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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

#81

Post by ChrisDutrow »

supermatt wrote: post #70
ChrisDutrow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If they knew they were using a doctored copy, they would go and pirate an undoctored one. Anecdote: This reminds me of the anti-griefer mechanism I put in to heyreddit/reddit roulette back in the day. If you received a verified report (following a forced match with myself), you would only got matched with other griefers. No-one realised why the penis-to-chat ratio was so low, but its because eventually all the penis…

Cool anecdote, sounds like an elegant way to deal with the griefing problem.

I think there is more to this pirating scenario though. A lot of people probably pirate games because because they aren't sure if they will like them. Once they are at the point where they are losing the game because of the pirated version, they already know they like it. Some of the people who get to this point will want to pay the $8 because they won't want to risk putting more effort into the game and losing progress again because of the pirating. Other people will be more comfortable paying because they no longer have to worry about paying for a game that they won't play.

Even if they convert only 10% of the pirates, they will have increased their sales more than 33%, making them over $800,000 more money.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#82

Post by ChrisDutrow »

Vaskivo wrote: post #75
ChrisDutrow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I agree, I don't think it would be super effective to say "Please don't pirate", like an after school special or something.

What I think they should have done was used it as a marketing opportunity and given the pirates another opportunity to buy they game and get more value after they have already been playing it and know they like it. (Get more value by removing the severe pirating problem within the game so that they can progress farther)

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#83

Post by nrb »

kristianp wrote: post #34
brotherjerky wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He is clearly referring to German and French.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#84

Post by supermatt »

ChrisDutrow wrote: post #81
supermatt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they knew they were using a doctored copy, they would go and pirate an undoctored one. Anecdote: This reminds me of the anti-griefer mechanism I put in to heyreddit/reddit roulette back in the day. If you received a verified report (following a forced match with myself), you would only got matched with other griefers. No-one realised why the penis-to-chat ratio was so low, but its because eventually all the penis…

Cool anecdote, sounds like an elegant way to deal with the griefing problem. I think there is more to this pirating scenario though. A lot of people probably pirate games because because they aren't sure if they will like them. Once they are at the point where they are losing the game because of the pirated version, they already know they like it. Some of the people who get to this point will want to pay the $8 becau…

Yeah, i definitely agree with the premise, but as soon as that alert pops up, people would rate the torrent/whatever and say its a bad copy, and then future pirates would download an alternate seed.

Maybe they could "leak" a few different torrents in future and do some testing! :)

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#85

Post by over »

scotty79 wrote: post #72
bitJericho wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think quietly doing good is okay, it's the people who talk about it that are risky.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#86

Post by ChrisDutrow »

supermatt wrote: post #84
ChrisDutrow wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool anecdote, sounds like an elegant way to deal with the griefing problem. I think there is more to this pirating scenario though. A lot of people probably pirate games because because they aren't sure if they will like them. Once they are at the point where they are losing the game because of the pirated version, they already know they like it. Some of the people who get to this point will want to pay the $8 becau…

Yeah, i definitely agree with the premise, but as soon as that alert pops up, people would rate the torrent/whatever and say its a bad copy, and then future pirates would download an alternate seed. Maybe they could "leak" a few different torrents in future and do some testing! :)

Ah, interesting. I'm not super familiar with torrents and didn't know about that feature. I suppose he could release many versions with their own unique hashes. Would people be less likely to put the effort into creating a cracked version if they felt there were already a lot out there? I always wondered who does software cracking and how hard it is.
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