Indie development sim Game Dev Tycoon gives pirates a taste of their own torrenting

[space.dust]

It really depends, say 100 people pirate a game, now the price of the game is $50, the average pirate is not going to reach out to as many people as he possibly can so that's $5,000 lost with no real investment turnaround, government didn't get their tax either.

lets say they all show 10 people the game increasing the public view to 1000 people who then maybe tell 10 more people each but that's a stretch. so here is where the free advertising theory hinges it's iron grip on justifiable piracy...

In the end, people who pirate tell other people who pirate so all these concepts about helping advertise is garbage, sure maybe 10% of them buy it, but that other 90% is either stealing it too or not bothering at all. Imagine a condom company only putting adds in elderly homes.. yes.. sure they see it and may tell their kids and close your eyes folks some may actually buy them as well! haha but lets face it, it's not going to be a big seller in that market pool

Back to the $5000, It's better spent on a web advertisement that will reach out to 100,000's of people with a 20% chance to buy. So yes while you can argue that it's free advertisement it advertising to a majority of other people who will also steal the game and that's not worth even a penny.

I'm not saying in some situations someone who pirates does not buy, or does not try to help bring more views to a product. What I'm saying is that if you do, you are the minority and all of you put together can not tip the scales to a proper advertisement company doing their jobs with the money lost to all the other pirates who didn't even bother to tell a friend.

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- Dust

[Redon]

Reality: Everyone who does it is a thief and there is -NO- legal excuse for it no matter how unfair you or anyone makes it look. Trying to justify it is just outright silly, don't get me wrong however I'm not saying publishers play fair with our best interests I'm saying it really just doesn't matter in the end, once you take something that is being sold without paying for it.. your a thief

Luckily, all these software pirates, placed on one level with thieves and robbers, can change and become ethical citizens in an instant by buying used games, while calming their conscience knowing they paid someone money for something - it doesn't matter who the money goes to after all.

As long as you don't enjoy something for free.

You freeloaders.

Grrrrrr.

[Blodo]

Redon: Used games are being decried by most distributors as "the devil's second worst creation" right after media piracy. Because they don't see any money from it. IMO software piracy is a good thing, because at some point it will make regurgitation of content by distributors that much harder.

although I am seeing slow changes now that crowdfunding is becoming more popular - giving talented developers the chance to break away from the big gaming studios. Like Chris Roberts is doing.

This business model is awesome. Best proof is Planetary Annihilation. People are in contact with the developers starting from the concept stage through the development stage all the way to the finish. It's done in a managed way, but because it is crowdfunding, the devs can listen to what people want as they go along with it - after all their funding sort of depends on it. One of the examples is people asking for the game to be compatible with Linux. It's definitely a model for the future, it allows for proper innovation rather than indie game devs getting stifled by greedy, money grubbing, innovation ruining distributors.

[tothebonezone]

So what I get from reading this companies page is:

1) They released a 'pirated' version themselves to be downloaded.
2) They released a limited, finite amount of copies to be played legitimately.
3) They compared the stats of the openly available, readily downloaded version to the one they specifically let only a small amount of people have.

This, my friends, is classic bull shit. It's almost exactly like every arguement that's been used for SOPA and CISPA. I hope that this company never truly sees the light of day.

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[Curios]

Piracy is a good advertisement for the game and studio for those who can use it. Mostly because the piracy will always exist and the expences on fighting it will just be constantly increasing making games moe expencive as well. While it's actually hillarious I guess it was a devastating blow on that game's progress. Some of those people could possbile buy the game but now I guess they won't.

Yes I pirate games and yes I buy them if I like them. Mostly because I was fucked over by game studios that were PRing their games as something super awesome but after I bought them and installed they turned out to be some brainless vomit of cockroach.

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[space.dust]

@Saronsen
Read the actual article:
http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/2...of-piracy/

It's just the reality of the situation, and naturally the same affect many have when you explain to them their religion is wrong, those with faith and who have been raised thinking it do not listen and go right into the denial of facts to keep their world in tact and safe.

@Curios,
Read the article, there is a pie chart that shows clearly how pirates advertise and it reflects my prior post that explains how pirates advertise to pirates and it's not worth a penny.

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- Dust

[tothebonezone]

@Saronsen
Read the actual article:
http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/2...of-piracy/

The same thing could be said about the people going PIRACY KILLS GAMING/MOVIES/TV.

Piracy has existed as long as the VHS recorder. I don't see TV dead yet.

I read it already. It's exactly as I described. They released a limited amount of their game, released a readily-pirated copy, and then made an arguement about how pirates were using it more than the non-pirated one.

Don't put out a pirated one, advertise for it (I had never even heard of the game, and all I bloody do is surf gaming forums), and stop trying to compare statistics that you purposely fluffed up.

This isn't a matter of me being a pirate or not, this is a matter of common sense and a basic understanding of cause and effect.

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[space.dust]

Were in the article does it say they released a limited copy of the legal version?

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- Dust

[Fletcher]

They DID advertise for it, by doing this. Think about it, what's one thing gamers like to do? Finish a game. Since they're game is tooled to be 'un-winnable' thanks to the piracy mechanic, I dare say some people will readily fork out for a legitimate copy of the game because the developers used this trick.

It's clever, putting out a pirated copy is a innovative idea on the developers part, as say, opposed to using useless and costly DRM.

@Space.dust

Here:

“Slowly their in-game funds dwindle, and new games they create have a high chance to be pirated until their virtual game development company goes bankrupt.”

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"Oh chuffing blimey, another day, another person being whiney!"
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[SMGSterlin]

I used to pirate games, but then I took an arrow to the knee a conscience to the brain.


SteamGauge says my Steam account is worth $1004 USD. 8|

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