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What would the PC piracy rate be for a bundle of DRM-less games worth $80 dollars, that we could pay
sepher
Member Posts: 3,561
25%: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3179232
'Rosen speculated that convenience was one reason that users were opting to download from a share link rather than simply paying a penny for the bundle.
"Some might want to donate, but it seems a whole lot easier to just click on a hyperlink than it is to enter a credit card number. Sure, it only takes a couple seconds, but for many, this is a few seconds too long," he wrote. "The most successful online stores all allow one-click buying, including Amazon, Steam and iTunes. In the words of one gamer, Steam showed him that he "wasn't cheap, just lazy," and I'm sure he's not alone in that realization."
He also attributed more benign reasons to the downloads, suggesting that some users may have paid for their friends with one donation, or that they reside in a country were PayPal, Google Checkout and Amazon are not accepted.
Rosen said that they have no plans to go after the pirates, and will continue to focus on making "cool games." However, he did have one request.
"If you are deadset on pirating the bundle, please consider downloading it from BitTorrent instead of using up our bandwidth! Also, even though you are pirating our games, please tell some of your friends about the Humble Indie Bundle. Posting to Facebook, telling your Twitter followers, (or simply talking to someone) sure doesn't require a credit card."'
If it wasn't evident before, its evident now that people pirate on the PC basically for the fuck of it. This is one scenario where DRM can't be complained about, cost can't be complained about, the end-recipients of the money can't be complained about. Five games, requiring not so much as the need to enter a serial, a choice to pay as little as a penny and with the decision of if that penny goes to the developers or charity like children's hospitals, and yet there's a 25% piracy rate.
I know people bitch about Ubisoft's DRM, EA's shift to online passes for content, and whatever else other developers and publishers do to discourage piracy...but damn, if this isn't proof that game makers can do no amount of good to completely stifle piracy on PC, I don't know what is.
The future can only be bleaker for PC gaming.
Comments
Truth there will be always pirates. It something game makers can better just accept for a fact. It's just plain stupid that by trying to get that 25-50% pirates to buy your game you alienate the 50-75% that do buy your game. The more you do to get people not to pirate the more people get disatisfied and will probably not buy your game and the pirates will still pirate your game.
Putting $$$ and time into it and getting 0-5% result in some pirates buying the game but maybe loosing 5-10% customers because the got pissed off by the inconvenience, is that smart?
The issue for PC gamers is that developers don't really have to target PC. They're already selling multiple times more of cross-platform titles on consoles. If piracy is so inevitable, then more and more developers will deal with it by opting out of releasing games on PC.
not all ppl can pay for a game for example iceland credit cards are not accepted some goes for not-so-coll countrys also there are many kids that want to play games and dont have a credit card
that games are made for kids not for adults (+18) so is quite awesome that they got adults to buy the games remember kids have to ask parents for CC to buy that, if u plan to release a game that is purchased online make sure your target audience have acces to a payment method
that can make 25%
BestSigEver :P
Thing is consoles games get pirated also. So....pirating will not go away even if they opt out making PC games.
Compared to PC, piracy is much, much smaller on 360 and Wii, and practically non-existent on the PS3. And in avenues of digital downloads on consoles, piracy is nill. So on the contrary, consoles are a great reprieve for developers from piracy, and its hard to imagine piracy will remain a factor at all in another generation of console's time.
That is what you think my friend. There is a big market out there for modding ones xbox360. Maybe less on PS# but it is more than possible to pirate games on PS3
It's big when the pirated game is sooner available for the console version than the pc version. It gives a hint where the most effort is put. I know people that do not own one single legit game while still being able to playing multiplay on windows live. I know of guys that earn a good extra spare change modding consoles. It's much more lucrative to pirate consoles than pc games...so soon it will be much bigger than pc pirating.
It something you just can't stop. The more these consoles start to look like a pc the easier it will get to be pirated.
Bytheway it's less on PS3 cause of it using blueray (more expensive)
Consoles don't need to be chipped anymore. There are sofware patches that make them play pirate copies.
It will catch on, but the console will be replaced entirely for the next gen before too long. Onlive for example won't have any trouble with piracy any more than World of Warcraft does.
Consoles certainly have a an advantage over PC's for DRM management. But games are even pirated on Iphones these days.
The most heavily pirated platform is currently Nintendo DS. Something like 3 out of every 4 DS games sold in the U.S. is a pirate copy.
A typical PC game has a piracy rate that can be 20 x larger than actual sales. Big deal. It's always been this way. Right from day one. How many pirated copies of Pong were there?
When I was child all the kids at school had copies of all the games. All of them. If a game was on sale in the shops all the kids had a copy. No change. The internet has changed. The ability to burn discs and tape to tape has changed, but kids remain the same.
There will be piracy.
I'm sure the 360 is still modded; with the consequence of not being able to use Xbox Live. But piracy on the Xbox 360 is much less than the original Xbox, and much much less than PC as evident through things like the published numbers for Modern Warfare 2 on TorrentFreak awhile back.
No actual downloaded games are pirated, just what can be ripped from disc for consoles. Thus my comment about "one more generation". Full 360 games are slowly beginning to be digitally distributed via Live Marketplace. Pretty much whenever first-parties (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) feel like it, discs can be thrown out of the equation all together. A lot of people suspect the next iteration of consoles will be without disc formats.
As for piracy on PC; yes its not going anywhere. The only ultimate cure there can be for piracy on the PC is a correction in consumer behavior. That's why I posted about this though; give people a DRM-less game, a download link, and an option of a penny to pay; 25% will still pirate. So...there's that.
As for consoles becoming more like PCs; are they? They all have hardware DRM that sends authenication data to their respective online services.That's why even if you mod your Xbox 360, you're avoiding Xbox Live. It's also why its impossible to do things like steal Xbox Live Arcade games; hardware authenication is involved. So that's the only thing there'll be more and more of; a full pipeline of DRM protected digital distribution and play.
Yes mate, they are more like PC's every day.
Architecture and operating systems. These means more people know how to program for them. Which means more programmers will be able to write ways around their DRMs.
As they have done.
Ultimately all hardware is controlled by software, if Microsoft develops a software that checks an XBox' hardware for alterations than a softwar can be written to reply to Microsoft with the answers it wants to hear.
The days of the hardware mod to consoles is perhaps over for good.
Piracy on the consoles is perhaps more damaging to the games publisher than piracy on the PC.
Piracy on the PC is typically done on an individual level. You still get the odd chap at the car boot sale selling pirate games discs, but not so much.
For Consoles this is the bulk of Piracy still. People selling ripped games discs or just printing up their own. In these cases the pirates involved are all people willing to pay for the title. The games publisher has lost out on sales (albeit at a lower price than he was asking).
If we take the DS as our example, we can see that the piracy for this system is corporate in nature. Organised crime. Not quite the ubiquitous 9 year old downloading nursery rhymes but a rival company sytematically and industrially ripping off Nintendo. (As usual).
I think the real cure for piracy on PC is a changing business model. Online games like MMO's for example.
The worlds most profitable game is WoW.
We are also starting to see games made by state funding. Dr Who for example is funded by the BBC lisence payer.
Free games with premium online content is another successful modern business model for PC games.
Single player games....I think they may be a dying business model for PC's. But you can always get a console emulator and play console games for that.
That said, COD4 while massively pirated on PC, sold more copies on PC than ever before. The well established business models are hardly doing badly. Piracy or no piracy.
I have to say Steam is awesome.
I remember when it got released and i was heavily into mapping and playing Half-Life, svencoop to be exact.
I REALLY friggin hated steam.
Nowadays, with the one click buy, and one click download and install?
I have 30 games in my steam library, in just under two years.
Some I have not even installed and played yet.
Not to mention some of the great bargains you can do there, games for like 5, 10 or 20$, thats barely money.
Wich is great for some of the indie groups out there, not sure how much of the cake they get but quite a bit of my steam library are games like.
Machinarium, Braid, World of Goo, etc.
Awesome titles, all for under 20$.
I did pirate Settlers 7, but I would have purchased that as well as steam had it, had it not been for their beyond stupid copy protection.
Ubisoft used to be one of my favourite publishers, sadly no more.
Other then that, can not even remember the last game i pirated, I just browse the steam store.
With some faith still in humanity i think that they can not possibly believe they gain anything by chasing pirates as hard as they do, alienating their legit customers to such an extent in the process.
Have to be another reason, I just can not figure that one out.
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Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
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