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Cracked Game Released To Get Back At Pirates
John Wagger writes "When Greenheart Games released their very first game, Game Dev Tycoon (for Mac, Windows and Linux) yesterday, they did something unusual and as far as I know unique. They released a cracked version of the game, minutes after opening their Store. The pirated copy was completely same as the real copy, except that after a few hours into the game, players started noticing widespread piracy of their games in the game development simulator."
You really need to read the article.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
They paid the most because their market is undeserved for high end games.
It really is down due to traffic. And cloudflare really is playing medical insurance company again. If you're not familiar, it's where you pay and pay and pay for their protection and then that one time when you critically need them, they're useless and refuse to properly do their one single job that they had (they claim there's allegedly no cached version of the page for them to serve up off their servers).
What does that have to do with things when. 1) notch is an OSX user and 2) their donations is not even a whole percentage of the total sales.
They paid the most because they have more money. An assumption as good as the other one.
Apparently you have read and comprehension problems. That is exactly what the poster you are criticizing said. Additionally he said that it is ironic because they proved the idea is false by pirating their own game (the simulator) and still having profit, as you fail to understand.
Not really, developers rarely, if ever, go out of business because of piracy alone. In order to have a piracy problem you have to be creating software that people want. The developers that ultimately go out of business are usually the ones that aren't creating software that's worth pirating.
Think about that, if your software is so bad, that people aren't even pirating it, how would you expect to stay in business? Pirates themselves don't cost developers any money because, quite frankly, if they won't buy the software, they wouldn't buy it whether or not there's a pirate version available.
Annnd by this logic Xplane pirated MS Flight simulator. Halo pirated Wolfenstien 3d. etc.
It isn't piracy. If the gameplay is exactly the same (such as some clones that ONLY change the graphics) you might have something. If the game plays differently, adds features, etc, it's just another entry in the genre.
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
Ah, the invincible pink scorpion. It appeared fairly early in the game, which was probably a good idea. If they'd put it in too late then pirates might have been put off (more so) from buying the game, but since it was so early it gave pirates a chance to get a feel for the game but not have to replay too much if they decided to buy it.
False Dichotomy. Assuming competence (which I realize is an unsafe assumption) they could have made the savegame from the warez version work on the official version, and the players would not have to replay anything. Just don't load the pink scorpion.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They paid the most because their market is undeserved for high end games.
I'm hoping that you meant "underserved".
The fact that you will LOSE because of that is not obvious from TFS. TFA is /.ed anyway.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Not only are you now all talking about a game that you otherwise never have heard about, the presence of a "cracked" version gives the authors a built-in answer to any bad reviews that might be published.
"The game is too hard? Noooo... that's just the cracked version which seems that way. It crashes ten minutes in? We put that there to deter pirates, and that would never happen in the real version. There's no replayability and it's even less fun than Cat Litter Simulator 2013 in hardcore campaign mode? Sounds like that reviewer was too cheap to buy the game and must haven playing a pirated copy. When you give us money, it will be much better. I promise!"
Cheers to the Klug brothers for thinking of everything.
"Game prices are too high"? Seriously, is US$ 8 too expensive for you? We're not talking about an US$ 50 game here.
"People don't want to spend any amount of money without knowing what they will get in return."? There are demo versions available.
They're there in their room. You're on your own.
So certainly they will want to try it before they buy it. But if they like it and their friends like it, they will likely buy it if they can afford it.
Just like how only people who truly need it will take welfare. It has nothing to do with the fact that many people feel that they deserve to get "free" stuff just for being born.
This should be the perfect release: solid title legacy, cheap, no drm, demoversions, free advertising trough pirate networks, complete with slashdot coverage and everything. Kudos. Would probably buy if i was into the Tycoon series.
Can I light a sig ?
The game is DRM free, you can use it on up to three of your computers for your own use,
If it was actually DRM free, wouldn't there be no limit to the number of computers you can install it on? Unless the 3 computers thing is just a suggestion. If they have a server monitoring how many installs you have for a particular serial number, and prevents you from installing on more, that's not DRM free.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
I haven't played this game yet, but if I downloaded the "pirated" version knowing it was a demo of sorts, by reading this /. article or having a short "you've downloaded the torrent demo. It's the full game, but blah blah blah" and I liked the "pirated" version, I'd buy the full game. If I downloaded the "pirated" version and there was no disclaimer, I'd assume the game was broken. No way I'd give up money for that.
This from someone who's kicked in a lot of money for beta's and less than stellar Linux releases (Minecraft, Humblebundles, Steam, extra donations to kickstarter's to be on beta tester list). If the game is available and I try it and like it, I will buy it. If the game is crap, "pirated" or not, it's off my list. There are many other things to spend money on before wasting it on crap games.
Kudos to these guys for trying something "new", but I think they, as with all developers, need to lighten up on the "piracy is killing our business". If you're not making money because piracy is hurting your bottom line so much, don't make games. It's obviously not a viable industry. Instead we constantly read about awesome new game selling millions of copies and turning huge profits and then hear the developer screaming about how piracy is running their business. I'm inclined to believe it's a bunch of horse shit. It also makes me believe when a developer of a less than awesome game starts screaming piracy, they're full of it too and are just on the "We'd make so much more money if it wasn't for piracy" bandwagon despite the fact that their game was just crap.
I'm not sure where to start...
"Initially we thought about telling them their copy is an illegal copy..."
Except that it isn't. You gave it to them. Regardless of you framing it as a "cracked" version it was still legal. Absolutely no one cracked and pirated your game. You simply released a free game. If you had done this without "tricking" people, if you had monitored usage of a version that had actually been cracked, then maybe it would be meaningful and maybe the conclusions you draw from it would be interesting. But considering that you did this "punk'd" style then it's pretty meaningless. Those "pirates" wouldn't have your game if it weren't for you. You can't donate to charities and then call them thieves.
It's also rather arrogant to assume that your game would have been pirated in the first place. There's no way for you to prove that if you hadn't released a "cracked" version that someone would have started torrenting it. For all we know, you could have just released your game and 214 people would have bought and downloaded it and no one would have pirated it and that would have been the end of it. Instead you concocted a convoluted, albeit clever, publicity stunt and played the victim of circumstances that you yourself created.
"Anyway, the cracked version has a separate ID so I can separate the data. I’m sure some of the players have firewalls and some will play offline therefore the actual number of players for the cracked version is likely much higher."
That is very speculative and flimsy at best. If you have torrent statistics then you know how many people downloaded it. What does it matter how many people send or don't send anonymous usage statistics? Unless you are comparing number of units sold versus number of units downloaded (from your own damn torrent) then it's a meaningless comparison. People who bought it could just as easily be using a firewall or playing offline.
I certainly get that you want people to pay for this game. I respect that. But I don't think this really proves anything at all. I think you've succeeded in clever publicity, not in proving any point.
It's obviously there to make a statement about the real world. That's why they put that in the pirated version--they wanted to tell real-world pirates how damaging piracy is by introducing bad effects within the game from game-world pirates. If game-world piracy is not representative of real-world piracy, this message is inaccurate and can be criticized for being inaccurate.
Hardly.
With only 3344 total users I'd argue that they either need to advertise more or make a better game. Furthermore the gimmick in the pirated version may in fact drive up the piracy rate.
Fuck Beta
Copying ideas is not the same thing as copying implementation.
Ideas are cheap. Implementation is expensive.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Im not sure, but Im not going to make an attempt to justify piracy with that line of thought.
The fact is
* There IS a demo
* This game is dirt cheap
* This is an indy studio
* Theyre making very little money
And scores of posters are STILL trying to justify piracy. At the least this dev deserves to have only those who have paid, receive this game.
And what % of the 3130 people that pirated it actually would have bought a legit copy?
Why is this meaningful? If I sneak into a movie theater and watch a movie without paying, it doesn't make it OK just because I would never have paid to see it. Sure my watching it doesn't "cost" the theater anything - I'm not really lost revenue for them - but that still doesn't legitimize my doing something for free that other people are paying for and in effect subsidizing.
You can persuasively argue that piracy by people who wouldn't pay for a product doesn't translate to lost revenue. You can't persuasively argue that it's "the right thing" to do, though.
"95% of all Slashdot
6. Because many Windows people already bought the game at full price and don't feel the need to rebuy.
Windows has a pretty vibrant game market, and has good digital distribution. Many of the non-cheapskate Windows users already bought the games prior to the humble bundle happening. For example I remember when the first one came out and Linux users were spraining their arms patting themselves on the backs for paying $14 for the bundle, or about $3 per game. All I could think was that the two games I wanted from it, I already owned and had paid full price for. $20 for World of Goo and $10 for Gish. I was happy with that too, felt I got my money's worth.
So I didn't buy the bundle, there was no need. I didn't want the other games.
What you have to appreciate about the slightly higher average Linux numbers is it is still highly cheapskate. Paying a couple bucks for a game is not much at all. One game at regular price can be a good bit more than that.
I think that is no small part of it. I've only ever bought one humble bundle, and that one I didn't pay much for because again, I owned many of the games. I bought the Introversion bundle because I wanted to try Darwinia. I already owned Defcon, Uplink, and Dungeons of Dreadmor. I spend quite a bit on games, but I do it outside of the humble bundle. I think you'll find many of the non-cheapskate Windows gamers are the same.