Pirating Games: Good Gods, Read This
http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/
Over 93.6% of players stole the game. We know this because our game contains some code to send anonymous-usage data to our server. Nothing unusual or harmful. Heaps of games/apps do this and we use it to better understand how the game is played. It’s absolutely anonymous and you are covered by our privacy policy. Anyway, the cracked version has a separate ID so I can separate the data. I’m sure some of the players have firewalls and some will play offline therefore the actual number of players for the cracked version is likely much higher.
Over 93.6% of players stole the game. We know this because our game contains some code to send anonymous-usage data to our server. Nothing unusual or harmful. Heaps of games/apps do this and we use it to better understand how the game is played. It’s absolutely anonymous and you are covered by our privacy policy. Anyway, the cracked version has a separate ID so I can separate the data. I’m sure some of the players have firewalls and some will play offline therefore the actual number of players for the cracked version is likely much higher.
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I absolutely agree. No one would have cared for it if it wasn't for the buzz or even the torrented version. 214 sales on the first day is nothing.
I guess you and Vainamonen aren't on good terms
Not on this point. Because Vainamonen is delusional.:(
Great experiment too.
I don't entirely know why Vain doesn't like DRM (which Steam, let's be honest here, pretty much is), but sooner or later he's going to have to accept that Steam, and services like it (like Desura and Origi*snicker*), are popular and well-used for a reason.
It's not only a way for games to be easily distributed, but it's also one way of maintaining a (supposedly) stable and secure location for all of a game's files. DRM Free stuff doesn't have that luxury, sadly.
Because Steam is such a big thing, if your game isn't on it (or a similar service - there's quite a few popping up these days), it's going to be missed by a lot of people who use Steam and Steam alone. That doesn't account for most of us (I hope), but you'd be surprised how many others rely solely on Steam now for their games.
It's a tough place for indie developers to be in - be on Steam or don't sell - and hopefully things like Greenlight can alleviate that somewhat. But even so, there really does need to be better alternatives.
In fact, I think this might hurt them more than do them good. If they had, for example, waited until Total Biscuit's video had come out and had garnered enough views, the numbers would be much lower. Right now however it makes it look like piracy really did wrong, and that rubs some people the wrong way.
Also, code that secretly sends out data is still iffy.
Double-checking this now, but that... that's not cool at all.
EDIT: From the page linked to in the first post (emphasis is by me):
Wow, that seems like a massive contradiction of terms, and within the same sentence no less.
It was a stream and I don't think that would have happened at all without the news of the anti piracy mechanism.
Here's the thing though, one has to realize that indie games don't always draw from the shortest end of the schlong. Or whatever the thingy was. The point is, the main thing that makes indie games not sell are mainly lack of advertisement and lack of exposure.
I mean, the only reason I knew about the Blackwell series is because of Indie Royale. Doing stuff like adding your game on Desura helps a tonne, people, especially indie developers, forget things like that exist. Desura might be a bit strict on what games can be on it, but once you are on it you have a decently sized userbase that might be your target. Same goes for GOG, although that might be even more strict, and Steam. Greenlight is one of the best ways to garner a bit of exposure.
The beauty of Desura however is that it's both DRM free and the games are actually linked to an account, which would get rid of stupid shit like limited activations. This ain't Ubisoft or EA, people, you don't add stupid shit like that. Even Telltale Games realizes that limiting the amount of installs is pretty pointless and stupid. Sure, legal shit forces them to put a limit on it, but that limit is so high that you'd only run out if you format your computer twenty times or something, and even then you could always contact customer support to get the amount reset or something.
So yeah, F this game in the A.
And then there's the fact that someone like me doesn't pirate games, yet most likely still would not have bought the game even were it on Steam.
This article got me considering whether to buy it, but the truth is that I wouldn't play it.
I am one of these people. I use GOG and Steam, and that's it. And when it comes down to it, which one I buy a game on largely depends on comparable content (eg. Standard vs. GOTY) and price.
And yet, I think about what the PC gaming world was probably like 10, 15 or 20 years ago, when indie devs would have had a harder time getting their game noticed on a physical shelf amongst a crap ton of other games.
So even though many people prefer to keep most of their eggs in one basket, it's probably a heck of a lot easier to get in on the PC gaming market than it used to be.
And this the best point to be made about this.
Before reading this thread, I don't recall ever hearing about this game (not that I would have bought it anyway, but still.)
Marketing your product well is extremely important. And they didn't. It's no wonder why the pirates grossly outweigh the legitimate buyers when the devs themselves let the torrent tracker do more marketing for their pirated version than they themselves did for the legit version.
Also... DRM-free, yet a 3 machine limit? Does not compute.
Also, they said the torrent version of the game sends data to them, not the DRM free sales version.
If that, by any chance, IS the case... I might have a chat with them.
You misunderstand. I never doubted the facts of your first quote and that is the reason why the platform Steam has to be stopped in that respect. Valve probably consists of a lot of really nice guys, but a dominated market is going down, and Steam's monopoly over the ENTIRE PC GAMES MARKET is pretty much complete. Or to mother-fucking quote the Greenheart Games guys:
That's EXACTLY what I do, almost exclusively these last years. What's so delusional about that?
We're usually on very good terms, and agree on quite a lot of things. But for this last bit, I might have to insist on an apology. :mad:
It is the "pretty much" part here that really scares me. Praise a hosting service as a "secure location" for your games (i.e. they control the files, its installation etc. ad aeternum), install its sales platform directly on your PC, accept their right for always online DRM and optional periodical online reactivation with the EULA, and of course go online to activate offline mode... but it's only "pretty much" DRM? "Pretty much"? Seriously?
Contradict me. Please. Contradict me: Greenlight is a survey among Steam users with the intent to find out which indie games have ALREADY garnered enough of a fan base to prove lucrative to Valve. It doesn't raise the general interest of PC gamers in indie games by an inch.
I guess the intent was different but right now it is just that. You cannot get more exposure with a now kinda hidden feature that lists 8 of thousands games on it's starting page.
Steam is no longer the only curator of the games that go on Steam, which is a good thing but Greenlight itself is useless unless you already have enough exposure.
Still I am convinced without Steam indie games on PC would still be dead and not nearly have the exposure they get from simply being on Steam / having a Steamsale.
It's true that there's a lot of people out there who only buy on Steam, but there's a lot of people out there who only buy on GOG.com as well. And, even more people who buy from both sites. You'll likely get more sales if you get your game on Steam (the ideal situation is always to get your game to as many outlets as possible), but since the indie market on the other platforms is thriving now, there's potential for profit even if you don't.
Greenlight itself is basically a popularity contest where the winners get their game on Steam for me to completely ignore until they go on sale. It's far from an ideal way for indie games to become more well-known, but if nothing else, it's a start.
Right now it feels like a jumping the shark moment, by putting the game yourself on BitTorrent and then telling everybody that 90% pirated the game. No fucking shit Sherlock, nobody even knew about this game.
Needless to say, if he went the actual normal way instead of this way I would have purchased the game, but he kind of ruined it for himself.
And... well, if I can actually talk about the game itself, I found it to be inferior to the mobile game it's cloning, "Game Dev Story" by Kairosoft.
I was expecting there to be a lot more to it, basically. For double the price, I was expecting at least 1.5X the content of the mobile game, as 2X is probably too much to ask.
I didn't even get that, though, because the progression isn't regulated at all.
When I was still in the garage, I recreated Surgeon Simulator and suddenly earned $4,000,000 in profit, over ten times what I previously earned per game. This set off a chain reaction where nothing I could do to benefit my company was of any risk to me.
I made a few more games in the $4M profit range, but then The Artificials happened.
The Artificials was my company's version of The Sims, and it ruined the fun of the game for me. It made $50M, which was again over ten times what the previous games I was making made. It turned my previous snowball into an absolute steamroll, getting me to the final area of the game much faster than I probably should have been able to.
It eventually got to the point where I could make multiple high-profile failures just to try to upgrade things to see if I'd unlock anything new, and spend nearly $6M a month on various upkeep costs without it denting my overall income in the slightest.
While Tycoon does bring some interesting aspects(I really like the engine system), Story has a better progression system that doesn't let one game ruin any semblance of challenge, and more consoles, both original ones made by the devs and obscure ones that the Tycoon devs didn't care to add, like the Neo Geo and the Sega Saturn.
This is the problem many Indie games face if you have a shoestring advertising budget. How do you define "The Normal Way"? How many indie games do you miss out on each year? Multiply that across a population, then insert the number of people that pirate games.
I doubt people have pirated Latura.
In other words, advertising is paid for; publicity is not. And they very well could have done this in order to garner free market awareness (ie. publicity) for their game.
...Now, if only it was more readily available to purchase.
It clearly was but I've seen worse in my time. This one hurt no one, didn't spread panic in a whole userbase and still was covered all over gaming media. Plus a few youtube reviews / livestreams to reach even more people.
I hope this torrent still exists. Since it is an official one there should be no guilt involved. I personally think the pirate version sounds a lot better than the normal one.
I'd just want to see if the cut is proportional or if it's a set value that gets larger each game you make. With how easy I found the game, it might be interesting to attempt to "out-profit" the developers at their own anti-piracy measures.
they should be happy people actually torrented it and tried it because you know you game sucks when people won't even play it for free, try before you buy and personal recommendations from people that have pirated it will get loads more sales than if nobody pirated it.
this is exactly the type of game that playing it will be the way to tell if you like the game, and they sabotaged that themselves, nobody will recommend a broken game.
blaming poor sales on piracy is a defence mechanism that ignores the fact that you may have made a game that sucks.
anyway i can't even be bothered to pirate this game to try it out because the pirate version will probably be the broken one so i'm not gonna buy it either.
That's why they have a demo. The point is for people to try it out and actually buy it if they like what they played, not to go and play the rest for free.
Also, it seems like they did pretty well for themselves when it was a Windows 8 app store exclusive. It's still pretty good, just maybe not as good as the original app in some aspects, while better in others.
They have a bad attitude for not letting people play their full game for free? I'm having trouble seeing your reasoning here.
Read my posts! They're full of wisdom.
That of course means: You are allowed to install the game on three of your computers at the same time. This is a simple EULA thing. No activation, no activation limits, nothing.
I saw that, and I backed it up by actually proving it.
Doubly so considering they do let people play for free, such as when the developer leaked his own game onto torrent sites