Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Somewhat misleading. It's also very easy to copy all the super-DRMed games. In fact, the process is identical. Load up a torrent site, search, download.
At any rate, claiming 90% piracy (regardless of truth) to run a sale is probably a good marketing move. It's a beautiful game.
Sure, if you like your machine full of trojans and malware. There is no honor among thieves, and honestly I view people who pirate executables (particularly cracked), running them anywhere but in a tightly-bound VM, as either naive or foolish.
We will never know this. When I used to pirate software in my younger years, I would buy software that I needed if I couldn't find it anywhere. I suspect that the number of pirates that would never buy are a lot lower than you claim.
The problem now is that piracy has muddied the waters. We will never know either way.
A bought this game at the full price despite having the pirated version available. I really want to encourage them to make more! For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't have bought it if it had any sort of crazy DRM scheme.
There's a wallpaper sized version of the of the pirate robot image and a new song on the official blog post here: http://machinarium.net/blog/2010/08/05/machinarium-pirate-am...
That's a beautiful looking game. I sure hope they're getting enough sales to make some decent money.
On the flip side, I recall at least one set of statistics showing that most pirates don't run a game more than once. Presumably most pirates pirate huge numbers of games and simply don't have the time to play them all in depth -- which certainly supports the idea that they wouldn't pay for them if piracy weren't an option.
I only bother to rip the movies I like... and re-watch them every so often. It is nice to have an on-demand library available.
I think the focus needs to shift from, "This sucks," to, "This is what it is, how can we deal with it?" Like a lot of other industries, games are going to need to evolve.
Server-side data and good online connecting is a way. Platforms like Steam that take the hassle out of online buying is a way. Alternative monetizing might be a way. Tasteful sponsorship and in-game advertising? At this point, piracy is what it is, and it's not going away. Time to start thinking about ways to monetize those pirates.
However due to being on Steam buying this game can't get much easier and people still pirate it. I agree the focus has to change but it is still a shame, this game is beautiful. I think the amnesty sale is a great way to draw attention to the issue (and the game too).
If fact, its probably a continuum. Choose your point anywhere along that line. (Of course, you never heard about the one where only 100 sold, the developers decided they'd failed and gave up).
People pirate games with DRM because the pirate version is better than the legit one.
You could easily argue that the DRM is increasing both the number and social acceptability of software pirates, which is basically the opposite of what it claims to be doing.
How do we know that the people that pirate games with DRM aren't doing it because it's "easy"?
"You could easily argue that the DRM is increasing both the number and social acceptability of software pirates, which is basically the opposite of what it claims to be doing."
No, the piratebay is increasing the social acceptability of software pirates. So is the increasing rate of entitlement among people in their 20s.
This small example shows me that having no DRM (or any other kind of protection) means an application developer will not make any money on their app because most people will just pirate it. DRM at least helps prevent piracy to some degree.
Downloadable apps are on the way out. Because of piracy, I predict most companies will move over to web services in the future.
This should make most people happy because now, instead of paying for software once, you will need to pay for it every month/year.
This may be the case, but allowing people to share your application freely will make it that much easier to create more pirates (IE: someone who doesn't know that much about computers searches your app on Google and finds the "free" version instead of your site).
i didn't pirate it, but i'd probably buy this game at $5. for what it is, a shorter single player, point-and-click puzzle game, i don't know that i'd pay $20.
Comparing the number of unique copies of your program running to sales made takes about ~20 lines of code. On first run, ping the website and mark somewhere that you won't do that check again. Count how many times your program accesses the website.
I have no desire to do privacy-increasing mechanisms which only help the privacy of pirates, which is what opposition to phone home is (since all legitimate customers left download and purchase logs).
i'm just trying to make note of the fact that if you do have something that phones home, can you really say that your product is totally free and clear of that drm/registration/etc type of software practices? more similar to false advertising. "our product will NEVER do this. except, it does, but just a little"
DRM is about controlling the right to run the software, and I don't think a simple ping back would count as that.
>"We released the game DRM-free which means it doesn’t include any anti-piracy protection, therefore the game doesn’t bother players serial codes or online authentication, but it’s also very easy to copy it," Amanita's Jakub Dvorsky explained. "Our estimate from the feedback is that only 5-15 percent of Machinarium players actually paid for the game."
1) they claim to not have any DRM, registration, pingbacks, etc.. they're saying that the 90% (average) number is purely based on feedback. how reliable is this number? i know i ignore most feedback mechanisms by default.
2) if they said all of this, and it turns out that the product does have a pingback or some form of automated feedback, is that not dishonest?
If you read what they wrote, they made no statement at all on pingbacks. They define what they mean when they say the game is "DRM-free". And since this definition does not preclude counting up the number of IPs from which the game accesses a particular online resource in the course of normal operation, I would have to say: No, it would not be dishonest of them to do that.
Perhaps another example would help: The Fedora Project estimates the number of active users of Fedora by counting the IPs accessing their update servers. Yet I don't think this causes Fedora to contain DRM, nor do I think collecting this information is particularly dishonest.
Who came up with the term pirating anyway? It adds a glamor that 'stealing' just doesn't have.
It would be as if I had a device that could duplicate your car in 10 minutes, atom-for-atom.
Clearly this would spell big trouble for the auto industry. We might even introduce laws which make this act illegal, or otherwise induce artificial scarcity so that the price of a car doesn't fall to zero, because we decided, as a society, that the auto industry is something we want to encourage.
Maybe every car would require a special passphrase to start, and the car phones home via the cellular network so that no more than one passphrase can be active at a given time.
Hmm. That sounds familiar. On the other hand, I'm not stealing someone's car when I duplicate it, am I? Suddenly there's this third party (the car manufacturer or retailer) who cares a lot about what I do with me car. They'd say, "No, it's bad for you to copy other people's cars" and do what they could to stop me.
A very different situation from car theft today, which involves only two parties (me and the person I stole it from) and obviously and directly deprives said person of their car.
Copyright infringement isn't theft, not legally, not historically, and not morally.
It's not the copying of other people's cars that's the issue. They'd object just as much if you copied your own car multiple times and gave them to your wife and kids, or friends, neighbors, colleagues or customers. So at that point, they decide that it's no longer your car, all the cars are their cars, they just rent or license them to you in order for them to get around what common sense says you should be able to do with a physical object that you have paid for. Then they'll realize they can go further and stop you taking your car abroad, or stop you modifying it, or running a taxi service, or using generic fuel.
This is why in the past we had three types of use: unrestricted use, fair use, and restricted (copyrighted) use. Now we only have fair use and restricted use.
What if I "steal" your identity? Technically, you don't lose anything. I am just borrowing your information. Should this be okay too?
How about a website that posts valid credit card information. Before someone actually uses the credit card, it's just numbers and letters on website.
"Clearly this would spell big trouble for the auto industry. We might even introduce laws which make this act illegal, or otherwise induce artificial scarcity so that the price of a car doesn't fall to zero, because we decided, as a society, that the auto industry is something we want to encourage."
There is no "artificial scarcity". The talented people that actually make software, music, and movies are scarce. This is what you are buying. If this wasn't the case, anybody could make Photoshop (not copy) in a few clicks.
"Hmm. That sounds familiar. On the other hand, I'm not stealing someone's car when I duplicate it, am I? Suddenly there's this third party (the car manufacturer or retailer) who cares a lot about what I do with me car. They'd say, "No, it's bad for you to copy other people's cars" and do what they could to stop me."
Not "stealing" per se, but if you took the original developers work and put them out of business because you were copying (and distributing) it for free, isn't it almost the same thing?
I find these discussions really funny. A few weeks ago, there was a heated debate about the author from the thesis wordpress theme and wordpress. By creating the theme (and not giving back to the GPL), the author really wasn't affecting the original (since it technically was just a copy of some bits). Many people here were against him because of the political ideology behind the GPL. When the discussion leads to piracy and its effects (such as this one), everybody has a different opinion.....
"Copyright infringement isn't theft, not legally, not historically, and not morally."
It's counterfeiting, which is worse than theft. With theft, you aren't going to put a television company out of business because a few tvs got stolen out of the back of a van.
When software is pirated (like in this article), it really can put a company out of business and destroy their entire revenue stream.
You can't steal identity. You are instead impersonating someone and you are defrauding someone else. 'identity theft' is a new word for the ancient problem of fraud.
Identity theft is a good example because it illustrates the way we call lots of things "theft" which aren't.
Similarly, we might say that murder is "stealing someone's life."
Anyhow, identity theft isn't theft, it's fraud. And if you pretend to be me so as to, say, extend yourself a line of credit, you're clearly doing harm to me (and my credit rating!), not to mention the counterparty you just (fraudulently) contracted with.
"There is no "artificial scarcity". The talented people that actually make software, music, and movies are scarce. This is what you are buying. If this wasn't the case, anybody could make Photoshop (not copy) in a few clicks."
You're parsing words here. Yes, the talent is scarce, but the means by which we reward that talent is breaking down because the marginal cost of media in a digital world is zero.
"Not "stealing" per se, but if you took the original developers work and put them out of business because you were copying (and distributing) it for free, isn't it almost the same thing?"
Well, personally, I distinguish between people who download something for personal use versus people who download something for the purpose of profiting off of it.
The law distinguishes between these two types of copyright infringement, too. The former is not criminal, while the latter is. That's why Grandma gets sued by the RIAA, but pirates operating on a massive scale get arrested by the FBI.
In any event, it's more about the macro trend of what would happen if such a technology existed. Right or wrong, it would fundamentally disrupt the economic system by which we produce automobiles.
But I think it's clear that duplicating my neighbor's car is not the same as breaking into his car, hot wiring it, and driving off without his permission, right?
"It's counterfeiting, which is worse than theft. With theft, you aren't going to put a television company out of business because a few tvs got stolen out of the back of a van."
Er, again, no. Counterfeiting involves fraud. It's fraudulently passing off something as genuine which is not.
That copy of Photoshop I download really is Adobe Photoshop (R), not a knockoff. I mean, it's bit-for-bit identical.
If I start selling DVDs of Photoshop from my storefront that's also not counterfeiting, but would probably be criminal copyright infringement.
If I were selling a DVD that I claimed was a legitimate, off-the-shelf copy of Photoshop with a license key and everything, but it wasn't, I suppose that would be both counterfeiting and copyright infringement. IANAL, so I don't know.
Anyhow, in conclusion, yes, if we had the ability to duplicate cars, atom-for-atom, at no cost that would be a huge problem for the auto industry. People would lose their jobs. There would be massive disruption, economic loss (at least in the near-term), and a call from auto manufacturers to ban the practice.
But it's still not theft. It's something else.
"When software is pirated (like in this article), it really can put a company out of business and destroy their entire revenue stream."
There are cases where that is true, but it's still not theft.
And I guess at that point people's motivations would radically shift as money was no longer required, since everyone would have the same 'means of production' (assuming the nano-replicator propogates, like everything else, and that the world isn't turned into grey sludge).
But, until then, the people who make the software do need money, or rather to make software costs money and risk and the risk is undertaken with the expectation of making a return on their investment. Not in every case, but its usually pretty easy to tell whether something is for sale or not.
Morally its kind of like the prisoner's dilemma. Its in everyone's best interests for people to buy software if they can afford it because it will lead to better software for everyone. But individually its better for pirates to not pay for the software because they get the software for free, and if enough people pay for it, they get the benefit of better software in the future. If everyone stole it, there wouldn't be any. Same for cars and whatever. It seems obviously wrong to me.
I'm not concerned about getting caught. I'm concerned about running arbitrary binaries downloaded from god-knows-where which were prepared by hackers with less-than-honorable intentions.
After you've reformatted your hard drive for the 3rd or 4th time, you give up on pirate software.
[my novel] is being Printed again and again, by Pyrates
Sad as it may be, putting DRM might not increase sales numbers significantly. It just makes crackers more determined. Such was World of Goo's reasoning against DRM.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-wor...
Yeah that is going to cut down on piracy.
As in the sale price. It's still $19.99 on steam.