DRM-Free Game Suffers 90% Piracy, Offers Amnesty

bonch writes "Independent game Machinarium, released without DRM by developer Amanita Design, has only been paid for by 5-10% of its users according to developer Jakub Dvorsky. To drive legitimate sales, they are now offering a 'Pirate Amnesty' sale until August 12, bundling both the cross-platform game and its soundtrack for $5. Ron Carmel, designer of DRM-free puzzle game World of Goo, stated that his game also had about an 80-90% piracy rate, claiming that the percentage of those pirating first and purchasing later was 'very small.' He said, 'We're getting good sales through WiiWare, Steam, and our website. Not going bankrupt just yet!'"

Comments

Queue the Arguing

[A. B3ttik]

Queue all the Pirates claiming for proof that the numbers are correct, proof that any one Pirate would have bought the game legitimately, and sentiments of entitlement revolving around how since Machinarium wasn't that great a game, people are entitled to steal it.

I don't know how people can doublethink away the idea that Pirates stealing 5x the number of copies being sold legitimately for a top selling game somehow DOESN'T hurt the industry.

Re:Queue the Arguing

[mobby_6kl]

I don't know how people can doublethink away the idea that Pirates stealing 5x the number of copies being sold legitimately for a top selling game somehow DOESN'T hurt the industry.

Where's the proof that it does?

Re:Queue the Arguing

[BorgDrone]

I don't know how people can doublethink away the idea that Pirates stealing 5x the number of copies being sold legitimately for a top selling game [torrentfreak.com] somehow DOESN'T hurt the industry.

Really ?

Consider this: Water falls out of the sky for free. Alternatively, you can buy it in a very convenient way from your water company at about a tenth of a cent per liter.

Yet, there are companies selling 0,5 liter bottles of water for several euro's. And this is of inferior quality to tap water that costs ~0,1 cent/liter.

They are selling an inferior product, for a much higher price, when the a better product that is orders-of-magnitude cheaper is available literally everywhere. And they are apparently making a healthy profit doing so as lots of people buy this stuff.

So why is the copyright maffia whining about piracy and games being available for free on the internet ? Water being available for free doesn't stop the bottled-water industry from making loads of money.

Re:Next step to prevent PC piracy

[pgmrdlm]

bull shit. The only people that use Pirate Bay are the cock suckers that don't think electronic products should be purchased. Be it music, movies, or games. They want them for free, or they won't use them at all.

And I don't give a fuck if they find the product to be the best thing that ever was released. They still wouldn't purchase it.

Re:Next step to prevent PC piracy

[Peach Rings]

I legitimately own World of Goo (got it with the Humble Bundle) and I don't think it's worth $20. And it's not that fun either; the original free flash game contains everything fun about it.

Probably the reason for the low pirate-first-buy-later rate is that the game isn't that good and people weren't impressed. You can't complain that people aren't buying your game if your game sucks.

Re:Next step to prevent PC piracy

[M8e]

It's your own damn fault if you work and create something that nobody wants to pay for. "you" are also [b]perfectly free[/b] to stop making games and start doing a real job. (it's not a job if nobody pays for it.)

Making a game(or writing a book) is like shoveling your neighborhoods streets/driveways, you either make a deal before you do the work, or risk not getting paid for all/any streets/driveways.

Re:Game compaines using piracy as an excuse

[IgnoramusMaximus]

If the games are "utterly crap," why are they getting pirated?

Actually "utterly crap" games (and music and movies) are getting "pirated" because a lot of people do not know better or do not believe reviews. Pirating is a no-cost activity and so boredom and the "who knows, maybe" factors combine into people downloading the said crap, watching/playing/listening for 10 minutes and then deleting it. That's how you get movies rated 1 out of 10 stars still going strong on torrent sites. But the hysterical "intellectual property" crusaders would still consider it "theft" (but then again they consider "theft" you looking at some famous building without permission).