Ah, Katchemash, they caught you and now you and made you look like a fool. Now you are ashamed and bitter and mad. You want to troll a little. That’s cool. I’ve been there.
Let me recommend something: if you can code enough to add back into the game what has been pulled out, then you have the skills to be a great programmer, why don’t you strike out on your own? Build your own game? You have a clear vision of what it should be! Be Awesome! 
Josh: My apologies, I did read your post in a vacuum to a degree. I was simply replying to the “What does this mean, anyway?” comment.
Troll? I have no reason to troll. I’m here expressing my opinion.
I am trained as a programmer and I would but then I’d have to work with North Americans, in particular, Americans and I just don’t enjoy that. I’ve been looking to break out or at least get a business visa for Japan so I can work with real talent there.
If you have a credit or a debit-credit card then your bank automatically converts the payment into dollars. So that is not an issue. Also, as far as I understand the Windows store (Where the game is on sale) accepts Euros and UK Pounds in addition to dollars.
@josh: you forgot the third type – those crying “This Game Is A Ripoff” in every post.
PS: Actually, I’m a pirate (since I dl’ed the game first, not the “fake” version, but the cracked real one) first, and only then a customer.
@Josh: I don’t know… I thought a few of us were stating some very interesting facts. I think we have some people who genuinely don’t understand that the Internet has made business very hard. Not because of piracy in specific, but the fact that there is always one copy more than demand, which makes it a 0% demand all the time. I believe many people simply don’t understand that any product made on the Internet will always have to rely almost exclusively on goodwill (Which, according to greenheart that’s around 6-7%). So, if I want to recoup my expenses for a product, I will have to expect no more than 10% return and price accordingly.
There is a fear brewing with 3D printers for the exact same point here… fearing that will bring an entirely new line of products that will suddenly have 100% supply (And 0% demand)…
Please make a great game for free. Thank you
I used paypal over on Windows store… Amazingly convenient !
Not in North America I won’t. I’m already in the process of making one to showcase my talent for Japan since that is where all the good developers are. Unless you know Japanese I’m afraid you won’t be able to play.
I applaud your efforts to bring the cost of piracy (especially on small devs) to greater attention. And what a brilliant way to do it. I bought your game because of your post, and even though I already played Game Dev Story on iOS I thought I would give your game a shot too. So far it’s well done.
To all the people trying to rationalize why they think stealing is okay:
At the end of the day gamers need to realize that we are not entitled to play every game ever made if we can’t afford them. The companies that make/distribute/market/sell games might be “big evil corporations” or however you want to see them (or small devs like Greenheart Games), but even those big companies are made up of a lot of employees. And every decision those companies make is based on sales – everything from what the next game is, what goes into it, microtransactions, to how many employees they have, etc. Stealing games ends up hurting the consumer sooner or later.
Also, the only time I would consider the act of stealing a game in order to “try it before buying” as a valid reason would be when A) there’s no demo, B) there’s no good reviews and C) there’s no videos of the game. With a demo, reviews and/or video there’s a pretty good chance you’ll get an idea if you think it’s a good purchase choice or not. This game had a demo that let you play for a good bit before ending… there was no good excuse to steal this for any reason other than stealing.
Talent it is. Troll mastery eh?
“At the end of the day gamers need to realize that we are not entitled to play every game ever made if we can’t afford them”
No. North American developers have to realize that their ideas are totally worthless in this industry as of today and the only types of games that are being developed as of right now are farm-ville clones like this game or WW2 shooters where adolescent men can shoot at nazi’s or whatever have you.
All of this facilitates piracy. If the developers had any ounce of developmental genius or any form of new idea then you’d see the drop of piracy. Instead you see WW2 clones all over the place alongside farm-ville clones that makes people proclaim that they aren’t going to suffer any more BS from North American developers.
Just look at Ni No Kuni for the PS3. Brought an entirely new concept to North America and Europe and it instantly outsold any offer that NA developers had like FIFA and CoD.
Thats why I continually will proclaim that NA developers the ones who have no talent
The said fact is somewhat counterbalanced because a software developer is also almost totally free of any liabilities towards his customer. He is not obliged to provide a certain quality level and demo versions, he can’t be held liable for any kind of service interruption (in case of software with online components), and he doesn’t need to provide any kind of warranty. In short, there’s no practical legal way to provide a software buyer any means to support the “caveat emptor” principle – and I think one big reason for software piracy to exist – is because software piracy is filling that gap between a developer who can’t be held liable and a customer who wants to buy a quality product.
Software buyers have to rely on a goodwill of a developer no less than a developer have to rely on a goodwill of his buyers.
PS: I’m talking strictly about the “general consumer” software market, of course. Things are quite different in the corporate software sector.
I would also like to point out that claiming “piracy” as a reason for game development companies failing is a pretty weak idea that would get thrown out of any academic setting.
What about factors of developmental genius? Do you think companies that continually produce first person shooters, such as CoD, WW2, generic shooters and such have any reason to survive? When their own genius is completely tapped out and can only resort to these types of games?
When we factor in comparable game systems like say the 360 vs the PS3 we can see what the offerings are now coming out for the 360 such as the new Skyrim clone, the New Halo clone or whatever have you which speaks volumes about the weakness of the NA developer in thinking new ideas.
I mean just look at when Japan presents a new idea or game, such as Ni No Kuni, it continually beats the competition flat out and proceeds to break records.
Stop blaming piracy and start blaming the developers and their managers themselves for coming up with stupid and poor ideas and then complaining when people don’t want to play WW2 clone XIII or Farm ville clone XIII.
Thanks for your reply. I like your food analogy, seriously 
But to the point: I think it is everyone’s right to criticize capitalism and to look for better models of creating a happy society for everyone to live in.
What I do not like is the following argument of the “free beer” movement: Your beer is too expensive so I steal it. Call me a simpleton, but I think in capitalism it is up to the producer of goods to decide upon the price and delivery model of goods. If the buyer doesn’t like it, he has plenty of options: don’t buy, blog about it, go to court, create a better/cheaper good… I fail how the (new) option to steal (or “copy”) it adds value in the old struggle of creating and selling goods at the right price.
I wonder whether we could even sustain a stable society if the Internet mood of just because it can be done it is legal and there is no physical loss - hence no theft - because binary objects can be replicated so easily would translate to non-binary goods. Do you really think people would still build Porsche cars? Invent new things? Sounds like socialism and/or communism to me…
Either way: how do you think games should be priced and marketed? Do you think piracy is good or bad or irrelevant?
Developers run a business and make their decisions based on sales. It’s not a lack of “creative ideas,” it’s the safe business decision to release a AAA game (or a microtransaction farm-ville-esq game) that they know will sell well to the public despite piracy. Without piracy those businesses would certainly be more willing (even if just a little bit) to take risks.
Ni No Kuni for the PS3 outsold FIFA and CoD… on it’s release week… in January… months after FIFA and CoD were released. Way to take that first part of the data out of context.
Your continued attempts at justifying piracy are humorous.
You’re talking like socialism is a bad thing (the theory, of course, not the, say, Russian implementation of it).
One thing to notice here – is that software production does not follow the same economic laws as the material production. There are costs to develop the product (same in material world), but there are NO costs to produce 1 unit of software (well, of course there are, but they are almost negligible nowadays). Yet then we follow a traditional market model and sell our software with a hefty per-unit price. Initial costs notwithstanding, we’re essentially selling nothing for something. This can lead to a huge margin of error both ways – i.e. becoming bankrupt due to poorly chosen pricing model (“hey, let’s sell our AAA game for $0.25 per unit!”), or making an ungodly amount of profit due to revenues completely overflowing initial costs (I believe the Minecraft case was pretty much it).
A reasonable market model should somehow adhere to the fact that a unit of software costs practically nothing to produce. For example, I can see this working through a Kickstarter-like service – “Hey guys, I made a cool game and spent $1,000,000. Now, I think the initial price will be $30 for a game, but once I make $1,200,000 the price will be equally reduced between all would-be buyers, so that I will be receiving no more than 10% of extra sales as a form of royalties. And once the amount of sales starts to dry out, your credit cards will be charged for an adjusted price (which could be much lower than initial $30, depending on popularity)”.
You’re talking like socialism is a bad thing (the theory, of course,
not the, say, Russian implementation of it).
Your are spot on here: I like the theory of socialism (or the earlier versions - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book) ) but the implementations so far have not impressed me. That said, from the US standpoint countries such as Germany (my home country) or Finland (a country I like a lot) are called ‘socialistic economies’ and I think specifically the scandinavian model of a ‘socialist systems’ is a pretty good implementation of capitalism-but-with-the-required-checks-and-bounds.
One thing to notice here – is that software production does not
follow the same economic laws as the material production. There are
costs to develop the product (same in material world), but there are
NO costs to produce 1 unit of software (well, of course there are, but
they are almost negligible nowadays).
I work in a software company myself, fortunately it is B2B (business to business) and we have a very different price range. However, I find it somewhat amusing that people are paying US$ 8 for a game and then expect personal support from the developers. Your price model of “no unit cost” certainly does not allow for THAT. More users will mean more potential for bugs to show up.
To come back to the original topic “software piracy”: Ethics aside, I don’t see it doing any good for helping to establish a better price model for games.
Same here. Yep, B2B is much more orderly, since it’s much more oriented towards selling stuff of real value (support, software adjustments, etc.), not the “air” in form of 1 unit of software.
I haven’t touched the post-release support issue, since it’s much harder to cover that – at the moment, it’s essentially a market running completely on goodwill on both sides.
I don’t think we should approach software piracy from the “what good does it do” side – as with most spontaneous phenomenons in society, it’s a reaction to problems on software markets, not some coordinated effort to “do good”.
Yeah Game Dev Story wasn’t the first Gamebiz came before http://www.veloci.dk/gamebiz/gb1/ infact Game Dev Tycoon plays more like Gamebiz 3 with more interactivity than Game Dev Story.