The Witcher 2 - 1M Sales, 4.5M Pirated?

@Moriendor — Funny thing; Rapidshare hosting service disagrees with what you say. There IS a waiting period between downloads for free users (https://www.rapidshare.com/#!buyrapids — click on "learn more").

What you claim to be trivial, or "boring, slow and stupid and totally 1990s" is actually just plain wrong.

Downloading a 14GB file via any of the file hosting services is a long and drawn out process that is anything but trivial (more like a nightmare). That is the real world of 2011.

*sigh* :rolleyes:

1) There is no waiting period at the moment on Rapidshare. Trust me on that. They removed it a few months back and probably never bothered to update their site so they can reinstate the waiting requirement at any time at their own leisure (like if/when the bandwidth exceeds certain caps or something like that).

2) As I said even if there were a waiting period it would be trivial to work around it and Rapidshare isn't the only hosting service either. Plus as I said most "serious" pirates are too cheap to buy games but they are not too cheap to often have multiple file hosting service subscriptions so they won't have to wait anyway.

3) To illustrate all of the above, I just added a warez version of Skyrim (I own the legal copy so let's consider this a backup download for testing and demo purposes :) ) to my JDownloader.
Just check the attached screenshot.
As you can see I took the screenshot after the first 500MB chunk had already finished downloading. I'm downloading at max speed as a free user. There was no waiting time between chunk no. 1 and 2. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Skyrim is a little over ~5GB and when the download started it said approximately 1hr:03m until the download is finished so you could download a 14GB game in ~3 hours with my type of connection (12MBit ADSL).

That's the reality of piracy in 2011. All of this took me under two minutes. Find link to container file. Add container file to JDownloader. Go.
It doesn't get any easier or more convenient than that.

That's why (PC) piracy wins.
 

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At least for the numerous IP services I've used in the US, I've never found one that relies on dynamic IP addresses. Indeed it is because of static IP addresses that the internet user can be identified by their IP address. Perhaps things are different in Europe; but I suspect not since virtually of the file hosting services require a waiting period between downloads; and they all rely on IP addresses to determine whether a waiting period is needed (some, but not very many, also check cookies as a redundancy check). If most addresses were dynamic (as you imply), the system that all these companies use would be totally inoperable, which hardly seems likely.

You are once again completely mistaken. The vast majority of ISPs buy IP pools that they then dynamically assign to their customers whenever a customer logs in. A static IP is a pretty valuable asset since it potentially allows you to run a number of web services that you would otherwise have to pay for. So static IP addresses are the exception and most (though not all... you will find static IPs with some cable providers especially) ISPs for home users don't even offer static IPs to their customers at all or if they do you usually need to pay extra.
 
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Actually most people who are trying to pirate anonymously will use a proxy server or a VPN.
 
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Besides rapidshare, there's also sneaker-net. You can be sure a ton of these games are distributed by dropping them on a flash drive and simply bringing it to school/work, then passing it on to the next guy the next day, and so on.

But anyway - the point of the matter is that piracy is rampant, especially if you take the whole world into consideration. Several nations aren't even remotely interested in prosecuting people for breaking the intellectual property rights of some other nation's businesses. Even within nations that are interested, it's still a very easy crime to get away with. For *MANY* people that translates to "legal."

That would be boring, slow and stupid and totally 1990s
I think you're talking UUEncode and the alt newsgroups if you're going to go back that far! (Oh man... I haven't thought about those newsgroups in a long time. It was like a single forum for the whole planet!)
 
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@Moriendor - I have neither the time not the inclination to argue your ridiculous statements. You said the dl software worked because of dynamic IP addresses. I pointed out that that getting a new IP address requires modem reboot even in the rare times that it is available. You conveniently ignored that. You also conveniently ignored the extended lease times. It is you who is once again completely wrong.

Rapidshare says that there are waiting times. You are simply wrong on this.

Yes there is piracy. But the huge numbers that people claim for piracy are supported by nothing but supposition and speculation. Speculation based on partial truths that ignores real world numbers and real world problems establishes absolutely nothing.

'Nuff said.
 
RPGFool, JDownloader can actually restart your modem there is a config page where you specify your modem type and the user/pass and it handles the rest. Still I do agree with you in the general sentiment of your agruement. For the vast majority of people BT offers far more. It is rare for my BT's to drop under 2-3MB's a sec and it would take roughly 9 "free" fileshare hosts to match that.

I thought the interview was pretty fair, it is interesting to hear from another perspective and a lot of what they said was quite rational. Personally I think that in general the quality of game has decreased and people get used to downloading games just to find out if it is even worth to buy. There are still games getting sold for 50 dollars that offer 6-7 hours of gameplay which is just ridiculous.
 
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Too much uncertainty to take away much of use from this. But ultimately, I think what's most interesting to me - is that they sold 1M copies of this game. This means it can be profitable to make a serious and mature cRPG - regardless of how much more profitable it would be without piracy.

Personally, I have no big issue with DRM - as long as it doesn't prevent me from enjoying the game.

So, if publishers and developers really want to blame piracy - then why don't they just implement a strong online protection. If there are 4.5 million pirates for TW2 - then common sense dictates that the amount of people "put off" by DRM would not exceed such a vast number. Even at the most pessimistic, I can't see more than half the amount of potential customers not playing the game, because they don't like the DRM.

I wonder how Skyrim did on the PC? I know that the Xbox pirated version was out a week before official release - but for some reason, console piracy has no effect on the developer.
 
Even within nations that are interested, it's still a very easy crime to get away with. For *MANY* people that translates to "legal."

Yes, this is actually pretty shocking when you think about it. I am certainly not completely innocent here, but the *vast* majority of people I run into, young and old the same, are of the mindset that you can "just download" it. Nobody buys CD's anymore. EBooks? Why pay for them? Buy an NDS and just load it with games on one of those flash cards.

Only hardcore fan groups are still interested in buying media: collectors, niche fans, nostalgic people, etc. Other people just assume that you can get it for free. Many assume it's completely legal, even. (In some cases it is!)

All of this has resulted in completely unhealthy media addictions. You can very easily get anything you'd want, at any time and it can be consumed at any time you want. Many people are simply collectors; they pull in terrabytes of content and seed it or store it on cheap, very large harddisk arrays. And there is hardly a way to stop all this, let alone change the general public opinion on this matter.

And in the middle of this, people get sucked into it. I certainly did my share over the years, beginning when I was a mere child with the mentioned sneaker-net. People were swapping 5 1/4" floppy disks like crazy. I've hardly ever met anyone who bought actual software for the Commodore 64. This all continued with the PC and even special hardware like handhelds and consoles, and will certainly continue until the end of the digital age, should it ever come.

I am back to buying almost everything I want to consume these days, from iPhone games to Steam downloads, to DVD boxes. I, however, can't get over the convenience of streaming music on-demand, being able to get at pretty much any band and album I want, whenever I want, and in a legal manner, too. And I do end up with *way* too much media, even while I paid for it. I've wasted so much money on stuff I didn't need, looked at two times and then neglected. It all stacks up, stays in my head and messes up my calm, elevating my stress levels. It's come to a point where I always have multiple games that I'm playing and have an impressive backlog. I "don't have time" to listen to music any more, because I'm always listening to podcast or audiobooks. I have lost so hours to watching TV series that were marginally interesting, some in marathon sessions. I have 4 things I want to teach myself at the same time, at all times, resulting in not progressing in any of them, really. These are interesting times.

Yeah, but long story short. Most people I speak to go like, "What? You buy music/games/movies? Why?" unless they are part of a special group of people that live for the kind of media they enjoy.

(Some people do buy the occasional title that they really want, though, while still downloading/collecting everything else.)
 
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I think most of the people who immediately or close to release go to download a 16 GB file are very interested in playing it. I think much more than 1/10 would have bought it if they couldn't pirate it actually.
 
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If you make a game that people want to buy then enough people will buy it to have more than a decent profit.

If you are too busy making it shiny and awesome to not bother adding some enjoyable gameplay or any kind of lasting appeal or inspiration then enough people might not buy it.

Quoting selected numbers back and forth is utterly useless. You can use a number to prove anything you want if you neglect, or are for whatever reason unable, to present the full picture and produce all the relative variables. Example: how many copies would a game sell if there was no absolutely piracy? We can only make assumptions, but such assumptions have absolutely no value since they are based entirely on our biases and they only serve to prevent us of reaching any kind of useful conclusion.

Piracy always existed in all media and will never go away.
Complain and threaten all you want, maybe if you do it enough you can guilt or scare a few people into paying but piracy will never go away.
Maybe pirates are the scum of the earth, maybe piracy should be punishable by impalement, maybe downloading games illegally is worse than sacrificing puppies to the lords of darkness... but piracy will not go away.

The way to combat it is to find a way to take advantage of it and use it for your benefit - if life gives you lemons etc. - it happened before it can happen again.. What way? I don't know and I don't care, it's none of my business. If the big game companies that are apparently severely affected by piracy are not even trying to do so, then I can only think of two reasons why: a. they are morons or b. they are actually not severely affected by it. I'm ready to believe either one or both.

I understand that the small indie developer has very little power to influence anything, but I'll be honest: I am not convinced that piracy doesn't work in their favor by generating more buzz for them. Bite my head off for making such statements but frankly, I only feel safe to spend all my gaming budget on indies that I've heard so much about because I feel safe that if I get burned I always have a way to get the brand new and shiny 'Uninspired Nonsense 17: The Rehash' that every reviewer awards with a 99.9%. I'm only speaking for myself here but let me support what I'm saying with some numbers 76%, 5.2M and about 8.6.
 
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When your store is being burglarized every week,

You put your finger onto an actually interesting point : We don't know all of the developers personally.

If I know a shop owner personally, having a chat with him or her several times, discussing matters and so on … Then I would be much, much more willing to buy there - leave my money there - than in a robotozed, faceless buying hall, so to say.
And I wouldn't rob him either.

It's all about personality, I guess, and getting to know someone personally.

In my case, I'm thinking differently about those people for whom I did beta testing in their offices - differently than people here and elsewhere who have never seen them personally, have never talked to them personally, have never shared their working time with them in their offices, and thus perceive them as faceless, unpersonal.

I guess that the "industry's" ("industry" ! this word alone talk a lot !) trend to spare money has betrayed them : Everything that makes a game a personal experience has been cut.

- DVD cases just looked cheap from day 1 on
- goodies are nowadas only to be found in paid-for expensive collector' editions
- developers are not knon by their names, the end game credits are seldom read, handbooks are more and more omitted
- everything is moving more and more into a faceless, impersonal "gming industry"

And as a result I believe that it is imho very, very mucb easier to rob from a victim you don't know than from a close friend (although this doesn't stop some people either).

To sum it up, I dare to say : The more impersonal the "gaming industry" becomes, the more piracy rises.


And the other side of the medal is, that giving gaming magazine's editors special special editions of games (like with Dragon Age 1, for example) that no-one will ever seen outside of the magazine's halls (except when they are given away in contests or so) creates a much, much more closer [emotional] bond between the developers and the editors - and this is imho resulting for much, much better reviews. You are more likely to forgive a good friend's mistakes than those of a stranger.

All of this has resulted in completely unhealthy media addictions. You can very easily get anything you'd want, at any time and it can be consumed at any time you want. Many people are simply collectors; they pull in terrabytes of content and seed it or store it on cheap, very large harddisk arrays. And there is hardly a way to stop all this, let alone change the general public opinion on this matter.

I agree to that.

First - it's unhealthy : It distorts our view of media. Media just isn't a "collectible" thing.
Second - It could well evolve a brand new kind of addiction - of a clinical addiiction ! - to that. Until a few years, Internet Addiction was not known and neither was Gaming Addiction.
- Third : This "collecting media" appears to me like a human's desire or will (or however you call it) to collect (which imho indeed was essential in the early times of humanity) gone wild. Unbraked, unstopped "collcting addiction".
- Fourth : This behaviour distorts the perception of how to aquire anything "media".
- And Fifth, and this is nothing but a guess : This kind of behaviour could both be the reasons of the downfall of the Printed Newspapers as well as a rise in collector's costs of printed papers. Like in Bladerunner, an natural, living animal which is an absolute rarity there could become the same with painted pictures here in Reality.
 
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How about stopping the discussion on how exactly to pirate games right now ?!

Everybody knows it's trivial. Who wants details can go somewhere else to find them.
 
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I consciously decided for myself NOT to learn how to pirate a game. And yes, I'm absolutely conscious over the fact that I'm sounding totally naive (ans like a fool) with that. I just don't care.

But apart from that, it's easy to get games for a lowered price. I really see no need to pirate games at all anymore.

All I do see is lack of patience.
 
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But apart from that, it's easy to get games for a lowered price. I really see no need to pirate games at all anymore.

All I do see is lack of patience.

It's a feeling that you need to have this *now*, because it's cool and some day you might come around to watching/playing/listening to it. So that goes on the already huge stack of "things to watch/play/listen to" one day and before you ever think twice about it again, something else comes along that you need to have *now*.

It works the same as an ulta-cheap special offer on Steam. You can get it *now* and it will hardly cost you a dime (or it's free). You want to see/hear it. I wonder how many pirates play games past the 5-10 hour mark or finish it.
 
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Yes, this "I want everything, and I want it now" is a certain mind-set, a certain mentality.
 
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Yes, this "I want everything, and I want it now" is a certain mind-set, a certain mentality.

I read about this series "Torchwood" in another thread just now. I want it. The Bard's Tale was released on iOS roday. I want it. I want it *now*. Will I play it? Irrelevant.

I am sick. Someone help me.

;)

But it's true. This is what drives piracy.
 
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I don't know why developers don't bake in game breakers for pirates like Mass Effect did. The weapons would get stuck in an overheated state if the copy wasn't legit. Brilliant! Not sure how they did it but I find that hilarious.
 
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I don't know why developers don't bake in game breakers for pirates like Mass Effect did. The weapons would get stuck in an overheated state if the copy wasn't legit. Brilliant! Not sure how they did it but I find that hilarious.

A good reason not to do that is that your forums and the whole interenet will get flooded with indignant "customers" complaining how broken your worthless game is - and potential "real" customers will actually believe it.
 
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Maybe I'm blind, but I didn't see him ever try to equate an illegal download to a lost sale. Almost nobody does
I've only seen it from forum users to be honest, never from companies. It seems to be the first thing trotted out whenever an article talks about piracy: "but it's not equal to lost sales!!" - we know, no-one said it was.
 
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