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[Kssio_Aug]

No Mans Sky probably going to get pirated to hell then, because so much people talking smack about it, but I bet everyone wants to at least try it.

I'm pretty sure it will. There are many people willing to just give it a try but not willing to buy it at all.

But maybe people can actually enjoy it (or not) and propagate their experience leading other people to buy, or even buying it themselves later.

But honestly, thats not only with NMS... Popular games in general, except those that offers strong multiplayer mode, does get pirated a lot, yet they also sell a lot.

 

[LordRaptor]

Do we have any proof that drm helps I'n sales to me drm just seems to hurt paying customers more

I touched on this above in my "things I think help developers curb the negative effects of piracy" post, because from a producers point of view there is only so much resources available for a PC port, and the time and money spent on DRM is effectively spending your budget on people who aren't paying you money, not spending money to improve the product for people who are.

Which, you know, when you lay it out like that should show how crazy a situation that is.

From a consumers point of view, I can attest that I have chosen to not purchase products due to DRM - to this day I still haven't bought Diablo 3 because always online requirements for single player content is absolute bullshit, and I'll likely never play the new Hitman for the same reasons.

I have also been forced to use piracy methods to play legitimately purchased games; in fact, I believe the version of Max Payne on the Steam Store is still the warez edition that stripped out CD checks.

e:

Look at the Tim Sweeney thread, it's very similar to the piracy discussion.

Oh okay, you have nothing worth responding to, I won't waste my time.

 

[shintoki]

Protecting your IP and making sure only paying customers get to to use it is not a "non issue" to me.

PC pirating is the only form of "theft" that I know of where people makes excuses like "people were never going to pay for it anyway so your not losing any money" or "these companies make billions so its ok" etc.


People need to be honest with themselves, people will always pirate games because they don't want to pay for something they should. Period.

I feel like these two points contradict each other. One of the biggest issues for years was punishing paying customers for the pirates. Securom, Stardock, and all those other terrible DRM forms that came out in the mid 00's. With the reason being they wanted to protect their interests and pirates are to blame. So the paying customers were treated like pirates and pirates had a better version of the game. That's all that happened.

After most major companies like EA and Ubi put PC on the backburner. Valve kept chugging away on non-intrusive DRM and GoG started to release DRM free titles. Suddenly, PC sales went up. Indie games found their market and now EA, Ubi, and companies who've never touched PC prior are jumping on board.

So I do have to agree with that one to a degree. A pirate wasn't their customer to begin with.

 

[DOATag]

So normally Ive always been on the side of the DRM makers, I understood that they had a right to try and protect their content and up to this point, Ive never run into a situation where DRM had caused me any great level of stress or issues in playing the games I wanted to play. It never bothered me so I never took the side that piracy was justified to get around DRM restrictions.

This past weekend however I tried to play a game I love, Sid Meiers Sim Golf. Its a game I keep around and like to play at random times every few months. With Windows 10, it is now no longer possible to play this game without the use of a no-cd crack. The DRM relies on a component of Windows that is no longer available/enabled in Windows 10. While ive been on the side of content makers, this experience made me realize that DRM and our ability to break said DRM is going to be paramount to the ability for people to play their games. Not every game has a blizzard or Valve behind it, supporting it for decades beyond its release to ensure it continues to work.

EA wont fix Sim Golf, its a game that in all honesty they probably dont even have the code for anymore and its age and the lack of any chance of sales for the title means they wont pour resources into it to make sure this game is still playable. The fact that 10+ years ago someone created a way to circumvent that DRM means I can still play this game I love and own. While I still support DRM, I have a new appreciation for the work and the fact that we need ways to circumvent this content protection.

 

[rickyson1]

I think there's probably a line where aggressive enough DRM actually increases piracy rather than decreasing it

I used to pirate games as a kid and(outside of my lack of money which was obviously #1) the biggest reason was that a lot of games were just plain objectively better if you played a pirated copy that stripped away all that nonsense

I doubt denuvo or whatever is anywhere near that bad(haven't played any games with it personally so who knows) but I feel like there's a definite line there that could piss a lot of people off in a meaningful way

 

[spineduke]

It's the same silly, adolescent arguments being made again and again from the same side. None of them learn since idiotic phrasing and memes get thrown around ad nauseum like it's some kind of intellectual honesty. Like it's some moral high ground. It's not. They are standing on a heaping pile of creamy shit and championing and parading around a child's logic that has no place in modern society.

Piracy is what it is, theft. It's a different kind of theft but to suggest the impact, the violation is different over finite/infinite will land you in the circus. It's foolish. It's dishonest. It's vile.

"It's just a copy bro" can go pound sand. It's beyond silly to rationalize piracy this way.

-

Having said that we will probably wind up with a future of nothing but services and streaming for gaming. Developers work in an extremely toxic and hostile environment. None of us deserve to survive simply because we are here, but we don't deserve to have our work stolen and redistributed to more theives and anyone arguing that it's not theft or throwing out the bullshit "but theft removes the original!" line of thinking deserves to be treated like a child because it's quite apparent they lack the mental capacity to see it for what it is.

Anyone bringing that logic to the table better be prepared to get called out on it. Period.

It's a hot button for me and my team and I won't sugar coat anything.

With that - I'm out.

I'm still not convinced by your passionate responses - I cannot equate piracy as a stolen copy. The math and numbers do not support your narrative. You sound angry, and I can understand the frustration with dealing with an industry full of obstacles and challenges. It's clear to me that you think of most gamers as self-entitled children, and that stains your perception of any argument coming your way. I don't think you're here to discuss, but rather lecture people here on what piracy actually is to you. Great. But don't expect anyone to listen when you keep insulting those indirectly and sticking to overly simple arguments of "It's wrong cause I said so!". If you're truly interested in the subject matter, there are some very interesting studies on the impacts of piracy to the media industry. Let me know, I can link you to some if you care to read.

 

[aravuus]

I'm still not convinced by your passionate responses - I cannot equate piracy as a stolen copy. The math and numbers do not support your narrative. You sound angry, and I can understand the frustration with dealing with an industry full of obstacles and challenges. It's clear to me that you think of most gamers as self-entitled children, and that stains your perception of any argument coming your way. I don't think you're here to discuss, but rather lecture people here on what piracy actually is to you. Great. But don't expect anyone to listen when you keep insulting those indirectly and sticking to overly simple arguments of "It's wrong cause I said so!". If you're truly interested in the subject matter, there are some very interesting studies on the impacts of piracy to the media industry. Let me know, I can link you to some if you care to read.

I doubt Jacksinthe is coming back, for better or worse, but you could post the studies here. This has been an entertaining thread, but I haven't exactly learned anything new, so I wouldn't mind checking them out myself when I've got the time.

Spoiler

Well okay, I did learn that it's better to just ignore jacksinthe's ramblings from now on lol

 

[Sniffynose]

It might sound stupid but I have a feeling a lot of the "piracy" is people trying these games out to see if they actually run properly, or if they are complete shit.

There's pretty much no such thing as a demo anymore for anything (unless you count release version lololol) and if it wasn't for steam refunds I would likely be doing this to get an impression of how a game ran on my hardware and if it was worth my time.

This generation has been nothing but lies and broken games being unleashed on us so I'm not surprised people would try other routes to see if things are what they say they are before blowing $90 Canadian on yet another over-hyped busted pile of shit.

I'm already starting to transition over to PC from my PS4 because I wanted to be full digital but Sony has no problem selling broken crap to people and not even offering a refund on things like pre-orders.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

I think people need to also consider that a pirated copy of something isn't necessarily a lost sale.

Dude, please don't instantly jump to the defense of software piracy because 1% are not doing it because free.

 

[bj00rn_]

please don't instantly jump to the defense of software piracy because 1% are not doing it because free.

I suspect that what you perceive as defense of piracy is simply a defense for bringing facts to the table. After decades of brainless FUD from the industry and its shills some of us are sick and tired of the usual endless barrage of fiction and imaginary numbers.

I've even provided a couple of contextual facts in this thread, but for some interesting reason most people here doesn't care. It might indicate that some people prefer to perpetuate their own cherry-picked narrative.

Disclaimer as usual: I do not pirate, I'm too old and resourceful for that.

 

[Polk]

Dude, please don't instantly jump to the defense of software piracy because 1% are not doing it because free.

Pirates would buy at most fraction of games they are pirating right now. That's why pirated copy = lost sale is flawed thinking.

 

[SeeNoWeevil]

Pirates would buy at most fraction of games they are pirating right now. That's why pirated copy = lost sale is flawed thinking.

Who is saying that every pirated copy is a lost sale? Can you quote them.

Secondly, who cares? It's still not yours to take, even if you didn't have any intention of buying it. Same goes for those trying it as a demo. It's not yours to take.. Ignoring the fact there are a million and one ways to find out about a game/how it runs AND you have Steam refunds. NMS was revealed to be a shit show by numerous people about 13 minutes after it went live.

 

[wazoo]

I have seen this discussion since the 80s with the same arguments in defense of piracy generation after generation.

 

[aravuus]

I have seen this discussion since the 80s with the same arguments in defense of piracy generation after generation.

Mind listing those arguments?

 

[SomTervo]

While I'm in a position now where Piracy isn't as necessary to enjoying things (I dabbled my fair share when younger), it's definitely something that people with no disposable income or from countries with big wage gaps won't be able to afford (assuming there is no scaled-pricing for their region, though that entices people to abuse it using VPNs etc) gaming realistically as a hobby or passion.

I think the preservation argument absolutely holds water. in an ideal world, games over a certain period of age would have their DRM-measures de-activated or at least made less severe to ensure compatability in future.

The preservation argument only holds water if you keep the files yourself once cracking them and don't distribute them ie by torrent

Which is what always happens

 

[superNESjoe]

I stopped giving any benefit of the doubt to piracy when people started pirating humble bundles in huge amounts.

I don't care if a pirated copy doesn't equal a lost sale. "I wasn't going to buy it anyway" isn't an excuse that entitles you to something without paying.

There are excuses for piracy. Emulation and games that are long out of circulation with no means for you to legally acquire them. But "I wasn't going to buy it anyway" is not an excuse.

You don't want to pay for it? Fine, don't. But then you lose the right to enjoy the product.

 

[jdmonmou]

It might sound stupid but I have a feeling a lot of the "piracy" is people trying these games out to see if they actually run properly, or if they are complete shit.

There's pretty much no such thing as a demo anymore for anything (unless you count release version lololol) and if it wasn't for steam refunds I would likely be doing this to get an impression of how a game ran on my hardware and if it was worth my time.

This generation has been nothing but lies and broken games being unleashed on us so I'm not surprised people would try other routes to see if things are what they say they are before blowing $90 Canadian on yet another over-hyped busted pile of shit.

I'm already starting to transition over to PC from my PS4 because I wanted to be full digital but Sony has no problem selling broken crap to people and not even offering a refund on things like pre-orders.

Steam refunds have tried to take care of that problem, but I think companies are still missing the boat on creating a digital rental service that could be very profitable. Imagine if you can pay small amounts of money ($2-$5) to "rent" games on Steam for 24 or 48 hrs at a time. If you want to keep the game, you just pay the full price minus the money you spent to rent the game and your save file carries over. Valve or somebody else should implement a rental system like that ASAP.

 

[aravuus]

Steam refunds have tried to take care of that problem, but I think companies are still missing the boat on creating a digital rental service that could be very profitable. Imagine if you can pay small amounts of money ($2-$5) to "rent" games on Steam for 24 or 48 hrs at a time. If you want to keep the game, you just pay the full price minus the money you spent to rent the game and your save file carries over. Valve or somebody else should implement a rental system like that ASAP.

Well tbh, like someone earlier mentioned, the refund system isn't actually meant for that. You get penalized if you keep buying and refunding games, I believe.

But yeah, a rental system for Steam and the consoles' digital stores would be amazing. There are a bunch of PS4 and Vita games I'd love to try, but it's really hard to justify forking over 60 euros for a "risky" game, i.e. one I have no idea I'll actually even enjoy.

 

[SeeNoWeevil]

Well tbh, like someone earlier mentioned, the refund system isn't actually meant for that. You get penalized if you keep buying and refunding games, I believe.

But yeah, a rental system for Steam and the consoles' digital stores would be amazing. There are a bunch of PS4 and Vita games I'd love to try, but it's really hard to justify forking over 60 euros for a "risky" game, i.e. one I have no idea I'll actually even enjoy.

Valve T&Cs state you can refund for any reason. They even have 'It's not fun' as one of the refund reasons. But even still, why would you be refunding masses of games you didn't like? It really isn't difficult to avoid buying shitty games. I manage just fine without piracy or demos (which cost a lot to make btw). Ignoring the fact that downloading and running a Windows executable you got from a random torrent is really dumb.

 

[Tarin02543]

I thought piracy was totally eradicated.

 

[aravuus]

Valve T&Cs state you can refund for any reason. They even have 'It's not fun' as one of the refund reasons.

Of course they do. They obviously want to know why you've refunded, whether or not they believe your reason is valid is unknown to us. Just because you can refund for any reason, the fact that it's not meant to be a 2-hour trial of any and every game doesn't change, as proven by Corpekata here:

Not really. Steam will flat out tell you eventually that refunds are not meant for this and could result in restricting your account. Got that myself recently after refunding a few shoddy games.

I don't personally know the inner workings of Steam refund, and frankly currently I don't really care either, because of this:

But even still, why would you be refunding masses of games you didn't like?

I don't know man, you tell me, because I don't do this. I've only refunded a handful of games ever since the system was introduced, and I've never had problems with it.

The rest of your post, I'm not sure if it's aimed at me? But good for you either way, some of us do make mistakes when buying games for a wide variety of reasons. Doesn't change the fact that I don't pirate games or adamantly demand demos, cause if I'm on the edge with one game, I'll just buy something else I know I'll like and wait for a discount.

 

[orava]

I have seen this discussion since the 80s with the same arguments in defense of piracy generation after generation.

Well i can play all of the games from 80s even if those had some kind of copy protection.

 

[jellies_two]

It's funny to see people argue that a pirated game isn't a lost sale. Yes maybe So ? So what ?
It probably isn't a lost sale of 1.0 skus but doing the math over all, it definitely isn't 0.0. It's Zero point something of a lost sale. 0.1 0.5 who cares, it's non zero.
Does stealing 0.x off a developer really feel totally fine to an adult who stopped shoplifting a while ago? (Or never has).

 

[Jacksinthe]

I'm still not convinced by your passionate responses - I cannot equate piracy as a stolen copy. The math and numbers do not support your narrative. You sound angry, and I can understand the frustration with dealing with an industry full of obstacles and challenges. It's clear to me that you think of most gamers as self-entitled children, and that stains your perception of any argument coming your way. I don't think you're here to discuss, but rather lecture people here on what piracy actually is to you. Great. But don't expect anyone to listen when you keep insulting those indirectly and sticking to overly simple arguments of "It's wrong cause I said so!". If you're truly interested in the subject matter, there are some very interesting studies on the impacts of piracy to the media industry. Let me know, I can link you to some if you care to read.

Coming back for this, in particular:

It's clear to me that you think of most gamers as self-entitled children, and that stains your perception of any argument coming your way.

Wrong, son. We're talking about pirates - not the gaming community at large. Don't ever fucking put words in my goddamn mouth like that. I have respect for "gamers" - just not pirates. I have respect for people who respect ME. That's how things work, guy. I'm taking a hard stance against piracy and you come at me with this manufactured bullshit? And now all of a sudden your arguments have merits when you try to spin my stance against piracy ... to this?

How can anyone take you seriously?

Ignore list it is :|

 

[aravuus]

How can anyone take you seriously?

I believe what we are all witnessing here right now is the absolute maximum amount of irony that can physically be contained in one post. Wrap it up folks. This is it.

Whatever. Denuvo made me buy games and now i just want legit games. Its just better.

What do you mean, made you buy games? Did you pirate them before? Couldn't you just not pirate them if they don't have a DRM implemented? What's better?

 

[Carlius]

Whatever. Denuvo made me buy games and now i just want legit games. Its just better.

 

[iBlue]

Games on PC should have some sort of way to verify if the copy is legit. Hate people who do this.

 

[Jacksinthe]

I believe what we are all witnessing here right now is the absolute maximum amount of irony that can physically be contained in one post.

I am passionately against piracy. I have hard data you and your studies don't. How is that irony?

And you have no argument against putting words in my mouth.

If you'd like to manufacture one, please do!

 

[LordRaptor]

It probably isn't a lost sale of 1.0 skus but doing the math over all, it definitely isn't 0.0. It's Zero point something of a lost sale. 0.1 0.5 who cares, it's non zero.

It matters because there are huge swathes of examples where anti-piracy measures have done nothing except annoy legitimate customers.

If the specific ratio of what percentage of people who would otherwise pirate would instead buy as a result of DRM measures, then it would be clearer at what point it is not cost effective trying to convert that audience.

Many publishers do believe that piracy rates approach 1:1 with lost sales, and those are the figures they use when discussing piracy, so their internal valuations are at an approximation that half of an entire games porting budget is "worth" spending on DRM mechanisms, because of "more than 90%" piracy rates.

If it turns out that the actual numbers are something like 30%, then publishers are effectively wasting money at the expense of legitimate consumers.

 

[aravuus]

I am passionately against piracy. I have hard data you and your studies don't. How is that irony?

And you have no argument against putting words in my mouth.

If you'd like to manufacture one, please do!

I'm not going to argue against your hard data (that you haven't presented) with my studies (that.. What?) because I try to learn from my mistakes, and the most recent mistake of mine was to try and engage you in a civil discussion. To which you responded with insults.

So clearly you're taking a very hard stance with me, too, despite me not being a pirate, so I've figured that arguing with you is just gonna be a waste of time for us both.

e: oh geez I just noticed you didn't even realize what it was that was so delightfully ironic. The lack of self-awareness is truly a sight to behold.

e2: on a more positive note, I do have to say that your game looks really cool

 

[jdmonmou]

Quote from the article

“I think soon the whole discussion about DRM will be irrelevant anyway,” CD Projekt CEO Marcin Iwiński told me at the end of our interview. “Even today, the importance of DRM is way smaller than it was a few years ago. Games are rich in online functionalities, which—if done well—add great value to the experience and pirating becomes irrelevant. Quite often [piracy] just makes no sense, as you miss out on the core social/community part of the experience.”

I agree with this. Pirating games is not as easy as music or movies. Unless you're on a private tracker it's very risky to run the executable on your PC since it could contain malware. Also, it's a pain to keep the game updated with patches and other updates. Steam automatically keeps the game updated. And it makes no sense to pirate an online multiplayer game.

I just think that the harmful effects of piracy are overblown nowadays. Cream rises to the top. If the game is good the developers will make money. As games become more complex with online support and features, pirating games will not continue to be practical for most people.

 

[Jacksinthe]

It matters because there are huge swathes of examples where anti-piracy measures have done nothing except annoy legitimate customers.

If the specific ratio of what percentage of people who would otherwise pirate would instead buy as a result of DRM measures, then it would be clearer at what point it is not cost effective trying to convert that audience.

Many publishers do believe that piracy rates approach 1:1 with lost sales, and those are the figures they use when discussing piracy, so their internal valuations are at an approximation that half of an entire games porting budget is "worth" spending on DRM mechanisms, because of "more than 90%" piracy rates.

If it turns out that the actual numbers are something like 30%, then publishers are effectively wasting money at the expense of legitimate consumers.

I don't like DRM and at no point is it 1:1. I personally feel most DRM solutions are a waste of money.

I think most large devs/pubs look at total numbers, which I feel is the wrong way to analyze it. The floor is always moving so you can never give an accurate number from game to game so the only logical solution is to take a look at sales dives when torrents are made public.

This is where I look and where other devs I talk to look. There's a correlation between drops in sales and pirated versions going live and that paints a pretty decent picture but there are other considerations like time since release. But when you see data consistent with drops across multiple games in early lifetime sales you'd be hard-pressed to come to any other conclusion.

It's never 1:1 but the data shows it does affect sales, which is pretty horrible.

Quote from the article


I agree with this. Pirating games is not as easy as music or movies. Unless you're on a private tracker it's very risky to run the executable on your PC since it could contain malware. Also, it's a pain to keep the game updated with patches and other updates. Steam automatically keeps the game updated. And it makes no sense to pirate an online multiplayer game.

I just think that the harmful effects of piracy are overblown nowadays. Cream rises to the top. If the game is good the developers will make money. As games become more complex with online support and features, pirating games will not continue to be practical for most people.

Ah, the "so what if people steal it, it still made devs money from legit consumers!" argument.

How quaint.

 

[horkrux]

If it turns out that the actual numbers are something like 30%, then publishers are effectively wasting money at the expense of legitimate consumers.

Hmm.

30% is a lot.. a lot by any stretch of the imagination. If we'd be talking lower single-digit rates, I could understand your reasoning. Kind of.

Yet still the question stands why we consumers should debate at what point DRM measures would be adequate, when it is completely up to them. It's their products they want to protect and sell. I think most of the legitimate consumers are not bothered by DRM and seeing how many people are focused completely on the newest releases, titles broken by DRM further down the line wouldn't even be a concern to them.

If we actually had hard data, that the money spend on DRM was effectively wasted, we could rub their noses in our findings and tell them how silly they are, and not buying their games anymore as a consequence. But it's ultimately a business decision surrounding the game, leaving the quality of the game itself untouched. Many won't care and enjoy the game regardless, however fleeting this experience might be. I also have my own concerns regarding preservation and whether I'll be able to enjoy a game many years later (I'm actually more worried about PSN etc. being shutdown on older consoles making it impossible to patch their games), but I think it's important to note that this might in fact not come at the expense of most of the consumers and you're basically speaking for yourself. Your experience is ruined, not necessarily that of the others. That doesn't invalidate your concerns (quite the opposite), but I think they should be voiced as such - your own.

 

[jdmonmou]

Ah, the "so what if people steal it, it still made devs money from legit consumers!" argument.

How quaint.

I'm not saying it's right, but you'll never be able to completely stop piracy 100%. And less and less people will do it as games become less practical to pirate. I don't think its worth the outrage.

 

[Mithos]

Whatever. Denuvo made me buy games and now i just want legit games. Its just better.

And Denuvo made me STOP buying them (that have Denuvo), I can wait until they are in bargagebin AND have cracks/removals before picking them up (if I ever will).

 

[LordRaptor]

I think most large devs/pubs look at total numbers, which I feel is the wrong way to analyze it.

Sure, and as per usual the experience of a large AAA publisher (even including the "AAA by PC standards" type publishers like Paradox or Kalypso) is going to be markedly different to the experience of an indie, because unless an Indie really knows the right people their sales are likely to be of the 'slow burner' variety rather than the big explosive launch anyway.

Hmm.

30% is a lot.. a lot by any stretch of the imagination. If we'd be talking lower single-digit rates, I could understand your reasoning. Kind of.

I mean, that's the figure suggested by the article in the OP - that piracy rates are closer to 30% than 90+%.
ie that having uncrackable DRM, which may or may not affect the desirability of the product to legitimate consumers, is only looking to boost sales by about a third over having no DRM at all.
ie that whatever money is spent on that DRM solution, you're only looking to increase ROI by a third versus spending nothing on DRM and spending those resources on improving the product somehow (which may have a much larger impact on sales)

 

[staticneuron]

The article goes into a lot of the nuances around piracy, rather than the very specific quotes seen in the OP.



The gaming industry, and especially publishers have often, and for many years, cried about how significant piracy affects their sales. These statements often linked to reasons for not putting as much importance on the PC platform, especially in the past. Despite all of this, the PC platform, along with Mobile, are the two fastest growing platforms. Games often match their console counterparts in sales, sometimes more, or less, depending on differences in general tastes between the platforms. It was long-believed that PC users only bought at extreme discounts, but that was debunked with SteamSpy, and also showed that sales have much longer legs versus their console counterparts, which largely rely on day-one volume. Denuvo has been very successful for the first couple of months of a game's release, and thus far, I have yet to see any significant evidence of this significant problem. The burden of proof is on them to show that piracy is a significant problem, not on the other side (proving a negative).

Just like the article opens with, it's very easy to condone piracy. You should be buying your games. I most certainly do, but there are a lot of nuances to this discussion such as restrictive DRM and long-term preservation which matter to paying customers as well.

It was a problem, like two console generations ago. It no longer is like that but I am sure some pubs will use any excuse to cheap out on PC dev. So the pay primary devs for console and if possible port to PC, sometimes using a different dev. It seems as with the rise of console gaming PC gaming has been an after thought for some. I would say it is thanks to steam and some other platforms for bringing life back to the PC and even some pubs/devs that are going to be PC only for their next entries.

 

[Otakumegane]

Oh, I see.

So, as a developer, at what point in sales am I allowed to hand-wave piracy and be OK with it? When should I stop feeling affected by piracy? How long will it be before I just laugh it off as I dive into my gigantic grain silo turned coin silo like Scrooge McDuck?

You are suggesting it's OK as long as it sells X copies. I will run this by my team if you can provide statistics from developers and their "I don't give a shit anymore, I'm baller now, son" spreadsheets.

-

Our first game a long time ago was a mobile game. No ads, no IAP, no BS gameplay and sold it for 99c. When we hit the top 50 paid on Android it hit the torrents quick. Our sales dropped like a rock. We didn't even make enough to cover basic costs - I mentioned in another thread across iOS and Android we didn't make enough to even buy a PS4. We have been pirated at percentages above 5 figures - it's still going even after we made it free. Mind you we have been above a 4.4/5 rating since it's release. It's not a bullshit game, we hit the top 50 day 1 and then sales dropped when we started getting phoned home from UDIDs that didn't purchase the game.

So my artist, audio engineer and myself never got paid since the money earned was used to cover the red. Ever since I started the company we have been in the red, which is to be expected since we jumped straight to a PS4/PC game with project 2 that is still under dev but at the least I was hoping to cover basic running costs of the LLC, servers, etc. Not much but enough that it affects me since I'm the only one paying and working 2 jobs to do it because I don't want to crowdfund.

We reviewed insanely well. We don't deserve to be around by default but we don't deserve to be pirated to high hell. I am extra careful at making sure I do everything right by the gaming community with our current game, unfortunately we won't get brownie points and will be an easy target for future PC piracy with our next game because of it.

I know plenty devs who don't give a shit about PC builds just because of piracy and I don't blame them. I also blame a lot on the industry for lack of legit curation and preservation. I'm against piracy but I'm not stupid when it comes to games being rendered useless in the future. There has to be a give and take. Unfortunately there's a lot more take which causes a lot less give.

Many of us want to be able to grow as developers, hire more people, make bigger and better games. We see what AAA is turning into and want to step up but it's difficult for is since the environment we work in is toxic. Again, we don't deserve to survive simply because we exist, but we don't deserve to have our work pirated no matter the quality of the content. Most of us are in the red as it is, so piracy really fucks us over more than people can imagine.

God that's terrible.

I guess why many mobile games right now are offering to start free but turn off ads after you pay a small sum.

 

[Jacksinthe]

I'm not saying it's right, but you'll never be able to completely stop piracy 100%. And less and less people will do it as games become less practical to pirate. I don't think its worth the outrage.

Oh you'll never be able to stop it fully, but stop it when it matters is key.

Also, I don't buy the "practical" argument.

I don't see how much more practical you can get besides naming your own goddamn price via Humble and a couple of clicks. But people still pirate the shit out of Humble games.

We can talk regional standards but there's sometimes shit outside the control of the developer that prevents them from releasing in every territory known to man but that doesn't make it OK to steal their work. Red tape sucks and when it's not the fault of the dev the punishment shouldn't be put on them.

We can't afford to localize our game everywhere under the sun. That doesn't mean we won't but that means we need to launch elsewhere first and hopefully get funding to continue the work to release where we feasibly can but that doesn't give someone the right to steal our stuff because they have to wait a few weeks.

With all the sales and how easy it is to purchase legally without special cases the practicality of it is that it's far more work to pirate than it is to buy legally. Humble. Like fucking charity. Name your own price. If that's not practical enough then I don't know what is :|

 

[horkrux]

I mean, that's the figure suggested by the article in the OP - that piracy rates are closer to 30% than 90+%.
ie that having uncrackable DRM, which may or may not affect the desirability of the product to legitimate consumers, is only looking to boost sales by about a third over having no DRM at all.
ie that whatever money is spent on that DRM solution, you're only looking to increase ROI by a third versus spending nothing on DRM and spending those resources on improving the product somehow (which may have a much larger impact on sales)

I think it might not have been really clear in my post: My point was that a potential loss of 30% is not something to simply gloss over and I'm at a bit of a loss as to why you would think it is. And I think it's fair to say that the amount of money you have to spend to noticably improve the quality of a game (I mean - to what end even?) far outweighs the costs of DRM. Developers/publishers are spending enough money on their projects as it is.

 

[Xilium]

Bluntly put, the only people that don't pirate are the people that don't know they can or don't know how. For all the people white knighting in this thread about the immorality of pirating a game, I'd be willing to bet that at least 90% of them download/watch porn for free.

Piracy seems to be one of those things that people will only take a stand against when it relates to an industry that they're personally invested in and want to see succeed. If you go to an anime forum, you'll find that many people are against the pirating of anime and will criticize people for openly admitting that they do it. That said, talk about wanting to pirate music there and suddenly everyone's posting links to their favorite places to get said content. And then there are industries like porn or software apps (Photoshop and Windows/Office for instance) that apparently everyone is OK with pirating.

This being a gaming forum, game piracy is obviously going to be a sour subject. I just find the hypocrisy of calling game pirates scum and then turning around to pirate content from some other industry interesting.

 

[LordRaptor]

I think it might not have been really clear in my post: My point was that a potential loss of 30% is not something to simply gloss over and I'm at a bit of a loss as to why you would think it is.

The figures suggested in the article in the OP suggest the subset of PC gamers that are pirates is 15-35%.

In other words there are more people that are prepared to pay money to play a game than there are not.
This is a vastly different assumption to that which has been made traditionally and fundamentally questions the benefits of DRM, which, again, mostly harm legitimate consumers, not prevent illegitimate ones.

And I think it's fair to say that the amount of money you have to spend to noticably improve the quality of a game (I mean - to what end even?) far outweighs the costs of DRM. Developers/publishers are spending enough money on their projects as it is.

'hard' DRM solutions such as Securom or Denuvo cost a lot of money.
Even 'soft' solutions like setting up your own server based authentication layers on top of whatever Storefronts account based systems are in place - such as a R* Social Club or UPlay - still cost money to develop and maintain.

It is money often taken directly from a titles port budget, or money used to justify not bothering with a PC port (less and less nowadays, as these age old assumptions are increasingly questioned).

If you want a hard example of where spending a bit more money on the development side of things would have helped sales more than spending that money on the anti-piracy side of things, current day Warner Brothers seem to be struggling with this issue.

 

[horkrux]

The figures suggested in the article in the OP suggest the subset of PC gamers that are pirates is 15-35%.

In other words there are more people that are prepared to pay money to play a game than there are not.
This is a vastly different assumption to that which has been made traditionally and fundamentally questions the benefits of DRM, which, again, mostly harm legitimate consumers, not prevent illegitimate ones.

Not sure what you mean by the bolded part. They reduce 'illegitimate consumers' by a 100% in the case of Denuvo. Did you mean that they harm us more than they benefit the publishers? We don't know that.
I'm not even sure if you read the article thorougly enough. The article in the OP suggests this figure based on a Steam survey. You'd think that people who participated in such a survey were frequently using it. Of those people, 30-35% had a bittorrent client on their PC (fuck this, why do they even know that ). I could spin this around and claim that even among the most avid buyers piracy is going strong, but all this spinning is leading nowhere.
The article provides other findings on this too, though, namely in the paragraph right after that, suggesting something higher.

I don't really care whether this is all much lower than a spokesperson's ridiculous guesswork. But all of this might even vary drastically from title to title, meaning that you'd suggest developers/publishers of titles pirated higher than average to follow the rest and don't use DRM at all.

'hard' DRM solutions such as Securom or Denuvo cost a lot of money.
Even 'soft' solutions like setting up your own server based authentication layers on top of whatever Storefronts account based systems are in place - such as a R* Social Club or UPlay - still cost money to develop and maintain.

'A lot of money' vs an unknown potential increase in sales, that could also equal 'a lot of money'. We don't know who wins out.

It is money often taken directly from a titles port budget, or money used to justify not bothering with a PC port (less and less nowadays, as these age old assumptions are increasingly questioned).

Many recent PC ports have been excellent, DRM or not. But if we wanted to look at those heavily locked-down games like the games with Denuvo, even those wouldn't support that argument. To the contrary: Most are excellent as well.

 

[LordRaptor]

'A lot of money' vs an unknown potential increase in sales, that could also equal 'a lot of money'. We don't know who wins out.

That's exactly my point as to why it is worth looking at; there is a point at which DRM is not cost effective. I don't know what that point is, but more importantly the people in charge of port budgets do not know what that point is.

Modern PC gaming has hugely challenged many of the assumptions that existed regarding piracy even just 4 or 5 years ago., and Steam has been a major reason as to why those challenges occurred.

 

[Stronghammer22]

Here is my view: You won't gain customers/sell more copies of your game by including invasive DRM. DRM affects the paying customer more than the pirates, which is very backwards. Treat your actual paying customers with respect and perhaps you will see more sales from the goodwill gained.

Piracy sucks, but is the negative impact on paying customers truly worth it to fight them? I don't think so.

And Denuvo made me STOP buying them (that have Denuvo).

I'm with you. I spend thousands each year on games, but I won't buy Denuvo titles on principle.

 

[Ooccoo]

Good games will sell. Piracy is not a factor IMO. It might suck for developers, but PC gaming has always been like that.

 

[jellies_two]

Good games will sell. Piracy is not a factor IMO. It might suck for developers, but PC gaming has always been like that.

Wow in one short line you manage to sum up everything that is wrong with the mindset of those that run torrent sites, torrent to their phones etc, or work on and publish cracks.
And blissfully ignore 50% of the posts in this topic. Including the developer story about 20 posts above yours.

 

[bj00rn_]

And Denuvo made me STOP buying them

Yep. The latest ones on my casualty list are Inside and ABZU. ABZU I managed to refund from Steam as soon as I learned it uses Denuvo.

 

[ForsakenLotus]

I've pirated one game, but to be fair it was a game that I had bought twice over the years (including expansions and sequels) and would subsequently buy digitally last year.

There are some instances where pirating a game is morally acceptable, and times where I wouldn't necessarily judge somebody, but most of the time it's not worth arguing with people who pirate games because they either don't care at all or are willing to use any and all excuses to justify their thefts.