Campaign Creations

One, there are other costs to piracy than just lost sales. For example, with TQ, the game was pirated and released on the nets before it hit stores. It was a fairly quick-and-dirty crack job, and in fact, it missed a lot of the copy-protection that was in the game. One of the copy-protection routines was keyed off the quest system, for example. You could start the game just fine, but when the quest triggered, it would do a security check, and dump you out if you had a pirated copy. There was another one in the streaming routine. So, it's a couple of days before release, and I start seeing people on the forums complaining about how buggy the game is, how it crashes all the time. A lot of people are talking about how it crashes right when you come out of the first cave. Yeah, that's right. There was a security check there.

So, before the game even comes out, we've got people bad-mouthing it because their pirated copies crash, even though a legitimate copy won't. We took a lot of shit on this, completely undeserved mind you. How many people decided to pick up the pirated version because it had this reputation and they didn't want to risk buying something that didn't work? Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy.

One guy went so far as to say he'd bought the retail game and it was having the exact same crashes, so it must be the game itself. This was one of the most vocal detractors, and we got into it a little bit. He swore up and down that he'd done everything above-board, installed it on a clean machine, updated everything, still getting the same crashes. It was our fault, we were stupid, our programmers didn't know how to make games - some other guy asked "do they code with their feet?". About a week later, he realized that he'd forgotten to re-install his BIOS update after he wiped the machine. He fixed that, all his crashes went away. At least he was man enough to admit it.

So, for a game that doesn't have a Madden-sized advertising budget, word of mouth is your biggest hope, and here we are, before the game even releases, getting bashed to hell and gone by people who can't even be bothered to actually pay for the game. What was the ultimate impact of that? Hard to measure, but it did get mentioned in several reviews. Think about that the next time you read "we didn't have any problems running the game, but there are reports on the internet that people are having crashes."

Maybe customers would be more apt to buy the game if:
a) they respect the developer
b) the game is worth the price, and the developer has a record of making games that are worth the price

Things like this used to be good business sense. It's why I buy Blizzard games legit, not because of any threat from the League of Lawyers or invasive DRM. The same principle applies to music.

Insulting the customer by making it harder to install the game legitimately than pirating it because of DRM, or by unleashing rabid hordes of lawyers on potential customers, only serves to erode respect for the developer. Then there's EA games... enough said.

World of Goo developer 2D Boy has revealed that its excellent indie title has suffered a staggering 90 percent piracy rate. The question of lost sales is a much tougher one.

Aiursrage2k wrote: If you saw the rest of the rant you might think differently. Those people who are crashing with the pirated version are actually causing the other potential buying customers to not buy the game because its "buggy".

One, there are other costs to piracy than just lost sales. For example, with TQ, the game was pirated and released on the nets before it hit stores. It was a fairly quick-and-dirty crack job, and in fact, it missed a lot of the copy-protection that was in the game. One of the copy-protection routines was keyed off the quest system, for example. You could start the game just fine, but when the quest triggered, it would do a security check, and dump you out if you had a pirated copy. There was another one in the streaming routine. So, it's a couple of days before release, and I start seeing people on the forums complaining about how buggy the game is, how it crashes all the time. A lot of people are talking about how it crashes right when you come out of the first cave. Yeah, that's right. There was a security check there.

So, before the game even comes out, we've got people bad-mouthing it because their pirated copies crash, even though a legitimate copy won't. We took a lot of shit on this, completely undeserved mind you. How many people decided to pick up the pirated version because it had this reputation and they didn't want to risk buying something that didn't work? Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy.

One guy went so far as to say he'd bought the retail game and it was having the exact same crashes, so it must be the game itself. This was one of the most vocal detractors, and we got into it a little bit. He swore up and down that he'd done everything above-board, installed it on a clean machine, updated everything, still getting the same crashes. It was our fault, we were stupid, our programmers didn't know how to make games - some other guy asked "do they code with their feet?". About a week later, he realized that he'd forgotten to re-install his BIOS update after he wiped the machine. He fixed that, all his crashes went away. At least he was man enough to admit it.

So, for a game that doesn't have a Madden-sized advertising budget, word of mouth is your biggest hope, and here we are, before the game even releases, getting bashed to hell and gone by people who can't even be bothered to actually pay for the game. What was the ultimate impact of that? Hard to measure, but it did get mentioned in several reviews. Think about that the next time you read "we didn't have any problems running the game, but there are reports on the internet that people are having crashes."

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=42663

Maybe customers would be more apt to buy the game if:
a) they respect the developer
b) the game is worth the price, and the developer has a record of making games that are worth the price

Things like this used to be good business sense. It's why I buy Blizzard games legit, not because of any threat from the League of Lawyers or invasive DRM. The same principle applies to music.

Insulting the customer by making it harder to install the game legitimately than pirating it because of DRM, or by unleashing rabid hordes of lawyers on potential customers, only serves to erode respect for the developer. Then there's EA games... enough said.

No world of goo  (2 guys), had a 90% piracy rate.

World of Goo developer 2D Boy has revealed that its excellent indie title has suffered a staggering 90 percent piracy rate. The question of lost sales is a much tougher one.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90.ars

The Grapple problem, saving problem and glide problem - it is not a BUG. Every Batman that's cracked has the same issue so you can't continue after 58% (Batcave after getting the Advanced Batclaw). So there's no point in posting "Omg I can't grapple". You want a problem fixed ? Good,buy the game. Why do I say that ? - Well because you can't get the option "Downloadable content" on cracked version,the game is awesome and perfectly made to ripoff developers,all those bugs will go away with full game,you can use other costumes for Batman and have more fun when DLC gets here. People ask "Why would I spend 60$ on a singleplayer game?" - Because Original game will bring up more content.

Following a huge increase in complaints from the music, movie and software industries, the four major Japanese ISP organizations have agreed that they will work with copyright holders to track down copyright infringing file-sharers and disconnect them from the internet.

Aiursrage2k wrote:About a week later, he realized that he'd forgotten to re-install his BIOS update after he wiped the machine. He fixed that, all his crashes went away. At least he was man enough to admit it.

Aiursrage2k wrote: If you saw the rest of the rant you might think differently. Those people who are crashing with the pirated version are actually causing the other potential buying customers to not buy the game because its "buggy".

Mr. wrote: I bought World of Goo.

Twice.

No, seriously.





I also did not buy Crysis.  I didn't pirate it, either.  But I did want it.  I saw it on Steam, and I wanted to see how my new computer would handle the graphics, so I was about to buy it, when I saw a little notice stating that it had Securom DRM.  So I looked up Securom, and read all about how it fucks shit up.  There was that, and the bullshit install limit.  SO, I decided not to buy Crysis after all.  No thanks, EA.  I'd rather not take the chance of being one of those odd cases of screwed up computers.  I'd like to be able to install this game after I upgrade bits of my computer's hardware.  And I definitely do not want to support a game which includes all of that retarded DRM.

Also, I could say that I don't pirate very many games, and that I buy the ones that I like, or that I mostly pirate games that are out of print.  But really, it's still wrong.  I can justify it to myself, and I can try to justify it to others, but I secretly know that it's still wrong.  And I think that by justifying it like that serves to validate the idea of piracy to others, who will repeat the same justifications, until we're all basically saying "It's okay that we're pirating games."

But will the fact that I'm acknowledging that change my pirating habits?  No.  It won't.  It's far too convenient for me to just go online, and search for a torrent.  It's too hard to resist saying "Well, I've heard good things about this game, but I'm not sure if I want to spend money on it, so I'll just download it!"

So basically, I know it's wrong, but I'm going to do it anyway, when it's convenient for me.  Damn, no wonder 235423523 people are doing it.