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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

#71

Post by supermatt »

over wrote: post #46
deelowe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe, but for the silent majority it's pretty straightforward: 1) we view information as fundamentally different from currency, goods, and services; 2) we don't want to pay for information if we don't have to and we're not going to get caught. The gymnastics are mostly about just trying to figure out whether we're bad people or not - because everyone else's favorite game is Shame the Pirate - but once you realize yo…

This isn't about whats legal though. Its about you taking advantage of someone else's hard work. Its theft in the moral sense, and its that what makes you a bad person.

That said, its still a grey area moralistically.

I do not see a small indie developer and a large corporation in the same light as the corporation is taking advantage of the hard work of its employees to make a profit.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#72

Post by scotty79 »

bitJericho wrote: post #50
over wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but for the silent majority it's pretty straightforward: 1) we view information as fundamentally different from currency, goods, and services; 2) we don't want to pay for information if we don't have to and we're not going to get caught. The gymnastics are mostly about just trying to figure out whether we're bad people or not - because everyone else's favorite game is Shame the Pirate - but once you realize yo…

Well you probably are a bad person though. A good person by definition tries to do good by other people.

I prefer people that try to not do bad to other people. Those that do good can be risky.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#73

Post by scotty79 »

The only interesting question in this is how many would they sell if 1.5 mil people wouldn't pirate it.

Unfortunately no-one knows hence the silly debacle. I'd bet they'd be amazingly happy if it turned out that each 0.5 mil of pirates translates to 100 k in sales.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#74

Post by andrewclunn »

kbenson wrote: post #45
andrewclunn wrote: post #21

So localize in English, German, and French (maybe Spanish) and don't bother with an Android version, good to know.

If you are interested in profit, the number of pirated copies is entirely irrelevant . The only metric that matters in that case is the cost of supplying the game for that demographic and how much money is expected to be made. This is the same whether it's a language or marketplace. For example, if it costs you $100,000 to supply and Android version, but you expect to make $1,000,000 event after all the (assumed) pir…

No because having an easily pirated version out there might otherwise cut into sales. I mean it's why a shoe store wouldn't simply give away unsold merchandise because then they're dramatically reduced the demand for shoes.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#75

Post by Vaskivo »

ChrisDutrow wrote: post #65
joshschreuder wrote: post #19

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!)

Just read through the Game Dev Tycoon article: http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-... I was on the edge of my seat waiting for him to say something like "We used the pirated version that we released to communicate with all the people who pirated the game and we were able to convert 30% of them into paying customers!" But it didn't happen... It sounds like he just used it to really subtly hint…

I think they are just using the medium effectivelly.

Instead of going and tell them "I know you pirated our game. Please don't do that." they made the game simulate the consequences of piracy to game development studios.

Instead of having the someone tell them they are wrong, the player comes to that conclusion themselves (hopefully).

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#76

Post by manigandham »

akerro wrote: post #62
manigandham wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but once you realize you're not a bad person and that you're okay with doing something illegal then it all just sort of fades into the background. Doing illegal things makes you a bad person. This isn't some fight against tyranny, it's theft (or illegal copying, more specifically).

Hey mate! Helping homeless is illegal in my city, as well as collecting wild berries, tenting in forest. Just because law is not realistic and doesn't protect anyone and was made only for profits from tickets doesn't make it a good law and me a bad person. I have a 100GB seedbox where I seed old books that are unavailable on paper in my country and scientific zip. How bad am I?

The only reason I added that last line is to highlight certain scenarios where laws aren't correct.

Illegally copying content is not one of those scenarios.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#77

Post by spacehome »

tristanj wrote: post #64
spacehome wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but the Monument Valley iOS piracy numbers from Dan Gray quoted in that article are positively nonsense. > It’s impossible for us to track that data. The only thing we can do is, two bits of data: One, how many purchases we have and, two, how many installs we’ve got. And we just leave people to draw conclusions from that as they wish, because we can’t clarify any further than that. Once you purchase an app…

> You can install the app on any number of devices that you're logged into ... So Monument Valley has 2.5x more installs than purchases No, it doesn't work like that. Android and iOS installs are separate, if you buy it through one app store it doesn't transfer to the other. Combining the Android and iOS numbers together to reduce that ratio is dishonest. Just looking at Android, the installs to purchases ratio works…

> do you seriously believe that can be explained through multiple installs?

No, I don't. My point was specifically about iOS, because I know how much of a pain it is to keep a jailbroken phone, and I have a good sense of the general population and how many of them do so.

(I develop a rather popular iOS app, and we have telemetry in the app that determines whether the device is jailbroken. We have multiple tests for whether a device is jailbroken. Jailbreak developers could fool all of our tests if they chose to do so. However, since we don't actually do anything with that data, we don't give anyone a reason to spoof them. In our population of users, jailbreakers make up less than 1%.)

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#78

Post by kbenson »

andrewclunn wrote: post #74
kbenson wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are interested in profit, the number of pirated copies is entirely irrelevant . The only metric that matters in that case is the cost of supplying the game for that demographic and how much money is expected to be made. This is the same whether it's a language or marketplace. For example, if it costs you $100,000 to supply and Android version, but you expect to make $1,000,000 event after all the (assumed) pir…

No because having an easily pirated version out there might otherwise cut into sales. I mean it's why a shoe store wouldn't simply give away unsold merchandise because then they're dramatically reduced the demand for shoes.

You should read my statement again. If the choice is whether to sell in a market or not, and you care about making a profit, the bottom line is whether at the end of the day you made more money than it cost to serve that market. Full stop. This is not about allowing or disallowing piracy in a market you are already serving.

In your analogy, it's like a shoe store opening a shop in China even though they strongly suspect if the shoes become popular knock-offs will pop up fairly quickly. The question of whether it's worth opening the store in China is answered by whether in the end they can make a profit.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#79

Post by bitJericho »

kbenson wrote: 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…

It's ok if I pirate music as long as I only listen to it once... to "demo" it.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#80

Post by kbenson »

bitJericho wrote: post #79
kbenson wrote: 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…

It's ok if I pirate music as long as I only listen to it once... to "demo" it.

Are you making the assumption that I'm condoning pirating to demo software? I was purely positing that those people may not have been likely to result in a sale, which may put the numbers in a different light.

That said, if the game doesn't provide a demo, and through marketing is tricking people into purchasing that which they would not have willingly bought it if they knew what it was like, then the situation is reversed and the buyer is the victim. Advertising has it's place, and that place is informational. Any time someone buys something they can't, don't or won't use or need, that's a comparative net loss for the economy.

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