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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

#61

Post by soup10 »

danielbarla wrote: post #58
aaron695 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> undertone of bitterness. I didn't read this at all. Just the facts and thoughts on solutions.

I think it depends on what angle you're looking at it from. The article does kind of read as: "hey look, we could have made 5x more sales if we'd been smarter about piracy". Not everyone agrees with this, and I think this argument is unhealthy in general. I'd wager that if you made piracy completely impossible, most of the current pirates - who tend to hail from regions where the international pricing is prohibitive…

This is an idiotic wager. People are only pirating because they want to play the game. Of course some percentage them would of bought it if they couldn't easily get it for free. The marketing effect doesn't make up for thousands of lost sales. Piracy has completely wiped out music sales, the only reason it hasn't wiped out games yet is because of anti-piracy measures.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#62

Post by akerro »

manigandham wrote: post #55
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…

> 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?

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#63

Post by Umn44 »

deelowe wrote: post #40
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Nope, corporations stole the public domain with bullshit laws. Piracy is the only way most games will be saved. Many of us don't believe in the bullshit one sided laws being passed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/...

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#64

Post by tristanj »

spacehome wrote: post #24
tristanj wrote: post #11

Similar situation happened with Monument Valley, a game that hit #1 on app store and won a 2014 Apple Design award. The devs tweeted that only 5% of Android players paid for the app. On iOS, 40% paid [1]. Later they released some sales numbers that show only 2.4m sales but 10m+ installs, implying that the majority of their installs weren't paid for. [2] [1] Hit mobile game Monument Valley and piracy: ‘Only 5%’ of And…

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 out to 20 to 1 ... do you seriously believe that can be explained through multiple installs? C'mon.

Read through the OP article as well. He also a encountered significant amount of mobile piracy, specifically on Android. There is widespread mobile piracy going on, arguing about installs-to-purchases ratios does nothing to hide it.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#65

Post by ChrisDutrow »

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 that the people should have bought the game. Seems like a wasted opportunity. I feel like a popup that said something like this would have converted a bunch of people and turned the pirating problem into a marketing opportunity: "Haha, you are playing a pirated copy of this game, that's why you are losing all your money to game pirates. Its all good, but if you upgrade to the paid version this problem will go away, here is a link to buy the game. Happy gaming!"

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#66

Post by pmontra »

If they pirate your game and play it AND if they wouldn't have bought it anyway, you should be happy because they're not giving money to your competitors: they don't have the time for it because they're playing your game. It didn't cost you anything but you're gaining something. Obviously people plays several games at the same time, still this reasoning works and in many markets. If they are happy enough with your pirated games, music, videos, clothes, bags they won't buy your competitors products. If your sales are higher than theirs, pirates are helping you to starve your competitors.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#67

Post by zamalek »

dublinben wrote: post #13
legohead wrote: post #10

Getting some insight from the pirates would be interesting. If a pirate is detected, pop up a quick radio selection box: Thank you for playing the game. I noticed you pirated it and would like to know why (you can still play the game): * I can't afford the price * My parents wont let me buy games * I want to try the game free first * I believe games should be free * My computer is old and I don't know if it can play…

It's not surprising that Brazil, Russia, and China top the list for pirate users. This game is probably very expensive for users in those countries, if they are even able to easily pay for it.

> if they are even able to easily pay for it.

Or even get legal access to it. Copyright treaties get in the way of people in certain regions from legally acquiring some content. For example, I've been legally unable to purchase certain music (in some cases download free music) in South Africa - DRM or not. Pandora is a fantastic example of this brain-dead approach.

Furthermore, per-region release dates only further propagate piracy, as everyone outside of America has to sit back and watch everyone else enjoy . By encouraging the rest of the world to pirate during NA launch, you are decreasing the likelihood of those people buying your game when you eventually stop celebrating long enough to release it in their region.

Piracy seems to thrive with the current measures designed to prevent it.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#68

Post by izym »

pmontra wrote: post #66

If they pirate your game and play it AND if they wouldn't have bought it anyway, you should be happy because they're not giving money to your competitors: they don't have the time for it because they're playing your game. It didn't cost you anything but you're gaining something. Obviously people plays several games at the same time, still this reasoning works and in many markets. If they are happy enough with your pi…

I honestly don't think game developers are interested in starving other game developers.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#69

Post by over »

oldmanjay wrote: post #57
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…

Yes, we all understand the linguistic gymnastics are a way of rationalizing an action you know is wrong.

On the contrary, I think the people who know whether an action is right or wrong don't spend a lot of time arguing either way, they just go ahead and do what they think is right. It's the people who don't know whether an action is right or wrong that get all worked up trying to handle their conflicted feelings about it.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#70

Post by supermatt »

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…

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 flashers would only be exposing themselves to each other.

Of course, if I had told people that they would have actively tried to get around it :)

Yes, the downside was a manual verification step :(

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