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How the Pirate Bay Can Be an Asset To Game Developers

Posted by Soulskill on from the or-at-least-some-of-them dept.

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."'"

9 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. So he's made 300 bucks so far... by AmazingRuss · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  2. Radiohead by morari · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
  3. Re:It's called donationware. by joelsanda · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    The Luddites were ahead of their time.
  4. Content Distribution by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:Content Distribution by jfengel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  5. Re:Crappy game by jiteo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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."

  6. Financial Success by theArtificial · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

    --
    Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
  7. Re:It's called donationware. by Havenwar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:Crappy game by kelemvor4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    $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.