News 90 percent of World of Goo installs are pirated

lewchenko I really disagree with you. The problem is that the games industry has gone the way of hollywood with massive marketing spend and less support / quality because the people are in it for money and not for the love of making games. That's what happens when you go public. The board of directors is held by the balls by the shareholders. The shareholders want the biggest return on the smallest investment. Ergo if you are a director of EA making 'good games' isn't really a priority at all, it's about making a product that people will buy, at the lowest possible cost to the company. If you tried doing the job to make 'good games' you would get the sack and they would get some other up and coming capitalist.

This has had the effect (its not just EA but many games companies) that the quality of games is less in many ways. Do you really want to pay £35 for a game that is utter crap? I love the C&C franchise and have every single game but after the disaster that was C&C3 / C&C3:KW I just wont bring myself to get Red Alert 3. Despite the fact my friends have got it and want to play multiplayer (well, trying to, its pretty buggy!) I won't hand over my hard earned cash.

If the games industry is concerned about piracy, then it should address the quality of it's products first. If it tries to screw over the consumers by selling shitty cut down games then fairplay to the consumer who tells them to **** right off. Having said that, I won't even pirate EA's crap, it would be a waste of valuable hard disk space.

Haven't got world of goo but was thinking about it - but don't have the cash and from the soudns of it it sounds short-lived. Since I'm so poor atm the only game I have to tide me over until christmas / january is Fallout 3 which is reassuringly good

 

I was going to buy that game, but 20$ for it was not worth it IMO. If it had been 10$ or 5$ cheaper, then yes.

Also.. they should have stuck with a Steam-only release. Audiosurf did it and it worked out fairly well for them.

 

lol@you

As Steveo said, it's not theft, it's copyright infringement, there's a big difference between that and theft. By your standards, taking a photograph of a famous painting and then printing it out on a large piece of paper to put up on your wall would be 'stealing' it. From what I can remember, no-one has ever gotten in to trouble for just downloading a game, only if they uploaded it, which makes sense. Cut the source and make an issue of that, don't go after the people accessing material that has been made freely available by some people.

As for you telling me no-one has told me I can 'try before I buy' on games, not all devs play by the rules you know, games have been included with what you would basically call spyware or malware, who gave them the permission to secretly install them?

You need to get out of the mind set that people who 'pirate' stuff are dirty low-lives who are intentionally trying to hurt the industry. It's something that people do, if they're gonna go after anyone, go after the ones who are making counterfeit movies/games etc. on a big sale and making money from the stuff. That's the only time when it's really a negative thing, when others are making money on some one else's products. Casual 'piracy' has existed since it was easy to copy media, and it will exist for ever more, it's just one of those things.

 

And why not? It's illegal because someone somewhere said it is. It's a moral issue and as such who ever can justify his/her point better and have the support of the majority will be right.

Is the pirating wrong? It's a matter of point of view.
Is there a way to stop/reduce it? Yes and it's not to force people to buy crap games but to make them want to bay [crap] games. As long as developers don't get that simple think there will be piracy.

 

Great comment, that's exactly how it is, they try to screw us over, then cry and whine when we don't rush out to buy their products, or blame poor sales on piracy rather than having inferior products.

This is the reason I 'try before I buy' because you can't trust that a product is worth the money they're asking, if it's good then I'll hand over the asking price, if not, they can keep their game because I wouldn't have bought it anyway.

I don't buy many games before playing them, but when I do, it's from one of the quality devs, like bethesda, I bought fallout 3 before trying it because I can trust that they're top notch on the quality. Same with valve and a few other devs, their main concern is quality, which is why it takes valve so long to get their games out, but they're always worth the wait.

 

I can't help but wonder sometimes if the whole piracy thing is an issue of accepting that there's probably nothing you can do. Well nothing you want to take that far.

If you look at the whole terrorism thing. You can never ever totally stop someone from blowing up a plane if they are determined enough. It's an ugly truth but true none the less. People want to feel safe so they try to protect themselves. We bring in laws, change rules, search everybody, grant new powers to the police,etc etc but this will only stop some of the terrorists. In the they'll find a way.

It's sort of like piracy in that regard. You can lock up your software in DRM and other rubbish but it'll be broken sooner or later. So what do you do? Do you grow up and accept that some people will steal and whilst you dont want to make it too easy, you must accept that you wont ever be able to stop them. Or do you keep on trying to stop them until you end up in a place where you've lost what you were trying to protect. In the case of terrorist attacks on planes, just ground all planes. No more planes, no more plane bombers right?! Terrible solution but a solution none the less. In the case of PC Games, just stop making games. Not just for pc as you'll always have pirated console games and emulators etc etc. In order to stop all theft of games, the only way to do it is stop making games. Who wants to go there?

 

I was about to post something but you just summed up the entire issue perfectly.

Yep, DRM security is a lot similar to terrorism security. you can pour infinite funds/resources into the security but never be 100% effective.

The problem with DRM on digital media is that even 1 cracked copy = the DRM is now 100% useless, wasting all the time/money used adding the DRM in the first place

 

Did everyone miss that part.

I don't know about the rest of the world,but here in South Africa about 99% of home users don't have static ips as it just costs too much,so every time some one completes a level (20mins or so) and upload there scores it counts as 1 pirate copy,no wonder there figures show 90%

 

I guess they should have made is Wiiware exclusive...
Harder to pirate... sooo.., the percentage would be lower. Sells and players would be lower as well... but that is small details.

 

QUOTE=kylew]Cut the source and make an issue of that, don't go after the people accessing material that has been made freely available by some people.

Casual 'piracy' has existed since it was easy to copy media, and it will exist for ever more, it's just one of those things.[/QUOTE]

Wow... So if I were to break the lock on your front door thus allowing anyone to use your house that would be OK? After all I made it "freely available". Or if I break into your car and hot wire it so you don't need a key anymore it would then be justified for everyone else to take your car and use it?

Just becuase it's casual and or easy doesn't mean it's legal or ethical.

 

Oi give my ones and zeroes back!

 

why the hell should we spend trillions of dollars and go after the millions of pirates for what is a small crime that causes no direct damage (and by some studies may be beneficial) when you can go after some big criminals that sell russian roulette in a needle or those other guys that have huge profits but have negative taxes.... yes, the ones that remove money from the community pot, the ones that everyone knows about...

 

In 95%+ of the World private Internet Connections have dynamic ip's by default and static ones cost extra. The other 5% are isps in america that give static ip's by default.

 

Or you can beat piracy by following the free MMO model: Free game, free to play (supported by some ads or something), and then microtransactions. This model doesn't lend itself to singleplayer games though.

Still, higher quality games are needed. I don't mean better graphics or whatever, but just better games overall.


I wonder what rate shovelware is pirated at? It's probably lower than blockbuster games.

 

Even that isn't a fix though, Yarrs just have to log onto or setup their own private server and everything is free again.

 

Im in the minority that has downloaded full games, and either deleted or bought them afterwards, with the exception of gtr2 and the longest journey as i actually went out and bought them only to have them not work because of the drm for them!! so whilst i do own them both the versions installed are torrented cracks that work perfectly.

 

The issue that gets missed among all the talk is the matter of studios, big or small, making enough sales to continue existence. Of course, whether this means something against the issue of DRM and lost sales and all that is another matter. But, ultimately, without sales, a studio will fail and a studio will close - or other things suffer. You can see with with the airline industry and perhaps the auto industry. The only reason the airlines are still in business is because they had to get government protection and subsidies. I think the effect of piracy can't necessarily be measured on a broad level; as some have noted, some games will be pirated heavily and some will not; some pirates will buy games, some will note. Pirate enough and/or lose enough sales and yes, a studio will not make enough money to pay back costs - this not being an issue of what some say is greed but merely a matter of being able to pay rent and food. This critical mass of sales though is different for each game. Some games may thrive well enough that piracy may not be a meaningful impact but other games may be more heavily affected. Whether or not a game is free in some way, whether or not you consider the games industry to be more about money or art, ultimately the problem is that of supporting developers of creative material - if game developers or musicians had no reason to worry about where they money was coming from (ie they need not worry about supporting themselves), then piracy wouldn't matter. If a game makes enough money to pay back the cost of development and (perhaps) help fund the next game, then piracy doesn't matter. But if a game is pirated enough such sales are lost (and yes, what this means is pretty vague) and enough sales that a game does not economically succeed... then piracy matters.

 

for like... a day.... then something else gonna pop up. please, we've gone through this at least 4 times the last 2 decades.

as for world of goo, shame on those torrrenting them! it's a wonderful game!

 

That's gotta be the worst analogy I've ever heard. How do you even think a person's home security compares to the pirating of software? A product? You obviously don't understand what you're saying.

You cannot, 100% validly compare a home to computer software and actually think people are going to take you seriously.

 

So if you factor that in.... .... .... There is all most no piracy on this game