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The Witness is being heavily pirated. J. Blow says piracy could impact his future.

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dLMN8R said:
Justifying piracy by saying that The Witness' price is "too high" is just reprehensible.

First of all, now that I'm ~10 hours into The Witness with a massive amount of stuff left to do, no, it's not "too expensive". It completely justifies its own price.

Maybe it's too expensive for you. That doesn't mean it's not worth its price. Stop pretending like you're so fucking entitled to have every developer personally meet your own budget.
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Do you realize that it's very likely that Blow woudln't have said anything about pirates if the game had sold, I don't know, 200k+ copies by now?

I like how people like you are trying to avoid the point. The Witness is not selling well because millions of Steam/PS4/Xbone? users like me have not been convinced it's not worth $40. Some say it's not worth $40 because it's from an indie developer, others (like me) because the game has just not bought me over. The game just doesn't look like it has $40 worth of gameplay to me, it has great reviews and an incredible art style, but the gameplay and puzzles look simple and repetitive, the soundtrack is boring, and the presentation looks cheap TO ME. I also think Battlefront, FFT0HD, Mario Maker, and Hardline are not worth full price, and so far I have only purchased Type-0 because it finally got to a price point that I found acceptable.

If, in my opinion, the game is not worth it's price, then I simply don't buy it and that's it. But going around calling people like me entitled, just because we don't agree on how much this particular game is worth, is not nice.
 
johntown said:
The majority of people who pirate are not potential customers.
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Again, this is just for music--but a correlation can be made between digital goods in general.

http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/03/20/piracy-does-not-hurt-digital-music-sales-e-u-study/

The paper concludes: “Taken at face value, our findings indicate that digital music piracy does not displace legal music purchases in digital format. This means that although there is trespassing of private property rights, there is unlikely to be much harm done on digital music revenues.”

It adds that results show “the vast majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals in [the sample] would not have been legally purchased if illegal downloading websites were not available.

“From that perspective, our findings suggest that digital music piracy should not be viewed as a growing concern for copyright holders in the digital era. In addition, our results indicate that new music consumption channels such as online streaming positively affect copyrights owners.”
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The reasons for piracy are interesting to talk about, but are inherently unethical.

The reasons The Witness is not selling are very similar to the reasons why some might pirate, but they are still distinctly different topics. It lacks a demo, it's perceived to just be puzzles, and it's an "indie" game priced at 40 USD. It's a cool game for cool people who like cool puzzles.

Personally, I don't like just solving puzzles for the sake of solving puzzles, at least at that price range. Considering the current tone, I guess I have to make a disclaimer saying that, no, I have not, nor do I pirate games. I just haven't bought The Witness, nor will I anytime soon.
 
I don't understand why GAF of all places wouldn't be a hotbed for unanimous zero tolerance of game piracy. This forum is usually the most interested in the people who make these games
 
Vital Tundra said:
Jesus this thread is something else. It sucks people are prating his game, and it sucks people can't get over the fact that independent games are becoming more expensive.
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Don't forget these gems:

FarTooManyPeople
Junior Member
PSsymbol.jpg

If only the game had been exclusive to PS4, then there wouldn't be any piracy. Developers should learn to not release anything on PC and focus exclusively on PS4 exclusives.
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I'm surprised the game isn't selling better, considering the pricepoint, but perhaps Blow just played the wrong game when it came to communicating pricepoint amd the game's features ahead of time. I don't think people expected to pay more than $20 for this, and just showing up with a, surprise mutherfuckers, it's actually $40, but it's also got an insane amount of content is working for him, after people had already had something else reinforced in thier minds for ages. I seriously imagine either stickershock is scaring people away, or people just don't get what makes the game great without playing it, and are therefore pirating it to see what it's about first.

Having said that, if this game is at 24,000 sales on PC alone, I imagine it will still do ok. I could see it easily selling 80,000+ at that pricepoint in its lifetime weeks, and selling multiple times that once the price starts to drop. That's already getting to the point where half the budget is recouped. I doubt Blow has PSN sales numbers yet, but I could see the game selling way better there, and therefore, still making a decent profit when all things are said and done.
 
Pirates need to be honest. They're cheap bastards stealing stuff because they don't want to pay for it. Couch it in all the faux moral battles you want but it's just stealing. Not only are they thieves, they are liars.
 
Next time release it exclusively for the Sony Playstation 4™ where piracy is impossible. Then we can all revel in the smashing success of the game which has clearly already sold millions on PSN already.
 
Movalpolos said:
Thanks for your shitty post. The game is sitting in the top of Steam sales, but since you have never heard of it, it doesn't exist!

Quality shit-posting, really.
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Top of the Steam sales list qualifies as marketing?

Disclaimer: I bought The Witness, but don't see myself slogging through it. Rewarding me for solving a puzzle with another puzzle isn't my idea of fun. It may be someone else's idea of fun, but it isn't mine.

Gutek said:
Demos demonstrably lower sales. No way he should have released a demo.
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I agree with this. A demo would have only hurt this game.
 
Coffee Dog said:
Are you being intentionally obtuse?

The Witness doesn't have the budget of an open world game. It shows. Don't act like it's even in the same ballpark as AAA games.
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You said "many many millions".

Witness cost many millions.

What is obtuse? I'm responding DIRECTLY. If you said TENS of millions or HUNDREDS of millions then sure - but you didn't.

I never said it was in the ballpark, several of my posts acknowledged that, as well.

Take a step back and re-read. Don't just sling bullshit from the mouth hoping it sticks.
 
Coffee Dog said:
You gonna tell that to Valve (who have gone on record saying that they work hard to convert pirates to sales), or people who actively put their products in the hands of the community like the hotline miami devs?
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I think the better way to put what he was saying is: "You shouldn't look at the pirates as consumers who would buy your game if they couldn't pirate it".

Certain industry people think that they're losing "X amount of money" because a game was pirated. That's obviously not true. Some pirates will purchase the game legitimately eventually, others will not play your game much, if at all, and wouldn't have dropped the money in the first place.
 
digitalrelic said:
... But you can't pirate PSN games and the PC version has refund options available. So this argument doesn't work. Once again, there's no excuse for pirating.
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Ugh. It's like going around in circles.

I haven't said anything is an excuse for pirating. But pirating is a reality, it happens whether you want it to or not. There are steps he could have taken to reduce the impact of the piracy. He's released a niche title at a higher-than-usual price with no demo (on PSN, dunno about Steam) and no retail version. People would be more inclined to part with their money on a retail version because if they didn't like the game, they could sell their copy or trade it in.

That's all I said. I was never making an argument 'for' piracy.
 
shortsFortallPeople said:
the Witness has already made a million dollars on Steam before valve takes its cut and probably something around that ballpark on the PS4, too.

I mean the man might already have made 2 million on the witness in less than a week, i don't think piracy is really putting a hurting on him. Not to condone it, but I'm not buying it.
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And that's the problem.
 
GatticusFinch said:
Did any of The Witness Let's Play or previews reveal that the game made people vomit? If not, I'd say yes, yes we do.
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I saw comments on Neogaf of people mentioning that. Plus from watching videos fullscreen people with motion sickness should get a feel for if it would make them feel sick or not?

I know a few friends who suffer from motion sickness while gaming and they can often tell from the first gameplay preview if it will affect them or not.

All pirates need to do is at least wait 48 hours and all the information you could possibly want will be on the internet and if it isn't you can ask 100s of gamers. But they can't wait and miss the hype :p
 
lol do you think if you made your game pirate proof = those pirates buying your game? Hell no that is not the case.

Piracy is not the problem here, its a game that was never going to sell well just using piracy as an excuse. Last years games sold really well on PC despite this piracy nonsense.
 
johntown said:
The majority of people who pirate are not potential customers.
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...when the game is available for free. That's my argument, the game being easily attainable at no cost has an impact on its perceived value. When the game costs $40 or $0 that $40 seems like an even higher entry cost.

We see this happen with day-one piracy and highly rated AAA games. There is a segment of pirates who can afford to buy a game but don't because hey, why not just get it for free? When the free option isn't available they become customers.
 
Jonathan Blow's newest work, The Witness, has been mostly showered with praise, but unfortunately a lot of players don't feel Blow should be paid, as they've been relentlessly pirating the $40 game. Blow tweeted today that "It seems The Witness is the #1 game on a certain popular torrent site. Unfortunately this will not help us afford to make another game!"
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The entire article is based around a newly released game being highly pirated compared to older released games?

Did anyone predict this not happening? Guess what, Rise of the Tomb Raider will be #1 game next week. News writers hire me!
 
Many games have been pirated. Some more frequently than this.

Especially considering how much PS4 press this game is getting and none of those copies are pirated.

He should put better DRM on it. That new one seems effective, but really just to ease his mind, most people torrenting this stuff barely even play it. Bitching about it annoys me.
 
Isn't it a bit too early to worry about this when the game just came out?

Either way, some of the posts in this thread downright depress me. It almost makes me want to get the game regardless of the price.
 
AbsintheGames said:
You said "many many millions".

Witness cost many millions.

What is obtuse? I'm responding DIRECTLY. If you said TENS of millions or HUNDREDS of millions then sure - but you didn't.

I never said it was in the ballpark, several of my posts acknowledged that, as well.

Take a step back and re-read. Don't just sling bullshit from the mouth hoping it sticks.
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Well then you can see why people aren't responding to a high priced indie games the same way they respond to high priced AAA games. They view them as a lesser product, because generally (much like the movie industry) the market for lower budget products shrinks exponentially.

People don't buy $40 lower budget puzzle games because the market that views lower budget puzzle games as worth $40 is fairly small in the first place.
 
GDJustin said:
This Witness is a gigantic and almost impossibly intricate game.

Moreso than almost any other video game, you can see and feel where those eight years were spent, and it's probably the only game where it wasn't spent on Uncharted or Tomb Raider-esque set-piece moments. Some of the puzzles and environmental details are so complex I have a hard time even wrapping my head around how they were planned and created.

$40 is a steal.
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This so much. I would easily pay full price for this and 36€ is a steal. I already spent more time on it than i do with most other games (including most full price AAA games) and i have only scratched the surface. An insane amount of hard work must have gone into making this. But these days, the price of a game is apparently proportional to the size of the development team and the amount of cutscenes and set pieces.
 
galyonkin said:
It's too early, wait two more days please :)
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The section_type = ownersonly flag, which is what prevents a game from appearing on Steam Community profiles, was removed from the app back in December, so your crawler has actually been tracking the game since pre-orders went up on the 19th.

I agree with Yian, though: you should hide sales/ownership information until a week after release so there's no awkward period of particularly unreliable data.
 
tallbroski said:
lol do you think if you made your game pirate proof = those pirates buying your game? Hell no that is not the case.

Piracy is not the problem here, its a game that was never going to sell well just using piracy as an excuse. Last years games sold really well on PC despite this piracy nonsense.
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The game is currently selling very well. I dunno why people think the game isn't selling but it was number 1 on Steam for a couple days and is still in the top 10 a few days now after release.
 
jbartee said:
he's convinced more than enough people to buy his game


and obviously you don't have to care, it seems you're in good company actually. but i care that he spent 8 years making something because i want a games industry where individual authors (not giant teams) can afford ambition. I want them to continue pushing themselves to create difficult, challenging things. i think that's worth $40. i find it depressing that so many people think it isn't
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I definitely think there's a sales problem lying around if you go out and say that piracy may negatively impact your future.

I'm also interested in those aspects of game development, that's why I'm here, after all. But my wrongly redacted point is that him spending 8 or so years developing The Witness has no impact on whether it's worth $40 or not. If his game is not good enough for me to pay full price for it, I'm not going to do so, even if he has spent his whole life developing it.
 
31GhostsIV said:
Ugh. It's like going around in circles.

I haven't said anything is an excuse for pirating. But pirating is a reality, it happens whether you want it to or not. There are steps he could have taken to reduce the impact of the piracy. He's released a niche title at a higher-than-usual price with no demo (on PSN, dunno about Steam) and no retail version. People would be more inclined to part with their money on a retail version because if they didn't like the game, they could sell their copy or trade it in.

That's all I said. I was never making an argument 'for' piracy.
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Again, Steam offers full refunds. This isn't a valid reason for pirates.
 
I think the problem is not if the price is too high or not, I'm inclined to believe is clearly not, but the real problem is the perceived value of the game.

How much money would people pay for an adventure/puzzle game in 2016? We'll probably find that for a lot of people the Witness price is too high. That dosn't mean the game should be cheaper, but that this is the reality of the market.

I mean, how many people would pay for a new Bust-a-Move when there's a highly successful clone on phones for free?

That said The Talos Principle sold like 500k and was released for the same price (if I'm not mistaken), so I think the Witness will be fine.
 
daveo42 said:
There was a segment on this week's GT Time that kind of tackles this issue with most modern games. There's always a carrot on a stick, or a level, or bar to fill up or whatever that tries to keep the player's attention and make the game seem more fun than it actually is. Almost every modern game has some sort of "progress" because rewards release dopamine into the brain, make us feel good about whatever happened even if that progress is trivial or inconsequential.

Yes, this is a massive amount of puzzles and the only real thing to look forward to after completing a puzzle is another puzzle. The way though, in which you get that sense of accomplishment without the constant new item/level/macguffin is quite frankly, refreshing in terms of gameplay. Figuring out how something works and why and learning a system should be a reward in and of it self and expecting a tangible reward for doing something shouldn't be a common practice in any facet of your life. It just creates and cultivates a false sense of fun and entitlement that shouldn't and really isn't there to begin with.

To each his own on the subjectivity of price though.
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Great post. Very insightful. This (in bold) truly is one of the reasons this game is so special.
 
Steve Youngblood said:
I think it's a little early to presume that the game isn't going to sell well.
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I'm not so sure anymore. According to this thread, the game took 8 years to make and Jonathon blew his life savings on the development, and if every pirate doesn't buy a copy before March then PC gaming will die and we'll never get that 3D Braid sequel set in World War 2.
 
Jackpot said:
The entire article is based around a newly released game being highly pirated compared to older released games?

Did anyone predict this not happening? Guess what, Rise of the Tomb Raider will be #1 game next week. News writers hire me!
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It's already 3rd and you can't even play it since it has denuvo.

m0dus said:
Sorry but I don't buy into that.

"I pirated it but I wasn't going to buy it anyway"
If you showed enough interest to hunt it down and download it, there is obviously some intent to play it there. Wait for it to go on sale if $40 is too steep.
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It really is a case by case basis, I have a friend who has no interest in buying games on PC, doesn't even have steam on it and pirated on PSP and DS before that. When Pokemon ORAS came out he hesitate to buy it because the 3DS was not hacked. I had to convince him to get a 2DS and to take advantage of the free game Nintendo offered for every 3DS/2DS purchase.
 
daveo42 said:
There was a segment on this week's GT Time that kind of tackles this issue with most modern games. There's always a carrot on a stick, or a level, or bar to fill up or whatever that tries to keep the player's attention and make the game seem more fun than it actually is. Almost every modern game has some sort of "progress" because rewards release dopamine into the brain, make us feel good about whatever happened even if that progress is trivial or inconsequential.

Yes, this is a massive amount of puzzles and the only real thing to look forward to after completing a puzzle is another puzzle. The way though, in which you get that sense of accomplishment without the constant new item/level/macguffin is quite frankly, refreshing in terms of gameplay. Figuring out how something works and why and learning a system should be a reward in and of it self and expecting a tangible reward for doing something shouldn't be a common practice in any facet of your life. It just creates and cultivates a false sense of fun and entitlement that shouldn't and really isn't there to begin with.

To each his own on the subjectivity of price though.
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I totally agree with you, and that's why I said it wasn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just one of those things that isn't exactly common place in current game design. So I can easily understand why the vast majority of people would see that you're not being rewarded tangibly for solving a puzzle and take their money else where.

It's not to say what the game does is wrong it's just a contributing factor to its performance considering how more modern gamers are conditioned. I think it's wonderful that the game's reward is solving the puzzles, but that also furthers the image of a 40 dollar puzzle book, which I don't think a lot of modern gamers care to buy into you know?

So obviously to a large majority of people that 40 dollars is going to feel high, but to puzzle game fans that 40 dollars is a boon. However they're obviously the minority.
 
Jackpot said:
The entire article is based around a newly released game being highly pirated compared to older released games?

Did anyone predict this not happening? Guess what, Rise of the Tomb Raider will be #1 game next week. News writers hire me!
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Some people still seem surprised by it, for some reason.
 
Makonero said:
Isn't this an example of pricing yourself out of the market? I mean, piracy is completely wrong, but I doubt the vast majority of pirates would have paid $40 for the game in the first place.
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I knew a dude who pirated Oniken, that game that was some cents on the winter sale.

On a related note, he admitted doing this on a party that he didn't know that had a few indie devs in it, a few friends of the Oniken devs. Was a weird party
 
Another thread about the piracy.
Well, EVERY game got pirated, EVERY single game.
I doubt people are pirating The Witness more than Fallout 4, AC Syndacate or mainstream titles, anyway. And not all pirates would buy your game just because they actually download it, some will just delete it after two minutes or so.

The only way to fight piracy is providing good contents, that's all. And even by doing so, there will be always pirates anyway.

Also selling almost 30k within 3 days, well, I think it's VERY good, considering the game costs 38€ and it's not a 15€ game like Braid was.

So I really don't understand Blow's rant, honestly. What did he expect, 2 milion in 3 days?

EDIT: Just saw the twitter message, well, of course Braid got pirated, because every game is pirated. Also how does it track those "lost sale" anyway? Really Blow should just calm down, if a game is good, it will sell, no matter what (just see Undertale).

Braid sold almost 1.200.000 copies (ok, it was bundled several times, still is an impressive amount of copies for a niche indie title I think). And this on PC only, excluding console sales.

Also Blow, just a tip: price your game in the same way between all stores:

-official site 20$ http://braid-game.com/
-Steam 15€ http://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/?l=italian
-Humble 9.50€ https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/braid_storefront?hmb_source=search_bar
 
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