Game Over Because of Pirating
 

Not sure if this was posted here before, but really funny…

Some of those comments are hilarious!

http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/…use-of-piracy/

I remember reading this, just classic.

Their game actually looks funny to play.

I really enjoyed it. Pretty good sim and a nice walk down memory lane. A bit short but considering the price you should pay less than $1/hr. Haven't tried any mods yet but there are a couple that looked interesting.

I'm not sure making people interested in your games jump through hoops is a sound business decision. To me it looks more like a stunt to get free publicity and good will on click bait blogs like Kotaku.

http://www.greenheartgames.com/wp-co…13/04/1day.png

I think the real reason we see things like these is that the indie scene is outrageously saturated and beyond being a gimmicky "simulation" this game didn't really bring anything new to the table.

It's like the Apple Store. Is your game even worth 99 cents considering how precious my time is and how vapid most of these "apps" are? How can I trust it is worthwhile? It's not surprising these games are being practically given away in bundles.

Only 214 sales? Hard to believe.
Very sad as I wanted to write about that good RPG…

It could simply mean that 93% of the potential customers weren't interested enough to actually pay for it.

Meaning, you should make a game that's more interesting.

Game Dev Tycoon is currently sold in boxed form here at German retail.

That was day two of it being available on early access.

So it is not as bad as it looks! As poster above said.

But you can also think of it in another way… probably there are people who are on the lookout for new torrens and will download something new immideitly… while the people who buy might try the demo first, buy it later, or need to learn about it before they buy it. So the numbers is probably not as bad as they look!

Nope. He said that's coming from usage data so this isn't from people just downloading the game and filing it away somewhere just in case they might want to play it some day. This is measuring people that are playing the game.

A game that has a demo version.

A game that only costs $8.

A game that's DRM free.

They aren't doing this because they want to try the game out. They aren't doing this because they have no money yet still seem to think they have a right to play video games. They aren't doing this as some sort of "protest against being treated like a criminal." They are doing this BECAUSE THEY CAN.

Honestly, this is at about the level where they might as well just ask for donations.

You do have a point, it'd be interseting to see how long those piratess played. Still it just proves how bad the piracy is… and that most pirates don't care at all about DRM free.

Haha I remember this, i laughed so hard when I first heard the story.
Well, they seem to have done reasonably well with the game in the long run, so that's something (maybe partly because of this funny stunt?). Still, I fully believe that this piracy ratio is the norm rather than the exception - there have been similar estimates all across the industry.

For sure. Piracy has always been there and is a cousin of "word of mouth".

The problem with this trolling method is pirate(aka "full demo") users think the game is actually broken by design and therefore don't become buyers.

It floors me still to hear that people will simply steal this blatantly, easily, with no fear or repercussions. I'd go ballistic if I ever invest a single cent into something and someone decided to steal it, lol,. The stuff I'd do in response would get me on cnn, guaranteed!

I think the copy protection of Spyro 3 on PSOne was better

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur…tes_at_bay.php

I'm not sure it ever was fully cracked. I remember my cousin was playing this and it was quite a surprise when I saw this pop up on screen, complete with voice acting.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011017/dodd_01.jpg

They made it very very tricky too, you wouldn't know exactly you had missing objects crucial for completing the game until much later on.

Would you go ballistic if it still sold well?

Piracy is a well known, level playing field for all developers and games are still making billions. More and more every year.

I think considering how many games sell well, and with people throwing millions at games that don't even exist (Star Citizen, anyone?) if your game flops and you find yourself blaming piracy maybe you should just not be a goose admit your game isn't really that good. :)

But if you're sure it is good but still isn't getting much notice and you start thinking about radical viral marketing you could do like the Pixel Piracy devs did recently and ask users to pirate your game first to see if its really worth your money! Sales went nuts, apparently.

Well, I can only imagine where the PC gaming business would've been without piracy…. I am sure it'd have been a lot bigger and we'd been getting a lot more great games as well.

That's just "glass half empty" assumption.

Statistics I don't have handy show that ~10% of demo downloaders end up buying and I see no reason a similar number of pirates wouldn't pay up for games they love, or at least get on board at the sequel or pick it up on sale at a price they deem more fitting.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating piracy. It's just that it is a constant fact of life and if you're creative you can even turn it too your advantage. I mean, look at what MP3 piracy did for Apple with its Ipod. :P

If we want to play the "what if" game then why not go a step further and say: "what if money didn't exist and all games shared a common asset pool and source code was all open and toolkits were so user friendly anybody could make a game thereby completely devaluing the skill but making a golden age of innovative iterations of the combined work of thousands of creative minds."

It sounds like something Bill Hicks would say, but this scenario is whats really best for PC gaming even if its not best for "PC gaming business" and it appears in a way money itself is a bigger issue for gaming than piracy, or the perceived loss of money, ever could be.

Zanzarah is said to have a similar thing.

And … Anyone remembers the Titan Quest copy protection thing ?