Another view of game piracy

Neil79 · 6 May 2010 at 13:04

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy

With the Humble Indie Bundle promotion we've seen that when we treat gamers as real people instead of criminals, they seem to respond in kind. Anyone can get all five DRM-free games for a single penny, and pirate them as much as they want -- we have no way to find out or stop it. However, in just the first two days, we have over 40,000 contributions with an average of $8 each! Would we have seen this much support if the games were console ports that only worked when connected to a secure online DRM server? We'll never know for sure, but somehow I doubt it.

Sleepery · 6 May 2010 at 13:08

Excellent stuff! Nice little dig at Ubi too

Schnippzle · 6 May 2010 at 13:16

Excellent stuff.

Psypher5 · 6 May 2010 at 13:16

got this yesterday,

one of the games is quite scary :'

Amnesia · 6 May 2010 at 13:18

well i only paid a quid for it so i guess im a bit of a cheap skate but thats great news.

ofcourse this wont be the correct figures but 40,000 contributions multiplied by $8 = $320,000 and in just 2 days = WOW

btw great middle finger @ UBI

Alex74 · 6 May 2010 at 13:19

Definitely some good points in there. I'm not sure I'd agree entirely with the overall argument, but certainly good points are made about DRM software and taking Blizzard as an example of software quality.

EDIT: Current numbers on the Indie bundle -

Real-time Statistics
- Total raised $348,309
- Average contribution $7.89
- Number of contributions 44124

Anominity · 6 May 2010 at 13:19

Well, they got $10 out of me

skullman · 6 May 2010 at 13:29

However, it's easier for these developers to point their fingers at pirates than to face the real problem: that their games are not fun on PC. The games in question are usually designed for consoles, with the desktop port as an afterthought. This means they are not fun to play with a mouse and keyboard, and don't work well on PC hardware. Their field of view is designed to be viewed from a distant couch instead of a nearby monitor, and their gameplay is simplified to compensate for this tunnel vision.

Blizzard is one of the most successful game developers in the world, and it develops exclusively for the PC. Why do they succeed where everyone else fails? They create games that are designed from the beginning to work well with the mouse and keyboard, and with all kinds of desktop hardware. If developers spent more time improving their PC gaming experience, and less time complaining about piracy, we might see more successful PC games.

Nail...hit...head.

platypus · 6 May 2010 at 13:41

Great read that.

ColdAsIce · 6 May 2010 at 13:45

Excellant read! I really hope the publishers heavily involved in DRM, at the very least, read this article.

z0mbi3 · 6 May 2010 at 13:46

Personally I paid $5, on the basis of having played Gish before and having found it excelent.

Tefal · 6 May 2010 at 14:22

It's more a view on advertising than piracy.

These games get hardly any advertising so don't sell, this gave them great word of mouth advertising across forums.

apatia77 · 6 May 2010 at 14:35

Haven't these games already been sold before?

Good games will always sell well, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 probably will end up as the most pirated games ever but at the same time they will sell well and earn Blizzard millions of dollars.

Acemath · 6 May 2010 at 14:59

Too be honest?I only tried to pirate one game in my life.didn't work.I'm a noob when it comes to mounting a image and use virtual drives and using daemon tools.So i buy every game i want to play.i just wait untill they are 20 bucks at Steam

eekfek · 6 May 2010 at 15:53

Acemath said:
Too be honest?I only tried to pirate one game in my life.didn't work.I'm a noob when it comes to mounting a image and use virtual drives and using daemon tools.So i buy every game i want to play.i just wait untill they are 20 bucks at Steam

I've never felt the need to rush out and buy games on release, and like yourself find it much more advantageous to wait a few weeks and snap them up legit and new cheap via sales/offers.

Meridian · 6 May 2010 at 16:19

So five games for $8 together? Anyone seriously think this would come close to covering development costs for even one major game, never mind five?

M

Amnesia · 6 May 2010 at 16:24

Meridian said:
So five games for $8 together? Anyone seriously think this would come close to covering development costs for even one major game, never mind five?

M

well $8 dollars probably wouldn't but it's unlikely they would only make 1 sale.

AbsenceJam · 6 May 2010 at 17:07

apatia77 said:
Haven't these games already been sold before?

Good games will always sell well, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 probably will end up as the most pirated games ever but at the same time they will sell well and earn Blizzard millions of dollars.

With all Blizzard games a huge part is on-line play so you need a real copy.

markk · 6 May 2010 at 17:19

skullman said:
Nail...hit...head.

Indeed, was about to copy paste the same thing.

Kenai · 6 May 2010 at 17:43

Meridian said:
So five games for $8 together? Anyone seriously think this would come close to covering development costs for even one major game, never mind five?

M

These aren't major games though, so of course people won't pay major game money for them. They're also not new games, which you have to take into account, many will already have at least one of the games in the pack (World of Goo is the big name in there and many people have it already) which again lowers the perceived value.