Has Any Creative Work Failed Because of Piracy?

Andorin writes "Anyone familiar with the piracy debate knows about the claims from organizations like the RIAA that piracy causes billions of dollars in damages and costs thousands of jobs. Other studies have concluded differently, ranging from finding practically no damages to a newer study that cites 'up to 20%' as a more accurate number (PDF). I figure there's got to be an easier way to do this, so here's my question: Does anyone know of any creative works that were provably a financial failure due to piracy? The emphasis on 'provably' is important, as some form of evidence is necessary. Accurately and precisely quantifying damages from p2p is impossibly hard, of course, but answering questions like this may lead us to a clearer picture of just how harmful file sharing really is. I would think that if piracy does cause some amount of substantial harm, we would see that fact reflected in our creative works, but I've never heard of a work that tanked because people shared it online."

Comments

sort of..

[Anonymous Coward]

I did some work for a man who paid to have drivers written for SCSI harddrives, a while a go, that was his edge over the competition. The competition simply pirated his drivers and sent him out of business. This may not be 'creative works' but the process is the same.

The Bilestoad, Apple II, 1980s

[jvbh]

Excerpt from an interview with the author, Marc Goodman at http://www.dadgum.com/halcyon/BOOK/GOODMAN.HTM

The game seemed popular and received great reviews. Did it do well commercially?

Nope. Datamost only sold around 5,000 copies of the game. I've gotten email from a lot of people and even met people who know and love the game and you know what? I've never met or talked to anyone who had an official copy.

Pretty frequently I see the recurring threads on software piracy on various newsgroups. People really believe that there is no impact from their copying software. Well, there is an impact. I couldn't support myself by writing computer games, so "The Bilestoad" was the last game I did.

I expect any real example will be naysayed, but...

[seibai]

I used to work in the independent games industry. In 2004, I designed and wrote a little Action-Puzzle game titled Drop! (feel free to look it up on GameFaqs). We sold it in stores for $10, and online for $5, however, we got $.33 per retail copy sold (blame publishers) vs. $2.50 or so per online copy sold. We sold a few hundred thousand copies or so at retail across a 6 month period (#4 for sales for a couple months, but no one pays attention to jewel case games).

Here's the trick: the online version had an online high-score system. You could play the online copy for free, but you didn't get access to the shared high-score system unless you bought it. We sold less than 100 copies online, but saw several hundred thousand unique IP addresses hit the high score system every day (and this kept up for years, not just people "trying out the high score system").

For 6 months of work, I made about $30,000 on that (a couple other guys made similar amounts), which eventually didn't justify the effort - because people who want to play a game don't care about making it possible for the creators to keep making games.

I work for Microsoft now :P

Re:He sega dreamcast

[PitaBred]

Bullshit. The Dreamcast was the last Sega console because of a number of missteps by the company, and because developers were scared of it turning into a SegaCD or 32x or Saturn, so didn't want to commit the resources to developing titles. It had nothing to do with piracy.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1572800/why_the_dreamcast_failed.html

Re:I think there's something to that

[Runaway1956]

You missed GP's point. Today, he has money to waste on entertainment. He just PAYS FOR IT, because it really is faster, and easier. The pirate who wants to play Super Duper Mario Brothers Meet the Exterminator and Predator has to find a download, find a crack, apply the crack, etc ad nauseum. Then, he probably can't play the online version, which includes the "value added" appearance of Alien.

Piracy is work, in case you hadn't noticed. People who are willing to spend no money, no time, and no effort to get their games/music/entertainment have to do without.

I agree, companies need to fight piracy, but following a mindless nazi doctrine that all pirates are evil and should be exterminated is as stupid as stupid gets.

Jim Baen, over at Baen Books came to understand that. He fought piracy by giving away books. http://www.baen.com/library/ Somewhere on their site, is a rather long discourse, in which Baen Books proves that every time they give away a book, especially an older, out of print book, not only does Baen realize a profit, but so does the author whose books was released for free.

Wake up and smell the coffee. Cooperating with the pirates can be lucrative.

Game producers could take a hint, and release a "pirated" version of their game, put it up on the torrent sites, sit back and allow the wider community to pay for distribution - then wait for a lot of pirates to come back and pay for the "value added" version that includes Alien.