How the Pirate Bay Can Be an Asset To Game Developers

Underholdning writes "It's been five years since Radiohead brought the pay what you want model to the public with their successful sale of their 'In Rainbows' album. Now, here's a fresh example of how a game developer is making The Pirate Bay work for him by offering his game, McPixel, for free and letting people pay what they want. Currently TPB has more than 5000 applicants wanting to do the same. 'Sosowski isn't worried that promoting a game on a site known for piracy might be more effective at attracting more pirates than actual paying customers. "The game was already available on TPB beforehand, and I believe if someone didn't want to pay, he just didn't ... It is up to people to decide how much they would like to pay for the game, and I have no worries. I am happy that more people can enjoy my game. ... TPB is one of the most visited sites in the Internet, and simply having a game there is a form of advertisement and promotion."'"

Comments

So he's made 300 bucks so far...

[AmazingRuss]

...kind of puts the lie to "pirates will pay in their own good time" trope.

It's called donationware.

[DerekLyons]

It's called donationware, a variant of shareware, and its an old way of getting paid for your work. I think I saw the first example of it back in the mid 80's on the BBS scene.

It's not new, and it's not news.

Re:It's called donationware.

[joelsanda]

It's called donationware, a variant of shareware, and its an old way of getting paid for your work. I think I saw the first example of it back in the mid 80's on the BBS scene.

It's not new, and it's not news.

I really miss those days. Being able to download something and use it for a week or so before deciding to get the full deal or pay the shareware fee. A few game companies do this, like Spiderweb Software - you can play a huge chunk of the game before it stops and requires payment. By the time the demo is over you're pretty sure it will run on your computer and there's no question about liking it or not.

Re:It's called donationware.

[Nationless]

There may be prior art, but it is still a resurrection in a certain way of thinking which will provide hard numbers for larger companies to crunch and consider alternatives to expensive and restrictive DRM and lawsuits against pirates.

Re:It's called donationware.

[Havenwar]

I'd agree, except in my experience most games with micropayments don't actually work like that - there tends to be plenty of things in most of them that you can't access at all unless you open your wallet. That's a dealbreaker to me when it comes to micropayments, because then it's suddenly a way to get more money out of people rather than a way to let you choose between putting time or money into it. If I want to put money into a game, I do it upfront, or I do it to unlock it once I've tried it - I am not willing to be nickle-and-dimed to death for little things I had no idea I'd have a reason to need when I started out, and have no other way of getting.

Re:It's called donationware.

[DerekLyons]

No, the larger companies don't need numbers to crunch - they know the facts perfectly well, as does anyone that doesn't wear admantium blinders or otherwise wilfully disconnect themselves from reality. Donationware is a fine way to go stone broke.

Re:It's called donationware.

[DerekLyons]

No, I'm not contradicting myself - because I *am* dealing with facts. It's a stone cold fact that this (donationware) model has been around nearly three decades, and always has the same result - the developer goes broke. Nothing fundamental has changed, and therefore there is no reason to believe this effort will be any different. (Especially since the early information confirms those decades of experience.)

There is no more need to collect more numbers than there is to put my hand in a fire to prove it will still burn.

The one dealing with assumptions and contradictions here is yourself - because your utter ignorance of experience, your disconnected from reality ideals, and your blinders to facts leads you to assume that somehow, some way, things will be different this time.

Re:It's called donationware.

[Nationless]

I disagree with the idea that nothing fundamental has changed. The internet has changed. Things are easier to pirate than ever and peoples expectations have changed because of this. So has the simplicity of donating and there's a whole new generation of people with a whole new mindset growing up into this world where they have never experienced the old market model.

Radiohead/NIN would never have been able to hand out their albums for free on 14.4k modems or in physical form. These are experiments and we should take value in the results. Same with McPixel.

If you could please link me to the large amount of recent companies that have failed because of this then I would be happy to consider your viewpoint, but so far all I see is a big [citation needed] behind your arguments.

New numbers and information is ALWAYS relevant. We do not know everything and it would be ridiculous to assume that nothing ever changes. Just look at how scientists work, constantly disproving known theories as new tech becomes available to them.

We can, of course, agree to disagree and all you have to do is simply not reply to this post and we will leave it at that with differing opinions.

Re:Crappy game

[Hatta]

3K doesn't sound so bad for a dinky flash app that he probably knocked out in a couple of weeks.

Radiohead

[morari]

I seem to recall Nine Inch Nails playing with a very similar idea beforehand. Giving the multitrack files out for fans to make remixes, releasing digital versions of the album for free, etc.

Re:Radiohead

[UnknownSoldier]

That NIN's albumt. You could even download flacs!

To bad it was off in a different direction from the traditional NIN "space".

Re:Radiohead

[zixxt]

That NIN's albumt. You could even download flacs!

To bad it was off in a different direction from the traditional NIN "space".

When was there ever a traditional NIN sound?

Content Distribution

[girlintraining]

The real reason the Pirate Bay is hated is because it is a content distribution network. The BitTorrent protocol doesn't care whether it's a linux iso or a copy of the latest popular bluray rip that it transfers; It simply distributes the load to all of its participants. The RIAA, MPAA, and organizations they represent only exist because they have controlled the distribution of content (not its creation).

To hear that an author is distributing content on the 'honor system', is not surprising. All he's doing is leveraging a (free) distribution network, and probably making more money due to reduced overhead than he would if he went with one of the commercial solutions. Not to mention that gaining access to one of those solutions would require he give them a cut of the profits and pay regular fees on top of that. For a small-margins production like this, that would probably leave him with next to nothing.

The free market at work, that's what this is: And that's exactly why he has to die, horribly, painfully, and with many legal injunctions and fees. We can't have people using the internet to create money directly for themselves without any middlemen -- most of the jobs in our economy are middlemen. Burn the heretic.

Re:Content Distribution

[jfengel]

The **AAs are/were a promotion and marketing mechanism, as well as a content distribution mechanism. That was, for a long while, a pretty good plan: they ginned up interest via marketing, which was expensive, and then made up their expenses on the content distribution side.

Content distribution is no longer a viable model; there is revenue but nowhere near what's needed to match the promotion and marketing required to generate nation-scale interest. What they really object to is the fact that they have been spending money on the promotion and marketing anyway, while other content distributors undercut their revenue.

As you say, it's broken and it's not coming back. For the RIAA, it's easy to see how they should abandon the whole thing: content creation in music is cheap. We can live just fine without them serving as promoters; between Pandora and America's Got Too Much Free Time, promotion gets done.

It's a bit harder for the MPAA. Home-grown movies still don't match what can be done by a real studio, and there really are seven-figure up-front investments. Losing control of the content distribution is a loss not just to them but to everybody, since it means certain kinds of movies can't be made profitably. They're still profitable, but it seems pretty unlikely that they'd continue to be if the MPAA gave up trying to control distribution and went for a "pay what you want" model.

I'm still not crazy about using Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead as a model. Their studios had already spent big bucks promoting them. For the average Garage Band garage band, they have a hard time giving stuff away. A better example is, of all things, Fifty Shades Of Gray, which really took off for reasons nobody can figure out except that word of mouth really spread. Do not, however, expect that to happen often. The real model is eight zillion apps languishing in the iTunes and Android stores, one of which might be awesome if only somebody got all Fifty Shades on it. But you just can't do that for a movie.

Re:Content Distribution

[girlintraining]

You're correct in that the business model does have a few advantages for funding. And if copyright lasted only a few years, perhaps it would be a reasonable tradeoff. But when something lasts 150 years plus the life of the author, then you no longer have a situation where cost and benefit are balanced -- it costs the consumer massively, for little to no benefit.

I personally think the aggressive enforcement of copyright and modification of copyright laws are what is causing the destruction of the industry, not piracy. It's just like what happened during the Prohibition in the United States -- they tried to cut off access to a common recreational activity by force of law, and drove its use underground, resulting in the creation of this country's first large-scale organized crime syndicates, which remain active to this day due to the War on Drugs. Had the Prohibition never happened, organized crime might not developed in this country, or at least not to the breadth and depth that is is today.

When I studied Macroeconomics, there was a man whose name I forget who proposed that beyond a certain point, increasing taxes would actually result in less tax being collected because the incentives to cheat the system would outweigh the risks. So a tax rate of 30% might earn the same amount of revenue that a tax rate of 70% would. I think the same situation has happened in the entertainment industry -- except the tax in this case is a amortized in the system -- there are hundreds of little fees and laws and procedures that all work together in a complex dance to create a similar framework at a macro level.

Or put more simply: The recording industry priced itself out of the market. Their attempts to raise prices to compensate for lost income (in the form of a distribution 'tax') passed the critical threshold where there were more incentives to evade the system than participate in it. And yes, we all lose because of it, in the form of less available income and lower quality material... but it is hardly the fault of the consumer (legal or illegal) -- it was, in the final analyis, caused by a lack of competition. Had the recording industry not been dominated by only a few players, the pricing couldn't have been manipulated enough to cause it to pass the critical threshold, as the price would have remained aligned with the market demands.

They did this to themselves, and they took us with them.

Re:Content Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

man whose name I forget who proposed that beyond a certain point, increasing taxes would actually result in less tax being collected

Arthur Laffer

It's not just cheating. Another issue is that people simply have little incentive to increase their production if most of their income is going to someone else.

It's also worth noting that in regards to product pricing, this is basic microeconomics (not macro). Higher prices on a monopolized good tend to increase your profit per unit but can reduce your overall profit. There's a sweet point where the lost of sales just balances the profit increase per sale. That's the ideal price for a monopoly good.

Re:Crappy game

[jiteo]

So much arrogance and bitterness.

Read the guy's story (yes, I'm re-linking to TFA in a comment) on Ars and the guy's AmA over on Reddit. You don't have to like the guy's game (which most certainly isn't a dinky flash app that he probably knocked out in a couple of weeks - it took him 10 months), but you have to admire his class, and if you inisist on letting the Internet know you don't like his game, you should definitely be more polite than "quite frankly it's crap."

Re:Crappy game

[Zocalo]

According to the article that $426 was made in less than one day (the first), and since you'll hopefully be getting donations seven days a week that makes it equivalent to an income just shy of $3,000 per week. Assuming that you can crank out equally successful games at a rate that out paces the inevitable waning interest in your previous works, while you are not certainly going to be making a fortune and will need to self fund all the benefits that an employer might provide as part of a package, it's still not a bad wage.

Coming from different places

[poity]

A nobody coming from the very bottom will undoubtedly benefit from the publicity of doing something like this, because the rush of publicity and the sympathy money will make up for the low sales to download ratio. AAA developers will receive no sympathy, nor will they benefit from additional publicity on their already famous franchises, which means it won't work for them except to lower their revenue.

So, Pirate Bay make sense for upstarts, and that's about it.

Re:Crappy game

[Kjella]

According to the article that $426 was made in less than one day (the first), and since you'll hopefully be getting donations seven days a week that makes it equivalent to an income just shy of $3,000 per week.

Uh, what? Opening day sales are usually way higher than your average day, usually people make up their opinion pretty quick if they want it or not. I'd be surprised if he breaks the $1000 barrier in a week and it's not like week two is going to be like week one either.

Financial Success

[theArtificial]

From TFS:

"It's been five years since Radiohead brought the pay what you want model to the public with their successful sale of their 'In Rainbows' album.

A curious thing about the (arguable) success is it hasn't been tried again. Subsequent albums have not used a similar model. Think about that.

Re:Fantastic Idea

[Pinhedd]

It's not your right to decide that. You don't pay the artist, you pay the copyright owner. That "corporation in hollywood" probably spent millions of dollars on funding, casting, scripting, construction, production, post production, marketing, analysis, and unfortunately on IP protection. In exchange for that, they get to choose when and how to distribute the works that they own. If you don't like that, don't use the product at all because you're part of the problem and not the solution.

Re:Crappy game

[LordLimecat]

and since you'll hopefully be getting donations seven days a week that makes it equivalent to an income just shy of $3,000 per week.

Thats not a safe bet at all; you cant simply extrapolate from one day's sales to one week's sales-- especially when every other industry recognizes far higher profits on day one than on subsequent days (check opening day sales on any major game or movie, vs the next several days, vs the next several weeks). Theres usually a pretty sharp drop-off.

"Pay what you want"

[Penurious Penguin]

I have a lot of faith in the honor system. The guy behind the popular bakery chain Panera Bread made an interesting and surprisingly successful attempt to open one cafe with the honor principle in mind. Of course, I suspect demographics can have a significant effect on a physically located business, and it is a gambit, but my faith extends beyond the physical well into the realm of the digital where I think it can work just as well. There will surely be abuse, though I think if we are to even have a future, similar concepts will become much more common some day, however remote from today.

Re:benefit or harm reduction

[Havenwar]

Seems like your question is fallacious. After all: even if it's harm reduction, it's beneficial. No matter what the cause, it's money he wasn't getting otherwise, and people who wouldn't have heard of it otherwise that's now hearing about the game. So in a way it's advertising he's actually getting paid for, which can't be seen as anything less than a win/win/win scenario.

Re:Crappy game

[kelemvor4]

$3000 is not a horrible salary for a third of a year. And if he can get that in 1 week, now that is nothing to scoff at.

Then you will be excited to get a job at a local McDonald's where they pay at least $15,080.00/year because of minimum wage. I would describe $9000/year as a horrible salary. Won't keep a roof over your head, but you might be able to get high occasionally while living in a cardboard box.

Re:Fantastic Idea

[Elldallan]

As long as they keep lobbying to increase copyright duration I personally find that to be a deal breaker, the original 25 years was ok for it's time, these days everything produced is expected to show a profit within the year so copyright should be limited to 3-5 years after creation/publication.
Copyright was never made for the benefit of the creators, it was made for the benefit of the general public by giving the creators a monopoly on distribution for a limited time.
Personally I find these constant extensions whenever the copyright on mickey mouse etc risks running out is against the spirit of that "for a limited time" and as such in my opinion they have voided any right to protection under the law, hence I will choose not to respect their distribution monopoly. If that would eventually cause them to go bankrupt from that then so much better, then maybe what comes after will be a system that actually works to the benefit of all sides involved.

Re:Crappy game

[aztracker1]

I've spent on the humble bundles just to support the model... I stopped playing most games when drm became rampant, and they started suing the homebrewers.. I've also backed a few kickstarter projects as well

Aaarrr

[slick7]

What good is a game if it doesn't have pirates?
September 19, talk like a pirate day.

Re:Crappy game

[froggymana]

3k for a couple weeks of work? That sounds pretty fucking *horrible* to me, especially when you factor in the cost of development and test hardware, and ongoing support costs.

Assume it only took 2 weeks (it probably took much longer than this, as anybody who's ever done any significant commercial development is well aware) - that's $78,000 gross revenues for your *business* over the course of a year. Factor in dev/test hardware, dev time, ancillary operating costs (office, lights, electricity, business insurance, etc. etc.), and you're looking at significantly less than $78k per year as "actual" income. Then, whack off another 25-30% for taxes (remember, you'll owe SS, Medicare, and Federal/State Income Tax when DBA "you, inc." - not just your marginal rate you pay as a W2 employee of some other company.)

No, 3000 for "a couple weeks of work" sounds pretty much like a recipe for being (and staying) poor. It's a hobby, not a business.

Lots of people enjoy programming in their free time. Getting paid $3,000 for doing something I love doing sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

No time to Explain

[Trax3001BBS]

Used the same method of distribution (sept 2011) http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/09/14/0517245/indie-devs-upload-their-own-game-to-the-pirate-bay

It's a heck of a lot of fun, the louder it is the better I play :}
I have the PirateBay edition, it's different as my guy wears a pirate hat.

"No time to Explain" season 2 will cost you $3 (US) now and that's at 70% off http://tinybuildgames.com/

Re:Crappy game

[McFadden]

but you have to admire his class

Why? That would suggest there's something almost altruistic about his decision, when it's pretty fucking obvious that he's doing this to make more money than his mediocre game would have otherwise. I suppose I grudgingly admire his PR savvy.

While these kinds of "gestures" by game developers remain a novelty, they will be treated as such, and garner more publicity (front page on reddit, slashdot and god knows how many other sites already) leading to considerably more sales than they would have achieved otherwise. The right-on crowd who still seem to think this is somehow a generous decision rather than a cunning marketing ploy will support it with their wallets and the developer gets more income for his distinctly "average" project than he could have hoped for if he'd tried to launch it at a fixed price.