Edit - I honestly think developers should release more demos. A lot of games I've just passed up on at launch since they haven't looked that interesting to me- but I've bought them in sales and loved them. XBL does this right imo- you get a demo for each and every Arcade game at launch. PSN and Steam you don't. I've got a tonne more XBLA games than I have PSN and Steam, and honestly I think this is why. I think if you're confident enough in the quality of your product, you'll release a demo. About 50% of the games I buy are from demo-ing and enjoying them first.
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Team Meat Talks Piracy.
- Thread starter Saty
- Start date
charlequin
Banned
TheOddOne said:
Team Meat are two people (and they contracted a third guy for music) who sold 500,000+ copies of their first game at $4-15 a pop. I don't think this is a concern for them.
When you're working in teams this small, it's actually almost impossible not to break even once you've gotten a single successful project out. Team Meat, Jonathan Blow, etc. are now millionaires. Terry Cavanaugh doesn't have to get a real job, maybe ever again, because of vvvvvv. Notch has enough money to pay a team of eight for years and still live off the interest on his Minecraft earnings.
SpaceDrake said:
Well, Notch is saying it too.
OniShiro said:
Piracy has no direct effect on profitability. 100% of AAA games that have ever been profitable were also massively pirated; the games that sell the most also get pirated the most.
That said, if $50m budgets are less sustainable in the digital era while games like Super Meat Boy can benefit from this brave new world, fine by me.
butter_stick said:
Certainly not. A substantial portion of it is based on the idea of "I'm 14, which means I have nigh-infinite free time and no money."
IrishNinja said:
There was one inveterate pirate from my college crew, who continued to download illicitly long after everyone else had settled down to legit software purchasing. He's now a dedicated Steam collector; he's bought every Humble Bundle (for a high price, even) and he constantly sends me links to the various games he's picked up on Steam that he wants me to snag. True story!
Fess
Member
Well, I can tell you about how it was back in the days when Commodore 64, and piracy, ruled gaming. Me, my friends, school mates, etc - everyone was pirating, I didn't know one single person with a C64 that didn't copy games. There were partys where kids could come together and just pirate stuff. People swapped games on the school yards. There was no end to it. I guess you could say that it was somewhat like youngsters does today with music and mp3s. Piracy was normal.
But no. It did NOT end up in a purchase. Never. And why would it? If you're fine with the immorality about piracy, or theft if you like, then there is no single reason to buy a game you could get for free.
And nope, I never bought a game I already had, no matter how much I liked it. The same goes for my friends, and honestly everyone I knew had a C64. If you actually did buy a game people would ask you "But why?? I have it, why didn't you ask me? You could've just copied it from me."
People talking about a great game, super high scores in magazines, etc, never made me, or my friends, buy a game either. It did however made us search for it as a pirated software.
The only games I bought during that time were the few ones that I didn't find as pirated software. Which during about 5 years was about 10 in total, maybe less. Yet, I had about a thousand games in total.
Now, I don't know if it's the same these days. But judging by my friends with PC's who pirate music, movies and games like crazy I'd say that it is indeed exactly the same - if they can't find it pirated they just don't care about it or they just wait a while until it ends up on the net - it never ever seem to end up as a purchase.
With steam sales there is really no reason to pirate, you're always welcome to the good side guys
Anyways, I'm happy to know team meat gets it, not punishing legitimate costumers is definitely the way to go
I think I stole SMB
Anyways, I'm happy to know team meat gets it, not punishing legitimate costumers is definitely the way to go
I think I stole SMB
by getting it at $3.75 on a steam sale, at that price it's basically a steal amirite?
mikespit1200 said:
Aren't we simply confusing publicity with piracy in these anecdotal cases? If you're an indie developer working alone or with a few friends, piracy isn't your biggest problem, but getting word out about your product (that only costs 5-10 dollars anyway). This is completely different from most commercially published games that cost millions to make and costs $60 at retail. The stakes are far higher.
blitzcloud
Banned
Honestly, it would be good if it was an actual wasteland, so when a future piracy/proconsumer argument appears, you can easily locate them for maximum limit break.JaseC said:
charlequin said:Team Meat are two people (and they contracted a third guy for music) who sold 500,000+ copies of their first game at $4-15 a pop. I don't think this is a concern for them.
When you're working in teams this small, it's actually almost impossible not to break even once you've gotten a single successful project out. Team Meat, Jonathan Blow, etc. are now millionaires. Terry Cavanaugh doesn't have to get a real job, maybe ever again, because of vvvvvv. Notch has enough money to pay a team of eight for years and still live off the interest on his Minecraft earnings.
In a sense I'd argue that this is technically a retrograde step for the industry - the return of the bedroom programmer, if you will, now with a platform on which they can shine after being shut out for so long; it's moving back, in many cases, to lower-budget stuff done by small groups and distributed very simply. The days when games would be sent in to Codemasters and Firebird and if you're lucky you'd get a publishing deal out of it. Codies and Firebird are now Steam, but the programming ethic is much the same, just a bit shinier.
That said, while it *is* a retrograde step, it's a retrograde step to a time which was *awesome*, and I've nothing against it, other than a slight fear (not huge, I must concede) that it'd impinge on the more bombastic high-budget games I'm also fond of.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
charlequin said:
To clarify, I think charlequin is paraphrasing me from a conversation from a few days ago.
Minecraft sales: 2.5 million
Sale prices: 10 euro, 15 euro <-- although sales continue to accelerate, let's go with 12 Euro. Let's further say that 2 euro of every sale are lost to payment processing, which would be an unusually high amount. That's 25 million euro revenue. It's true, tax isn't being counted here.
He's hired 6-10 people. I think the figure was 8. Let's assume he's paying 100,000 Euro a year for his office space (which is pretty high for a small office). Let's assume he's paying each of them 100,000 Euro including benefits (which is pretty high for the games industry). So that's 900,000 Euro a year. Let's further assume his web server costs him 100,000 Euro a year (a dedicated server is around $3000-5000 USD a year, even a high end one. So we're giving him 20+ high end dedicated servers. Yep, seriously.) That's a million Euro a year in costs.
25 million Euro in the bank = more than a million Euro a year in interest invested conservatively. In this scenario, Notch could literally employ these 8 people and pay all of his costs using only INTEREST from his bank account, and that's assuming no human being ever buys Minecraft again and he releases all future products for free forever.
Taking into account tax, he might have to touch his principal bankroll, but he's also probably investing more aggressively, not losing as much on payment processing, not paying the employees as much, not paying as much rent, not paying as much in server costs, and people are still buying Minecraft and future products will be sold.
So... yeah.
People who pirated a game and enjoyed the hell out of it are not likely to run out and buy that game. They've already beaten it for free, and by the time it drops to an attractive price they will have long moved on from it. Team Meat makes some decent points about DRM harming legitimate customers, but for the most part, they sound extremely naive.
Steve Youngblood
Member
The stakes are higher, but does that mean that the assumptions about piracy as a known element to contend with are somehow different? There's a difference between asserting "piracy rates were high for our title and if they were lower it might have been (more) successful" and concluding "the piracy rates for our title were uniquely high and unforeseeable; if we do a better job -- and we assume we can -- at preventing it next go around we'll surely see more revenue."ymmv said:
Refreshment.01
Member
Space, in reality the majority of pirates don't care about you, devs or the industry and as a consequence themselves. It's human nature, that's why you get people wasting precious potable water or food yet they don't give a shit abouit, it's about here and now.SpaceDrake said:
Also a lot of people who pirate a game are do so because they are very interested in that piece of software.
Not always and in some cases not to cover the initial investment or with a return thats minimal.acm2000 said:
I'm not so sure, actually. Runic Games, ACE Team, and Avalanche Studios have all issued public statements that they get quite a few emails from people who say they pirated the game, but liked it so much that they bought it legitimately. Admittedly, those are pretty small studios with more forgiving attitudes toward piracy, but it seems like pirates turning into customers is more common than many might think.Takuan said:
Fess
Member
As I said earlier. Not in my experience.Orayn said:
Sure, eventually I turned around and started buying my games. But it was like 10 years later.
The reason: Super Nintendo - Simply because it was too cumbersome to use those floppy disc based units for using pirate software. I had already gone that route, using 10+ floppys for one game, didn't want to see that crap again. Cartridges were heaven for me.
Orayn said:
I'll say this again: piracy is a form of advertising. The less marketing a game has through other means the more piracy can help. If you already have massive marketing and everyone knows about your game piracy probably hurts.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer.
What the Team Meat guys are talking about is analogous to shareware. Shareware in the past was a great model for SOME games. It would be extremely silly to say "hey shareware worked great for us, obviously shareware is great for everyone!" Changing "shareware" to "piracy" doesn't change that.
It's an extreme logical fallacy to assume that what worked for you will work for everyone else even in wildly different circumstances.
Also for every indie game that becomes a big hit there are 100 that fail. Claiming that that model is more sustainable than the traditional one is a bit premature.
Steve Youngblood
Member
Maybe it's kindness. More likely, though, is the idea that they have decided that they like the game so much that they are choosing to use a previously forgone right: voting with their wallets. Maybe the replayability is high enough that they plan on continuing to play and would rather have a legitimate copy that doesn't necessitate jumping through hoops to bypass copy protection schemes. There are more possibilities, but you'd have to ask the individual in question as to their actual motives.Khold said:
I think a big part of it is people just being stingy. They most likely had interest in the game, found the demo inadequate or completely absent, and didn't want to shell out for a buggy, incompatible, incomplete, or poorly made piece of software. The result is a sort of extended test-drive via piracy, which may or may not turn into a sale.Khold said:
I don't have a link on hand, but EA cozied up to this attitude when a somewhat-incomplete version of The Sims 3 leaked, and one of their community representatives said that they were aware, but weren't putting much effort into fighting the pirates because of the potential for turning them into consumers. Recently, a similar case played out on /v/ when the preview build of Deus Ex: Human Revolution leaked and absolutely blew peoples' minds. Lots of people on /v/ were cynical as could be about that game, expecting nothing but a bloom 'n brown bastardization of one of their favorite games, yet a little piracy turned into hundreds of pre-orders from those who might have ignored the game otherwise.
drhankmccoyphd
Member
Steve Youngblood said:
For me it was just the convenience of having a game on Steam to download whenever I wanted to, cloud saves and wanted to support the developer.
carbonbased
Member
read wutwutwut's post that i just quoted here. it comes down to service, online integration, and adding increased functionality for legitimate customers.Khold said:
Fess
Member
I don't see how it can be advertising. I have played video games almost 30 years now, not once has a pirate gotten me to buy a game. Pirates talk to pirates, on pirate message boards, torrent sites, etc. They don't sit on boards like this startinh threads saying "OMG! I just downloaded RE5 on pirate bay! You seriously need to buy this! It's awesome!".Margalis said:
Sure, some might download games and then go to this board lieing their ass off saying that they "bought" the game and talk about how great it is, but I those people rather hang out on boards that they safely can talk about where they downloaded it, what's wrong with the downloaded version, what you need to beware of when running it, how you get around the copy protection, what is stripped out of a specific release, etc etc.
This argument basically ignores the possibility that the eternal, unpersuadable pirates might talk about the games they're playing with friends or family who do make purchases. Not all of the people on NeoGAF talking about their friends who pirate videogames are using that as a clever smokescreen for their own activities, you know.Fredrik said:
I'm not going to argue that there's some sort of massive sales spike which can be attributed to people who have the money and the desire to legally purchase videogames listening to their deadbeat college buddies, but it does happen. And I think that's what the Team Meat guys were getting at with their comments.
Fess
Member
Now that I think about it, a way to actually beat the pirates whould be to do what anonymous said they would do with the Oslo terrorist's document.
Flood the torrent sites with versions that _looks_ legit, but that is heavily modified, upping the rating for the torrents, essentially making the pirates download the modified version instead of the real version.
1. It would identify the pirates. The modifications would only be known to those who pirated the game.
2. Pirates would have a very hard time finding the "right" version. Some will likely find it and do their piracy thing as usual. But some will probably buy it instead.
Flood the torrent sites with versions that _looks_ legit, but that is heavily modified, upping the rating for the torrents, essentially making the pirates download the modified version instead of the real version.
1. It would identify the pirates. The modifications would only be known to those who pirated the game.
2. Pirates would have a very hard time finding the "right" version. Some will likely find it and do their piracy thing as usual. But some will probably buy it instead.
balladofwindfishes
Member
I'm thinking you give people too much credit.Fredrik said:
I bet there's a huge number of gaffers who post their thoughts about games that they have pirated. Probably people in this very thread.
I can't remember the exact number, but some poll out there found that most people have pirated something
It's just part of culture.
Primate Ryan
Neo Member
mikespit1200 said:
That books still survived doesn't mean that there were never any problems at all that hurt writers and their output
I think the USA actually had some problems way back when there were no copyrights and people mostly sold books from the other kind of the ocean, while authors from the states themselves could not push their works as printers would rather spent their time on carelessly copying established works from English authors and selling them for cheap, which was a detriment to originality and American literature. But don't quote me on that.
That being said I would for publishers to fight their crusade on piracy in a different way. I try to avoid bad DRM and copy protection (Ubi and co.) whenever I can. Not only because it causes problems now, but may turn out to be a hassle in the future when I want to replay certain games. Take for example Etherlords 2. About a year a go I felt like playing it again, but as its protection (Starforce) was not compatible with Windows 7 64 bit, I had the hardest time getting the game to even work. And that's because the protection is incompatible, not the game itself. That is completely absurd. Similarly, I almost couldn't install Mass Effect 2, because my dvd-drive couldn't read the disc (only after fifteen tries or so did it work), and that happened to someone else I know as well, who ended up downloading the game, and I'm sure that's not an isolated case.
So yeah, I would like my games to be immediately playable without any hassle and would also like it if I could still play them in the near future without having to search for possible solutions on the internet for hours on end. I can handle some Windows compatibility problems, but having to work around your crappy protection to get it working really gets my blood boiling.
This would take more work than it would be worth - In piracy, people generally trust releases from a few dozen major "scene" groups. This might cause a little chaos on public BitTorrent trackers, but it would lead to just as much bad blood as restrictive DRM, if not more. I prefer the approach of Nintendo and Rocksteady here, which is to introduce bugs that are intended only to occur on illegitimate copies. Sure, they'll wind up getting patched out, but it lets potential buyers get their extended test drive while throwing the even less scrupulous pirates for a loop.Fredrik said:
These methods have been in use for years, actually. Many videogames have "subtle" copy protection schemes that may not be noticed until the game has been played for some time. One of the Spyro games on the PS1 was famous for this. And the movie & music industry have tried flooding trackers with intentionally bad copies of media before. Oddly enough, they don't seem to have had much effect!subversus said:
drhankmccoyphd
Member
balladofwindfishes
Member
SMB had a retail releaseTakao said:
Even had a collectors edition of said release that came with a t-shirt
ZedIndyLil
Member
(not sure if I'm offering anything new to this good discussion, but...)
The problem with piracy, as I see it, is that it upsets the balance of power between buyer and seller. If a buyer wants what the seller is offering, there needs to be a mechanism that settles on a price that is acceptable to both. Zero dollars is not acceptable, unless the seller is OK with that. The Meaters are OK with that; so was ID in 1993, which worked out pretty well for Doom. Piracy, though, ensures that nobody can choose whether to "sell" their stuff at zero dollars or not, because the free version will always be available.
Relying on the goodwill of gamers to donate money to the developers will ensure that game development remains a largely shitty career.
Unfortunately, the only sure-fire way to bypass the harm of piracy is to offer community features, etc. This further pushes the market away from high-quality single-player experiences, which is a bummer for folks like me.
The problem with piracy, as I see it, is that it upsets the balance of power between buyer and seller. If a buyer wants what the seller is offering, there needs to be a mechanism that settles on a price that is acceptable to both. Zero dollars is not acceptable, unless the seller is OK with that. The Meaters are OK with that; so was ID in 1993, which worked out pretty well for Doom. Piracy, though, ensures that nobody can choose whether to "sell" their stuff at zero dollars or not, because the free version will always be available.
Relying on the goodwill of gamers to donate money to the developers will ensure that game development remains a largely shitty career.
Unfortunately, the only sure-fire way to bypass the harm of piracy is to offer community features, etc. This further pushes the market away from high-quality single-player experiences, which is a bummer for folks like me.
crazygambit
Member
AShep said:
I think what's really unsustainable is charging $40 or $20 (or even $.99) for something that has a Marginal Cost of $0. Free to play is already being more profitable in many cases and I feel it will be the future, making piracy largely irrelevant.
What company are you talking about? I can buy Super Meat Boy at retail on a CD-ROM.Takao said:
How does that matter in any way? Is the DVD version of a movie not really a retail version of the movie since it was shown in the cinema before and came out way after it was first shown?Takao said:
Frank Jaeger
Member
I haven't played it yet! I know it's a great game and a friend of mine has basically told me: buy it or you're a bad bad person! I haven't! I'll get it in a Humble Bundle or in a steam sale for under 4. Until then, I have other stuff to do!
They need to be handled with kid gloves, but donationware for SP and cash shops for MP both have a lot of potential that's been either ignored or abused in recent years. They obviously aren't universally applicable, but some people in the industry are starting to catch on, and I like it.crazygambit said:
drhankmccoyphd
Member
Takao said:
Must have been general enough since I saw the boxed copy in J&R yesterday. Even still that's not what you said.
XANDER CAGE
Member
You know, as much as I agree with the sentiment that things have changed and that publishers/people in general need to reevaluate digital piracy and such...
Oh, ok, you've pirated a ton of stuff and it's totally not like shoplifting! Cool! Thanks for letting us know, I'm glad it's not the same thing as stealing at all. That's totally not a self-serving line of thinking at all, no sir. Wow.
Let's face it: piracy is "different" because it's easy.
Oh, ok, you've pirated a ton of stuff and it's totally not like shoplifting! Cool! Thanks for letting us know, I'm glad it's not the same thing as stealing at all. That's totally not a self-serving line of thinking at all, no sir. Wow.
Let's face it: piracy is "different" because it's easy.