Indie Company Strikes Back at Piracy

Cool thing to do, the irony of those pirate complaints!

Such a shame though, the numbers speak for themselves.
 
Fascinating! Of course, the question remains, how many of these pirates would turn into regular paying users if they didn't have the option to download the pirated version. It's what RIAA & co likes to make everyone believe... that the total number of pirates could be directly translated into total loss in revenues.
 
Fascinating! Of course, the question remains, how many of these pirates would turn into regular paying users if they didn't have the option to download the pirated version. It's what RIAA & co likes to make everyone believe... that the total number of pirates could be directly translated into total loss in revenues.
That's something I always found to be quite a bit misleading. It does not directly translate into total loss in revenues. If a lot of these pirates didn't have easy access to a cracked version, they probably wouldn't go out and buy it.
 
214 genuine users = $1712 revenue
3104 using 'cracked' = $24832 :eek:

Scale that up globally and it's no wonder software companies are making you "check in" online with your license details to be able to play their games.

Sim City anyone? ;)
 
The game is pretty fun I ended up buying it. It's actually just HTML, Javascript and CSS in a package. If you're on a mac (not sure about Windows) you can open the app contents and play it in the browser (something I had to do as it wouldn't run correctly on the retina MBP.
 
Interestingly, when this story dropped, it interested me enough that I thought I'd buy the game. Unfortunately, the developer's site had been buried under the traffic from RPS, PC Gamer, Reddit, etcetera, so I was unable to buy it (or get the demo). Say what you like about Steam et al, but they're certainly incredibly useful for avoiding situations like this.

Of course, now I've played the demo I went ahead and bought the game. It's worth the £6 to me.
 
That's something I always found to be quite a bit misleading. It does not directly translate into total loss in revenues. If a lot of these pirates didn't have easy access to a cracked version, they probably wouldn't go out and buy it.

Then they shouldn't play it.

If they're using a cracked version of the game, it's lost revenue. Doesn't matter if they had planned on buying it or not. They're still using an illegal copy which is lost revenue for the company.

This is what happens when you grow up with an over inflated sense of self entitlement.
 
Then they shouldn't play it.

If they're using a cracked version of the game, it's lost revenue. Doesn't matter if they had planned on buying it or not. They're still using an illegal copy which is lost revenue for the company.

This is what happens when you grow up with an over inflated sense of self entitlement.
How is it lost if it was never going to be there in the first place? I wasn't condoning the activities, I was just saying that companies aren't going to get that revenue regardless if there was piracy or not.
 
The reactions to the game are a bit stupid as well.

It's a game inspired by Kairosoft's Game Dev Story and a lot of fanboys are claiming they're 'stealing' the concept so it's ironic with what they've done. Ignoring the fact that almost every game in existence is based or borrows off of a previous concept and that pure originality in video games is rare. Or that Kairosoft wasn't the first to do simulation, nor were they the first to do game dev sim.
 
How is it lost if it was never going to be there in the first place? I wasn't condoning the activities, I was just saying that companies aren't going to get that revenue regardless if there was piracy or not.

Unfortunately, piracy is never going to go away, its simply impossible to stop. Rather than companies being apathetic or spending millions in ineffective measures, they should work out how to make money off it.

For example, this games company could have approached, say amazon for example, and in the game they released via piracy themselves, embedded adverts for amazon somewhere, on a PPM style pricing or similar.

Or, several weeks after a blockbuster movie has been released, the movie company puts out a "free" dvd quality version online before the pirates get hold of the "normal" copies themselves... but with banner adds popping up every 30 minutes for 30 seconds or so, kinda like youtube, but actually hardcoded onto the movie itself.

Maybe i'm just being naive, or idealistic, but I think if these companies want to stop losing millions in ineffective anti-piracy measures, they should just accept it will happen (because it wont go away), and work out how to turn that around into a money making venture instead.
 
Maybe i'm just being naive, or idealistic, but I think if these companies want to stop losing millions in ineffective anti-piracy measures, they should just accept it will happen (because it wont go away), and work out how to turn that around into a money making venture instead.
Exactly this. Anti-piracy measures are not loss of revenue. They are expenses that companies choose to take on. Lost revenue is selling a crate of watermelon and some kid smashing a few. Those watermelon would have been sold, had they not been smashed.
 
I like what they did there. However if you look at the facts....I didn't even know or hear about that game until this thread..which ultimately got posted because of it's flip-position with the story-line directly relating to piracy. So in this case piracy of this game caused me to consider checking it out. Now if I do end up buying it, the people who sought out my money will only have the pirates to thank...because of them and people responding to them, I know about this game.

If people could return games that sucked that were bought in stores (within a window of even just a couple days not 30 like a normal return policy )...People would not have to find a way to try them out themselves before donking-off 60 bucks or whatever. Yes it sucks but as was said...people are going to download crap, that is just how it is and you can't catch them without breaking laws and becoming a bigger criminal than them yourself.

I have two great ideas that would generate plenty of income for games and one in fact would only generate money from pirated copies. However since the scope of logic that people define and describe a 'pirate' with is so convoluted, and because I am not employed by a game house coupled with the fact that I am broke and already pretty much work everyday for free tends to make me keep my ideas to myself.

I mean why share the ideas...I have no way to profit from them myself as I don't have my own game title...and anyone using my ideas, my name, my nick or anything else related to me without paying is a pirate (conceptualizing something great is just as important as making something great) and I am sure at least one major game maker would just use my idea as their own and not credit or pay me so in an effort to not have my ideas pirated, I no longer make suggestions to any company.

There you go...I defeated piracy by doing nothing, now if everyone would stop having ideas and people would stop making things there would be no piracy....sounds like a plan right?
 
Unfortunately, piracy is never going to go away, its simply impossible to stop. Rather than companies being apathetic or spending millions in ineffective measures, they should work out how to make money off it.

For example, this games company could have approached, say amazon for example, and in the game they released via piracy themselves, embedded adverts for amazon somewhere, on a PPM style pricing or similar.

Or, several weeks after a blockbuster movie has been released, the movie company puts out a "free" dvd quality version online before the pirates get hold of the "normal" copies themselves... but with banner adds popping up every 30 minutes for 30 seconds or so, kinda like youtube, but actually hardcoded onto the movie itself.

Maybe i'm just being naive, or idealistic, but I think if these companies want to stop losing millions in ineffective anti-piracy measures, they should just accept it will happen (because it wont go away), and work out how to turn that around into a money making venture instead.
I just have to quote it even if I already liked it cause more people need to understand this in general, it applies to other on-going issues too. You either find a new way to deal with it or go home, cause it won't go away.
 
Unfortunately, piracy is never going to go away, its simply impossible to stop. Rather than companies being apathetic or spending millions in ineffective measures, they should work out how to make money off it.

For example, this games company could have approached, say amazon for example, and in the game they released via piracy themselves, embedded adverts for amazon somewhere, on a PPM style pricing or similar.

Or, several weeks after a blockbuster movie has been released, the movie company puts out a "free" dvd quality version online before the pirates get hold of the "normal" copies themselves... but with banner adds popping up every 30 minutes for 30 seconds or so, kinda like youtube, but actually hardcoded onto the movie itself.

Maybe i'm just being naive, or idealistic, but I think if these companies want to stop losing millions in ineffective anti-piracy measures, they should just accept it will happen (because it wont go away), and work out how to turn that around into a money making venture instead.
Or... they could come up with these ideas like SOPA that can help restrict & control the internet?

Yep, my idea sounds so much better.

-.-
 
That was an interesting little trick, I quite like it.

Now, on the note of piracy, DRM and such: most games, movies, etc. suck. This is more often than not not a matter of taste, they were simply created and rushed out to get sweet moneys. Which on its own is fair enough, but not if you do it without trying to give your buyers something worth buying, otherwise they will very quickly grow annoyed with you. Now, I'm going to focus this posts on games, because I have a lot less with movies.

Games are really expensive. Those prices may vary between countries, but usually the price for a new game is about 60 euros. That's a lot. This doesn't even always have all the content, sometimes there is DLC (Dragon Age), sometimes you need to pay a fee to play (World of Warcraft) etc. However, games are all ready really expensive, so leaving out content or even being able to play the game (!) without paying more money, is just a crude move.

Now, since most games suck and are really expensive, obviously you can't really buy them all and stick to what you like, because there's no "Not good? Get your money back!" kinda deal. Sure, there are demos, but they don't really tell the whole story. For example, if you play the Diablo 3 demo, it seems like quite a cool game. You can only play it up to a certain point, and it feels worth buying. It's not until you play the full game that you realize how boring the game gets. Because I've bought Diablo 3. I liked Diablo 1 and really liked Diablo 2 and its expansion pack. The game was hyped up for quite a while, so this was a "must buy" for me. Except that no store in my area could deliver it to me when it got released. Which is not entirely Blizzards fault, but it is still a little bit. No problem, I'll just download it online. From their website. The legal way. Now, my download speed is really good, so if I were to download it cracked, I would have been done in half an hour. Top. But not with Blizzard! My download speed was capped most of the time on a rather insanely low level because their servers couldn't handle it. Probably more people got left without physical copy. Then when it was finally done, it wouldn't work, I got an error message. Looked up the problem on their website, it said "please download again". So there we go again. Anyway, when it was finally fully downloaded and installed, I got to play. A little bit. Before their servers went down. Because even though I went through all this trouble to get their game, I was forced on an always online method for playing single player, and they hadn't quite realized that their servers couldn't handle that. (we're talking about the company that created World of Warcraft, out of all things). Anyway, the game itself was not quite as fun as it should be, and there were quite some issues with it. As a paying customer I feel screwed over and I won't be so quick to buy Diablo 4 when it inevitably comes out.

However, for Blizzard it was at least unintentional. Their game wasn't as good as it should have been, but at least they tried. In the past I've bought Red Alert 3, the premium edition. I have always been fond of the Command & Conquer series, I've played them all, including all their expansion packs. Now, one thing that was included with the RA3 premium edition was beta access to EAs next C&C game. Cool! So I got access to Command & Conquer 4. I've installed it, played it for 3 games and got so bored that I never played it again. However, I did hang around the private beta forum to provide and read feedback. And there was a lot of it. A whole lot. EA read all this feedback, and then basically said "well, we see your point, however we're too far into development to make any major changes so, yeah." 2 or 3 minor things got changed, and the game got shipped regardless, while pretty much everyone agreed on it being a horrible game. But hey, it shipped for 60 bucks, with always online feature, with the apparently forced server issues. In this case, it got so bad that the EA community master posted that he understood that people downloaded cracks to play their legally bought game to just be able to play it offline and thus play it at all. Ha! Anyway, I've downloaded the game because while it was a horrible game, it was the end of the original C&C series, and it would have felt bad not to see that. So I've rushed through the campaign in an hour or so, then uninstalled it forever. Not even bothering with the extra mission. Because that's just how bad it was.

In the past, I've also downloaded games to see what they were like. An example would be starcraft 2. I really liked Warcraft 3, but had never played the starcraft series. So I downloaded it to test it out, then realized I quite liked it, and bought it. Because it was a good game, and worth buying. However, most of the time games are badly made, rushed out for some quick money, with DRM that hurts the user experience (but not the ones that pirate it), and cost way too much. So as long as they keep that scheme up, people will keep pirating, because if anything, it's a superior product compared to the legal one. DRM isn't the solution, better games, for realistic prices, with all the content without hurting DRM is. Because if a game is truly good, it will get bought, I'm sure of that. World of Warcraft can be played illegally on all sorts of private server, but it remains one of the most legally played games in the world, giving Blizzard loads of money. The games that hurt the most over piracy are the mediocre and bad ones, that aren't really worth the price and as such get skipped for the actual good games. Once game developers start realizing this, maybe they'll finally spend their leftover time into improving the game, rather than screwing their customers.

/rant
 
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