Game Over Because of Pirating

Originally Posted by Carnifex
The stuff I'd do in response would get me on cnn, guaranteed!

So you would start dating Jennifer Lopez?

Originally Posted by SirJames
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.

Umm, you can't see a reason? How about "they don't get anything for paying?" I suppose 10% might actually intend to pay for it "some day soon" but I bet most of those either wait for a rather deep sale or simply forget about it once the marketing hype has vanished.

Things would certainly be different if even 30% of players were paying for their games. The bigger market would mean far more game development going on, that's for sure. I'm less sure how much would go into developer/publisher pockets, how much would go into bigger development budgets, and how much would go into charging the consumers less but I would be surprised if all three didn't get at least some of the pie.

I find things like this to be the perfect example of human ignorance, and I love how this "test" can be interpreted every which way.

If piracy really worked like that - no one would be making any money. Fact of the matter is that there's a ton of fantastic games that earn a ton of money based on legitimate purchases.

Now, based on my experience with human beings - a large part of it has to do with convenience. If something is convenient, people will gravitate towards it - if they're inclined to enjoy the experience. In fact, even if they're no particularly inclined to enjoy it, they still might do something if it's easy enough. That's why you have a zillion people buying all kinds of crappy games when there's a sale on.

If you serve up an unknown title on torrent sites - people will download it, even if they don't care about it. People actually playing the game doesn't mean people who're enjoying the game enough to invest.

If you want people to buy something, you have to make sure it's convenient - and you have to make sure they're aware of what it is BEFORE it's released - and, especially, WHY they need to get it. Now, much of that is marketing and word of mouth - but you have to do the work.

Also, you should offer an incentive to use the legitimate version over the illegal version, and that can be something as simple as a pre-order scheme giving access to something extra that the illegal version might not have.

The biggest challenge is definitely when you're an unknown and you haven't established yourself as worth the investment.

But that's how the world works when you insist on the monetary system.