Sadly, pirates don't actually convince their friends to buy it. They help them pirate it.
He's right about doing what he can to provide features that pirates can't take advantage of, though. That's the only way to actually combat piracy.
He's right about doing what he can to provide features that pirates can't take advantage of, though. That's the only way to actually combat piracy.
Pirating software is often a pain - find a proper release, install, replace a binary, generate a key, avoid online services, seek out cracked updates (or go without them). If your time has value, it's hardly free. Do you really think everyone pirating anything is going through this process for every Tom, Dick and Harry they know, as opposed to just saying, "Yeah, it's $50 at Gamestop..."?
What the author is talking about sounds like the far more common scenario -- friends will see a pirated game being played (or just hear it being praised), and make a purchase later if they so desire (perhaps on services like Steam, where hordes of people who used to exclusive pirate games now periodically pay for the simple conveniences of being legit). And the pirates themselves are occasionally 'turned' by the kind of value-adds that the author is taking about. How many people who really liked the single-player modes in their pirate copy of MW2 didn't go legit so that they could play multiplayer?
Piracy can unquestionably lead to expanded mindshare and buzz, it's silly to assert that it merely spawns more piracy. Piracy of Photoshop isn't destroying Adobe's profit, it's securing it. How many legions of designers and photographers cut their teeth on a pirated version, in the process trained themselves to all its concepts, quirks and idioms, and later became a paid seat in a professional context (where using a pirated version is astonishingly stupid behaviour)?
Edit: This is clearly an emotional issue. Parent is getting a steady stream of upvotes for blithely making a generalization about how all pirates behave, whereas I saw a downvote faster than what I've wrote could even have been read.
Really the biggest likely pitfall facing indie-game developers is that they release their game and nobody notices or cares, not even enough to pirate it. There are a ton of indie games that come out every year that never rise out of obscurity, which is the main thing publicity attempts have to overcome, at least early on. Enough people pirating it to generate some forum/blog buzz is one possible way, like underground musicians who get their initial publicity via people trading mix tapes.
Probably, yes. They're trading their time for social capital.
> Pirating software is often a pain
I agree with the first part. The second line is also true, but the cash value must be low. I am a student, and I will very often see students (pirates) helping their friends pirate Cadence Orcad. Sure, it's a pain, but it's not THAT much of a pain and a single license is several thousand dollars. (Heck, it might even be more- they don't list prices, because they don't sell to individuals!)
Orcad is a fantastic piece of software by the way. I'd happily give them lots of money if they'd sell it to me, and I had lots of money. (call me cheap, but I am guessing my annual income is probably on par with only a small handful of licences)
No. That's the only way to make money in an economic reality that copying is free. It's redefining what you sell so that it cannot be pirated because it's a different product/service to start with.
You're not combating piracy when you offer a non-copyable service - you're just redefining your terms to work with reality.
The article says:
> But what if that person likes that game, talks about it to his or her friends, and then I manage to convince three of them to buy the game?
The author is hoping that he can convince these friends to buy the game; he isn't suggesting that pirates do the convincing. In the next paragraph he describes how to do it:
> Instead of just relying on guilt tripping pirates into buying, or wasting time and money trying to stop them, I can offer online-only services that actually add to the game experience. Online level saving, centralized skins, friends lists and secure name verification for multiplayer. None of these features can be accessed by people with pirated versions of the game, and hopefully they can be features that turn pirates from thieves into potential customers.
Investing actually money into something as brittle and vague as a video game simply requires that I certainly know what I'm buying. Thus, the title must either be a few-in-a-decade known hit or tested with a pirated version.
If the situation is even remotely like that these days, game publishers are making their money because of piracy, not despite of it.
If you're not actually adding any useful internet-based features, then this is just another DRM system that will piss off paying customers when they want to play but don't have a net connection because they're using a laptop on a plane flight.
The question should be: how do you account for the fact that your customers are criminals and still make money without crippling your game? Putting useful features online is a good answer to that question.
I don't think there's really anything "wrong" with that, though. It's not very fair, but that's how the world works. Given that people are going to continue to try making money from games, it seems like an optimal outcome.
It also often creates the paradox that pirates get a better experience. Once the pirates work around all your antifeatures, the pirated version is actually a better product than the one you're selling (which makes piracy even more tempting).
1) It drives your customers to your competitors
If you had a choice between a shop that detained you in an "interview room", and checked your bags, pockets and body cavities against the receipt, every single time you went there, and one that just had a few CCTV cameras, which would you choose?
2) It makes people think "If I'm going to be punished anyway, I might as well commit the crime"
In some countries (IIRC, both Finland & Netherlands do this), purchasers of recordable media are "treated as criminals" and pre-emptively fined for copying music (specifically music, not software). If I were subject to that kind of treatment, you bet I'd copy as much music as I could lay my hands on.
I'd be pretty annoyed if I couldn't play my fun new game on a plane because it needs to constantly connect to the internet to prove I didn't steal it.
But it stinks that developers now have a bias towards online features (because they combat piracy) instead of potential offline features that are more useful or better serve customers.
If you look at Minecraft, it has the worst graphics possible and, in the Alpha that Notch is selling, half of the features don't work in multiplayer. The main thing the game has going for it is its limitless replay value with the ability to create and show off things (however tedious I think the average person would find the process).
Despite its flaws, Notch seems to be doing something right. He doesn't have much overhead and he can sell the game for cheap (although not very much so by indie standards). He doesn't even have an effective copy protection scheme. The login system is easily bypassed, and multiplayer servers hosted in "offline" mode are no different from a regular server.
Granted, there are previous incarnations of the game that did not take off and Notch has a lot of open promises about what he will deliver with the game. Yet, the game is in a state that is highly addictive and people have nothing but good things to say about it. Word of mouth and social media (namely youtube tutorials and showcasing) have rocketed sales.
Obviously, this game is a different caliber than most big budget games, but they are at a disadvantage to Notch's straightforward development style. Game studios are often rushed to finish their game and they need to see immediate success upon release. Yet, they are almost always still working out bugs. Beyond patching and token DLC, the game is considered final. Some games have even lost modding support despite how much value that adds to a game.
Blaming the current generation of consumers doesn't fit. There is an exponentially larger consumer base buying games. Most gamers are always ready for the next game and often games are sold on hype alone. Maybe this is an overstatement, but we have attained what is close to rabid consumerism. There is a lot of competition, but when a game hits, it sells big.
Could it be that there is something else rotten going on in the games industry? Look at the surefire success that is the Call of Duty series (even despite the supposed boycott). Activision apparently couldn't afford to properly take care of Infinity Ward and there was a huge falling out. Can this be explained by greed, incompetence, or what?
Even if piracy is to blame, games are already harder to pirate. You can probably fight it head on to a certain extent, but I doubt you can stop it. At some point, it will hurt business more than it will help. The type of article Notch has written here has become fashionable among indie developers. It makes them look good, while making big game studios appear to be at a loss. Maybe they are also trying to serve as an example of how you can rise above piracy concerns rather than getting hung up on them.
Now 6 of my friends (who never would have been hooked on the series otherwise) own legal versions of the two most recent novels starring our favorite wizard-detective.
Those sales would not have been made if they hadn't gotten a taste of the series beforehand. Sure, this situation isn't the rule, and they pirated 5x the books they've purchased... but 2 sales each is better than 0, and with 8-10 more books coming in the series, the author/publisher have come out far ahead.
(see? Another chance to hook somebody)
The Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks is good in GraphicAudio, as is Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. Warbreaker is stand-alone, so it may be a good starting point.
There are a few rough bits, but there always are; some sections with awkward musical choices, some re-used recognizable sound effects, but they're no more common than errors in standard audiobooks.
(Disclaimer: GraphicAudio books are abridged, but functionally unabridged. If it's raining, they play the sound of rain instead of having the narrator say "it was raining". By definition, that makes them abridged, despite no loss of content.)
We stopped tracking piracy when we realized that we were getting into a cat-and-mouse game with application pirates and the feature wasn't worth the resources, but I can't imagine these stats have changed much since.
Untrue, I have direct personal proof to the contrary ;)