Valve's 75% off offers - will it help stop piracy ?

Pinkeyes

Pinkeyes

Pinkeyes

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I've been taking a bit of an interest in this.

So far Steam have sold Lost Planet, Left 4 Dead and now World of Goo with 75% off in recent weekends.

Reading this article recently, and it looks like they have been experimenting with these offers, and found they are making more money with these very low prices.

So as they have nothing to produce once the game is written, and if they continue sell them at these prices, a lot more people will buy them (as has been proved), they make more money, the games makers make more money - and everyone is a winner.
Surely this is the way to go to stop piracy.
 
Pinkeyes said:
I've been taking a bit of an interest in this.

So far Steam have sold Lost Planet, Left 4 Dead and now World of Goo with 75% off in recent weekends.

Reading this article recently, and it looks like they have been experimenting with these offers, and found they are making more money with these very low prices.

So as they have nothing to produce once the game is written, and if they continue sell them at these prices, a lot more people will buy them (as has been proved), they make more money, the games makers make more money - and everyone is a winner.
Surely this is the way to go to stop piracy.
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I find the offers great and for me it helps me purchase games i wouldn't normally buy.

Will it stop piracy, no. Will it help elevate the problem yes. Will game companies accept lower prices for there products, no.
 
I suspect a game is downloaded illegally the most around the time of its release, so I can't see these special offers having too much effect on piracy really. By the time the developer is ready to drop the prices, the damage will have already been done.
 
imo, it not only helps stop privacy, it gets more people playing all the games.

i wish all my games were on steam
 
TheVoice said:
I suspect a game is downloaded illegally the most around the time of its release, so I can't see these special offers having too much effect on piracy really. By the time the developer is ready to drop the prices, the damage will have already been done.
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But what if they started at this price ?
 
a multiplayer game like L4D/BF2 = less piracy, as virtual LAN etc is just too long and not as good

if the main game is built around a single player with a rubbish multiplayer thrown in = high piracy.

therefore i would say that if you want to stop piracy, or at least a particular % of it, release only multiplayer games, or perhaps single player games that must be run off a server, so no internet = impossible to play any game, and if internet d/c's your game is paused.. it would suck i know but its the only way

at the end of the day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

this has nothing to do with piracy
 
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You'd think if Valve stand up and say "Look, we halved the price of left 4 dead and made a 3000% increase in sales" that other games companies using steam would be clamouring to do the same.

It's really straightforward math - you're making £10,000 in weekly sales at the moment, half your price and you'll make £ 150,000. But somehow I think even with this obvious logic staring them in the face, most companies won't budge on price. Gits.
 
why is everyone so obsessed with stopping piracy? it is never going to happen!

As far as the pirates are concerned, why buy anything when you can get it for free!

It is nice to see steam dropping prices though, I may have to reinstall it :D
 
36,000% isn't that big a deal, what if the stats are based on the month before and that month one person bought the game, it was old and it just wasn't getting sales anymore.

as for selling at these prices to start, you'd be bankrupting companies left right and centre. if crysis say sold 2million copies at £40, obviously selling all those copies at £10 would get them a lot less money, but that money isn't pure profit, they employ a lot of people and a lot of that money goes to publishers and advertising etc, etc.

The point isn't to cripple the income on those 2 million sales, but once the people who really want it have made the game their money, its the extended sales that can make you a little money. Say 2 million people buy the game in/around launch and the first month or two, in the next year you might only sell 200k copies altogether, during the 2nd year you're probably only selling 5k copies a month because people who didn't want the game still don't want the game. Its those people you entice with the 75% offer, people who wouldn't buy the game normally. Its enticing extra sales not killing the profit from sales you can already make.

SO no, the 75% doesn't discourage piracy as others have said, if people are gonna pirate it they will pirate it around the release, who waits 3 years to steal games(normally) when you can get it often before the official release.

if a game was selling well anyway its retarded to offer it with a massive price cut, so you can already assume the games they've done it with were dramatically lower sales than at release.
 
drunkenmaster said:
36,000% isn't that big a deal, what if the stats are based on the month before and that month one person bought the game, it was old and it just wasn't getting sales anymore.

as for selling at these prices to start, you'd be bankrupting companies left right and centre. if crysis say sold 2million copies at £40, obviously selling all those copies at £10 would get them a lot less money, but that money isn't pure profit, they employ a lot of people and a lot of that money goes to publishers and advertising etc, etc.

The point isn't to cripple the income on those 2 million sales, but once the people who really want it have made the game their money, its the extended sales that can make you a little money. Say 2 million people buy the game in/around launch and the first month or two, in the next year you might only sell 200k copies altogether, during the 2nd year you're probably only selling 5k copies a month because people who didn't want the game still don't want the game. Its those people you entice with the 75% offer, people who wouldn't buy the game normally. Its enticing extra sales not killing the profit from sales you can already make.

SO no, the 75% doesn't discourage piracy as others have said, if people are gonna pirate it they will pirate it around the release, who waits 3 years to steal games(normally) when you can get it often before the official release.

if a game was selling well anyway its retarded to offer it with a massive price cut, so you can already assume the games they've done it with were dramatically lower sales than at release.
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Its not a case of discouraging piracy, but i imagine a lot of people who pirated it would have picked it up at the reduced price (i did it just for the ability to have it on steam so i can play it wherever).
 
I dont think you will fully ever eradicate piracy. However Steam must be doing something right for the gamer and the developer. (never mind the publisher, capitalist pigdogs :D ) Anecdotally, I am hearing more and more people say they will wait for it to come down in price on Steam before buying. A few years ago the same people would be looking for a torrent of a certain game.

A few years back I would download games and look for hacks, cracks and patches. With the advent of Steam and their pricing, I had to ask the question why bother. All I want is the experience of sitting down playing a game for x ammout of time and thats it.
 
Loki said:
A few years back I would download games and look for hacks, cracks and patches. With the advent of Steam and their pricing, I had to ask the question why bother. All I want is the experience of sitting down playing a game for x ammout of time and thats it.
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Same here. I expect I'd still be pirating games if GabeN hadn't decided to get rich one day.
 
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