Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 81 posts

Re: Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale

#51

Post by rmc »

rick888 wrote: post #45
dillydally wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't "pirate" a car. If I took your car, you'd be less one car. If I copy a game, nobody is less anything. It would be as if I had a device that could duplicate your car in 10 minutes, atom-for-atom. Clearly this would spell big trouble for the auto industry. We might even introduce laws which make this act illegal, or otherwise induce artificial scarcity so that the price of a car doesn't fall to zero, because…

"you can't "pirate" a car. If I took your car, you'd be less one car. If I copy a game, nobody is less anything." What if I "steal" your identity? Technically, you don't lose anything. I am just borrowing your information. Should this be okay too? How about a website that posts valid credit card information. Before someone actually uses the credit card, it's just numbers and letters on website. "Clearly this would sp…

> What if I "steal" your identity? Technically, you don't lose anything. I am just borrowing your information. Should this be okay too?

You can't steal identity. You are instead impersonating someone and you are defrauding someone else. 'identity theft' is a new word for the ancient problem of fraud.

Re: Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale

#52

Post by parfe »

jcl wrote: post #32
theBobMcCormick wrote: post #19

If that 90% figure is accurate, that's really fucking depressing. That's a beautiful looking game. I sure hope they're getting enough sales to make some decent money.

90% seems to the rate everyone comes up with when they actually measure it, judging from various independent games blogs and feedback from acquaintances in mobile gaming. I wouldn't be surprised if the rate holds for AAA titles as well. On the flip side, I recall at least one set of statistics showing that most pirates don't run a game more than once. Presumably most pirates pirate huge numbers of games and simply do…

Sounds like the downloaders are treating the game as a demo. If I get a game for free I'm more willing to stop playing if it sucks. If I pay I'm going to see if I can get into it.

Re: Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale

#53

Post by noonespecial »

At the bottom there might be a choice. 100,000 copies in the wild with 90,000 of them pirated or 100 copies, all legit.

If fact, its probably a continuum. Choose your point anywhere along that line. (Of course, you never heard about the one where only 100 sold, the developers decided they'd failed and gave up).

Re: Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale

#54

Post by lionhearted »

theBobMcCormick wrote: post #19

If that 90% figure is accurate, that's really fucking depressing. That's a beautiful looking game. I sure hope they're getting enough sales to make some decent money.

> If that 90% figure is accurate, that's really fucking depressing.

I think the focus needs to shift from, "This sucks," to, "This is what it is, how can we deal with it?" Like a lot of other industries, games are going to need to evolve.

Server-side data and good online connecting is a way. Platforms like Steam that take the hassle out of online buying is a way. Alternative monetizing might be a way. Tasteful sponsorship and in-game advertising? At this point, piracy is what it is, and it's not going away. Time to start thinking about ways to monetize those pirates.

Re: Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale

#55

Post by r0s »

theBobMcCormick wrote: post #19

If that 90% figure is accurate, that's really fucking depressing. That's a beautiful looking game. I sure hope they're getting enough sales to make some decent money.

That figure doesn't reflect the number of sales that hypothetically would happen, if piracy somehow was not possible.

Re: Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale

#56

Post by ericd »

commandar wrote: post #36
jcl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% seems to the rate everyone comes up with when they actually measure it, judging from various independent games blogs and feedback from acquaintances in mobile gaming. I wouldn't be surprised if the rate holds for AAA titles as well. On the flip side, I recall at least one set of statistics showing that most pirates don't run a game more than once. Presumably most pirates pirate huge numbers of games and simply do…

I've known a number of people through the years that would pirate hundred of movies, and only ever watch a handful of them. I've definitely seen the odd sort of compulsive hording you're describing.

It's not that odd, it's basically building a huge on-demand video library. Since videos take such a long time to download, you have to decide to get them long before you decide to watch them. Thus it makes sense to batch DL them all and then decide later.

Re: Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale

#57

Post by commandar »

ericd wrote: post #56
commandar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known a number of people through the years that would pirate hundred of movies, and only ever watch a handful of them. I've definitely seen the odd sort of compulsive hording you're describing.

It's not that odd, it's basically building a huge on-demand video library. Since videos take such a long time to download, you have to decide to get them long before you decide to watch them. Thus it makes sense to batch DL them all and then decide later.

Well, I've heard that rationalization, but the people I'm talking about tend to have literally hundreds of movies on hand, most of which they'll never actually watch. Actually watching them seems to be far less important than just accumulating as much as possible.

Re: Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale

#58

Post by protomyth »

lionhearted wrote: post #54
theBobMcCormick wrote: post #19

If that 90% figure is accurate, that's really fucking depressing. That's a beautiful looking game. I sure hope they're getting enough sales to make some decent money.

> If that 90% figure is accurate, that's really fucking depressing. I think the focus needs to shift from, "This sucks," to, "This is what it is, how can we deal with it?" Like a lot of other industries, games are going to need to evolve. Server-side data and good online connecting is a way. Platforms like Steam that take the hassle out of online buying is a way. Alternative monetizing might be a way. Tasteful sponso…

The sad part is the evolution to "can't trust the public". So DRM or "can't play unless connected to our servers" becomes the norm.

Re: Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale

#59

Post by ergo98 »

MichaelGG wrote: post #11

" the game doesn’t bother players serial codes or online authentication, but it’s also very easy to copy it " Somewhat misleading. It's also very easy to copy all the super-DRMed games. In fact, the process is identical. Load up a torrent site, search, download. At any rate, claiming 90% piracy (regardless of truth) to run a sale is probably a good marketing move. It's a beautiful game.

>Somewhat misleading. It's also very easy to copy all the super-DRMed games.

Sure, if you like your machine full of trojans and malware. There is no honor among thieves, and honestly I view people who pirate executables (particularly cracked), running them anywhere but in a tightly-bound VM, as either naive or foolish.

Re: Machinarium suffers 90% piracy rate, offers $5 amnesty sale

#60

Post by ZeroGravitas »

dillydally wrote: post #33
goodgoblin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - most of the people pirate because its easy and relatively risk free. They would never think of 'pirating' a car. Who came up with the term pirating anyway? It adds a glamor that 'stealing' just doesn't have.

You can't "pirate" a car. If I took your car, you'd be less one car. If I copy a game, nobody is less anything. It would be as if I had a device that could duplicate your car in 10 minutes, atom-for-atom. Clearly this would spell big trouble for the auto industry. We might even introduce laws which make this act illegal, or otherwise induce artificial scarcity so that the price of a car doesn't fall to zero, because…

On the other hand, I'm not stealing someone's car when I duplicate it, am I? Suddenly there's this third party (the car manufacturer or retailer) who cares a lot about what I do with me car. They'd say, "No, it's bad for you to copy other people's cars" and do what they could to stop me.

It's not the copying of other people's cars that's the issue. They'd object just as much if you copied your own car multiple times and gave them to your wife and kids, or friends, neighbors, colleagues or customers. So at that point, they decide that it's no longer your car, all the cars are their cars, they just rent or license them to you in order for them to get around what common sense says you should be able to do with a physical object that you have paid for. Then they'll realize they can go further and stop you taking your car abroad, or stop you modifying it, or running a taxi service, or using generic fuel.

Post reply on HN