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Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

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Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#32

On a similar note, here's what the devs of Game Dev Tycoon did with pirates of their game. http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-... Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5624727 Interesting article that after reading it made me go out and buy the game (so a solid marketing effort too!)

These sorts of things are silly revenge fantasies at best, they are just as easily cracked and removed as any drm features.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#33
post #26

Since in these breakdowns they invariably seem to be using stats collection from the games themselves, I would love to see how many of the pirated copies progress past the fist X% of the game, or continue playing beyond 24-48 hours, whatever the devs would consider around the mark for what they would consider releasing a demo for. Not that I think all the people that pirate are just demoing, but I think without quest…

A lot of people collect games like they are pokemon. My mate has a ton of games on steam that he's not even played.

Plus a lot of those games are being pirated by kids who don't have bank accounts and/or are not mature enough to realise that pirating hurts people. If a friend asks another friend 'do you want a copy of ' they just say yes and that's the end of the thought process. The 'does this affect anyone' doesn't enter their heads. (source: teacher)

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#34

An amusing incongruity from the article: "Punch Club clearly shows that localizing games to Western European languages pays off, and has a very low piracy rate." Yet the article is primarily about piracy problems with Portuguese, surely the most westernly language in Europe.

Assuming you weren't making a joke, the article clearly states that the piracy is coming from Brazil, not Portugal.

Still, it's ambiguous whether the article recommends that Portugese localisation should still be done despite the piracy from Brazil, or whether other western european languages should be done excluding Portugese.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#35

On a similar note, here's what the devs of Game Dev Tycoon did with pirates of their game. http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-... Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5624727 Interesting article that after reading it made me go out and buy the game (so a solid marketing effort too!)

These sorts of things are silly revenge fantasies at best, they are just as easily cracked and removed as any drm features.

That's not the point.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#36

How do they calculate the number of times it's been pirated? > We take overall amount of activations minus legit sales per platform minus 10% (to offset for people who activated a legit copy on more than 1 device). An assumption of 10% multiple device activations is begging the original question. Pirating on Windows, Mac, and Android is pretty easy, but on iOS it requires jailbreaking, which is pretty limiting these…

Is a reason given for the 10% figure? (I looked in the article but didn't see anything) I can easily see the figure being much higher (e.g., for PC: laptop+desktop, for iOS: iPhone+iPad)

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#37
post #26

Since in these breakdowns they invariably seem to be using stats collection from the games themselves, I would love to see how many of the pirated copies progress past the fist X% of the game, or continue playing beyond 24-48 hours, whatever the devs would consider around the mark for what they would consider releasing a demo for. Not that I think all the people that pirate are just demoing, but I think without quest…

A lot of people collect games like they are pokemon. My mate has a ton of games on steam that he's not even played. Plus a lot of those games are being pirated by kids who don't have bank accounts and/or are not mature enough to realise that pirating hurts people. If a friend asks another friend 'do you want a copy of ' they just say yes and that's the end of the thought process. The 'does this affect anyone' doesn't…

> A lot of people collect games like they are pokemon. My mate has a ton of games on steam that he's not even played.

I have 558 games on Steam. Almost exclusively from Humble Bundle orders, I've installed and played maybe 30-40, and that's because I've made a concerted effort the last year or so. I have another 100+ on GOG.com, mostly titles from my childhood and teen years I've convinced myself I'll some day have time to pick up and finally complete. I can relate.

> Plus a lot of those games are being pirated by kids who don't have bank accounts and/or are not mature enough to realize that pirating hurts people.

Yes, that was me. The vast majority I never played beyond trying out to see if I liked them (thus my original question). The few that I didn't buy that I did pirate and liked? Well, see the GOG.com note above (but a lot of those are ones I bought twice, or in that case of M&M II or some of the Ultima Series, 3+ times...).

Edit: A portion that was supposed to be offset as a quote wasn't.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These sorts of things are silly revenge fantasies at best, they are just as easily cracked and removed as any drm features.

That's not the point.

If its shown to be ineffective what is the point exactly?

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These sorts of things are silly revenge fantasies at best, they are just as easily cracked and removed as any drm features.

That's not the point.

For a dose of reality, I recommend browsing r/piracy. The mental gymnastics people go through to justify their actions is mind boggling.
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