Question: Piracy % today?

We are just asking out of curiosity, that’s all. You could say that 83% are pirates/legitimate buyers and be done with it :smile:

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Patrick can, I cant as i dont have access to the demographics :smile:

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I meant 83% as in how Barney always uses 83% when making up statistics (How I met your mother)

I don’t watch that :smile: Best stick to Big Bang Theory references if i need to get them :smiley:

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Support for Bitcoin please (lol)

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Well, sorry for that then. BTW good luck with your Steam launch!

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So how about those numbers :wink:

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We plan to write a follow-up blog post to our piracy story once the Steam release is done. It is unfortunately not so easy to tell now how many pirates there are since pirates now play the real game and not our fake version. All we can do is compare purchases with users. We know there are a lot more users than customers but it would be incorrect to say that the difference is solely due to piracy. Customers can install the game on multiple machines and the data collection itself can be fuzzy so there are no hard numbers but even so it’s pretty obvious that piracy is still very prevalent. Anyway this is why we published our original story after one day as the numbers were much cleaner back then but we will still be able to highlight stand-out numbers like like this one which I’d shared earlier:

http://forum.greenheartgames.com/t/russian-translation/87/56

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A shame for my country.(

Actually how many people are pirating the game is irrelevant. The relevant question is are you making money?

If the answer is yes, then piracy is not a concern. If the answer is no, then you may have cause to be upset with pirates.

If it were not for piracy, most people would not have heard of this game.

Also it should be mentioned that this game is pretty much an exact copy of Game Dev Story, which is its own type of piracy.

It seems silly and ill-advised to continue this crusade against piracy. Just be happy that your game is selling and you can make a lot of money from it and… LEAVE THEM BE!

Did you bump your head?

Piracy is a huge problem for indie developers.
By saying "well you are making money, so stop complaining. "If people are pirating your game, it’s your own fault"
You are just trying to justify pirating games.

I assume that you did not buy the game, because you think that Greenheart is already making a lot of money with this game.

You are wrong and make it worse, if everyone had the same idea, guess no one will buy any game.

If you like a product, Buy it!
If you don’t like the product, don’t use it!

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You assume wrong. I actually bought 2 copies of the game, even though I could have just installed the same copy on two computers. The reason was that it was only $5 or some small amount of money and I didn’t mind paying.

Not everyone is in the same position as me, many people around the world cannot afford $5 for something so trivial as a video game, but they should not be denied the simple pleasure and joy of playing a game on their computer. It is a powerful medium that can bring us all together and bring us all happiness, and to see it as a business and nothing more is pretty terrible.

I understand that indie game devs often have trouble to make money from their games. That is because most indie games are horrible, and nobody wants to buy them. Sure, we might pirate it to try it out, but bad games don’t have any assumed right to make money.

There are very, very few good games which don’t make any money, and it has nothing to do with piracy.

People need to understand the real business model of video games. It comes from players first, sales second.

I do love Game Dev Story 2, but I can fully understand people wanting to pirate it and do not judge them by that decision for one second.

“If you like a product, Buy it!
If you don’t like the product, don’t use it!”

Good morals, but often times you don’t have the luxury of a demo or trial version of a game, and the only way to try it is to pirate it.

Actually having a lot of people discussing and enjoying the game, recommending it to their friends etc is a more powerful marketing tool than you realise.

If you have the money to buy any system needed to play games, i am sure you can afford buying a $5 game.
And there are plenty of free games out there if for some reason you spent all your money in buying a PC/Console …

Where did you get the idea that this is just bussines for Greenheart ( or any other Indie Dev )?
You can not expect developers not having some profit made from their games.
How else would they be able to continue making new games?

If it were only bad products that are being pirated, it would not be much of an issue, because if company’s just made bad games, they would go bankrupt sooner or later.
But Pirates do not only pirate bad games, they pirate anything, because it’s free and don’t care about the people who put a lot of effort in making a good game.

And you are wrong again.
Most developers ARE making the games because they want to please the players ( and it’s hard to please everyone )
But in order to make games, you need money.
Just because someone needs money in order to continue what they are doing, does not justify “stealing” their product just because you feel it should not important.
I’ll just go an get a rental car, drive it for a few weeks ( i will pay for my own fuel ) return it and will not pay.
I didn’t steal anything and the rental company should just be glad that i had transportation.

Watch this and see if you have the same position about piracy.

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I wonder how many those 0.3% in numbers because percentage looks a little bit… shameful and terrifiing =(

P.S.: I know one who bought a game copy for himself but uses a downloaded from somewhere version with a kind of “translation”. I thought he’s the only one who could do it but some time ago a thread appeared where someone bought his copy and then patched it so it looks like “translated”. Now I am thinking there are quite more than 2 people who did the same thing :slight_smile:

You’re so very wrong on all counts I’m afraid.

It’s completely false that if you have the money to buy a computer, you have the money to buy a game.

Many people in the third world use computers that they get for free, or reclaim from junkyards and repair themselves. You don’t need a $500 graphics card to play Game Dev Tycoon, it can run quite happily on the sort of low-spec, old machines you see across much of Russia, India, China and the Middle-East.

Having access to the internet is increasingly becoming an essential part of functioning in the modern world. the internet is close to being a need, not a luxury. Games will always be a luxury purchase that can be extremely difficult to justify. “Do I eat today, or do I buy Game Dev Tycoon?”. Please accept that there are people different to yourself in the world.

I didn’t say developers cannot expect to see some profit. Of course they can. But if they don’t see any, or see much less than they expected, they should look inwards for reasons, not outwards. Nobody has the right to generate infinite income from selling copies of the same digital item again and again. It’s possible, and you can do it, but please don’t assume that we are beholden as a society and a planet to uphold this Copyright and Intellectual Property model, we aren’t. Physical objects and services will always mean more, and some countries only respect the physical, not the digital.

I didn’t say pirates only pirated bad games. Every game gets pirated, the important thing to note is that only the good ones get bought in significant numbers. It’s an important distinction to make. I have pirated literally thousands of games in my lifetime, 90% of them were terrible and I would never consider paying money for them, the other 10% I enjoyed, and many of those I either went on to buy or recommend to my non-pirate friends, who bought.

Even if I only bought the 10% of games that I enjoyed, I would be bankrupt. Games generally cost $60 each these days, and that is not really something which you can just throw around like you can throw around pirate games. With prices this high, we need all the help we can get to make good choices. Game Dev Tycoon wins here because it’s relatively very cheap, so it’s no problem for most people to buy it.

A good game on a good platform will always be a commercial success, regardless of how many people pirate it. A good game will also be pirated by a very large number of people. That should really be seen as a mark of quality, not “lost” revenue.

I don’t think it’s true at all that people that pirate games don’t “care” about the people that made it. I think it’s true that they don’t wish to pay them. You should not confuse paying for something with caring about it. I care about my wife, I care about my friends, but I don’t pay them any money as a matter of course. for some of us, at least, the reason we choose not to pay is because we don’t see the value in a digital object. It’s my hard drive, my computer, my electricity, my internet connection, my monitor, all of which I bought and paid for.

A factory worker put my specific computer parts together. An engineer worked on my specific phone line, a power company generated the actual electricity that I am personally using. I feel obliged to pay for these things because they are mine, they are physical, and someone did physical work to bring them to me. If I did not pay for my physical goods, their work is wasted.

All the developer did was to write one piece of software, once, to run on my equipment. He doesn’t have to code 1 million games for 1 million players, it’s a one-shot deal, and you buy replicas, not an original. It’s the same amount of work if he sells one or one million. If I did not pay for my digital goods, no work is wasted. He should feel gratitude that someone decided the initial work was good enough to pay for, not upset that some people decided not to pay for it.

Your rental car analogy is wrong. If I take the rental car, they cannot rent that car to anyone else. If I take a copy of software, they can still make more copies for other people.

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I also mentioned, that there are many Free games out there.
I do not see anything there that justifies, you can just won’t pay for a product since the device you are using it on is for free.

People do not need luxury, so stealing something that’s a luxury does not justify it.
If the choice of eating or using a luxury item becomes an issue, they should get another activity to do in their free time.
I work hard to have accces to luxury items.

They might not respect the digital, but i assume they respect law under which those digital products are protected.

I will continue later with my reply, since i need to get some work done :smile:

So you do not expect any support for your games?
Game full of bugs, meh just leave them, i just made a one shot deal. No need to go back to coding, just because a few people have a bad experience. Besides that Probably 80% of them pirated the game and i do not owe them anything.

You’re embarrassing yourself now. Please stop.

Piracy isn’t stealing, it’s making an unauthorised copy. There is a huge difference. If I steal your watch from you, you no longer have a watch. If I make a copy of your game, even if you don’t want me to, you still have your game.

Copyright advocates such as EA, the RIAA and MPAA are seeking to blur that disctinction and make the law treat piracy as theft. It very much is in their interests to do so, and very much not in ours.

Sadly, as you say they are making significant inroads towards this goal, and certain laws such as the DMCA reinforce this viewpoint. It is however a viewpoint which is incorrect, unfair and ultimately alienates the consumer or fan from the producer. We should be challenging this view and disobeying their rules, not parroting them.

I’m not trying to “justify” anyone’s actions. To do so implies that I have the ability to morally judge others. What I’m suggesting is that we simply let others be. They aren’t harming us by making copies, they aren’t harming the creator, all they are doing is gaining access to something they want.

You might think that taking a copy of something that you have no rights to is immoral. I might think that producing something once and selling it a million times is immoral. Since there is no universal morality, and nobody is harmed in either scenario, it is pointless to make such an argument.

No, I don’t expect any support for my games.

If I do get it, great! I’m happier with my product and more likely to buy games from that company again. If I don’t get any, that’s sad for me but there is not much I can do about it. I bought a game, not a contract with a software developer. Fixing bugs and adding new content is a bonus, not a requirement.

All of this has no bearing on the fact that bugs in a game need to be fixed once, not a million times. Yes, more users generally mean more bugs will be uncovered, but if you have a million customers you don’t need to write a million bug fixes.

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It’s weird that you think it’s ok for others to pay for a product and secure the continuation of the products,
while others just use it for free.
If everyone shared your opinion, there will be no more games to play.

People like you ruin the industry and ruining it for the other players.
It’s because of people like you companies like EA are making it a complete drag to buy and install their game, and force for example a Always Online feature upon the paying customer.
Allthough EA makes shit games anyways.

The worst thing you are saying that a small start-up company like Greenheart should just let the pirates be.
Assuming they are actually making money with this game.

And who cares that they make a single product and are able to sell it a million times.
After the product is finished, the development team still needs to get payed every month and all other company expenses need to be payed as well
The costs for making a AAA game can go up to 25M ( on average )

Anyways i am done with this discussion, people like you and pirates in general…

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No it’s not. Bank problems are not the #1 problem for game and software companies that are not able to offer their products to their customers on time. #1 problem for game and software companies are … people that won’t buy the game, pirate, copy and use it illegally… Thats the #1 reason that most companies don’t make enough profit so they can’t continue making other games.

True that piracy have certains benefits but that’s a double edge sword. I for one (except this game cause I saw Jesse Cox and Total Biscuit videos on it) pirated games before and bought it after IF IT WAS WORTH IT. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the case for most games I played since it didn’t gave me more that the ones I pirated.

So pirating the game so you can play your game before 6 days is just plain stupid and silly. You should be ashamed for just thinking about it. They hell are you, a boy douche bag that can have everything by the snap of his fingers (except digital copies of legal games since he don’t have a credit card…)

Today, I go on youtube watch let’s plays and reviews of some channels I know and then I decide if its worth it. not even worth my time and effort to pirate anymore since the videos will tell me that anyway.