jemborg said:
j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
To go into hypotheticals for a minute: I'm sure that you're aware of World Of Goo. Fun game, imaginative, indie,
9 people out of 10 who played it pirated it. Now let's say just for the sake of argument that WoG was an EA funded title. It still gets pirated to hell, possibly even moreso as it has the stigma of being an EA title. Mr Ritticello looks at sales of WoG, and he looks at how much it got pirated. He thinks to himself 'Hmm... we sank a cool couple of million into that project, and got next to nothing back. Something's got to go.' So of course, he being the head honcho of a big corporation, he shuts down 2D Boy studios in order to minimize losses, then goes back to his however-many-millions-a-year salary. He and the rest of the managing elite aren't affected, but those guys at 2D are now out of a job.
Let's NOT get into hypotheticals. In contrast to that misrepresenting link above why not look at what the makers of World of Goo, 2D BOY,
themselves have to say about the situation... 90% [http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/].
"...people who pirate our game aren't people who would have purchased it had they not been able to get it without paying." They have good reason to think "
...preventing 1000 piracy attempts results in only a single additional sale."
World of goo is a very poor example mate- 2D BOY also state...
"by the way, just in case it's not 100% clear, we're not angry about piracy, we still think that DRM is a waste of time and money, we don't think that we're losing sales due to piracy, and we have no intention of trying to fight it." (From World of Goo has an 82% piracy rate. [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/11/15/world-of-goo-piracy-rate-82/])
Note that WoG is the
second best selling game on Amazon after WotLK. And they are very proud of the fact, not at all crying into their beers. They've even given away the music.
If you'd actually read my post properly, then perhaps you may have understood my point better.
I was not referencing WoG in regards to how the developers felt about piracy. If they want to try and shrug it off, that's their choice. The point I was making was that
if World Of Goo had been financed by a big publisher as an actual
industry title, and had still suffered the same losses to piracy, that same developer would in all likelihood
shut 2D Boy down to minimise losses.
If the developers have decided to turn a blind eye to a hideous piracy rate of their product, then that's their choice, but you cannot apply the same rules to other developers and publishers, who may not be so pragmatic, or who may just really need the money. Developers need their games to sell in order to get future work, or even just to stay open as a studio. Publishers need games to sell in order to fund future projects. If they suffer losses, they have to start cutting back.
Now, you say that people had no intention of buying the game anyway, but I call that a crock of shit. Pirates seem to change their answer depending on the circumstances. First, they're using the pirated game as a sort of extra-special demo before they buy. Then the pirated game gets on their hard-drive, and suddenly they never had any intention of buying it anyway (which makes me wonder why the game is therefore on their hard-drive).
I haven't played WoG, but I know that it's been well recieved amongst critics, and it certainly isn't so bad a game that it deserves only 18% of its players paying for it. I asked this before in another thread, and didn't get a satisfactory answer, so I'll ask here.
What gives you the right to play a game without paying for it?
Seriously. What gives you the right? The developers and publishers have made it clear you need to pay them to play their game. You state clearly that you have no intention of paying, yet for some reason you feel entitled to play. What gives you the authority to do that?
