What happens when pirates play a game development simulator and then go bankrupt because of piracy?

Greenheart Games
#182

First off, this is not true. The “fake” version was edited, but not maliciously.

The developer haven’t stated any theory that would be proved or disproved by this experiment. Hence, there was no “one-sided point” at all. Here goes the rest of your argument.

Earlier I described the blogpost having “some, if a bit misguided, interpretation” solely because there’s a sentence telling that every person who run a fake version “stole the game”. Which I can’t support simply on the fact that downloading and/or running a pirated version of some software does not equal to theft (and no, I don’t care what USA’s laws say about it).

Other than the sentence mentioned above, I have no problems with the article.

1 Like
#183

In my opinion, the published numbers in the blogpost are misleading. This game was not released just the day before the blogpost. They released a version for Mac and Linux and Windows 7 or so the day before the post, but the game was live in the Windows 8 Store more than a month before that. I do not know wether or not it was avaiable in a pirated version somewhere during that time.

I just think that those people who heard about Game Dev Tycoon and wanted to try it either had Win 8 and already bought it (like me) or did not have Win 8. So at least part of the legitimate clients just do not show up in the statistics mentioned in the post. (Why should I buy the game a second time?)

Then again, those who heard about the game and do not have Win 8 couldn’t buy the game. Say, those people found about the torrent version before seeing the news that there was another release with their favorite OS included? We are talking about just one day. Under these circumstances, I would have downloaded the torrentet version without many thoughts. After all, in this scenario, last time I checked, there was no version for my beloved Win 7/Mac/Linux. And there in the torrent description it says there is one now.

I am pretty sure that the majority of the players who like the game and know where to legally buy it will sooner or later do so. I sincerely believe that piracy is NOT that much a problem for the game (or music or film) industry. Quite contrary, I believe that piracy is a major bonus and I’d wager that without piracy and torrent sites, many indie developers would sell way less and the dependency of those small devs towards giant distributers would be much higher.

#184

Great experiment.

I don’t know if you guys are still following this thread, but I would suggest you try to put your game in http://www.humblebundle.com (Humble Indie Bundle).

I think it’s a good way for indie developers to get their game legitimately noticed… I’ve bought almost all bundles feature on there.

Good luck to you guys… I’m a indie developer myself (iOS) and know how hard it is to get noticed.

#185

Creating an impossible-to-win version of a game isn’t malicious? In what universe?

#186

Let’s try to give this discussion a bit of a different spin… So let’s assume for the moment that someone invents a way to copy beer (yes, the alcoholic liquid!). Let’s please not get bogged down in details how this works scientifically, let’s just assume it will work from a practical perspective as follows:

  • Go to www.beerez.com
  • Pick your favorite brand from a drop down list
  • The beer starts flowing from your tap

What do the participants of this discussion think would happen? Here are my ideas, not very creative :slight_smile:

  • The breweries would create associations such as BIAA (Beer Industry
    Association of America)
  • BIAA would go after www.beerez.com
  • The Internet being what it is, the BIAA would loose the technical battle
  • Somewhat frustrated, the BIAA would go after individuals drinking beer for free
  • There would be a public outcry from the free-beer advocates asking
    for free beer for everyone and using screw the greedy corporate
    breweries     as well as I want my free beer now as their main argument.

So far for my humble, lame and uncreative suggestion for what could happen. I hope for more visionary suggestions from this thread. Specifically: Any suggestion for a fair model to make sure we all get free beer?

#187

Nice idea and a nice publicity stunt, but doesn’t have much to do with how piracy and sales works. If your game is not making profit, it’s not piracy you should blame. If your game suddenly became piracy-proof, you imagine that those 93% of players who pirated it would buy it. Instead, more than 93% of those 93% who pirated it would not play it at all.

So, instead of blaming and attacking piracy and wasting your time and effort trying to prevent it, you are better off focusing on gameplay, content, good price and marketing.

If you don’t believe me, you should check out a very popular, completely free city-building game with ASCII user interface. Check out the monthly donations reports on their forums. They don’t complain about piracy, do they?

1 Like
#188

No, it’s not. In this universe.

PS: Just so you know, you can’t win in Tetris.

1 Like
#189

[quote=“just_dont_do_it, post:188, topic:264”]
No, it’s not. In this universe.

PS: Just so you know, you can’t win in Tetris.
[/quote]You can’t win “highschore” mode. However, you can win clearly defined objectives, ie: get to level 18, clear 100 rows, create 40 tetris. This game clearly has an end: 25, 30 or 35 years.

#190

Well, the “fake” version have a clear end too: bankruptcy due to low sales. You can still state some clearly defined objective (i.e. hold out for 5 years vs. pirates, etc.) and try to win it.

#191

Can you tell me the websites where these posts asking for help were made?

#192

I would like to admit that I myself is also a thief, a stealer but not a pirate. I always do download those cracked games from really good pirates. And if you want to know my reason, here it is. Reason is that those games are only payable in $$$ DOLLARS and not in any other more currency so people living in another country who doesn’t have a dollar account or rather earns dollar in their hopeful job can’t afford to buy those games so what can they do other than stare and watch gameplays of it on youtube? They look for it’s pirated (cracked version) so they could also enjoy it. I mean face it, most of those users who has been playing those pirated games came from different country who couldn’t even afford having a VISA or MASTERCARD. I can pay and buy that game, but in our currency that I can promise you. And also if a developed game was released to a certain country only nor limited to that country but really is interesting a pirate would upload it and share it so other can play as well.

#194

Every office in the world that has those kind of placements are subject for copyright infringement?

#196

To back up the dev’s sob story?

#197

Any person who is able to read, can clearly tell that the graph shows that 214 users have run and not firewall-blocked a “genuine” game version as opposed to 3104 users that run and not firewall-blocked a “fake” game version.

But yes, it’s quite possible that people who can’t comprehend written text all too well may have problems with that particular graph.

#198

Oh boy! I’m downloading the demo and will try it now at work on lunch time. If it’s good, i’m getting the linux version today (or tomorrow, i usually try to cool down to avoid compulsive purchases i regret later :stuck_out_tongue: )

#199

You guys have gone viral! :slight_smile: I never heard of you before someone posted your blog post on Facebook. THIS is the kind of ingenuity I respect! I don’t have the ability (time or funds… no really, currently unemployed and $8 goes out of the food fund for the family, but that’s temporary) to try your game at the moment, but when I have funds I’m buying a copy simply to support you! I’m an analyst and I extrapolated the numbers based on your post and found that you guys are effectively working at 10 cents an hour (presuming 251 work days, 10,040 work hours for two people over two years also note: I also gave extrapolated numbers on what you would presumably make as the game winds down post-release) If you sold your game for $60 like the other guys, that would simply bring you up to low-poverty level (about $10K a year for each of you). Extrapolating numbers, presuming 214 legit users and 3,318 total users, the game ended up being valued at 51 cents a copy. That’s a horrifying number. Anyway, keep up the good work, guys, I think this is going to be good press for you, and that’ll help! $8 is an awesome price point, one I can afford (under normal circumstances). Please be sure to keep a copy of your pirate version, that is something to be treasured!

—Guy

1 Like
#201

@ Josh: The problem is fundamental with Capitalism. In order for it to work, you must control your Supply. With software, the supply is infinite (You can’t really clone cars… or televisions), so you have to either go REALLY REALLY big with demand (Make the game an insane MUST-HAVE game of 2013!!! YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT!!! Ahem… sorry, got carried away) or you control your supply somehow. And that’s the reason game companies and music companies are futzing around with DRM, because not every game is the one you can’t live without.

When it comes to the value of the game (And the reason you aren’t understanding the numbers on that graph) you have to look at it from the point of view of work hours put in by your workers. If these two developers were in my company, I’d be expected to give them a living wage, let’s say $60,000 (That’s a lousy wage for competent programmers, by the way), so my overhead for this game is now (2 programmers, 2 years) $240,000, right? So in order to break even, I need to sell 30,000 units of this game. Games will show a return of (roughly) 50% of release day sales over the first month after release and 50% of THAT over the next year (This is a guestamate, not hard and fast numbers). So, you had 214 units sold on release day, you can assume another 107 more units by the end of the month, and another 53 units by the end of the year. That’s a total of 374 units, $2,992 dollars. Now, Marketing changes this number greatly, but we’ll use the “Mediocre marketing” model for effect (Mostly because marketing won’t show more than 200% return over a year unless something astonishing happens). So, it cost me $240,000 to make the game, and I made $2,992 dollars. Just slightly over a 1% return. Or, look at it another way: a 99% loss.

So, the way to solve this is to control my Supply: I restrict it so you can’t get it except through me (DRM or something like that, I don’t believe DRM works, but let’s just play along), and hype it so you MUST have it. Will I capture all of those 3100 people who pirated it? Absolutely not. But the price point is tasty ($8), and with that I WILL capture half of them. And adding an extra 1500 units to my 214 changes the numbers dramatically. Now I have 1,714 units sold on opening day, add 50% for the month (857) and another 50% for the year (428) and now you have 3,000 units, or $24,000. NOW we are at 10%. You still need to market blitz to 10 times that to make overhead, but that’s possible. It’s a whole lot better than having to boost to 100 times. This is a small company release, I don’t expect a marketing blitz out of them yet.

The thing about this is, it’s business. And that’s hard to follow if you don’t DO business. It’s easy to think these guys are whining until you realize that their work is right now valued at a DIME an hour and that’s because they have infinite supply of their product and they can’t control their supply. Marketing works the demand side, but they have to do something to control their supply in order for it to be effective. Would YOU work for $0.10 an hour?

That’s why this is ingenious; they didn’t violate their personal beliefs (No DRM), but they still managed to get their point across (And capture some great numbers for me to work with).

#202

You can say that about Game Dev Story.

Stop whining dude.

#203

Even if they would have filled it with virus, the pirates would be stupid to complain anyway. They pirate a game instead of buying it LEGALLY to get full support of the devs…

#205

Why aren’t you far away from here, playing your free games?
You’re contradicting yourself.

EDIT: Oh wait, that’s because you’re common troll.