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Spore the Most Pirated Game of 2008
TorrentFreak has posted some statistics on the most pirated games of the past year. Leading the list by a large margin is Spore, made infamous even before its release for the draconian DRM attached to the game. It was downloaded through BitTorrent roughly 1.7 million times, with The Sims 2 and Assassin's Creed following at just over a million each. (It's worth noting that Spore came out in September, so that figure is essentially for a mere three months.) GameSetWatch has posted a related piece discussing the countermeasures involved in dealing with piracy. It's the second article in a series about piracy; we discussed the first a couple days ago.
Its because of the Marketing blitz.
Everywhere I look its Spore this, Spore that. You'd have mushrooms in your ears to miss hearing about it.
OF COURSE people are going to think: "Whats all the hype about - not like MARKETING has LIED to me before so I'll take a free no-obligation look-see for myself."
Some %, possibly significant, of those downloaders are going to perhaps like it and/or will want to play online, so they will sign up for valid copies. These people are new clients - they would not of bought the game otherwise.
Now the hardliners-stuck in the 80's software model will cry "these numbers will destroy the game industry". Bollocks. They are getting 1.X million potential clients who would never have bother buying the game to see if it was worth the hype in the first place.
News flash: Bittorent downloads will reflect real world marketing promotion.
Can go one better: The weight of evidence is in the real world sales: http://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-080124/
http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/08/pirates-convince-game-develope.html
The weight of real-world evidence is in favor of the hypothesis posted above. The only anti-hypothesis you've got is 1 Pirate == 1 lost sale. *cough* Your data prove your hypothesis?*cough**cough*
Now, let's ponder for a moment. Was this game P2Ped so often despite the insane DRM mechanisms? Or was it maybe because of it?
How many read about what EA wants to do with their PCs to be allowed to play this piece of ... erhm ... software? Deep manipulation of your driver makeup, authorisation requirement to be allowed to use what you pay for, the sword of damocles hanging over you in the guise of limiting the times you may activate it, not to mention the question whether or not you'll be allowed to play it when EA decides that you shouldn't any longer because you're supposed to buy the successor...
How many of those copies are actually people who bought the game and for some reason had to activate it once too often, and instead of calling the very helpful, friendly and lightning fast user support people of EA who speak flawless English they decided for the faster venue of downloading the game to play it? Or, how many actually HAD to download it to play it at all because for some funky reason that DRM barfed on them and all EA said was "sorry, problem at your end"?
I'm actually willing to grant the DRM advocates that this time those copies are actually lost sales. But not despite, rather because of DRM. People wanted to play that game and they would have had no worries about the 50ish bucks it costs, but they just didn't want you to mess up their PCs.
Before someone asks, no, I didn't copy it. The money allotted for the purchase of Spore was redirected to Sins of a Solar Empire when I heard about Spore's DRM mechanism. Sins was a purchase of protest, only to turn out to be a pretty well made game. I then saw Spore at a friend's and realized it ain't even worth the bandwidth necessary to P2P it. So, I guess, I'm not in this statistic this time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
From what I hear, modern pirates tend to have heavy artillery on their shoulder rather than a parrot:
Maritime piracy still goes on, and is still a major problem in some parts of the world. Just because someone's smear tactic to conflate illegal copying with theft and murder has been successful doesn't mean we should stop resisting it.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I had to pirate the game after buying it in Thailand (I live there) because EA support refused to give me the English language (1.3 meg of files)
and why the fuck should I care if it's more expensive in the UK if I don't live there? In fact why do they mention the UK at all?
WHY RESPOND! I DON'T GIVE A SHIT WHY YOUR FUCKING ME OVER FOR THREE FILES!!!
>>>want to see what a game is worth before buying!
I just got into a debate on a forum about this very subject. Unfortunately the Moderator is pro-copyright, and I earned myself a one-week banning. :-( My argument was: "I downloaded Galactica 1980 to see if it was worth buying, and it was worthless trash, so I saved myself from wasting ~$50." I was amazed at how many people rushed in to call me scum, part of the entitlement generation who steals instead of pays, and that I should have supported that show by buying the DVD.
RIAA's propaganda campaign seems to be working. They even have customers claiming I should buy ____ like Galactica 1980!!!
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
For those of us who had Ataris and Commodores, that day happened around twenty-five years ago.
- Pirated versions load faster.
- Pirates versions customize the game (skipping levels, unlimited lives).
- Pirated versions don't pound your 1541 drive's head to pieces and incur a $500 repair to fix it!!!
- Pirated versions can be backed-up whereas the original can not; the disk dies and you're out $30. The game company won't send you a new one.
Yep. I've been preferring pirated versions since circa 1985.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Actually, if I bought a product, I should have a right to do whatever-the-fsck-I-want with it. If I get a candybar, I should be able to "copy" it however I want to. If I knew how, I would. And for computer data, I very well know how to do it.
That's theoretical of course, reality is something different. But understand this: copyright and patents are not natural rights, they are granted by the society. They are rights to take away other people's freedoms. Copyright may have served books well, but in "digital millennium" they are barely enforceable and outdated anachronisms of a past era.
If you can't control 1 billion Chinese and others from replicating a trademarked work, how will you control 6 billion Earthmen from replicating copyrighted work?
Entitlement generation -- I love the expression, where'd ya pick it up? And I'm sad it won't come close soon.
Let's face it, copyright serves so companies and people like me could earn money off their products. It's not a right, it's a tool. No, scratch that -- more like a toy. A toy that should be taken away from the babies.
"Pro-copyright" doesn't mean what you use the expression for. FSF is pro-copyright. You need copyrights to protect openness.
Perhaps he was an advocate of copyright-protection? That's a very different rat.
Major digression:
Personally, I'm strongly for strengthening copyrights. As in copyrights being made the inalienable and time-limited right of the creator, and not the sponsor. That would put the incentive back to create more, and not just exploit already created works of arts and science. It would shift the power from the big money to the artists, which I think was the original intent.
Of course, it will never come to pass, as long as those with the money make the laws, and think it's perfectly fine that if they pay for a person's living expenses while he invents and creates, it's perfectly fine for them to take all profits of what's invented or created. Me, I call that exploitation, and just the modern form of slavery.
Back on topic:
DRM is not about protecting copyrights. It's about the appearance to protect copyrights. It's a CYA measure. If a game doesn't sell well, the company can blame piracy. And the investors will believe it, especially if the protection mechanisms were draconian but still broken. They don't see that the reasons it was broken was because it was so draconian, and the reason it didn't sell well was because it was a crappy game.
Ask a pro-protection why Galactic Civilizations II is so much more successful than Spore. The answers will be interesting, but try not to giggle too much; it's not polite.
All rights are.
Copyrights are seen as a necessary evil to encourage risk taking where there is a high cost to create but low cost to duplicate. And yes, I do realize that people will still create culture even when there are no copyright protections, but the quality will suffer due to resource restrictions.
I guess we should also give up on managing SPAM, identity theft, DNA profiling, etc. since in the information age it's easy to do and barely enforcable.
A tool like the ability to vote, or getting judged by your peers. These things, like copyright, are not necessary parts of a functioning society, but they have been demonstrated to improve the quality of life. That said, the "babies" have gotten out of control moving the balance between the creator and public too far in favor of the creator. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, reevaluate the implementation of copyright, don't just abandon the idea.
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