News 90 percent of World of Goo installs are pirated

[CardJoe]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/11...-are-pirated/1

According to rough figures from 2D Boy, developers of World of Goo, roughly 90 percent of all installs are pirated.

[kenco_uk]

You could practically give something away for free and it'd still be stolen. I think you'd have to force it into someone's hand/hard drive for it not to be pirated.

[Blademrk]

^^ true, remember the album Radiohead released where you could pay what you wanted - a lot of people still torented it rather thatn download from the official site with a price of £0.00.

[p3n]

Casual games its more likely they will be pirated by 'casual' users (limewire etc) ... not accounting for these "noobs" being on dynamic IPs either

[quack]

Awesome... a game maker coming out and saying what everyone already knows: DRM is a waste of time and money.

[pimlicosound]

Developers could just as easily form the conclusion that releasing on PC is a waste of time and money. If they try to protect their IP with DRM, they get pirated mercilessly. If they give users the benefit of the doubt, they get pirated mercilessly. 2D Boy seems optimistic (somehow) in this situation, but I wouldn't be surprised if developers continue to choose consoles as their lead formats.

[Gunsmith]

whilst you wont stop piracy, killing bittorrent will kill about 80% of it.

[kenco_uk]

No it won't - there's usenet, for a start.

[Apoca1yps0]

I've installed it on two machines home and work and persuaded any of my friends who were interested to buy it instead of pirating it.

For this to happen to such a great game is really disappointing.

I can't help but think what utter *******s wouldn't reach in to their pockets for £10.

[Nictron]

I agree, take away P2P downloading and you will kill 80% of the current piracy figures.

But people will still pirate by work of mouth, or at LAN get togethers.

[mclean007]

Originally Posted by kenco_uk

You could practically give something away for free and it'd still be stolen. I think you'd have to force it into someone's hand/hard drive for it not to be pirated.

Case in point, the current Radiohead album "In Rainbows". They had it on their website for unrestricted MP3 download with the ability to name your own price. You could put in £0.00 and download it for free, but it was still hugely available on torrent sites.

As to DRM, my view is that it may frustrate some would-be pirates, but (a) not for long, because someone will crack it anyway, and (b) they probably won't then go out and buy it just because they can't get a free pirate download. I hope 2D Boy isn't so naive as to believe, just because there are 9 pirate copies for every legitimate one, that if they had a foolproof piracy prevention scheme, they would have made 10x as many sales.

You also put off would-be buyers, who can't be bothered with the activation malarkey or get really annoyed because they upgrade their PC and then find the game no longer works, so they then steer clear of games with DRM in future and games from that publisher in particular. Ironically, with sufficiently draconian DRM, it can get to the point where a pirate copy is actually PREFERABLE to a genuine original, because the pirates will have removed the DRM so it can be used without restriction. I have read (on these very forums no less) of people who buy a game to support the developer and assuage the guilt of piracy, leave it in the cellophane, then download a cracked copy because it avoids the hassles of activation or needing to insert the DVD every time they play.

Finally, developers lose potential sales which could have been achieved by someone downloading a pirate copy to try it out, then deciding they like it enough to buy the real thing to support the dev. I know this is a tiny minority of pirate copies, but nevertheless.

In all, given that DRM can be a real annoyance to legitimate customers and is at best a minor impediment to pirates, it is difficult to accept that developers benefit their businesses by buying in or developing DRM for their software.

[thEcat]

Frightening... that a good game at a reasonable price is subject to such a level of piracy.

Stupidity, ignorance, human nature ?

[mclean007]

Originally Posted by Gunsmith

whilst you wont stop piracy, killing bittorrent will kill about 80% of it.

How? Bit-torrent is only a protocol and is exceptionally widely distributed. There is no central server to "kill". The only way to reduce bit-torrent traffic is at ISP level, and ISPs who do that, by port blocking or traffic shaping, come under a lot of criticism. Let's not forget that bit-torrent has legitimate uses which, while they make up a tiny fraction of total bit-torrent traffic, are essentially indistinguishable (as far as the ISP is concerned, and especially if encryption is used) from naughty pirate data, and are hugely important to the legitimate users. For example, developers of open source software use bit-torrent to distribute large install packages (Linux ISOs, for example) without incurring the vast bandwidth costs that would arise if everyone had to download directly from the developers' servers.

Add to that, if you could "kill" bit-torrent, for example by legislating that all ISPs have to block bit-torrent traffic, other methods of online piracy would quickly arise, be it Usenet, HTTP hosts like rapidshare, FTP, a modified bit-torrent which worked around the blocks, or something altogether new.

The only way to "beat" piracy is by making software which is good enough to justify the price you expect people to pay for it. If it is, and if you can get your software on people's radar (e.g. by making a decent demo), then you will make sales. Yes, people will still pirate it, but so what? The great majority of those people probably wouldn't have bought it otherwise.

[mclean007]

Originally Posted by thEcat

Frightening... that a good game at a reasonable price is subject to such a level of piracy.

Stupidity, ignorance, human nature ?

In many cases, probably a combination of all 3, plus greed and habit.

[UncertainGod]

I grabbed it off a torrent site, played it for five minutes and then bought it since I was utterly mesmerised by it's beauty. I did the same thing with Mount & Blade (except the being mesmerised by it's beauty bit, the game is great but a tad fugly).

[kylew]

I wish people would stop with all the 'downloading games is stealing'. It's not stealing when there's something there that's freely available. Going into a store, picking up a game, and running off without paying is stealing.

DRM really is just a waste of time and money anyway. It doesn't do anything other than annoy legitimate buyers and it's always cracked anyway.

Piracy happens, devs need to get over it, it's not lost sales or anything like that considering the majority of people who pirate a game wouldn't have bought it in the first place.

I frequently download games, and if I like it, I'll go out and buy it, if not, I'll delete it. Some might say, why not just download them demo? Well as you know a demo isn't always an accurate representation of how the final game is.

As for people saying 'pirates are cheap', I've bought more games than ever this last year. I've bought around 50 PC games, 28 PS3 games, 12 Wii games and about 26 Bluray movies.

If I download something, then don't buy it, I wouldn't have bought it in the first place, and at the end of the day, I'm looking out for myself when I do it like that. It's not nice to splash out on a game for full price £30-40 only to play it and realise it's utter crap, yet there's not much chance you'll get a refund.

[DXR_13KE]

and what % of those 90% bought the game afterwards?

edit: they came to the conclusion that DRM does nothing to protect you IP... as everyone and their dog knows and has known since this idiocy started.

[lewchenko]

I cant believe so many people get away with what is essentially theft.. a crime, which is against the law.

I think the police need to step up a gear and start arresting people for it on the same basis as shop lifting, then giving out a criminal record and fine/jail time.

Now that would reduce it if the police were pro-active in their relentless persecution of such thieves ! (you know... like they are with motorists who speed!!!)

[lewchenko]

Originally Posted by kylew

I wish people would stop with all the 'downloading games is stealing'. It's not stealing when there's something there that's freely available. Going into a store, picking up a game, and running off without paying is stealing.

You for real ? !

Thats like saying if you make it out of the shop without being caught ... its not stealing as somebody obviously put some free stuff there just for you to sample.. and that you will pop back later and pay if you like the stuff you 'stole'.

Not everyone treats downloads as 'try before you buy'. In fact I think you are in the 0.1% minority who do.

If the developers wanted to release a try before you buy version of their product, then they would. Its not for you to take that liberty regardless. Doing so makes you a thief, plain and simple.

Pirates will always try and justify their crimes, but once you cut through the *crap* excuses, a court of law would always find them guilty of theft.. no matter how they justify it.

[steveo_mcg]

Yup that's just what we need the police relentlessly pursuing people who have committed a civil offense to the tune of £10, yup that will right all the wrongs of our society.

A court of law will NEVER find them guilty of theft EVER. Its copy right infringement which is very different offense to theft. Theft involves denying some one access to the material stolen ie a physical disk from a physical shop.