen will burn but your not going to be getting more energy out of it then you put into it when coming from water (well, possibly if you use catalysts to easy the hydrolisis but that has yet to be shown).

This actually sounds like a productive approach. So when the teacher gets out a globe, and Timmy sticks up a hand and says "please miss my church says the earth is flat and globes are the tool of Satan" what does the teacher say in reply? ,/blockquote> The teacher simply says this isn't your church, we need to teach science or geography or whatever and they use this so you will be required to use it to when dealing with this/these subjects. As long as the school doesn't teach his religion also, there shouldn't be any conflicts because people are more then capable of compartmentalizing things. Especially little kids like Timmy, I'm betting he has at least two video games that have different combo power moves and he has to remember different left right a, a, b, a combination to make them happen in the different games. He probably has a different combination for the lock on his bike then he has for his secrete storage box where he puts his rare and collectible junk and so on. If there are more then to TVs or a mac and a PC computer in the house, they are doing different things again. SO it isn't to difficult to expect a kid to know you do one thing there and another here even when talking about the same general thing. And when you say Science uses this or does this, or geography does that and this, they know that when taking science, you use the same things just like he knows to right click on the PC where you don't on the mac.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[bentcd]

I predict that if you jump out of the window from the 50th floor, you will be pulled by gravity to your death. This fact has nothing to do with belief, religion, opinion etc etc - it's just an undeniable fact - an absolute truth, if you like.

It is quite possible to survive this so you would be wrong in calling it an absolute truth.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

No, I haven't abandoned anything. We have just strayed into another topic with that. As for speaking for creationists, That's sort of not what I was attempting to do.

Well, I wish you'd say what your point actually is, then. Preferably in a paragraph by itself and in twenty five words or less.

My major point is that science is essentially objective and religion essentially subjective.

What's yours?

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

My point was coming to your conclusion verses the conclusion that religion is more right when dealing with the issue of evolution verses creation is fundamentally the same in both rationality as well as objectivity when the persona making the decisions doesn't know enough to validate any of the claims. That has always been my point, not that evolution or creation was more or less accurate, then when someone doesn't know anything about either, they can't only deal with the information presented to them specifically which might not produce the same answers that you came up with and it might not put someone to the same conclusions. But there is nothing inherently different about what makes someone believe on is right over the other when you look at how they come to that point.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

OK. I know you're big on definitions, so let's look at one for "objective" and make sure we're both on the same page here The definition that applies to my point is this one:

(adj) objective (belonging to immediate experience of actual things or events) "objective benefits"; "an objective example"; "there is no objective evidence of anything of the kind"

Now you find me some objective evidence for creationism, and I'll concede the point.

I should add that I don't regard the bible as objective evidence that the Garden of Eden is the literal truth. Hell, it's not even objective evidence of those things for which we have independent historical corroboration. It's hearsay at best, and it's a hearsay account of a sequence of events that we have no objective reason to believe to be possible.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

Do you mean the same objective evidence that evolution presents where in conflict with creation? I don't think either of us can find that in either sect. In creation, god made all life, the animals and humans, in the other, something else did, it doesn't go into that detail, it just posits that once life was here, it evolved into other species and so on and we can see that now. In creation, you look around and see what the bible claims to have created, in Evolution, you look around and see what people claim we evolved into. As for looking at evolution in real life, well, we know that we can breed different types of animas like horses, cattle, dogs, et cetera, but in the end, where that evolution comes into conflict with the creation (speciation) and interspecies human evolution), we can't breed a dogcat from a cow or anything other then it's own species. And when we attempt to, or think we found it in nature, we have to alter the definition of speciation from not able to breed (part of the definition of species) to don't or can't because they don't want to or are blocked from doing it. Then there is the missing link where we haven't a complete ancestral trail of fossils leading back to the whatever we branched off of and even that is missing the point that there were humans already in the world when god supposedly made Adam and Eve which goes on to the chosen people- the tribe of the Israelite's.

But I'm not attempting to get you to believe that creation is real, I'm not even attempting to get anyone to think that. I'm attempting to show that when someone can't do the research themselves, when someone is forced to rely on other people to tell them about it and which is right or wrong or more right or more likely or whatever, they have to eventually trust one of those theories or some other one and go with it. And when that happens, it is no more different when someone picks one over the other because they don't know what you think you know and they don't know what I think I know, all they know is what someone else told them and it might have not been either of us.

I should add that I don't regard the bible as objective evidence that the Garden of Eden is the literal truth. Hell, it's not even objective evidence of those things for which we have independent historical corroboration. It's hearsay at best, and it's a hearsay account of a sequence of events that we have no objective reason to believe to be possible.

That is fine, I wouldn't think many people would. And to the same note, the parts of the bible that are in conflict with evolutionary biology are in the same league. If I showed you the remains of an animal fossilized and they are over 1 million years old or whatever, the only way you could link that to a modern animal is through subjective interpretations. Otherwise, it would just be an animal that dies out. You have to believe in evolution in order to connect the dots to complete evolution in order to say it is true and there is no DNA or any other scientific experiment that can't be done to validate it outside of an interpretation. At best, you can validate the age and look for others like it in areas expected to be of that age, but all that really proves is that an animal like that was alive at that time, to connect it to anything else in an evolutionary scale means that you would have to be subjective in your interpretations. In the end, evolution is really saying this looks like that, I think it is that before it evolved.

Or at least that is how it will be perceived by anyone without intimate knowledge of it.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

Do you mean the same objective evidence that evolution presents where in conflict with creation? I don't think either of us can find that in either sect.

Can you rephrase that? It sounds like I might agree with you if I knew what you were talking about.

In creation, you look around and see what the bible claims to have created

That is evidence that the universe exists, but not for the means by which it was created. It offers no support for the events described in Genesis, or if you insist that it does support Genesis, it also supports the Big Bang theory to equal measure. it also supports, every creation myth on the planet, and any crackpot creation theory we may care to make up on the spot, so long as it results in the world around us. It's not even evidence of creation, because it equally mean that the world has been here forever. Net effect: nil.

we have to alter the definition of speciation from not able to breed (part of the definition of species) to don't or can't because they don't want to or are blocked from doing it.

I think any biologist worth his salt would agree that there are better ways of defining species than "can" interbreed. Wikipedia goes into some detail on the subject. The distinction is useful for separating two very closely related lines, but as a definition, it's a little out of date.

You have to believe in evolution in order to connect the dots to complete evolution in order to say it is true and there is no DNA or any other scientific experiment that can't be done to validate it outside of an interpretation

Certainly, it's still a theory, and in the absence of time travel, it may well remain as such. On the other hand, it's a theory supported by a lot of objective evidence. Fossils, carbon dating, observed mutations in current species... all of it with the the researcher and dates recorded, all of it verifiable.

The best evidence you have for the Garden of Eden is an unattributed, undated creation myth.

Objectivity is relative. There is no way you can present creationism as even remotely objective. You're tilting at windmills.

Or at least that is how it will be perceived by anyone without intimate knowledge of it.

By some people lacking a superficial knowledge of it, perhaps.

Look, I'm deeply gratified by your sudden, uncharacteristic enthusiasm for the will of the people, really I am. But until we find a way of voting laws of nature into reality I can't see what practical impact it has on science.

And I can't begin to imagine what you might think popular perception, itself inherently subjective, has to do with the level of objectivity behind any theory at all.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

Can you rephrase that? It sounds like I might agree with you if I knew what you were talking about.

I'm not sure I can rephrase that. I have been trying to throughout this entire thread without success.

That is evidence that the universe exists, but not for the means by which it was created. It offers no support for the events described in Genesis, or if you insist that it does support Genesis, it also supports the Big Bang theory to equal measure. it also supports, every creation myth on the planet, and any crackpot creation theory we may care to make up on the spot, so long as it results in the world around us. It's not even evidence of creation, because it equally mean that the world has been here forever. Net effect: nil.

Oh.. So your finally getting my point. To the average person, both creation, evolution, the big bang, and everything else that isn't provable without a time machines of direct evidence in the form of some usable device or something you can use right now, is just that. What they have to do is figure out who has a more believable story and work from there.

I think any biologist worth his salt would agree that there are better ways of defining species than "can" interbreed. Wikipedia goes into some detail on the subject. The distinction is useful for separating two very closely related lines, but as a definition, it's a little out of date.

I didn't say that interbreed is the definition, I said it is part of the definition of a species. Don't attempt to invert the input to create a different statement. Problems with the current definition of speciation definition that excludes interbreeding for whatever reasons is that if you take it literally, a pitbull on New York would be a difference species then a pitbull in Australia because it is separated by a geographical barrier and cannot interbreed even though we know that can.

Certainly, it's still a theory, and in the absence of time travel, it may well remain as such. On the other hand, it's a theory supported by a lot of objective evidence. Fossils, carbon dating, observed mutations in current species... all of it with the the researcher and dates recorded, all of it verifiable.

The evidence's worth is all subjective. We have had the evidence in times before the theory of evolution evicted and it was interpreted along another set of lines. The parts of evolution that are in conflict with creation are all subjective interpretations molded to fit within the theory. It isn't like creation claims that everything looked like it does today when it was created, it just claims that it was created and not evolved from one species into another. A lot of the evidence for speciation could actually be interpreted as a separate species altogether or just an older form of the same species (as in it could mix with the heard today, ot just looks different).

The best evidence you have for the Garden of Eden is an unattributed, undated creation myth.

Lol.. You see, there is your subjective bias coming through. You don't know the garden of eden is a myth, you don't know that what happened in it is a myth, you only think it is and here you are applying your less then objective interpretations to it as if it is fact. On the same note, when someone is convinced that it is real, they are linking what they know together and coming to the same conclusions process as you have except they took the opposite position. You have no evidence that it didn't happen or that it wasn't there, you can't falsify it meaning that you can't credibly state it is a myth in a scientific means. You can however choose to not believe it which most people might support, but your beliefs don't make something true or false.

Objectivity is relative. There is no way you can present creationism a

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

To the average person, both creation, evolution, the big bang, and everything else that isn't provable without a time machines of direct evidence in the form of some usable device or something you can use right now, is just that.

Now all you have to do now is show me where the words "the average person" appear in the definition of objectivity and you'll have a relevant and valid point.

I didn't say that interbreed is the definition, I said it is part of the definition of a species. Don't attempt to invert the input to create a different statement.

"Invert the input?" All I'm doing is pointing out that your (unstated) definition is probably a little simplistic, and that modern biologists take a slightly more sophisticated view of the problem. Wikipedia discusses the problems in finding a single useful definition and lists thirteen different ones used by different biological specialties.

You can't insist that evolutionary biologists use your definition of "species", and then claim it as evidence against them. Sorry.

It's the perception of the theory that counts the most.

I've always thought the "popular perception == reality" idea to be rather cynical and self serving, myself.

Certainly, I can see the appeal for a politician, but it's not a terribly useful viewpoint when it comes to science and engineering. Basically, you're saying that it doesn't matter if the Mars lander does use a prayer wheel for its landing gear. The important thing, you're saying, is that everyone thinks the landing gear will work.

Of course, the mechanism won't function purely because people believe in it, but I guess if you manage perceptions properly, no one is going to blame you when it crashes. Which I suppose is the whole point, from the political viewpoint, anyway.

Personally, in the words of the song, I don't subscribe to your point of view.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

Now all you have to do now is show me where the words "the average person" appear in the definition of objectivity and you'll have a relevant and valid point.

Lol.. Objectiveness of always subjective to the person evaluating it. The entire idea behind the word needs an interpretation to start from. Even the definition you presented says belonging to immediate experience of actual things or events. And as we know, when 10 people see something from 10 different angles, you end up with 10 different chains of events.

As I said before, you showing me a fossil found in a certain place at a certain time that is so many years old means nothing to evolution until you start subjecting it to the theory and making it fit. I don't need to show where the average person is anywhere, I just need to show that they aren't being asked to look at objective evidence.

"Invert the input?" All I'm doing is pointing out that your (unstated) definition is probably a little simplistic, and that modern biologists take a slightly more sophisticated view of the problem. Wikipedia discusses the problems in finding a single useful definition and lists thirteen different ones used by different biological specialties.

Lol.. I like who Wikipedia changes depending on which force is in control at the time. Anyways, that's neither here nor there because when I open the biology text from my highschool or college, they include interbreeding in the definition of a species. When I look at other modern science books, they do the same. When I look at dictionaries, they say the same. Even when I look at the wikipedia page you presented, it says "A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring" within the first few sentences. Interbreeding is significantly a part of the definition until as you say, you get into specific fields of biology in where they are subjecting their findings to their theories. In this case, evolution or organisms that don't reproduce sexually at all.

I've always thought the "popular perception == reality" idea to be rather cynical and self serving, myself.

It probably is. But what do you expect someone who doesn't have the ability to comprehend or participate or even monitor to validate or evaluate the claims do? I mean all these people can do it take what someone tells them and chose to believe them or not.

Certainly, I can see the appeal for a politician, but it's not a terribly useful viewpoint when it comes to science and engineering. Basically, you're saying that it doesn't matter if the Mars lander does use a prayer wheel for its landing gear. The important thing, you're saying, is that everyone thinks the landing gear will work.

Lol.. NO. What I am saying is that the people who wouldn't know if a prayer wheel would work or not aren't in the position to make the mars lander in the first place. BTW, a prayer wheel made out of sufficiently strong material could easily be incorporated into parts of the landing gear without failure. It will just reduce it's efficiency and add some unneeded weight.

But all this doesn't matter anyways. Religious people don't dispute things they can put in their hands or see for their selves. In the context of creation verses evolution verses Buddhism or whatever, there is nothing in what conflicts that fits into their hand, nothing is that they can see for themselves, and even when they can with the fossils that rely on someone's interpretations, the fossil itself isn't a product of the science, it's interpreted value is.

Personally, in the words of the song, I don't subscribe to your point of view.

You don't need to subscribe to my point of view, just take the blinders off and look at the point of what makes people do the things they do. And when you do tha

Re:Only sane conclusion

[Walter Carver]

They don't! Read again his comment. He sais "more convinient". He is not saying that Steam and WiiWare are piracy.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

Lol.. Objectiveness of always subjective to the person evaluating it.

You know, I'm starting to think that "lol" of yours is a tell. You only even use it when you don't know how to reply to a point. I mean objectivity has nothing to do with popular opinion, and there's nothing you can do to make it so. So what are you going to do? Lol.

Of course, I you can always play the solipism card I suppose, and claim that everything is subjective in so far as its mediated through our senses, then we have no access at all to objective reality, and that everything we see is the product of our imaginations.

Of course, the comeback to that is that since you're therefore a figment of my imagination, this is therefore some, sort of dream I can therefore safely disregard anything you may come up with as sheer twaddle. I have to say, to that extent at least, the theory seems to fit this discussion disturbingly well.

Lol.. I like who Wikipedia changes depending on which force is in control at the time.

I like how you're always happy to cite wikipedia when it supports your point. Lol.

Anyways, that's neither here nor there because when I open the biology text from my highschool or college, they include interbreeding in the definition of a species.

And as I'm sure we're all agreed, there's no more recent nor sophisticated definitions available than those written in high school textbooks. Lol.

Lol.. NO. What I am saying is that the people who wouldn't know if a prayer wheel would work or not aren't in the position to make the mars lander in the first place.

Since popular opinion apparently no longer defines reality, you're going to have to find another reason why this is relevant. Lol.

Personally, in the words of the song, I don't subscribe to your point of view.

You don't need to subscribe to my point of view, just take the blinders off and look at the point of what makes people do the things they do.

The point of view to which I decline to subscribe to is the one that popular opinion has the least bearing on the objectivity or otherwise of a series of procedures and investigations. If acceptance of such a notion constitutes taking off the blinkers, then I'm quite happy stumbling around here in the darkness, thank you. You just carry on with whatever it is you think you're doing.

Lol.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

You know, I'm starting to think that "lol" of yours is a tell. You only even use it when you don't know how to reply to a point. I mean objectivity has nothing to do with popular opinion, and there's nothing you can do to make it so. So what are you going to do? Lol.

Actually, I use it when I encounter an answer or statement I find either humorous or so far removed from the point I made in my previous reply that I find that it never considered it.

Of course, I you can always play the solipism card I suppose, and claim that everything is subjective in so far as its mediated through our senses, then we have no access at all to objective reality, and that everything we see is the product of our imaginations.

There is no need for that. You see, there is no objective evidence in evolutionary biology concerning the points where creation would conflict. It's a plain and simply reality. And no, the objective evidence in other parts of it don't lend objectivity to the evidence where it's in conflict, that would make it subjective as in interpreted through the ideas of something else related.

Of course, the comeback to that is that since you're therefore a figment of my imagination, this is therefore some, sort of dream I can therefore safely disregard anything you may come up with as sheer twaddle. I have to say, to that extent at least, the theory seems to fit this discussion disturbingly well.

Lol.. Nice one here. Of course if it is all just a dream, I'm betting Freud would have something to say about it.

I like how you're always happy to cite wikipedia when it supports your point. Lol.

I haven't cited wikipedia in probably two or three years without a disclaimer or statement that I validated the sources or knowing that the information was accurate. I'm not sure where you get this always at. In fact, I find Wikipedia to be about useless and politically motivated and this is from direct observation and not considering the secrete editing groups, the political affiliations, the tenured professors living in mom's basement who their employers have never heard of and so on. All that shit does is confirm my opinions.

And as I'm sure we're all agreed, there's no more recent nor sophisticated definitions available than those written in high school textbooks. Lol.

Lol.. And I'm sure we all can agree that I didn't limit my statement to highschool text books. You can't really toss out the college books, the dictionary and stuff like that just to make it appear I'm looking at out dated material. Maybe it is a conspiracy, maybe the all the other sources are in on it too just to riun Wikipedia's credibility? Lets not trip out of the real world.

Since popular opinion apparently no longer defines reality, you're going to have to find another reason why this is relevant. Lol.

It was relevant when I wrote about it because I was answering your point. Why you think it is relevant escapes me. Well, unless your under the false impressions that if A=b then C=D then maybe. Of course I highly suspect this because I'm not talking about opinion, I'm talking about the perception that forms the opinion. I'm find it extremely hard to believe that after how many posts, you stil don't get that.

The point of view to which I decline to subscribe to is the one that popular opinion has the least bearing on the objectivity or otherwise of a series of procedures and investigations. If acceptance of such a notion constitutes taking off the blinkers, then I'm quite happy stumbling around here in the darkness, thank you. You just carry on with whatever it is you think you're doing.

Then you will forever subjective in everything you do. You will also find that you would b

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

You will also find that you would be a poor scientist in the new "popular consensus" means everything politicized science that we see practiced today

Your definition "poor scientist" of sounds to me like "doing it properly" :D

I shall stay as I am, thank you.

Perhaps it's your scientific training that makes you concentrate on the results and not the process that gets the results, perhaps it's just your ego.

That's an odd thing to say. The process is the part where so far haven't challenged the objectivity of science. Where you appear to think the subjectivity lies in communicating the results of that process to the public. Or maybe you think the communication part is the scientific process?

Or maybe, (and this is what I think), you don't believe word one of this crap. You just thought that if you wound me up about science, you could goad me into saying something like "people are stupid, they need to be told what to think", so that you could say "see, I told you so".

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

Your definition "poor scientist" of sounds to me like "doing it properly" :D

I shall stay as I am, thank you.

"Doing it properly" doesn't include putting blinders on and only accepting something if you already have a preconceived notion about it. That's how religions work. Perhaps your just confused and science is your religion?

That's an odd thing to say. The process is the part where so far haven't challenged the objectivity of science. Where you appear to think the subjectivity lies in communicating the results of that process to the public. Or maybe you think the communication part is the scientific process?

Well, No. I have been talking about the mechanisms that creates the results this entire time while you seem to be focusing on the results. The bottom line is that there are different inputs into the mechanisms which means the results will vary and you can't look at it otherwise. You also can fault the choice because of the input seeing how the input is all subjective to someone's ideals.

Or maybe, (and this is what I think), you don't believe word one of this crap. You just thought that if you wound me up about science, you could goad me into saying something like "people are stupid, they need to be told what to think", so that you could say "see, I told you so".

Lol.. I'm not asking you to do anything but see things for what they are. But as it appears, when I say look at A, you stare at B, When I say consider A and B together, you worry about C. You entered into this conversation under an objection to my statement that the decisions to believing in creation or evolution carry the same rational to the average person who has no way of validating the science or claims behind any of it. For some reason, you insist that they trust you and not others because you think your right. You then have to stray outside the areas of creation or evolution in order to make that claim seem real while ignoring any attempts from the other side. I'm not goading you into making any statements, I'm putting light onto the comparable facts and that is the next logical step you came up with which is why your worried that you might have said it. However, if you would have said it, it wouldn't have been me tricking you into saying it, it would have been the real lack of objective evidence with your point of view causing your own mind to say such.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[NickFortune]

I have been talking about the mechanisms that creates the results this entire time while you seem to be focusing on the results.

Bizzaro Boy! You're back! I was beginning to think you'd been kidnapped and replaced by a well person.

Re:Only sane conclusion

[sumdumass]

Lol.. So you have been trolling me this entire time. Well, that explains why you just couldn't get it.

huh ???

[Anonymous Coward]

world of goo ? whattzat ?

Re:huh ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. Even if we accept the absurd math and conclusions given, it could be that pirates are aware of the game but the public at large isn't. Hell, I probably spend more on games each month than on groceries and I've never heard of the thing.

Maybe the real issue here isn't DRM, but marketing. In fact a high level of piracy may be the only reason it got the sales its gotten!

Re:huh ???

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that's because you're not a gamer. You're a shopping soccer mom.

The game was featured on many game sites, including Penny Arcade, and won a few awards.

Re:huh ???

[ChangelingJane]

If you haven't heard of this game, then you're not paying attention. PS. If you do try it, spend the money. It's worth it.

Re:huh ???

[smallfries]

Bollocks. It's had terrible marketing, this story is the first time that I've heard of it. To be honest I can't see how they could raise interest in what looks like just another "Fantastic Contraption".

Re:huh ???

[Kagura]

If I hadn't noticed it on Steam, I would have neeeever heard of it. I remember playing the indy tech demo a few years ago and decided to buy it. It was a good purchase! It kept me busy for quite a while ;)

Re:huh ???

[ChangelingJane]

It's been previewed and reviewed by every major gaming site. You just missed the boat. Oh well, it happens. It's a really fun physics-based puzzle game, and owes more to Lemmings than anything else. Probably not everybody's cup of tea, but I loved it.

Re:huh ???

[smallfries]

Hundreds of games get previewed and reviewed by all the major gaming sites. That is not enough for it to stand out from the herd. Sorry, but having a review buried on a bunch of sites is not marketing.

The video (because I can't be bothered to download the demo) makes it look like this, but it involves a download and payment. It looks about the quality-level of the numerous freebies in this genre, and so it would take a lot of effort for it to stand out from the crowd.

Before you respond for a third time with exactly the same point, consider this. I am not the OP. I replied because I agreed with him. There are numerous other comments from other posters also saying that they had never heard of this game before this story.

When it comes to popularity, lots of people are never wrong. Some people have heard of this game, but it was not marketed well.

Re:huh ???

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really like Fantastic Contraption, you're not building machines so much as structures. I thought it was worth the money, but that's just my opinion.

I guess I forgot that not everybody keeps up with industry stuff as much as I do; I'm looking to get into game development myself.

My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a copy of this game and I gave a copy to my housemate who enjoyed the demo, but not enough to pay for the full game.

I didn't pass on copies to any other friends mainly due to the "this is a drm free game, please be nice" type message that came with the download link.

Re:My experience

[Hurricane78]

That's what I do too.

Unfortunately, my brother thinks, that as long as you can copy it, then why would you buy it at all?
It goes without saying, that his views to not fit with mine. Somehow he does not "get" the morality that is involved in being motivated to not hurt the developer if he's nice to you too.

And strangely, he's a media industry manager, who does not get why DRM is so evil, too.

Somehow, my theory is, that both sides, the one hurting the developer, and the one hurting the consumer, are two sides of the same character.
The type that does not trust people and thinks there is nothing else out there than a dog-eat-dog world, so if others fuck you anyway, and everybody can expect it, then he can act that way too.

The best thing is, that I even know the reason for this. His life was unfair and sometimes even horrible. And so was mine. I still do not trust many people.
But I could never stand someone good being hurt, because I saw it happening to my own brother.

So if you want to stop the **AA and those type of guys, just make the world a bit better, be nice to others and your kids, and hope that they end up defaulting to being good. (Oh, and wait one or two generations. ;)
(I know it's not realistic in the short run, but does it result in anything not good, to try it anyway?)

Re:My experience

[atraintocry]

Somehow, my theory is, that both sides, the one hurting the developer, and the one hurting the consumer, are two sides of the same character.

My thoughts exactly. Big publishers need to see DRM on software because they are they type of people that would not think twice about pirating software. The honor system (that is, honor) just does not compute.

(Not talking about your brother, in case there was even the tiniest ambiguity there. I don't know the guy. Or at least I don't know that I know him...)

Re:My experience

[RichiH]

> That's what I do too.

Same here.

Which is pretty amazing. Not only did I pay for software, I paid for a _game_! The last software product I paid for was Vim. Before that, SuSE 7.1? This excludes the Wii I own and the DS my parents own.

Though I lie a bit since I installed the thing at my mom's computer to ensure that my niece would enjoy a copy for Xmas. So technically, I stole it for about 30 minutes. :p

Re:My experience

[kalirion]

Unfortunately, my brother thinks, that as long as you can copy it, then why would you buy it at all?
It goes without saying, that his views to not fit with mine. Somehow he does not "get" the morality that is involved in being motivated to not hurt the developer if he's nice to you too.

And strangely, he's a media industry manager, who does not get why DRM is so evil, too.

Just from these two examples (which I admit is a rather small sample for in depth analysis) I think your brother just doesn't get "morality" in general. All's fair in love and war, and life is war, right?

CORRELATION != CAUSATION

[yincrash]

there are more variables than "has DRM" and "does not have DRM" that could influence the steal rate. selling price, metacritic rating, marketing to name a few.

Re:CORRELATION != CAUSATION

[Anonymous Coward]

The price does seem a bit on the high side at $20,-. The point were I would consider buying this game based on an enticing demo and good reviews lies at $10,-. Spontaneously buying a game based on good reviews only I would do for $5,-. Of course, being a graduate student, I don't have much in terms of disposable income.

This makes me wonder. What if you set up a construction that has people initially paying $20,-, then when the game breaks even, split up the profit from new sales between pure profit and a payback fund. When the payback fund reaches a certain pre-calculated figure, lower the price of the game to, say, $15,-, and use the fund to payback $5,- to everybody who initially bought the game for $20,-. Do the same for $10,- and $5,-.

Could something like this work in the real world or is it too idealistic?

Re:CORRELATION != CAUSATION

[quizwedge]

The overhead for the company in keeping track of who paid what and who got paid back what probably wouldn't be worth it... it'd take forever to pay all of the personnel before you could start giving customers money back.

Re:CORRELATION != CAUSATION

[Excelcia]

More variables indeed. Like "is the game worth actually spending money on?" is one variable that leaps to mind.

Re:CORRELATION != CAUSATION

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree on one point - the game is a little bit expensive. I tried the demo, loved it, but couldn't justify dropping $20 on it. And I'm too lazy to pirate it to play beyond level 1, as fun as it sounds. For me an impulse buy is $10 for apps and small games. $2.99 or less for iPhone apps. But I say this as a non-developer/consumer. If I were 2D Boy I'd be out there cracking skulls and flaming others for suggesting that $20 is overpriced, seeing how a lot of effort went into making the game.

Re:CORRELATION != CAUSATION

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for that! For a moment there, I almost took their interesting comparison of two games to be as authoritative as a million-person telephone survey run by a national polling company! The true gall of them for pointing out salient facts without disclaiming any and all relation to reality! I daresay they need something put on a billboard in front of their house...

Re:CORRELATION != CAUSATION

[Anonymous Coward]

This game is still unreleased in Europe, guess thats a pretty sure way to skew the statistics, too.

You can't even get it on Steam from here, which is just pathetic.
Feb/March '09 is their estimate, mine is that everyone will have forgotten about this game by then.

Re:CORRELATION != CAUSATION

[Repossessed]

No, but a lack of correlation *does* imply a lack of causation, if you can't show a correlation between DRM and a reduction in piracy, DRM must not reduce piracy. The sample size sucks in this story of course, which would be a valid complaint... excuse me while I try to formalize your fallacy.

(((A --> B), & (A)), --> (A&B)) --> !necessarily ((A&B) --> (A --> B))

Which is the formal for correlation does not equal causation, but you use this to reach, though steps I do not understand:

((A&!B) --> possibly (A --> B))

Which does not make sense in *any* context. Hmm, anyone know if this fallacy has a name? Or is it just proving the antecedent?

(apologies if you were responding to an idea DRM increases piracy, in which case you are correct)

Re:CORRELATION != CAUSATION

[shish]

Like "is the game worth actually spending money on?" is one variable that leaps to mind.

If it's so terrible it's not worth paying for, why download it? :-P

DRM is not about prevent piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM is about preventing sharing. I don't mean BitTorrent sharing. If you purchased a copy of a game from Walmart and want to lend it to a friend after you are done, DRM is designed to prevent that. Most (if not all) DRM solutions are bypassed before the game hits the torrents, making DRM worthless at preventing piracy. But a limited number of installs prevents honest customers from lending each other games. It also makes re-selling the game difficult if not impossible.

The game companies would certainly do this for consoles if they could (I believe Sony has a patent associated with it). It's one of the reasons why downloadable games are very popular. I've purchased the first two episodes of Penny Arcade Adventures for the Xbox 360. I have a friend who would like to give them a try. The DRM doesn't prevent an illegal download of the PC version of the game, it doesn't prevent me from lending a legal copy of the game to my friend.

Re:DRM is not about prevent piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, this point has been lost on everyone. DRM was never about piracy prevention, but about maximizing the number of people who would pay, to be forced to buy the game.

Same with Spore and the number of installs yada yada yada. They gouge those that do pay, and try to expand on that, because of "mythical" lost sales of piracy, but had piracy not gotten as big as it is, we would be in the same state of things.

Was it Sneakerware, that they once called it? Don't copy that floppy? lol good memories

Re:DRM is not about prevent piracy

[Joe Jay Bee]

DRM was never about piracy prevention, but about maximizing the number of people who would pay, to be forced to buy the game.

So, what you're basically saying is that DRM wasn't about piracy prevention, it was about making people buy the game instead of freeloading it (i.e. preventing piracy). Good one.

Personally, I don't see what's so horrible about stopping freeloaders, but hey.

80% seems pretty high

[pablodiazgutierrez]

Which explains why they're trying new ways of making people pay, as we saw recently...

Re:80% seems pretty high

[TubeSteak]

80% does seem pretty high, but a 10% difference in piracy rates would, generally speaking, strike me as statistically large enough to be called a "major difference".

Unless of course, their margin of error is greater than 10%, in which case their results are meaningless in any comparison.

Re:80% seems pretty high

[MaskedSlacker]

You must not have bothered to RTFA, because the point of the second portion of the article basically was that their margin of error was at least 10%.

sweet game

[PetriBORG]

I've been watching this game on Greenhouse - waiting for it to come out on Linux. It looks extremely cool, its sad that it gets pirated so much, but it seems it made no difference...

Re:sweet game

[carlzum]

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

Re:sweet game

[RichiH]

It works fine with Wine and the PC licence allows you to get all of the PC/Mac/Linux versions, anyway. At least that's the case for the pre-orders. Waiting for a Linux version is not a reason not to buy it :p

Re:sweet game

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been playing the windows version in wine and it works flawlessly.

Re:sweet game

[kiddygrinder]

dunno, i played the demo on wine then decided to hold off till the linux version was done, they should *always* (if they are going to make a cross platform version) make it easy to say "yes, i'm buying it but i'm playing it on linux in wine, so when's that platform's version coming out, you bastards", that way everyone would be happy, i could play it now and they would know i'm a whiney linux geek (and have my cash). win/win

Re:sweet game

[PetriBORG]

This is basically my reason for not buying it yet, I want to explicitly support Linux gaming.

Re:sweet game

[RichiH]

I pre-ordered _after_ I made the head dev promise there will be a Linux version. If no one had pre-ordered, there would be no game at all.

Believe me, the devs know that I only paid because they promised a Linux version. And I know they are sincere about the whole thing.

Re:sweet game

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I played a free version of part of this game several years ago. It was just called Tower of Goo. It was kind of fun for a while. When I saw it on WiiWare I thought about looking at it, but I've noticed a lot of WiiWare is actually available as free flash games online so I figured I'd check there first and never did.

Re:sweet game

[Maverynthia]

I remember when this games was shown to me about...how many moths ago...and they had a promise of a Linux version then "in beta testing". So, really I think they are blowing smoke at this point. How hard is it to make a Linux version, considering Mac OSX is based on a Linux system anyways.

Re:sweet game

[EvilIdler]

How is OS X based on Linux, exactly?

These numbers are misleading

[Jimmy_B]

The problem with using a per-game statistic for measuring piracy is that a pirate can play far more games than someone who doesn't pirate, but will play each of them less. If you have 25 pirates and 75 people who pay, and each paying person buys five games but each pirate downloads fifty, then each game will be pirated more than 75% of the time. (All of these numbers are pulled out of the air; I don't know the size of the effect, but economics dictates that the number of distinct games per person is at least somewhat higher for pirates.)

Re:These numbers are misleading

[mrsteveman1]

We can't let them get away with that, we must force them to play each game to the end, maybe with some kind of technological method?

Re:These numbers are misleading

[Lordnerdzrool]

Each game could come with a masked guy holding a whip.

Plus it makes the pirated version much less exciting.

Re:These numbers are misleading

[Qzukk]

Each game could come with a masked guy holding a whip.

Plus it makes the pirated version much less exciting.

The masked guy and whip only ship in the retail box?

Re:These numbers are misleading

[Fanboys_Suck_Dick]

From the publishers point of view it does not matter. The great majority of games generate revenue at the time of sale only. It doesn't matter to the publisher if the buyers play the game for 5 hours or 50. The publisher sees each instance of this as a lost chance to make revenue. The only type of game where I could see this making a difference is a game that has a monthly fee, but these games don't have a piracy problem because they are server based like World of Warcraft and access can be easily controlled by the developers.

That fact is that for your average popular PC game 70-90% of the people who played the game at some time never bought a copy. I've read similar developer accounts for the last few years. It's the reason publishers feel they have to include restrictive DRM in their PC games. For whatever reason, the vast majority of PC gamers don't pay for their games and developers are beginning to notice and shift their focus over to the consoles e.g. Gears of War 2 was abandoned on the PC due to piracy concerns. Only games that use online authentication like Steam or niche games with an established fanbase stand a chance on the PC platform. Even Call of Duty 4 had 90% of the people playing it on the PC never buy a copy.

http://kotaku.com/5056532/why-no-gears-of-war-2-for-pc-well-piracy-for-one

Re:These numbers are misleading

[pbhj]

We can't let them get away with that, we must force them to play each game to the end, maybe with some kind of technological method?

Perhaps the game could overwrite the MBR (keeping a copy) and install a custom bootstrap that goes back to the last point played in the game.

When you complete the game writes back your original MBR and you're free.

You'd need to hack some workarounds to boot-block protection.

Re:These numbers are misleading

[ultranova]

The masked guy and whip only ship in the retail box?

They could also be assembled from nanoparticle mist in the Steam version.

Re:These numbers are misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of kidnapping the princess, kidnap their sister imo.

Re:These numbers are misleading

[Pentium100]

Go to BIOS setup - select "boot sector protection" - done.
Or just boot from windows install cd to recovery console and type fixmbr.
Or just don't play the game (my choice).

Re:These numbers are misleading

[Jurily]

Each game could come with a masked guy holding a whip.

Make that a masked girl holding a whip, and I'll buy it.

Re:These numbers are misleading

[Blakey Rat]

Why is that relevant, again?

Whether he played it for an hour, or five hundred hours, he still pirated it. I don't get the point you're trying to make.

Re:These numbers are misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Make that a masked girl holding a whip, and I'll buy it.

In fact, forget the mask and whip!

Re:These numbers are misleading

[pbhj]

Me: You'd need to hack some workarounds to boot-block protection [to allow a game to properly overwrite the MBR].

You: Go to BIOS setup - select "boot sector protection" - done.

Erm? If they'd hacked a workaround to your BIOS setting, how does it help?

Re:These numbers are misleading

[Pentium100]

There is also a setting on my hard drive - "read only", you can't work around that...

However, if I read somewhere that a game was overwriting MBR, I certainly wouldn't buy or download it.

Tough demand curve.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The fellow interviewed in the Gamasutra link mentioned tracking piracy and purchase numbers across successive improvements of DRM. The punchline was rather chilling: For 1000 units not pirated, 1 additional sale resulted. At that rate, even if DRM were perfect, using it would be more about moral satisfaction than about economics.

I wonder: are those vast masses of pirates merely aquisitive types who enjoy the download and crack process(the way some people stockpile more music than the could ever listen to) but have no real interest in the product? Are they people without access to credit cards or other suitable online payment mechanisms(I suspect that at least some gaming minors would be willing to spend the money; but unable to get approval from somebody with a credit card)? Or are they merely cheap?

The second of those two categories seems like it would be the most interesting, and potentially profitable, to explore. If it turns out that transaction costs are turning people away, that would suggest that glomming onto actually functional electronic currency schemes(if one would get off the ground sometime before the heat death of the universe) or one of the existing consolidated payment setups(iTunes, Steam, etc.) could be of considerable use. If that isn't a factor, of course, then they'd probably be better off cutting out the middleman. I'd like to see some numbers.

Re:Tough demand curve.

[FooAtWFU]

Methinks a lot of them are college students with fast Internet connections and little or no budget of their own. Or high-school students. (Myself, I got out of the computer-game piracy business after I started making several tens of thousands of dollars a year. I've gone out of my way to buy most of the games I spent any significant amount of time with, as well.)

Re:Tough demand curve.

[JLF65]

Probably most of these people are more likely the "try before you buy" type. They used to rent the game for a night or two to see if it was worth buying. Now they use the internet instead of rental places. Given that 99.9% of games are worthless crap, most people who "try before they buy" will end up not buying the game. This makes it look like the game has heavy piracy when in reality it's simply crap not worth buying. Which do you think the game industry will claim? :)

Re:Tough demand curve.

[MadnessASAP]

Are you kidding me? Trying to download anything large over anykind of college or campus network is balls-achingly painful. The only college students who are going to be downloading anything are those with their own apartments and therefore own internet connection.

Re:Tough demand curve.

[supervillainsf]

Trying to download anything large over anykind of college or campus network is balls-achingly painful.

I don't know what college you go to, but I just downloaded the latest xcode dmg ( just under a gig in size ) in less than 3 minutes today on my campus. The experience resulted in no ball-aching on my part.

Re:Tough demand curve.

[Grimbleton]

This is me, in a nut shell. Sure, I download X amount of games a month, but most of them live on my hard drive for maybe two days (up to a month if I wasn't horribly interested in the first place and don't get around to installing them) before they're uninstalled and deleted.

There's no (that I know of) place to get PC game rentals, and I'm sure as hell not shelling out $40-60 for a brand new game if I'm only lukewarm on it, on a college student working part time budget.

Re:Tough demand curve.

[MaskedSlacker]

Congratulations you go to the shittiest college in the world.

My dorm building had what I assume was its own T3 connection at the time. We (a floor filled with science and engineering students) tried to kill it and couldn't.

DRM and relative sales

[wild_quinine]

Yet more evidence to suggest that piracy is absolutely rife, but that DRM is not any kind of solution. Personally, I played someone elses copy of this game. I enjoyed it, but can't justify buying it for myself. I don't intend to REplay it. However, I've bought it for my dear sweet old mum, for Christmas. So... that's one pirated version and one sale, from a marketing perspective. Mind you, these days the corporate view of second hand goods is that they're evil, let alone borrowed ones!

On the subject of DRM:

Sales of Fallout 3, which does not have significant DRM, have been 3:1 in favour of the 360 over the PC.

Sales of Bioshock, which was the first of the new terrible fuckurom releases, were 10:1 in favour of the 360.

There are a lot of factors in play here, but I'd like to believe that we are seeing something like consumers voting with their wallets.

Bioshock was really the first time I started to see major mainstream lashbacks against DRM, and represents the beginning of consumer awareness. So I guess we have something to thank them for after all, just not a game that we can easily play. NB. Both Fallout 3 and Bioshock used 'securom' but there is a world of difference in the implementation. In the case of Bioshock the executable code of the game isn't actually even on the disc! You download the EXE as part of the install routine from an activation server!

Re:DRM and relative sales

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unfortunately, customers don't seem to care about DRM per se, just DRM that fucks with their systems. In DRM terms, contemporary consoles are to PCs what cybernetically enhanced Yakuza ninja assassins armed with mind control shiruken are to mall security guards.

The latter are far more annoying; but the former are far, far more effective. It would not at all surprise me, given their experience with both WMRM and consoles, along with the overwhelming degree of dissatisfaction with current PC DRM, most of which does some seriously dubious stuff to your OS, if Microsoft simply decides to fold a DRM API of some sort into future versions of Windows. By virtue of controlling the OS, they would be able to offer equivalent or better DRM than would the third party stuff, with lower likelyhood of breaking things horribly.

Now, having the guys you buy your OS from in on the conspiracy to control your use of it is not exactly an improvement from the freedom perspective(and you might want to look into bidding fairwell to first sale); but it would quiet the people who oppose DRM merely on convenience grounds.

Re:DRM and relative sales

[MaskedSlacker]

Lower likelihood of breaking things horribly?

You don't use Windows much do you?

Re:DRM and relative sales

[Hal_Porter]

The 360 is packed full of DRM and it works. Last I heard you can crack the old kernel and play pirated games but new games will only run on the new kernel which has not been cracked. Upgrading and downgrading is pain.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uxjpmc8ZIxM

On the PC pretty much any new game will be on pirate bay with the DRM stripped out in a week or so. I personally buy games but clearly 90% of people don't. It's much less hassle to pirate on a PC than an Xbox 360, and actually less hassle than buying the game. Check Pirate Bay and download whatever you want. No need to drive to the store or cough up your $50 per game.

In the long run games companies will only release new games on consoles, and consoles will be locked down as effectively as cell phones are so cracking them will be impossible. Sad really.

Re:DRM and relative sales

[wild_quinine]

In the long run games companies will only release new games on consoles, and consoles will be locked down as effectively as cell phones are so cracking them will be impossible. Sad really.

I don't think that's a foregone conclusion.

Remember that at the point at which your security measures make a piece of entertainment software into something that is hard work, rather than fun, then the battle is already lost. That's a language that EVERYONE understands.

Mobile software is only just getting to the point where it's worth using at all. For years it has been so weighed down and hampered by restrictions that it has been largely ignored. A lot of the games are PAY PER PLAY, for goodness sakes!

Accordingly, it has taken a long, long time for mobile software sales to take off at all, and they're still nothing to write home about. At least one carrier in the UK almost went out of business banking on online content sales, only to discover that hardly anyone gave a crap.

Re:DRM and relative sales

[Dr_Barnowl]

Microsoft simply decides to fold a DRM API of some sort into future versions of Windows

A general-purpose PC is harder to secure, but you may be surprised to discover that these capabilities are already built into the hardware and the OS in many modern PCs. Vista requires you to turn on your Trusted Platform Module to enable Bitlocker.

Trusted Computing is the general moniker ; it's opponents, like the Free Software Foundation like to say "Treacherous Computing".

The main objection to it is that it places all the power in the hands of a few select holders of private encryption keys - and the user isn't one of them. In the console market, this is pretty much accepted, because the majority of folk just want a box that plays games. In the PC market, it permits holders of root keys unprecedented power, for example...

• The ability to literally force users to upgrade software by turning off their old software (or subsets of its features).
• The ability to restrict the opening of given documents, including your own.

All of these things already happen on Consoles ; the Wii refuses to open save-games for Twilight Princess (specifically crafted ones that enable an exploit), upgrading some parts of the OS disable it's ability to play MP3 in the photo viewer (in favour of AAC for some reason).

If it happened in PCs? Software manufacturers would love the ability to prevent you from porting your documents to other formats ; they'd have a customer for life. It has potential for good uses (so much so that there are Trusted Computing stacks even for Linux), but if it becomes ubiquitous, the potential for abuse is enormous.

Re:DRM and relative sales

[tomhudson]

consoles will be locked down as effectively as cell phones arepossible

There - fixed it to reflect the reality of cracked cellphones being available all over the place.

Re:DRM and relative sales

[Anonymous Coward]

if Microsoft simply decides to fold a DRM API of some sort into future versions of Windows. By virtue of controlling the OS

Isn't this what so called "Trusted" Computing is all about? (eg.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Secure_Computing_Base)

Re:DRM and relative sales

[JuicyBrain]

if Microsoft simply decides to fold a DRM API of some sort into future versions of Windows. By virtue of controlling the OS, they would be able to offer equivalent or better DRM than would the third party stuff, with lower likelyhood of breaking things horribly.

Good !
We could call it the COPA technology for Crack Once, Play All. We would only have to crack one technology to play all the games. If this ever happens, I may give Windows a try after all...

Re:DRM and relative sales

[darkonc]

..... if Microsoft simply decides to fold a DRM API of some sort into future versions of Windows. By virtue of controlling the OS, they would be able to offer equivalent or better DRM than would the third party stuff, with lower likelyhood of breaking things horribly.

It's called Vista, and some people consider it intrinsically broken. The built-in DRM is what results in it being considered slower and crankier. Every part of the system spends time looking for signs of being cracked, and if anything is out of whack, rather than try to work anyways, the system will proactively break.

This may be acceptable for a game console where all you intended to do with it is playing pre-packaged games games anyways, but it really sucks for people intending to use the system for real work (and especially for mission critical work).

Re:DRM and relative sales

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called Vista, and some people consider it intrinsically broken. The built-in DRM is what results in it being considered slower and crankier. Every part of the system spends time looking for signs of being cracked, and if anything is out of whack, rather than try to work anyways, the system will proactively break.

Wow, just, wow. You may wish to strongly consider the credibility of whoever told you that crap.

Re:DRM and relative sales

[Maverynthia]

Didn't Vista already have something like that called PMP or something? No doubt they can roll it into a Service Pack update that is mandatory.

Fantastic summary!

[dosun88888]

So, from the summary, we can infer that 8% of players typically buy DRMed games, and 18% of people bought this one, for an increase of over 100%, which makes the last part:

There seemed to be no major difference in the outcomes of the rate regardless of whether DRM was used or not... well, no difference other than the cost to implement such nonsense.

sound utterly retarded.

In the article you see that they think it's more like 90% and is at the very least 82%, so the summary is just crap. The god damn title of the post that it links to is "90%."

Anyhow, if it is actually 90% vs 92% then I disagree with their definition of significant, but who's counting. Yes, I think that selling 20% more is significant.

Feel free to correct me if I'm missing something big.

Counting IP's? Fail.

[Presence2]

They're counting IP connections of users who opt to check a box within the game as the foundation for their argument. It's difficult to take any Piracy/DRM conversation seriously when developers are using sensationally hyped math as a starting point. Pirates vs. buyers, static vs. dynamic IP's, and those who choose to check the box to upload their scores or not; three wildly oscillating figures they're saying = 90%.

Re:Counting IP's? Fail.

[C18H27NO3]

Funny, that. Isn't it interesting that any time piracy is involved the hot air spewed from the mouths of the opponents are wildly arbitrary numbers that they can't possibly back up but will most assuredly `always` be very high. Anywho, to me this reads as DRM not doing anything for the piracy aspect and keeping the honest users honest but aggravating them during the process with all of the protection measures.

Re:Counting IP's? Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh...

Re:Counting IP's? Fail.

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Not reading the article = Fail. They acknowledge their math is off and give reasons it would be off - such as static/dynamic ips and people who choose not to check the box. They're saying it's around 82% after that is taken into account.

Re:Counting IP's? Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the number of pirates that check to box that sends there IP is bigger than the number of buyers, then there are a lot of very dumb pirates, or your game sells like shit.

Re:Counting IP's? Fail.

[iammani]

They also claim to have an error margin of 10%. But with the measurements gp mentions, I would assume a error margin of atleast 50% (read, an arbitrary result)

Re:Counting IP's? Fail.

[ultranova]

Not reading the article = Fail. They acknowledge their math is off and give reasons it would be off - such as static/dynamic ips and people who choose not to check the box. They're saying it's around 82% after that is taken into account.

They don't know the values of several variables, but can nonetheless take them into account to arrive to a figure accurate to within a single percent. And you believe that. Epic fail.

Re:Counting IP's? Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is Slashdot, but if you read the entire blog post, you can see they accounted for the same user on multiple IPs. That's why the rate claimed (both in the article and in the Slashdot summary, FFS!) is not 90%, but 82%.

And yes, there are still some assumptions in that calculation, but they are counting smart enough that a reasonable reader could agree that the 82% figure is 'about right'.

What?

[Aphoxema]

One versus one? Hardly a definitive sample size. This doesn't really tell us anything about the state of copyright infringement (NOT PIRACY GOD DAMNIT) or DRM, it just tells us about these two games.

Re:What?

[pbhj]

Because the sun may not rise tomorrow ...

odd math

[socsoc]

TFA: we divided the total number of sales we had from all sources by the total number of unique IPs in our database, and came up with about 0.1. thatâ(TM)s how we came up with 90%.

Heaven forbid a legit user installs it on his laptop, takes it to the library, starbucks, work, university, a few friend's houses and whatever other wifi signals he comes across.

This math seems pretty flawed.

Re:odd math

[shentino]

Flawed yes, but I think it's better than just pulling numbers out of your ass.

Re:odd math

[phanboy_iv]

That's the point. They are kinda pulling numbers out of their ass. The way they're measuring piracy rates is way to inaccurate to give a reasonable figure. Take me. I bought the game, have it installed on Linux via Wine, and also under WinXP. When they release the Linux version, I'll use that.

Re:odd math

[IceCreamGuy]

FTA:

it's just an estimate though... there are factors that we couldn't account for that would make the actual piracy rate lower than our estimate:
* some people install the game on more than one machine
* most people have dynamic IP addresses that change from time to time
there are also factors that would make the actual piracy rate higher than our estimate:
* more than one installation behind the same router/firewall (would be common in an office environment)
* not everyone opts to have their scores submitted
for simplicity's sake, we just assumed those would balance out. so take take the 90% as a rough estimate.

I think they make it pretty clear that their math is flawed and based on shaky assumptions. If you scroll down further in the article there is an update, too, with much more detailed math and the final conclusion of an 82% piracy rate.

Re:odd math

[jonbryce]

Or even just has a dial up account that gives you a different IP address every time you connect.

Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

I downloaded it (the full version) to try it out. It's neat, but it's not my cup of tea so I deleted it. In my case there's no lost sale, as I was using the game as a demo. I'm sure a fairly large chunk of that "82%" probably downloaded the game so they wouldn't have to pay for it, but I think it's important to note that there are people who will just download something because it becomes available. They don't necessarily want it specifically, and will probably never touch it, but they download it anyway. It's my opinion based on my own experience (I have done zero formal research) that these people comprise the bulk of the "pirates". They didn't buy the game because they were never going to buy the game. Their downloads will get stashed on a DVD or a hard drive somewhere and then go ignored until the heat death of the universe.

Back when I was younger I was really into the "collecting" aspect of downloading software. I didn't know when or where I might need something (or indeed IF) but if I could get something my friends didn't have it felt like a victory of sorts, as did sharing what I had. I tell you, if I'd put half as much effort into my studies as I did into downloading I'd have a PhD by now. Now I waste all my time downloading music I never listen to. :D Some things never change.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[AKAImBatman]

I downloaded it (the full version) to try it out.

Here's an odd question: What is so horribly wrong with the demo that you refused to download it? If you had done so, you would be providing one less piracy statistic and instead providing a failed-conversion statistic. A failed-conversion tells the developer that they need to do better. A piracy statistic suggests that they're not getting paid for their hard work.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm. You know, and this says nothing good about me, it never even occurred to me to seek out a demo. I very seldom play new games because most games these days are either huge FPS/RPGs or strategy games or lame rehashes of Bejeweled, so when I saw something a little different I wanted to try it out. I'd hoped for a side-scrolling platformer, but alas, it was more like lemmings than anything else so...

To the devs, if you're out there reading this: I'm sorry. It's not you, it's me. I'm just an idiot. I hope you can forgive me.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[DigiShaman]

Piracy is wrong for sure. However, some demos are not time trial or usage count based, but rather an annoying form of "cripple-ware" with features missing or turned off. So I can understand why someone would pirate the full version to try it out. I personally don't see a moral problem with that approach. What I *do* have problem is when someone pirates software for personal productivity or enjoyment without paying for it. The relative questions being when and at what point should that distinction be made.

I honestly think we need to go back to the root of this issue. No technology needed. Just pay your due for rendered services. If your trying to cheat another man out of his labor, you should be smacked. Simply put, we're on the honor system and it's up to us to keep our fellow peers in check when they step out of line.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Here's an odd question: What is so horribly wrong with the demo that you refused to download it?

Because you can't trust demos. Over the years, demos have been the subject of just about every anti-consumer dirty trick you can think of from polished demos for hastily finished games to significantly different game play. If the real thing is available, why even bother with a potentially misleading demo?

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

"demos" come from shitty http download servers that are dirt slow and or make you wait. hey look at this ad too.

torrents dont

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[dp_wiz]

Maybe it is time for them to start counting pirating as "failed conversion" too? Not buying after playing is just this - game is not good enough.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Unrelated person, but I was introduced to this game by /v/. A bunch of people were going "OMG THIS GAME IS SO AWESOME YOU GOTTA TRY IT" while posting rapidshare/megaupload/mediafire links to the full version.

I downloaded it, played for about 20 minutes, and stopped. It just wasn't all that great. It feels like a free flash/java game - and in all honesty, I've played online flash/java games that were far more enjoyable. When I found out it was selling for $20 I almost did a spit-take. IF I was going to buy this game, you'd be hard pressed to get $5 out of me. Hell, I'd rather take that $5 to the grocery store and buy some chocolate bars.

On top of that, what I've been hearing from others, is that the guy who made this originally did the basics of it for a competition that he won, and then added on more components in his spare time to make the game being sold today. With 20,000 units sold, even with the claimed "90% piracy" rate the guy still would've made a huge chunk of money. It's not like this guy's pan handling out on main street now. He's got a well paying job, and he's getting rich off something he was doing in his spare time. All we're really talking about now are whether he gets rich, or megabucks rich.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

If the honor system worked that well, the world wouldn't need lawyers...

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Splab]

Demos can be severely limited, and also as creature creator showed us, they might piggyback some very very unwanted software.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Demo's are rushed buggy low quality versions of the game (at least my experience).

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[CSMatt]

I downloaded it (the full version) to try it out. It's neat, but it's not my cup of tea so I deleted it. In my case there's no lost sale, as I was using the game as a demo.

No, but from the game publisher's case it is. If you bought the game, hated it, and sold it at a break-even price, they still have your money. They honestly don't care whether or not you like the game, just that you buy it. Why do you think that most media is packaged in non-refundable shrink wrap?

Media publishers in the past were able to get rich off of hype and deceptive marketing because the potential buyers did not have the actual product yet. The Internet has, practically speaking, lessened the risk of buyer's remorse. It is harder to rely on customer ignorance than in the past since the bits can be downloaded free of charge, so from their perspective copyright infringement is costing them sales.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[EvilIdler]

The demo in the case of World of Goo is the whole first chapter. There should be enough game to form an opinion.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

I downloaded it (the full version) to try it out.

Here's an odd question: What is so horribly wrong with the demo that you refused to download it? If you had done so, you would be providing one less piracy statistic and instead providing a failed-conversion statistic. A failed-conversion tells the developer that they need to do better. A piracy statistic suggests that they're not getting paid for their hard work.

Because a demo is usually one of two things;

1. Cripple ware that doesn't actually resemble game play.

or

2. The best the game has to offer crammed into 15 minutes of game time, just like a movie trailer, and then everything is downhill from there.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[gknoy]

the guy who made this originally did the basics of it for a competition that he won, and then added on more components in his spare time to make the game being sold today. With 20,000 units sold, even with the claimed "90% piracy" rate the guy still would've made a huge chunk of money. It's not like this guy's pan handling out on main street now. He's got a well paying job, and he's getting rich off something he was doing in his spare time.

Whether or not the author is getting rich has NO BEARING on the ethics of pirating their creations. If they created a product worthy of you spending time with it (past a demo phase), they've created a product worthy of your money. Don't try to sugarcoat your actions by saying "well, he's rich anyways".

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[janrinok]

I cannot believe this. You are claiming that if you had downloaded the full game and decided that you liked it, then you (and others) would go out and buy the same game again simply for the pleasure of giving the makers your money? There might be a handful (perhaps one or two only) who would do this but I simply cannot accept that most of those who illegally download software will go out and make a donation (of the full sales price) to the originator if they find that they like it. It might be different for a demo, but if you already have the full game I will argue it never happens.

This is simply a claim to make those who download illegally feel justified about their actions. Its sort of 'I would have paid for each of these 100 games if I had found that I liked them - but of course I didn't like any of them that much.' If you don't like the games - stop downloading them.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought Braid and Spore on their demos. Never, ever making that mistake again.

Until demos go back to being like old Apogee/id shareware - with enough meat to them that I can appreciate the game and honestly want more - I'm not paying attention to them.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Dutchmaan]

A piracy statistic suggests that they're not getting paid for their hard work.

...or that they may be overcharging for it. I've enjoyed my fair share of pirated games and most seem to fall into the category of something I'd buy if it were cheaper.

Some titles I'm more than willing to pay full price for.. and I do pay for them. However a good majority fall into the, 'it's just not worth it' category.

Now I understand, that a studio needs a return on it's investment, but if it's a choice between overpaying, or piracy.. I'll go piracy.

Give me a reasonable payment option and I along with many others would likely take it.

Granted it may not make the studio the profit they were looking for, but it might be enough to keep it afloat and working (and improving) on a next title.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you can't trust demos. Over the years, demos have been the subject of just about every anti-consumer dirty trick you can think of from polished demos for hastily finished games to significantly different game play. If the real thing is available, why even bother with a potentially misleading demo?

Because you can't trust trailers. Over the years, trailers have been the subject of just about every anti-viewer dirty trick you can think of from polished trailers for hastily finished movies to significantly different scenes. If the real thing is available, why even bother with a potentially misleading trailer?

If the movie wasn't good, why pay for it? If it was good, why pay for it, it isn't like it is any thing that you haven't seen before?

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I completely agree. Trailers and even a large number of bought-and-sold reviews.
Its not in any movie-goer's best interests to pay based on hype and false hopes.
Just because a lot of people act against their own best interests, doesn't mean it is the smart thing to do.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

On top of that, what I've been hearing from others, is that the guy who made this originally did the basics of it for a competition that he won, and then added on more components in his spare time to make the game being sold today. With 20,000 units sold, even with the claimed "90% piracy" rate the guy still would've made a huge chunk of money. It's not like this guy's pan handling out on main street now. He's got a well paying job, and he's getting rich off something he was doing in his spare time. All we're really talking about now are whether he gets rich, or megabucks rich.

Yeah, I only mug rich people, it's not like they need the money. At least I think they are rich. All we are talking about here are how rich they remain.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely agree. Trailers and even a large number of bought-and-sold reviews.
Its not in any movie-goer's best interests to pay based on hype and false hopes.
Just because a lot of people act against their own best interests, doesn't mean it is the smart thing to do.

So what you are saying is that because it is the smart thing to do it, pirating is right?

To prevent piracy, one would have to make it not smart then. Like making the risk so big that it is not smart. 20 years in jail and personal bankrupcy seems like it would do it. To further increase the risk, a high sum could be paid to people who tell on others.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Dachannien]

That's obviously the game publishers' argument, because it bolsters their case, but they have yet to provide evidence that the people ripping off these games/movies/songs would have paid for them sight-unseen.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Lakitu]

The World of Goo demo is like 30 megabytes.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Lakitu]

The World of Goo demo is practically a replica of a doom- or wolf3d-style demo.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Kjella]

Whether or not the author is getting rich has NO BEARING on the ethics of pirating their creations.

I'm sorry, but if I stole 200$ from the poor so they can't afford food or rent this month or if I stole it from Bill Gates there's an ethical difference. Both are wrong, but at least in my ethics praying on the weak and defenseless makes it extra heinious and despicable. Phrase it this way: Is pirating a poor author's creations no worse than pirating a rich author's creations? I think it's worse, not good and bad but bad and worse.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So what you are saying is that because it is the smart thing to do it, pirating is right?

Yes.

To prevent piracy, one would have to make it not smart then. Like making the risk so big that it is not smart. 20 years in jail and personal bankrupcy seems like it would do it. To further increase the risk, a high sum could be paid to people who tell on others.

No. You've heard of the carrot and the stick? Your solution is all stick and no carrot.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, in this case the demo contained the whole of the first chapter which contains some 10-15 levels with no time limit, crippled features, etc. Other than giving the entire game away for nothing (as far too many freeloaders on this forum seem to think would have have been the best idea) what else could the developers have done? Plus, as has been pointed out already, it's only $20 - it's not like you're risking all that much cash.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

A piracy statistic suggests that they're not getting paid for their hard work.

...or that they may be overcharging for it. I've enjoyed my fair share of pirated games and most seem to fall into the category of something I'd buy if it were cheaper.

Some titles I'm more than willing to pay full price for.. and I do pay for them. However a good majority fall into the, 'it's just not worth it' category.

Now I understand, that a studio needs a return on it's investment, but if it's a choice between overpaying, or piracy.. I'll go piracy.

There are more than those two options. One is not playing the games.

Another option, still illegal though. Is that if you think that the games are worth half the price and you pirate ten games. Buy five of those.

Give me a reasonable payment option and I along with many others would likely take it.

Granted it may not make the studio the profit they were looking for, but it might be enough to keep it afloat and working (and improving) on a next title.

Most companies want to keep more than afloat.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You've heard of the carrot and the stick? Your solution is all stick and no carrot.

The pyramids and the chineese wall were both built using the stick only. They are really great accomplishments.

The game happens to be the carrot. People steal the carrot. The carrot does not work.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[cliffski]

So do you take the same approach with movies? ie, sneak in and watch the whole movie, then maybe flip some coins to the till on the way out?
After all, you can't trust trailers can you.
Also, take cars. That test drive is a very inaccurate demo. You don't get to test the car at night or in the snow. Way better to steal the car, and then pay the manufacturer in 10 years time once you are sure you like it right?

Face facts, people pirate because they want to take stuff for free and don't care about the developer. it has fuck all to do with the nature of the demo.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[cliffski]

If I had the option of not paying for restaurant meals at the end of them, suddenly no food would be up to my *standards*.

A pathetic excuse.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[mollymoo]

While it's true that there are a lot of "collectors" out there accounting for big chunks of the downloads and distorting the figures, the ones I've known never buy anything they can download. While they certainly wouldn't buy as many games/music/movies as they pirate, I'm pretty confident that if the choice was no games/music/movies or paying, they would be buying a hell of a lot more games/music/movies than they do now.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[c0d3g33k]

Bad examples. It's more like going to a friend's house to watch a movie, then deciding you like it enough to buy a copy for yourself. Or going to a library, reading a book and liking it enough to want a personal copy. Or borrowing a book.

The existence of ways to experience something without payment to the original creator doesn't preclude a purchase if someone wants a copy for themselves. The missing piece seems to be to give people enough of a reason to want a personal copy.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree. DEMO are misleading. Take a recent game DEMO, James Bond: Quantum of Solace. The game make use of COD4 engine, which is great for movie-based game. I played the demo, it's smooth and I enjoyed it although it's simply short. So I bought the full original game from the retail just to find out that the game SUCKS! The game stuttering ALOT on my averagely powerful PC. I think I played tottally two different game here... Ahh, there's my money spent to crappy FULL VERSION game...

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

See the Mirror's edge demo vs the full retail game.

Awesome demo, game wears thin quickly.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Blakey Rat]

Yes, but your example is bad also.

If you watch a movie at your friend's house and decide you want it, you can't just take it from him and keep it until the end of time. Unless you're an asshole. Ditto with the library.

In the pirating case, however, there's no practical difference between pirating the product and owning your own copy. So the incentive to buy your own isn't there in the same way it is with the "book" and "movie" examples above.

What it really comes down to is that software pirates delude themselves to make their illegal activities "ok", and one of the most popular delusions is, "I was just trying it out, I wasn't going ot keep it." Sure, and four years later you're *still* "trying it out". Complete crap.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Pentium100]

To prevent piracy, one would have to make it not smart then. Like making the risk so big that it is not smart. 20 years in jail and personal bankrupcy seems like it would do it. To further increase the risk, a high sum could be paid to people who tell on others.

So it would be actually better to rob someone then use the money to buy software instead of pirating said software?

Also, the day this becomes a law is the day I stop playing games and restart my hobby of recording music from the radio...

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[c0d3g33k]

It's closer to the real situation than "sneaking into a theater" or "eating a meal in a restaurant and not paying" or even "stealing a car".

And there are differences between a downloaded copy and a "real" purchased copy which have value. Physical things like packaging, a manual etc. Economic value like the ability to resell. Well, the latter has been neutered by no-return policys and the crusade against pre-owned media, but it's one reason to own a real, tangible good. Then there's the ability to actually provide proof of ownership. I've been advocating on GoG that they provide proof of ownership for those that request it. A real certificate, maybe, or a GPG-signed/validated digital certificate.

The point being that there might be ways to provide an incentive to "buy your own" which actually reflect economic reality as it applies to other goods. And maybe those ways ought to be explored and applied. If people only bought/sold things because they were forced to, economic systems wouldn't work. Fair exchange and payment are natural human tendencies. If that isn't being fostered then something is wrong and someone is missing something somewhere. In the case of infinitely replicable digital data, what seems to be missing is the benefit of purchase that exists for practially every other good in the world.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The pyramids and the chineese wall were both built using the stick only. They are really great accomplishments.

Shows what little you know.

The game happens to be the carrot. People steal the carrot. The carrot does not work.

Lol. Your lack of imagination -- particularly when surrounded by so many contrary examples -- is only your failure, not the rest of the world's.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So do you take the same approach with movies? ie, sneak in and watch the whole movie, then maybe flip some coins to the till on the way out?
After all, you can't trust trailers can you.

Ignoring the issue of consumption of physical resources (at a minimum, a seat at the theater), then yes.
It is definitely in your best interests to get something for free if you can. That is not a moral issue, it is an economic one. If the business model is such that freeloaders make it unprofitable, then the business model is flawed, which is why your suggestion to "maybe flip some coints to the till on the way out" sounds so trite.

The CueCat business model was flawed, yet nobody seriously felt that we had an obligation to conform to it. What CueCat should have done, and the movie industry needs to do, is change their business model such that either it is not possible for freeloaders to get their product, or harness the freeloaders to actually increase revenue. I am in favor of variations on the ransom model, like subscriptions, which use freeloaders as free advertising and at the same time reduces risk to the creators. But there are other options too, it is a matter of evaluating the constraints of the current marketplace - not the marketplace of 100 years ago - and figuring out what models make sense given those constraints.

Face facts, people pirate because they want to take stuff for free and don't care about the developer. it has fuck all to do with the nature of the demo.

Yes and no. People do want stuff for free, that is human nature and you will never change that. But "fake" demos are just the flipside of the same coin - they are an example of developers wanting stuff for free (advertising) and not caring about the customer. If you have a moral issue with piracy, then you should also have the exact same moral issue with "fake" demos.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[level4]

You're a Brit, so maybe you don't know about tipping.

In many countries in the world, a tip of around 20% for service is considered normal, even obligatory. In theory, if service is indeed not "up to your standards", you can leave nothing at all. In practise, almost everyone tips at or near the generally accepted level.

People could use your "pathetic excuse" to never tip, but they almost always do. Hell, I'm not even a yank, so I've got another excuse not to tip - "that's not my culture!". But in America, I always tip, 20% on the dot. Social pressure wins every time. So I bet that even if paying for restaurant meals was "optional", you'd still pay, unless you're some kind of sociopath who isn't capable of noticing or caring that people hate them.

I have had access to pretty much any music I want for free since 1998. I still seem to have a lot of CDs. Basically any band that makes it into my "A-list", I go buy all their CDs. Why? I don't know. There's no economic advantage. A pride thing, a social pressure thing, a status thing? You tell me.

I've had a DVD burner since the early 2000s. There has been nothing stopping me burning my own copies of DVDs, for a marginal or zero cost, since then. I have actually never done this even once. Why? Same as above, I guess? And I don't want to look like a cheap-ass loser to my friends. Or myself.

Why am I mentioning these things? Well, I just think your worldview is too black and white. There is not a sharp line between good paying customers and illegal thieving pirates. It's more like a gradient. Plenty of artists where I only have their "good" CD. I've got the rest of the albums on mp3, they're just not worth spending the $30 on (or, these days, storing the damn things forevermore - almost more of a factor!).

Similarly, I own a number of, say, iD software games. There were some shitty ones, and I never bought them. They just didn't deserve that vote. But I'll pay money for games I like, no problem at all. I'll pay a LOT of money for games I actually want. In fact I've previously said on this site that I'd pay pretty much any reasonable amount for remakes of some of my favourite games, say Marathon 2 or Final Fantasy 7. If there was a PS3 with FF7v2 in ROM and useless for anything else that costs $1000 and that was the only way to get it ... I would buy that in a heartbeat, lol.

So it's complex. Your worldview seems to be about a binary world of "filthy thieving callous dishonest pirates" vs "angels who can do no wrong". In reality, everyone I know is a mixture of the two.

Which am I, angel or thief? I own many more CDs than average. But I've "stolen" many more times than that again. I probably own 10 times as many games as the average consumer. But I've pirated 100 times more. But I've given the industry thousands of dollars! But I've stolen many times more! Which is it?

Grey. It's a word, it's an area, it's a colour, it's a point on a sliding scale between black and white. Turn up the bit depth on your display of the world, maybe you'll start to see an awful lot of it.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[jmorris42]

> I'm sorry, but if I stole 200$ from the poor so they can't afford food or rent this month or if I
> stole it from Bill Gates there's an ethical difference. Both are wrong...

Of course the more popular political philosophy right now says seizing Mr. Gate's money and 'spreading that wealth around' isn't even wrong. Do these Hollywood (and RIAA, game publishers, etc) assholes realize that their support for the one leads to the current attitudes regarding 'piracy' as day leads to night? Just take a look at Robin Hood[1] as understood in popular modern culture, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Robin Hood is a hero. And they think they can convince people to stop pirating stuff from multi-billion dollar corporations that the liberal establishment, including every one of the large media outfits, spends most it's time preaching are 'evil rapacious corporations who control the government through lobbists.'

[1] Note I qualify that with 'as understood in modern popular culture.' Robin Hood is actually somewhat more complex, even in the Disney version. But everybody has been conditioned to believe something entirely different and more in line with proper Marxist teachings. A proper reading of the source materials (or even Disney, Walt was still influencing production so they didn't hose the story totally) show Robin as a loyal royalist fighting against an usurper who was oppressing the people and a few merchants enriching themselves through their loyalty to the usurper. It is doubtful Robin objected to paying his taxes to King John when he returned from the Crusades and no legend has him 'redistributing' the King's wealth.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[aldwin]

That's why I now make sure I've checked here to see if there's a review before I buy a game. Actual (sarcastic as hell) reviews, rather than paid-for fluff pieces.

There are several games I haven't bought because of this site, and had friends confirm their crappiness. Also, there have been a couple of games I have bought, that I otherwise wouldn't have looked twice at.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. When food hasn't met my standards at restaurants I complain. Its rare that I need to, but good restaurants take it off the bill if you were not satisfied.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[cliffski]

bullshit. I have an issue with people taking my hard work for free. That's ripping off over a years hard work for zero compensation. If someone downloads a fake file and thinks they were ripping me off, why the hell should I give a damn how they feel? They were trying to rip me off, they got what they deserved.

If someone cuts their finger trying to break into my house, I don't give a fuck, so why should I care if someone wasted some bandwidth trying to steal my games?
Trust me, I don't. They made the first move in trying to act like an asshole, it's no good crying about lost time to the guy you wanted to steal from.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

bullshit. I have an issue with people taking my hard work for free.

Tough shit. The world doesn't owe you squat. And as long as you are stuck in an emotional response to an economic problem you will NEVER come to a successful solution. NEVER. Enjoy your anger, because no one else gives a damn.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

You have an interesting concept of "facts," I suggest a dictionary and maybe an encyclopaedia so you can understand that word.

The rest of your examples are also pretty terrible:
1) Plenty of game demos have started coming with SecuROM and StarForce, these have crippled people's machines and required significant repair work on their part. Just because the game in question claims to not have this in it, doesn't matter, people have come to distrust demos. Gameplay arguments are semi valid, some demos are tailored to make the game look much better and more polished than all the levels actually are.
2) If you steal a car you have actually removed resources from the manufacturer. Game development is a fixed cost whether they sell 1 or 1 million copies. Therefor copyright infringement of a game is not the same as car theft. Please try and come up with better arguments.
3) When you purchase a movie ticket you are renting the seat from the theater, this usually comes with other amenities such as comfy cushions, fat speakers, and air conditioning to make purchasing this seat worthwhile. A lot of us do this for movies such as Quantum of Solace that we are fairly certain we want to see and refuse to do so for things such as Tropic Thunder, which may suck. Instead we get them for vastly reduced prices from Netflix or catch it for 2 bucks at the 2nd run theater where we can have a beer, but I suppose that would be "stealing" too right?

Quit trying to equate downloading games with other activities, you fail to consider the contrasting elements and it makes your whole argument look ridiculous (which it actually is).

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[cliffski]

you clearly don't, but then clearly you don't give a fuck about other people. yay for you.
Some people actually give a toss about others, including those that entertain them or make stuff they find helpful. Your attitude means you probably don't know anyone that nice.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Mister_Stoopid]

I haven't read the source materials, but I the strong implication (I'm think it's outright stated, but I don't have a citation) is that the usurper was taxing and oppressing the people to an unbearable degree that King John never did. I don't think there's really enough evidence to determine weather Robin did what he did out of loyalty to John or out of hate for oppression, because those two motivations both dictated the same actions.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had the option of not paying for restaurant meals at the end of them, suddenly no food would be up to my *standards*.

Well guess what... I have the option of not tipping for restaurant meals after the service, yet somehow I still feel that most service is worth 20% of the bill.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

you clearly don't, but then clearly you don't give a fuck about other people. yay for you.

Clearly? The only thing that's clear is you have a reading comprehension problem. Go back and read what I wrote. I've already discussed ways for people to get paid for their work that do not rely on something so pathetic as the kindness of strangers.

So while, I'm talking about workable solutions, you have just been whining. To my eyes its the self-centered whiner who doesn't "give a fuck about other people" and is completely typical of someone too incompetent to get past the emotional response of self-entitlement and get on to the business of making money in the real world.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Perky_Goth]

You're starting to make me sorry I actually bought a couple of your games. Just shut up.

Re:Piracy != Lost Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had the option of not paying for restaurant meals at the end of them, suddenly no food would be up to my *standards*.

A pathetic excuse.

Well, this to me seems to be more of a question of morals. The ability to pirate content exists and is very hard to stop. The ability to reward the creator exists. It's down to the individual's discretion.

Given the freedom to choose whether to reward another person for efforts that have produced some tangible or intangible benefit (situations such as freely available pirated copies of entertainment media, be it games, movies or music, or "payment-optional" restaurant food as per your example) people fall into certain categories (these are broad, so please excuse my generalisations, but seem to cover most people):

-- Those who will always pay for anything they consume, without question - the "best customers" for obvious reasons.

-- Those who free-ride as much as possible and don't pay at all - the ones who download everything without a thought to paying. There's not a lot you can do about these people.

-- Finally, those who pay after-the-fact on the basis of merit but have no qualms about piracy in the first place. I must admit I fall into this category. If the potentially-free meal was nice, I'd certainly pay what I felt reasonable. If I particularly like a movie or album I download, I'll be buying the DVD/CD for my collection or going to a concert. If I download a game and I like it, regardless of whether I've already finished it, I'll feel obliged to purchase a copy to reward the developer.

I'm obviously rather personally biased, but I feel that people who fall into the third category are best for all the industries involved - they pirate a lot of content, but make sure they pay for what they consider good quality. Thus, the problem is quality, not piracy. You can't stop the hard-line pirates, but you can produce better quality output to please the try-before-you-buy crowd. People being exposed to more media than they would be were they to pay for everything up front is a good thing, but only if the content is of a quality to back it up.

Awesome game

[mrsteveman1]

I only heard about this game because of the piracy story here on slashdot, went and played the demo, and loved it. I'm gonna buy the full version now.

Hows that for irony?

Re:Awesome game

[Anonymous Coward]

I just bought it too.

Good production and looks really great. Also good that they are supporting Macs.

Re:Awesome game

[lokpest]

1) Make a Crybaby story about how many people pirate your DRM-free game

2)Make sure story hits /.

3) ???

4) PROFIT!

Re:Awesome game

[Anonymous Coward]

You lie.

Re:Awesome game

[KermodeBear]

I did the same thing a while ago when the author of Democracy 2 was featured on Slashdot when he asked the gaming community about why they pirate.

I had never heard of Positech or their games, but since this developer was being pretty cool with the piracy responses, I downloaded the demo of Democracy 2. Fun game. Bought it.

Re:Awesome game

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't call that irony, rather a perfectly played slashvertisement. 2dboy is just pimping his game here and pandering to the anti-DRM crowd.

Re:Awesome game

[Anonymous Coward]

This looks like a fantasticcontraption knockoff.

Re:Awesome game

[arkhan_jg]

I played the demo on steam, thought it was pretty good, and went to buy it in the UK. And it's not available in my region. And the website is down (presumably from a slashdotting), so no direct download either.

On the other hand, there's copies available right now for free by various piracy means.

Sigh. Staying honest is *really* tough sometimes.

Re:Awesome game

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Same here. I bought the game a few hours ago and it's awesome.

Re:Awesome game

[Cochonou]

World of Goo is one of the winners of the 2008 Independant Games Festival. You should keep an eye on that competition, it really churns out a number of very good games.

Re:Awesome game

[Anonymous Coward]

That is probably the point. Get some PR for your game from a pirating angle.

Re:Awesome game

[ultranova]

On the other hand, there's copies available right now for free by various piracy means.

Sigh. Staying honest is *really* tough sometimes.

Download the game from Pirate Bay now, and send money when possible. It's not that tough ;).

Re:Awesome game

[FinnWinter]

If you define irony as "the author's free advertising via Slashdot has had exactly the intended effect" then yeah, I'd say you were right.

Say, you should hook up with my friend Alanis some time; you'd like her.

Re:Awesome game

[sponga]

I knew there would be a comment like yours that would be shot up immediately with +5 as if it somehow reflects the market and the mentality of the pirates.

In reality if you have the full pirated game for free than there is no point in going to buy it, get this through your thick skull that it is impossible to compete against free. Maybe if this were a multiplayer game than you would have a point as some people would be forced into buying it, but that is not the case and turning a naive blind eye to what really goes on.

People are lazy and the hypocrite defends of thepiratebay are getting a taste of their own medicine.
Unfortunately a lot of the comments around here will be "oh I pirated it, loved it so much that I had to buy it". It was the same thing with the Radiohead syndrome, I went straight to thepiratebay and got the biggest disc collection download.

I pirated the game and played it all the way through without buying it(not really). Mod me up. Mod points do not equal what is really going on in the real world, but rather an agenda with a click of a button.

But hey turn a blind eye to what really is going on, back to the RIAA war....
This company should go bankrupt soon, sad but true.
Hows that for irony?

Re:Awesome game

[mrsteveman1]

I don't recall saying anything about TPB....

I simply said it is ironic that a story about piracy lead me to a game i wouldn't have otherwise known about, BECAUSE of the piracy.

Re:Awesome game

[Seth Kriticos]

You should have pirated it, then copied it to 50 of your friends, then bought a legal copy of it and complain about pirates ripping the un-DRM-ed game. That would eventually qalify as irony.

Re:Awesome game

[richmaine]

Yup. Me too. I guess slashvertizing works.

I was intrigued when I saw that it was a drm-free game and had a Mac version available. That's two thumbs up for me. Saw that it had a playable demo. (A third thumb?) Played with the demo a little and decided it seemed at least half decent. Ok, out of thumbs, Bought a copy.

Oh, and I then sent them a short email saying pretty much the above, so that they know those things influenced my purchase.

Hmm. And it looks like a good xmas gift for one of my nephews. I'll likely buy a second one for that.

Piracy = Sales? or DRM ftw?

[Anonymous Coward]

I pirated this game for the windows platform to try out, really enjoyed it and then bought a copy for the wii platform. where it has natural wii DRM. hmm, but a better interface). I doubt this fits the statistics.

Wow, that's a really bad hed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the point that the DRM-free piracy rate was NOT high, compared to the DRM rate? WTF?

Nothing to see here...

[L4m3rthanyou]

I don't see how such statistics are even useful, anyway. Piracy is an unfortunate market force, an inevitable cost of doing business. We all know that. Clearly, it hasn't stopped games from being profitable.

I think that even the most thickheaded publishers are starting to figure out that trying to stop piracy is futile, at least for single-player games. It would seem to me that most developers releasing their stuff DRM-free have simply stopped worrying about what's being "taken" from them, and refocused on maximizing their income. In the ever-expanding world of online gaming, where authoritative control is actually possible, the DRM makes sense and will continue to be used. It's all about the benefit against the cost.

In other words... DUH.

Only "/." conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm wiggle room:

A) People stop producing good content. Youtube wins.

or

B) Too much risk for too much loss. Sequel after boring sequel. EA wins.

or

c) Games move to another less hackable platform. Consoles and MMORGS win.

or

D) Games move to Steam. Everyone wins...except for those boycotting on principles.

Re:Only "/." conclusion

[Klaus_1250]

or
E) Game producers turn pirates into paying customers and embrace distribution methods people prefer without harassing them. Reality is that most people pirate stuff they wouldn't buy in the first place. No loss there except free marketing. The only problem is people pirating stuff they would normally buy. But with a good product, good support and harassment-free incentives to buy the product, you should be able to turn those people into paying for products.
PS:

D) Games move to Steam. Everyone wins...except for those boycotting on principles.

Personally, I don't like Steam for the simple reason it annoys the hell out of me. I can't start games without Steam throwing ads at me for products I don't care about and it increase the loading time of games significantly. Impulse from Stardock is much better in that respect (disclaimer: I purchase most of my games through Impulse. I used to buy games from EA, or well, the studios it has taken over, but I can't remember the last time I did).

Re:Only "/." conclusion

[Dachannien]

I'm not sure this works with all games on Steam, but for a lot of the ones I've bought, I can just create a shortcut to the game executable directly. (The Steam-created shortcuts actually run Steam first and then run the game.)

Re:Only "/." conclusion

[Jurily]

Reality is that most people pirate stuff they wouldn't buy in the first place. No loss there except free marketing. The only problem is people pirating stuff they would normally buy. But with a good product, good support and harassment-free incentives to buy the product, you should be able to turn those people into paying for products.

Spot on. Case study: me and WoW.

I started playing on a free server, after one of my friends started doing so as well. The client itself has no copy protection whatsoever, it's fully playable by just copying over the game directory and running wow.exe.

Meanwhile, I moved 2000 miles, and now I'm in the position to pay the monthly fee, so I decided to do so. I wouldn't have considered buying it, let alone pay monthly, had I not played it before.

Re:Only "/." conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you didn't grow up like me in the Commodore VIC20 generation of tape-loading for 15 minutes with only a 60% chance of arriving at the menu screen anyway! ;)

Seriously though, I really don't mind the load times on Steam and I don't mind paying for games/movies. The problem is that I'm paid too little to warrant $50 per game for the most part and I know there are many people out there who feel the same or more strongly about pricing. I expect to be paid for my (very high quality) work and I think it's fair to expect to pay for quality games/movies (demos provided to try to show you their product is deserving). I know that a lower price point would convince principled people like myself to buy things - how many other people are really so firm on not pirating? If I want something but can't afford it/justify the cost, I just don't get it. Rare behaviour though methinks.

Popularity

[kasdaye]

Call me crazy, but I'd wager that the popularity of a title is a huge factor. More people want to play a EA or Microsoft Games title than something from an indie developer (usually), and thus a higher percentage of pirated copies of the former will be in use, thanks to the larger amount of interest in the game. Personally, I've never heard of World of Goo before.

Rate of piracy doesn't matter...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

On the surface, at least, it seems to be a good thing that these guys are doing this sort of empirical analysis. But it seems to me that it isn't the rate of piracy that matters, it is the rate of actual sales. That is hard to control for because you have to take into account the sukekekeness of the game - but in theory you should have to account for teh sukeke when evaluating piracy stats too.

Terrible study

[RichPowers]

This study is deeply flawed. Optional checkboxes? A reliance on IP addresses (dynamic, logging in from multiple locations, etc.)? I eagerly await the technical analyses of the study's flaws.

This story is making the rounds surprisingly fast, which is fucking terrible. The study is flawed, but how many readers will see that? Will they take this 80% piracy rate at face value? I really hope not.

To those who think piracy will ruin PC gaming by making profitability impossible, I offer the following analysis of the sales of another DRM-free game: Sins of a Solar Empire.

In September, Stardock reported that Sins sold over 500,000 units: 400,000 at retail and 100,000 online. For the sake of these back-of-the-envelope calculations, I'll assume that the average retail price is $40. The online price is $40. I'll round down total sales to 500,000.

So 500,000 * $40 = $20 million. We know that Stardock took in at least $4 million by virtue of online sales. I don't know enough about retail sales to estimate how much retailers take in per sale.

Sins cost less than $1 million to make. After the retailers get their cut, and Stardock pays for Impulse's bandwidth, I'll estimate that they pocketed at least $10 million, probably more. (I'm being conservative.)

That's at least a 10:1 return on their investment. That sounds like a killing! And Stardock/Ironclad plans several micro expansions in the coming months.

Even with piracy, Stardock did quite well. Hell, even if piracy is 90% (which I think is a buncha crap), they still made plenty of dough. Why? As explained by Brad and others:

1) Ironclad/Stardock kept costs low. I hate how the industry creates these multimillion dollar games that necessitate a huge number of sales to recoup development costs. Piracy or not, the PC gaming market is simply too small to fully recoup the dev costs of today's AAA games (not enough high-end PCs etc. etc.). That's why big-budget games need multiplatform sales.

2) Relatively low system reqs.

3) Sins is a PC game. At the moment, you simply can't have a Sins-like experience on a console. Stardock's offering a game that takes advantage of the PC's strengths. Imagine that, appealing to your target audience. AFAIK, the game doesn't suffer from "consolitis."

4) Excellent customer support and relations. Patches, active forums, listening to customers. The other day, Brad left a post on a somewhat obscure topic at CivFanatics. He wanted to to clear up any misconceptions about Stardock's upcoming fantasy 4X game to an audience that's clearly interested in 4X stuff.

5) Lots of positive press. Slashdot and other PC/geek sites responded positively to the company's anti-DRM messages, the PC gamer bill of rights, etc. This probably attracted customers and overall goodwill.

Now if Sins isn't your kind of game, you probably don't care either way. What I'm arguing is that it's possible to profit handsomely in the non-MMO PC game market, provided you know your audience and release a game worth playing. Having good marketing and PR certainly helps, too.

Source: http://news.bigdownload.com/2008/09/04/over-500-000-total-sins-of-a-solar-empire-units-sold/

Re:Terrible study

[DeadDecoy]

I think one of the reasons sins does well is that the main developer or manager targets these games at people who will pay for them: my guess is young adults who have money, like strats, and might want to play a game with friends. When I consider World of Goo, the target audience is much larger and the game size is much smaller. The former increases those who might distribute the game and the latter increases the likelihood of the game being distributed. I for one, would rather shell out 40$ then spend a week torrenting a 4gb game. I like World of Goo and hope the devs are successful but there are some features that make it more susceptible to piracy. My suggestion would be to make (non-lan) internet play a bigger feature and do some serial checking like steam or bnet. Otherwise, they might do better by focusing on a target audience that pays.

Re:Terrible study

[Ash-Fox]

In September, Stardock reported that Sins sold over 500,000 units: 400,000 at retail and 100,000 online. For the sake of these back-of-the-envelope calculations, I'll assume that the average retail price is $40. The online price is $40. I'll round down total sales to 500,000.

Wow, that's quite a lot.

I wouldn't pirate Stardock's games though for one reason - They have nothing I want to obtain in the first place.

Re:Terrible study

[Carbon016]

DRM-free game Sins of a Solar Empire

Hahahaha, no.

Re:Terrible study

[JimboFBX]

Typically software wholesalers will see about $20 - $30 per copy. I think its usually $20. However, for the online games, its a lot closer to the actual price the consumer pays.

So in reality, its more like 400,000 * $20 + 100,000 * $50 = $13,000,000

Another thing, is that actual sales or shipped units? I'm not sure if they can keep track of actual sales. Retailers will often return unsold software for a refund.

Thats a pretty impressive number though, I was under the impression the game wasn't doing too hot since no stores in my area picked it up until a few weeks after it came out, and when they did it was about 2 copies.

Re:Terrible study

[Anonymous Coward]

Sins is awesome, primarily because of the scale, and from that, the scalability of the game.
 
It's possible to setup a quick game that you can finish relatively easily. It's equally possible to setup a game that can literally take you months to finish, if thats your cup of tea.
 
3 friends of mine and I have had an ongoing game for the past 3 months or so, playing a few hours every weekend, and we're not entirely sure what we're going to do on sunday afternoon once someone actually wins...

Re:Terrible study

[Anonymous Coward]

I am curious, why do you hope that 80% will not be taken at face value?

Is it because you believe it is vastly exaggerating the true extent of piracy? Or do you think it might be in the ballpark, only that it will be used towards purposes you disagree with?

so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I admit it, I pirated world of goo because I thought it sounded sorta cool. to be honest, it's still sitting in the torrent downloads folder and it hasnt been looked it. I guess that counts as part of the 80%, but you can hardly claim I would have bought it otherwise. I mean, shit, I havent even played with it yet and it cost me nothing. can you really claim I would have bought it if I couldnt download it for free?

Re:so what?

[Ash-Fox]

I admit it, I pirated world of goo because I thought it sounded sorta cool. to be honest, it's still sitting in the torrent downloads folder and it hasnt been looked it. I guess that counts as part of the 80%, but you can hardly claim I would have bought it otherwise. I mean, shit, I havent even played with it yet and it cost me nothing. can you really claim I would have bought it if I couldnt download it for free?

The statistics they have are from people who actually played and submitted scores back online. So you wouldn't of been counted.

Maybe you should RTFA.

Re:so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you wouldn't of been counted.

What?

Re:so what?

[RichiH]

> Maybe you should RTFA.

Your uid is a tad lower than mine and still you suggest people RTFA?

On a related note, people who download stuff they will never use are the role model of someone who will not bother to RTFA.

The flip-side

[SpeedyDX]

Of course, if we were to look at the flip-side, 18% of the people who got their hands on World of Goo purchased it, whereas only 8% of those who got their hands on the other game purchased it. That's over DOUBLE the rate of purchase.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Re:The flip-side

[Threni]

And 100% of Linux users can't purchase it at all. Why don't developers create games runnable like live OSes, so you just boot and play and don't need to install Linux if they just want to play the games?

Re:The flip-side

[Klucki]

Why don't developers create games runnable like live OSes, so you just boot and play and don't need to install Linux if they just want to play the games?

Because you would need to have hardware drivers included on the disc with every game.

If you had hardware that was made after the game was released, you would have to download the drivers and create a new bootable DVD. That would mean DRM would have to be completely removed, and I don't see that happening for many games anytime soon...

Re:The flip-side

[windsurfer619]

Uhm, the linux version of World of Goo is currently in beta, and the windows version runs well in Wine.

Re:The flip-side

[maxume]

It would be easy enough for the live cd to access a folder of downloaded updates on a hard drive.

The reason it won't work is that from the point of view of developers, most people will probably have a better experience with a game that installs for windows.

Re:The flip-side

[mollymoo]

You expect people to reboot to play a game? Very funny. It's not 1995 any more you know. Not only are OSes much more stable, but a far greater proportion of people actually do something useful with their computers.

Re:The flip-side

[Reigo Reinmets]

Umm, They do actually! But it requires that you know the hardware, which is why we have very nice and handy things called PS3, Xbox360, Wii and all the other nice consoles...

Piracy rate is an irrelevance

[91degrees]

It doesn't matter how many people pirate the game. What matters is how many people pirated the game instead of paying for it. Eliminate piracy and how many of those 80% will actually buy it.

Basic supply and demand says that if you decrease the cost to zero, demand will go up. Experience tells me that many people who have large collections of copied software still buy a considerable amount of media.

And before you all go off and miss the point and go off on one - I'm not trying to justify piracy here. Just pointing out that from a business point off view the percentage piracy rate is a useless statistic.

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Goo means shit all over India and many Asian countries.

One of the funniest stuff I heard in Mumbai was

Gaand me nahi goo....hagne chale Juhu.

Offling PC gaming is (almost) doomed.

[Inominate]

And piracy is the reason. DRM cannot fix it and just pisses off the people actually giving you money.

The PC has always been a place for experimental games and has far more gaming firsts than any console platform could. It's a breeding ground for innovation and experimentation. But the same low barrier for entry that makes the PC good for this makes breaking copy protection trivial.

Consoles on the other hand require a substantial initial investment and lean very strongly towards games which WILL be a commercial success. Piracy on consoles is much less of an issue because a console is much more of a "black box" than any PC ever will be. It has the ultimate copy protection, piracy is less convenient than buying the game. For this reason, the blockbuster games will almost always be directed towards the consoles.

But all is not lost for the PC. Consoles are becoming closer to the PC. The xbox 360 is essentially a PC and microsoft has made sure that games developed for one can be ported to the other with a minimum of effort. This ensures that while PC users are 2nd class among the blockbuster games market, the market still exists and can be met with little extra cost.

There is however one form of copy protection that works. Games focused on online play are trivial to protect and with monthly fees it's often undesirable to even try. Valve has nailed this one on the head with steam. Make games easy to buy, easy to hold onto forever, and have a rudimentary drm system, while authenticating this in online play. The calling home DRM is somewhat invasive, but it's more than made up for by providing a useful service, that of having a permanent account that I KNOW whatever happens I'll have access to my games in the future. No CDs or keys to lose.

Steam is probably the best method of PC game sales/distribution that exists. It's not perfect but it's far better than any DRM, and provides independent developers publicity and an easy way to sell.

Re:Offling PC gaming is (almost) doomed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, while I agree that Steam has some strengths I complete disagree with the notion that "it's far better than any DRM".

Steam is institutionalized DRM. The only thing missing from the more infringing DRM schemes is that you can install Steam games on more than one PC.

I'm curious to know how you "KNOW [that] whatever happens [you'll] have access to [your] games in the future". Have you read the license agreement? There's nothing that prevents them from revoking it whenever they decide (or are forced) to do so for whatever reason.

Personally, I only use it to buy Steam games that are significantly cheaper than retail copies and where I know that I'll only play them once anyway, e.g. think Sam&Max. I might buy more via Steam if they wouldn't shove localized German (read: censored and cut game with crappy synchronisation) down my throat no matter what just because of my IP.

Palin could come up with more believable numbers

[halo112358]

Or, "These numbers are so crap they should be attributed to Palin so we can all recognize them for the joke they are."

These numbers don't take DHCP addresses or multiboxing into account at all, in fact these two factors inflate the piracy percentage to dominating levels. I bought the game through steam and play it on two machines, according to 2D Boy's data collection method this means that they have a 50% piracy rate just from my copy (1 sale, 2 addresses observed.)

Now let me throw a couple of things into the mix, one of the machines has a dynamic address DSL connection, the address changes daily (roughly every 24hrs, and every DSL modem reboot). If I play the game daily for two weeks on this machine it means that there are an additional 14 addresses added to their tally for a grand total of one sale and 15 unique addresses (aka, pirated copies), all of this due to me playing my legitimate copy. This inflates the piracy rate of my single copy to 1 sold and 15 pirated, ie: 93.333% piracy.

This method and their numbers are so much bullshit it hurts me to even think about this. You could probably divide their figure (92%) by about 5 or 6 and have something more reasonable to work with, but it's really going to depend on how many dynamic addresses they're observing. I'd estimate they're wrong by a factor of 5 here.

Bias much?

[Anonymous Coward]

" the piracy rate of another game that was shipped complete with DRM, at 92%. There seemed to be no major difference in the outcomes of the rate regardless of whether DRM was used or not"

Why does the headline read "Independent Dev Reports Over 80% Piracy Rate On DRM-Free Game" when the piracy rate is higher on DRM'd games?

Re:Bias much?

[Anonymous Coward]

um there is nothing bias about that headline, they don't claim that the rate is higher in the headline, therefor no bias, just your imagination.

if anything, the bias exists in the summary where going from 80% to 92% is "no major difference"

i'm sorry but a 12% drop in a number that can often reach 7 digits is a fairly major difference.

Huh.

[nog_lorp]

I played Tower of Goo back when it was a toy on the Experimental Games project. Cool that it's become a full fledged commercial game.

World of Goo: Buy it!

[Happy Welsh Wizard]

On the strength of this story I just downloaded the demo, and discovered to my suprise the game is awesome. It is everything I have been looking for since Lemmings (Lemmings 2 and 3d sucked bigtime!). The game has held my attention in a way that some recent "big" games havent; almost reminds me of the days of the Amiga and all the fun puzzlers and platformers that were round then. A big thumbs up in my view! I just showed it to my wife and she was instantly intrigued, so it must be good to appeal to a non-gamer! I have just bought the game I liked it so much. 2d Boy, the developers seem kinda cool and definitely deserve support.

I never thought I'd ever hear this...

[w0mprat]

From TFA: "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 arenâ(TM)t people who would have purchased it had they not been able to get it without paying." ... this from a game development house? Wow...

Just tried to purchase the game on steam....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sorry!

An error was encountered while processing your request:

This item is currently unavailable in your region"

Bit of a kick in the pants for the UK.

Re:Just tried to purchase the game on steam....

[Hal_Porter]

It could be worse, I got shown a picture of a horse with its mouth open and a comment about British people having bad teeth too.

Re:Just tried to purchase the game on steam....

[LunarCrisis]

Apparently this is no problem if you buy it direct from the official web site (as opposed to through steam or such).

Better to roll with it

[rastoboy29]

The long and short of it is that one is recognizing reality by simply accepting that one's game will be pirated.

That's why I'd really _like_ to fund my games solely through advertising.  Pirate away, motherfuckers!

$20 for a minigame?

[scuba0]

I think they made a terrible miscalculation on the expected price on their part. I would never pay $20 for a game I'll spend a few hours on when most games I'd spend weeks on costs ~$30-40. Had the price been half, they would most certainly have doubled if not quadrupled their sales if not more. The market for a simple game at higher prices is not that big. It's an easy argument if you have a reasonable price for the consumer and not what you would like someone to pay.

Re:$20 for a minigame?

[mako1138]

World of Goo isn't what I'd call a minigame. It's a puzzle game, and I thought the price was right.

Re:$20 for a minigame?

[Haeleth]

I think they made a terrible miscalculation on the expected price on their part. I would never pay $20 for a game I'll spend a few hours on

And yet the number of people willing to pay well over $20 to watch a 90-minute movie is great enough to sustain an entire industry...

Re:$20 for a minigame?

[scuba0]

It is very hard to compare the two since one is an industri and the other one is a webpage which primarily markets itself by speech. Other than that a game, even though it might be a lot of coding behind, contains a lot of reoccurring events. I don't see how the cost could even remotely be linked to the price.

Nice move, 2D boy!

[dgcaste]

Anonymous writer? I think 2D boy just gave themselves a million hits when they managed to get this story on /.!

No, it probabl reflects

[Anonymous Coward]

If I like playing new games, but I just want to try to play for a few days and then I give it up, I would prefer to pirate. Yes, there's a lot of people who like to play, but rarely finish games. But they at least want to say they tried (kind of like years ago, people who start reading the latest best seller so they could say at parties that "...yes, I'm reading Book X right now...").

What that suggests to me is that piracy rates could be reduced with fully playable demos that only allow the first few levels (or whatever). However, this will not increase the number of games sold.

That's not a paradox. It suggest to me that even if piracy is reduced significantly, publishers won't sell any more games.

Re:No, it probabl reflects

[Lakitu]

you mean like the fully playable demo 2d boy released of their hit game World of Goo?

There is no piracy, only mismanagement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Copying is not stealing. If the games weren't grossly overpriced, there'd be little or no copying. Who would bother if they could get the game easier from legitimate sources. Piracy exists only at sea or in the minds of those who are unable to sell a product honestly so instead corrupt the free market and coerce their customers. Simply lower the price until sales take off and profit. Most games should cost less than a buck.

Re:hello

[Anonymous Coward]

As if anyone on slashdot is stupid enough to sign up for your website after you come here and spam your crap everywhere.

Idiot.

ID software

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone old enough to remember knows that the game company I.D. software would not have existed if people had not pirated Doom. You can still do very well with a high piracy rate if the game is any good.

Re:ID software

[Ash-Fox]

Anyone old enough to remember knows that the game company I.D. software would not have existed if people had not pirated Doom. You can still do very well with a high piracy rate if the game is any good.

I remember everyone redistributing the demo because it was practically a full game (one episode, but long enough to be a full game).

Actually, I think Doom is the only game I've ever known in my youth to not see a pirate copy of.

Re:Terrible study .. only a million to make?

[pbhj]

$1 million sounds quite cheap. I'd estimate that as about 5 man-years; 10 people for half-a-year (including admin, marketing people - not highly paid) including associated infrastructure costs (ie housing those people some place). It's very little if you think about computing infrastructure, testing, promotion, distribution, credit costs, etc..

Where's that $1 million figure from?

Your overall analysis otherwise seems sound to me.

Will be 100000000% after this article

[Joce640k]

Not everybody has heard of it, until now...

No big surprise

[blackjackshellac]

Remember back in the day of shareware? This is actually quite good compared to what we calculated for the few shareware products that we produced. At the time were were estimating that only about 1% of users bothered to pay for their copies. One interetsing thing about this though, is that every once in a while I still get a registration from someone almost 15 years after they started using it, and suddenly started feeling guilty.

If they're getting 20% I'd say that's pretty damn good.

Re:No big surprise

[Tony Hoyle]

On a project I worked on it was less than 0.1% - we even had large well funded companies say 'why should we pay?'.

Relying on human nature is doomed to failure.. you need stick as well as carrot.

This is NOT an intellectual exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

People seem to forget that piracy = less money = less games. Pirates are like lethal bacteria, that kill their host instead of trying to live with it. Most pirates could give a shit about supporting non-DRM companies, or "sticking it to the man" for DRM-laden games, they just want games for free, because they're greedy, selfish, using bastards that have never tried to sell something they created.

People that bemoan the fall of PC gaming should go out and stomp a few pirates, because THEY are killing it. You can argue semantics all you want, and throw up numbers all you wish, but the FACT is that anything that hurts a revenue stream hurts a business' chance of survival. Period.

Re:This is NOT an intellectual exercise

[cliffski]

great post. I applaud you. I wish more people realised this.

Re:This is NOT an intellectual exercise

[Lord Bitman]

Piracy hurts sales a little bit, yes.
But mostly it's just annoying to see so many people enjoying your game without paying for it. Would so many have bought it in the first place? No. Will some who have been exposed to it now buy the sequel? Probably.

Attempts to control piracy are not attempts to get more money. They're attempts to make the game makers feel less annoyed. It's okay that they want to feel less annoyed. It's not about greed or anything that normally gets thrown around. It's just not something I'm likely to sympathize with too much.

And yes, I buy the games I play.

Re:This is NOT an intellectual exercise

[asretfroodle]

I've downloaded a lot of video games. I started back when I got an Amiga 500 about two decades ago. Video games have been a large part of my life during this period, probably to an unhealthy level at times. The constant supply of new titles provided to me by piracy has fed this obsession.

Now that I have a much higher disposable income what do you think I spend it on? On my main interest of course - video games.

Preventing my piracy would not have resulted in any additional sales for the industry, it's already got everything it could out of me. Preventing my piracy would only have helped break my obsession - leading to me spending my money elsewhere.

Although I have pirated games, I find it hard to buy into the argument that I'm hurting the industry. I've spent a lot of money of video games, and I don't forsee that changing much in the future.

I downloaded and i didn't even played it

[Anonymous Coward]

I normally download games but is just to try them out, demo stile, i downloaded that game but haven't even bothered to try it since i run only linux, the videos in youtube were enough to see it. So i assume those 80% probably would never buy the game anyway, pirates do not play games, they just download stuff to have it in the collection. Anyway this is a slashvertizement... who cares about your weak games sale.

Radiohead example

[cvd6262]

I "pirated" World of Goo. I downloaded it when a friend raved over it, tried it for five minutes, thought "Is this it?" and deleted it. I wonder what percentage of this "piracy" is actually people just trying the game after hearing about it, since I wouldn't have bothered had someone not raved about it. (I don't even know if there is an official demo available.)

This happened to me with Radiohead. When they released their album in a "pay what you want, even nothing" format, I paid zero for it because I had never listen to the band before, and I wasn't sure if I would like it. I found the album interesting, but not something I would ever listen to, so I deleted it.

The next week I saw a music publisher website decrying that so many people had chosen to pay nothing for Radiohead's music and how it showed how screwed up all music fans were.

Re:Terrible study .. only a million to make?

[dreamchaser]

I've seen the same figure in numerous write ups. Here is but one example. Excerpt:

"So how has this strategy panned out for the gamemaker's first third-party-published title, Ironclad Games' Sins of a Solar Empire? As reported by gaming trade site Gamasutra, Sins of a Solar Empire has surpassed 400,000 units at retail, with another 100,000 units digitally distributed through Stardock's online store, since the PC game went on sale in February. That's not a bad figure, considering Sins reportedly cost under $1 million to make.

"Pirate"

[AlpineR]

I "pirated" World of Goo. I downloaded it when a friend raved over it, tried it for five minutes, thought "Is this it?" and deleted it.

Yeah, and I sneaked into a showing of Quantum of Solace at the movie theater. The opening scene wasn't very impressive so I left. But if I decided to stay I would have bought a ticket afterwards. Really I would!

By the way, did you opt in to the global scoreboard and set a high score during your five minutes?

Re:"Pirate"

[X0563511]

Yea, if only you could do that. I stopped going to movies because I was sick of paying up front and being disappointed.

Re:"Pirate"

[Mister_Stoopid]

This reply is relevant and insightful because torrenting a game uses up one copy that could have gone to a paying customer, just like the seat you used in your theater example.

The deciding factor for me

[spyrochaete]

This game is $20. If it were $10 I'd buy it right now. I wonder whether the game's sales would at least double if the price were halved.

Re:The deciding factor for me

[raynet]

I agree, 10USD (or 10EUR which is roughly the same after you add the mandatory VAT to the price) is about what I would pay for a good "indie" game, maybe 15 for amazing game that I could play for weeks. 20 would be ok for a game like Half-Life 2 and 30 for games like Baldur's Gate that took me ages to finish.

Unfortunately the trend seems to be for higher prices and shorter gameplay.

No Failure Present

[Kneo24]

No what's fail is the fact that they believe they can somehow come up with any sort of accuracy here. The variability of dynamic IP's is so massive that there's no good way to accurately gauge piracy numbers based off of IP addresses. If you would like to believe that because they said they could, I have a bridge to sell you.

Raw piracy rate will never be useful

[Sycraft-fu]

Even if they were very careful to get an actual number of people who got a copy without paying, that doesn't really tell you anything. Many people will take for free what they would not pay for, not even a little bit. As an example the free samples at Costco. I sometimes take a sample. However I only do so because it's zero cost. If Costco wanted even 10 cents, I'd simply pass. I've never really wanted one that bad, sometimes my curiosity has just been peeked and having zero cost, I try it.

So after you know the real rate the first question you have to answer, and there is no easy way to do so, is how many of those people that nabbed a free copy would have bought it, had it been impossible to pirate? You'd probably find that number to be rather low. Many were trying it because it was free, not because they really wanted it and could just get away without paying. Also some may be using it as a "try before you buy" method. I had a roommate that used to use Napster like that. Guy had an insane amount of CDs, like over 500. He had a subscription to one of those mail-order CD places and everything. He'd download tons and tons of music to decide what he wanted to buy. Napster INCREASED his purchasing, not decreased it.

Now in terms of if DRM is useful you have to answer some more questions:

1) How many people would it actually make buy the game? DRM isn't 100% effective so of the people you've determined would have bought it had they not gotten it for free, how many would get it if you made it harder, but not impossible to get for free?

2) How many sales will you lose because of the DRM? Some people are going to protest it, others will try it and find it doesn't work and thus want their money back. How many sales does the DRM cost you?

3) What is the cost of the DRM? If you buy an off the shelf one you pay an up front fee, plus per copy royalties. If you write your own, there's development costs. Also in both cases you incur support costs from people who can't figure out how to make it work. What are those costs in total?

You then have to add it all up. You might then find, that in fact the DRM costs you money. Even if it increases raw sales numbers, it has to do it by a significant enough amount that you make back all the associated costs. Based on some things, like Sins, it seems that may not be the case.

This would all be different if there was perfect, unbreakable DRM that would make the options "buy" or "don't play". However there's not so you aren't stopping piracy, simply making some forms a bit more difficult.

EU release delay

[megalomaniacs4u]

I wonder how much of the piracy was due them cocking up the EU release. It was briefly released then pulled, and as far as I know still not available for EU customers.

Treating your customers with contempt does no favours

NB I had zero interest in this game after that idiot decision so didn't even get around to downloading the demo.

No major difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

8% of those who downloaded the DRM-infested game paid for it. 18% of those who downloaded the DRM-free game paid for it. That's more than twice as many. And you say there's no major difference?

Just remember!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pirating these games are okay as long as you buy a concert tee-shirt when these developers come to your town .... oh.

Incorrect

[aepervius]

"If you purchased a copy of a game from Walmart and want to lend it to a friend after you are done, DRM is designed to prevent that."

You mean the new fnagled spore/Steam DRM with itnernet checks is designed to prevent that. The crushing majority of the DRM today is to prevent sharing BEFORE you are done (aka : make a copy and give it). Case in point, I have only 2 games out of my collection which has an internet check. For all but those two, ocne I am finished I can resell/give/share them. One person at a time can use them, no matter who.

Wrong interpretation of the statistic

[Anonymous Coward]

It should read: "Allegedly, 90% (or rather 82%) of people of who choose to submit their scores to the company's scoreboard pirate the game." They can't infer about the whole population using a disjoint subset. That's extremely dangerous. A undergrad statistics course will tell you that.

I'll admit to pirating it

[Anonymous Coward]

but honestly, my reason is this: there's no way I'd spend 20 bucks on a game called "world of goo," that runs in a fixed resolution, and is as conceptually and visually simplistic as it is. I'd consider buying it at 10, I'd pick it up in a heartbeat for 5 (and maybe even pick up extra copies for friends!) but 20 bucks is pushing it. even the wiiware version, where things like resolutions don't matter, and I'm more prone to paying for something that isn't visually or artistically advanced, costs to much (15 bucks? when ocarina of time is only 10? NO.)

I like the game, and its pretty clever, but its also pretty clear that it was cooked up quickly. there's a few reasons I'll pirate something instead of buying, and in this case, its all about perceived value: I don't view this game to be worth the asking price. sure, I could just not buy it and not play it either. at least this way I'm talking about the game instead of forgetting about it, and if they alter their pricing, I may be apt to change my mind.

Re:I'll admit to pirating it

[Cochonou]

You can change the resolution by editing a flat text configuration file. As you post on Slashdot, this shouldn't be an issue for you.

title should be DRM games pirated more than no DRM

[Dan667]

Seems pretty clear that people appreciated the DRM-free game more. Not treating Customers like criminals looks like it is more profitable.

Measuring Piracy

[Sir Realist]

Which would be far more interesting a statistic if they were using anything like a valid method for measuring the piracy... They're counting up the number of unique IPs logging into their site playing the game, and dividing by the number of copies they sold. Many people get assigned a random IP by their ISP on a regular basis; each of those people will count as many, many pirates by this method.

Most people just plain hate DRM

[blackholepcs]

I haven't bought many games over the last 5 or 6 years. Largely due to the fact that these days developers simply release crappy, half finished, incoherent and generally not fun games. It seems to be the rule rather than the exception of late. The only games I have actually paid for in the last, say, 3 years are Mass Effect, The Witcher, Battlefield 2142, and Spore Galactic Edition. Well, I played a pirated version of Mass Effect and Spore before purchasing them. Mass Effect was so well done that it deserved my money. The Witcher was a leap of faith, and it paid off as it is an excellent game. Battlefield 2142 sucked ass. Spore...well, Spore has been a mixed bag. A bag full mostly of crap. Horrible DRM restrictions, major graphics issues, lots of BSOD and CTD's, and a completely dumbed down, lowest-common-denominator mentality. Fallout 3 is the next game I'm going to spend money on. I played it for about 15 hours, and absolutely LOVE it. That is the way games should be made. AWESOME attention to detail, fantastic story lines, great dialog, cutting edge graphics/physics, and way above average replayability.

But, back to the point. Had I known about the DRM problems with Spore before purchasing it, I would never have bought it. I made the mistake of not reading the forums and what not first. For me, it's the install limits that make me want to boycott EA. I haven't yet experienced a crash related directly to the DRM scheme, but I hate DRM on principal. Not to mention the fact that the DRM was installed without my knowledge (and it's NEVER installed by ANY game with my consent). However, my girlfriend has had a DVD burner ruined from DRM being installed on her computer. She installed a game that had DRM on it, and then her DVD drive suddenly had trouble reading discs. Then it simply failed to read ANY disc at all. Formatting and reinstalling everything had no effect. So we put a new drive in from a different manufacturer. As soon as she installed the game again, the new drive started to fail. I realized what was happening and immediately re-wiped and reinstalled her system, before any permanent damage to the new drive. She has since thrown the game away without having ever played it. That is just plain bullshit. She has never even heard of a torrent and the only mp3's she has are ones she bought from Rhapsody and ITunes. So, you may be asking yourself, "Well, the title of his response says the most people just plain hate DRM, but how does he know this?" Well, it's not exactly the most scientific thing in the world, but I made a poll on EA's Spore forums, and here are the results :

Does DRM bother you AT ALL, either morally, philosophically, or by messing up your computer? (269 votes so far)
Yes, I hate it, it needs to die. 62% [168]
No, no problems here. 19% [51]
What is DRM? If I knew what it was, I could say yes or no. 4% [12]
I'd not be bothered by unobtrusive/stable/non-damaging DRM that doesn't restrict legal users. 14% [38]

I made this poll in response to the article with the EA guy that said 99.8% of users care about DRM. As I said, this poll is NOT the best gauge in the world, but it still speaks pretty loudly to the fact the current DRM is just garbage and of no benefit to anyone. In fact, the only people who seem to really be affect by DRM are the legal users who actually paid for the games that have DRM schemes. They are the ones who have install errors, incompatibility errors, install limits, bloatware, ruined DVD drives, etc. Treating a paying customer like a criminal is just fucking retarded. And annoying. Why should I pay for something that is possibly going to break my computer, cause massive amounts of headache, and make me feel like I got ripped off? Most games I download copies of aren't worth the money I would have to pay to play test them otherwise. Here are some examples of games that I saved money on by pirating them first : Legend Hand of God (utter boring tripe), So Blonde (wow, just lame), Lost Via Domus (horrible voice

JUST QUIT IT

[Daetrin]

Would you and everyone else who tagged this "correlationisnotcausation" spend maybe two minutes thinking about what you're doing before screaming "correlation != causation" in response to every article? You just end up looking like fools. Neither article mentioned nor claimed any specific kind of correlation between presence or lack of DRM and sales, they just provided some data about theorized piracy rates for two different kinds of games. In fact one of the articles specifically said:

"From the results above, it seems clear that eliminating piracy through a stronger DRM can result in significantly increased sales - but sometimes it can have no benefit at all." i.e. no direct correlation.

And the slashdot blurb didn't say anything about correlation at all, it specifically pointed out that the piracy rate for the two games, one with DRM and one without, were essential the same. So where are you getting the idea that anyone involved claimed there was a correlation, much less a causation?

There is no unbreakable software!!!

[master_p]

and DRM is just that, software. Windows activation is hacked, DRM is hacked etc. I wonder when the companies will get their head around that...

Idiot mods strike again

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not have bothered to RTFA

Don't worry, he'll still get a +1 Insightful from idiot mods who also couldn't be bothered to RTFA. Currently he's sitting at a +4, Insightful. Moderation really isn't difficult to do correctly. Any idiot can understand the guidelines, yet I see incompetent fuck-ups doing it poorly all the time because they are either too stupid or too lazy to do a good job. I'm not sure which is worse -- modding good posts down because you don't understand either humor or logic & reasoning, or modding shitty redundant posts up. Probably rewarding shit is worse, which is what happened here.

Delayed European realease didn't help.

[Stimpack]

Played the demo, loved it. Tried to do download on Steam but it was US only. Very easy to pirate at this stage, but I lost interest instead, either way, a lost sale.

The real purpose of DRM

[rabtech]

The real purpose of DRM, especially the EA "limited installs" kind, is to shut down the resale market. The publishers look at that market and think "they're selling my games for free! those bastards...".

Like the telcos who talk tough words about "using my pipes for free", they fail to acknowledge that We the People own the land, and our government has graciously granted them access to right-of-way on our behalf, to run their lines and deliver their services. Like a renter, the furniture (pipes) may be yours, but the building (right-of-way) belongs to us. We can easily terminate their access if we decide it is in society's best interests.

Copyright is (was) a balance between encouraging creativity and our natural right to share, duplicate, and/or dispose of our own personal property however we see fit, regardless of its content or the desire of the creator. Blatant attempts to alter the balance in your own favor cannot be tolerated. We've seen what happens when the financial sector is allowed to have the very ropes with which to hang themselves, we can't let the rest of our society go down the same path.

This sucks

[Sheik Yerbouti]

As a business person I would look at that and conclude that doing business on the PC is just plain stupid.

I contend they are very very wrong in their conclusion that the pirates would not have actually bought a copy if they could not steal it.

The way to prove that would compare World of Goo sales figures to a popular console downloadable only release like Braid and compare total sales number. I have no doubt the Braid sales figures would end up higher without a convenient pirate copy to steal. People will pay for these types of indie games on Xbox arcade because they HAVE to if they want it.

As a PC gamer I think this is really really sad. And as a developer I would target the console download able content space not the PC as a business decision it seems cut and dried.

Good movie ratings

[AlpineR]

Try Rotten Tomatoes. Their system of compiling reviews gives a very good gauge of how good a movie is. Some rules of thumb for the Tomatometer:

• Below 60% is not worth seeing
• Above 90% is a great movie, and you'll like it even if the plot or previews don't look that great
• Between 60% and 90% is in the realm of personal taste. Movies toward the high end you should see if you have at least a lukewarm interest. Movies toward the low end you should avoid unless you already like the plot/director/actors/genre. But you can enjoy anything in this range if you're in the right mood.

Sound cuts out in the Demo of GooWorld

[JumperCable]

Kind of an annoying bug. You have to exit out & run it again to get sound to kick back on.

I bet more people would be willing to plunk down $20 for the game if they fixed it.

Runs even on a PCC Mac!

[AttilaSz]

I'm buying this game. The demo was tremendous fun for both me and my kids. And the best part for which I can give these folks a lot of respect:

The game has a Mac version. Not only that, it's not a lame-ass "we really wrote it for Win32 API and made the Mac version linking it with WINE/Cider so it only works on Intel Macs only, sorta" that seems to be the trend in the game industry who try to go the Mac route.

Nossir. This game specs its requirements as an "Intel or PPC G4 CPU", meaning they really did write it as cross platform code (Linux version coming soon), which is exactly a beautiful display of the spirit whose lack of in the industry I've been lamenting before here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1021097&cid=25674759

So, double kudos to them (and they get my money, as this game will run on the iMac G5 I'll pass down to my kids this Christmas).

"Generation Thief" steals from itself

[peter303]

What did people expect from the perhaps the most amoral general in history?

80% piracy rate doesnt mean 80% lost sales

[thc4k]

I think im a pretty normal gamer, and i think over the last years i bought 5 games and pirated something like 20. So my personal pirating rate is 80%+, but that doesnt mean i would have bought any of the games .. most of them were boring, but i brought 2 after i warez'd them. If i think back and count the games i loved and should have bought vs the games i bought, my lost sales rate is below 50%.

I'm kinda experienced in that pirating stuff, doing it since the good old isdn days, but these days with bittorrent and the pirate bay, pretty much everyone can pirate something if they dare.
DRM has never been any issue for me, in the worst case the crack come out a few days after the official release date (gasp!). A few years ago, when there was less pirates and just some simple copy protection, it took alot longer to find a crack. Ok, on Mass Effect with the fancy new securom it almost took two weeks to get a bug-free crack, but on the other hand, many who bought the game also had to wait ...

Sooner or later everyone, pirate or not, needs a crack for something: DRM creates pirates, from music to games to video. I remember trying to explain to my mom why she can't copy a CD to leave it in the car (and failing at it) ... in the end i just downloaded the album and she became a music pirate (sort of )

Anyways, i think the absolute mayority of game pirates are not against paying for a game in general (i have brought plenty of games myself), but against buying a bug-ridden, boring, unplayable game that is not my taste or doesn't run on my pc ( just the same for music and video ).

Even if DRM worked and prevents me from using a product, leaving me unable to decide if i like it or not, that definitly won't make me buy it blindly ...

The cost of piracy is important!

[kentsin]

The cost of crack or copy is important, not as you think!

The cost of crack and piracy is absolved by hackers.

If you want, you should lower the motion of a hacker and rise the cost to copy a little.

Well balance is the key.

+1 Informative

[FredFredrickson]

I am using the new Slashdot Moderating System. It may appear as if I'm only replying to you with a comment that says +1 Informative, but be assured, I'm actually using a very advanced feature that only appears this way.

(anyway, thanks)

Re:Terrible study .. only a million to make?

[pbhj]

thanks, nobody seems to say where that figure comes from ...

Quoting statistics without providing the studies

[Wakk013]

Means that any of these quoted rates are worthless. If you can't back up the claims with hard facts and numbers, its all bogus crap spewed out to grab attention and distort the true relational facts.

Re:Terrible study .. only a million to make?

[dreamchaser]

I can't find it now but I clearly remember first seeing that figure in an interview with Stardock's CEO.