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[Lingitiz]

That is a shame its being heavily pirated . I wonder if this will push his future projects to be console-exclusive in the future. That way he doesn't have to deal with piracy on the level on PC and ensure that he gets money from games sales. Heck, I could see this leading to him pulling Witness off Steam for a few months until the piracy stops for a while.

lol are you fucking kidding me with this.

 

[Holundrian]

It's called living in reality. I didn't condone piracy or anything but just think his comments about it are out of touch with reality.

No it's called being an idiot that believes that there is only this one relevant truth in life that has to be relevant to everyone else or if they deny it they deny reality. They don't live in reality. Rofl. That's some a grade teen bs right there.

Like how a pirated copy does not equal a lost sale. And how piracy can cause lost sales. But bot of these statements are so inconsequential to where his statements came from.

Cause his reality is the uncertainty of continuing making the games he wants to make after pouring a looooot during the past 7-8 years into this game(feels like a good assumption to make looking at how it turned out). And you can believe he's living that reality.

But whatever by now I should know that the internet makes everyone a sociopath.
Cold logic your way to the single truth of life on everything, like review scores and apparently feelings of someone stealing work from you that you've worked for years on. Jeesh....

 

[Dreams-Visions]

lol do you think if you made your game pirate proof = those pirates buying your game? Hell no that is not the case.

Maybe, maybe not. But we can almost guarantee that someone who pirates a game won't be buying it at any point ever. Whereas someone who couldn't pirate it may have bought it on steep discount months later. Provided the game still has a reasonably active community/good mods/longevity.

 

[RK128]

lol are you fucking kidding me with this.

I made a dumb post with that . Will remove it.

 

[New002]

I think that it's sad that it seems he has to tread lightly when addressing this for fear of backlash.

 

[moggio]

I'm not buying The Witness but why would I pirate it when I can just watch someone Let's Play it?

 

[Amir0x]

$40 is too steep, and lots of people use piracy as demos anyway

If $40 is too steep for The Witness, than it's too steep for every game ever made. Gorgeous, stunningly designed title with well over 50 hours of content, without exaggeration. One of the best puzzle games ever made.

This is the one time I'm going to agree with Ken Kutaragi's mindset: if you can't afford $40 for such a game, get a goddamned second job. Hippies.

I'm not buying The Witness but why would I pirate it when I can just watch someone Let's Play it?

Because obviously it's a videogame and a puzzle videogame at that and thus playing is infinitely more rewarding than watching?

 

[Sorcerer]

I doubt they would have paid $30 or even $20. I really don't think pirates give a fuck about the price

If the game was a dollar that's still too much for pirates.

Poor dude put so much time into the game, its a shame he can't ask $40 bucks for it.

 

[KarmaCow]

hotline miami built up early buzz with the devs encouraging people to pirate the game and spread word of mouth, and pay for it later when they felt like

they are doing very well for themselves

It's a little spurious to say this significantly benefited them. It didn't seem to hurt sure but the game had amazing word of mouth about the game itself from people who bought it as well.

I think that it's sad that it seems he has to tread lightly when addressing this for fear of backlash.

When has he have ever treaded lightly about something he believes?

 

[Glix]

You can gameshare. At least one person will be able to not pay for the game.

Whoa. Thats part of the EULA for the users. If he doesn't like it, don't make games for the system. It is not illegal and not a secret.

That is not Piracy not even close. It is a feature.

 

[Shantom]

No?

Exactly. There are quite a few $40+ PC games in the last few years that have launched day 1 with absolutely no DRM and have been big successes, such as Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, Kerbal Space Program and The Witcher series.

I realise that you're not arguing with my initial post, but I'm just making the point that even releasing the game with DRM is unnecessary, and that a game being simple to pirate is no impediment to its success, and therefore many of the people in this thread wanting it to be timed exclusive to the PS4 aren't thinking it through.

 

[SparkTR]

That is a shame its being heavily pirated . I wonder if this will push his future projects to be console-exclusive in the future. That way he doesn't have to deal with piracy on the level on PC and ensure that he gets money from games sales. Heck, I could see this leading to him pulling Witness off Steam for a few months until the piracy stops for a while.

I can't tell if you're joking. This reason why he tweeted this was to promote sales. Doing that would completely kneecap any chances he has of success.

 

[Sylas]

Maybe, maybe not. But we can almost guarantee that someone who pirates a game won't be buying it at any point ever. Whereas someone who couldn't pirate it may have bought it on steep discount months later. Provided the game still has a reasonably active community/good mods/longevity.

Except, and once more for people in the back, this has proven to be absolutely false with digital music. It's not hard to draw a line between digital music and digital games.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

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.

Downloading a game is as simple as a few clicks and searches, and probably most pirates already have pages with release announcements. I mean, hunt it down, means is hard to come by, and that's not the case at all.

 

[galyonkin]

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.

Well, it would remove the game from my frontpage as well. I think it would be bad.

 

[Coffee Dog]

I'm not buying The Witness but why would I pirate it when I can just watch someone Let's Play it?

you fucking monster, if you even think the game is interesting watching a lets play is denying jon blow your potential dollars

 

[MMaRsu]

No, the risk is higher. People will buy retail knowing they at least have the trade in/sell option if they regret the purchase. With digital, on PSN at least, you're stuck with a £30 game you don't want. £30 is hardly 'the norm' for PSN-only titles.

Its not the norm, this game also completely justifies the price. Thats not always the norm either, digital or retail.

 

[DSix]

According to the release stream, The Witness budget is around 6 million dollars.

SteamSpy shows sales somewhere in the 23k+ range last time I checked. And who knows if all of these were bought from the Steam store.

Man, really scared about him and his team - this is shitty.

Yeah, but it doesn't has that much to do with piracy really.

Let's face it, a big series of abstract puzzles was not gonna be that popular in a world of cheap ios puzzlers and with higher priced games being the sole domain of big traditional core games.

 

[AzaK]

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.

Does that mean you're pirating it? Why does what someone make on a game mean people feel entitled to get it for free? Especially a small dev that sunk millions of his own cash into the game.

 

[RK128]

I can't tell if you're joking. This reason why he tweeted this was to promote sales. Doing that would completely kneecap any chances he has of success.

Edited my posts and made a bad mistake . Again, sorry everyone.

 

[Rezae]

This might be a hint for companies to first release on consoles to ensure sales then eventually release it on the PC to get whatever is left over.

Anyways pirates suck.

A lot of companies are doing this, and frankly I can't blame them (as long as it's not TOO excessive). In a perfect world I'd love to see stuff released on consoles and PC at the same time, but I understand when it's not.

Developers shouldn't fall into that excuse trap though that every pirate is a lost sale. I would think that number is very small, or at the least many of them would have (or will) purchase when the game is heavily discounted and wouldn't have paid full price anyway.

 

[prudislav]

...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.

Yeah there is segment like this ,but this segment is quite tiny compared to the majority of pirates who are either kids without any income or people from countries where 200 bucks is monthly salary...

 

[Crimsonclaw111]

hotline miami built up early buzz with the devs encouraging people to pirate the game and spread word of mouth, and pay for it later when they felt like

they are doing very well for themselves

There was also, notably, that leaked build of Deus Ex Human Revolution. The positive critical reception ended up increasing interest and sales.

Noticed this tweet, seems relevant:

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/692906245154410496

If it was exclusive to the PS4 it wouldn't have been pirated though!

 

[SarusGray]

i can't hepl but think this will help sales

 

[Coffee Dog]

It's a little spurious to say this significantly benefited them. It didn't seem to hurt sure but the game had amazing word of mouth about the game itself from people who bought it as well.

So...good games sell regardless? Because that's what I'm getting from this.

 

[Jacksinthe]

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.

C'mon, man. See below. Price is irrelevant. I don't care if it was 400 bucks or 4 cents.

vvv

Noticed this tweet, seems relevant:

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/692906245154410496

 

[see5harp]

People who make or create content don't like to see or hear about said content getting stolen. I get that. Some of the responses like "don't release on PC" are probably more disgusting than the silly shit that Blow said.

 

[Venfayth]

More relevant tweets:

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/692845777811435521

Yes but at 90% piracy, if 10% of pirates actually bought the game, the developer's revenue would almost DOUBLE.

@90% Piracy rate:

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/692848652675514368

That is a consistent rate that has been measured by many games.

 

[NotMyPsn]

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/

If music albums were $40-$60, piracy would be higher.
Can't compare.

 

[Steve Youngblood]

I think part of the problem with the "price is too high" argument is that it's difficult to speculate what impact a lower price would have had in terms of increased sales. I mean, it assuredly will increase units sold, but at what cost? I'm going to ignore Steam's cut here to make way for easier cocktail napkin math, but if you halve the price, you have to sell double the number of copies to generate the same revenue. Price sensitivity is a thing, and I can understand that there are people out there who want to play the game, may be willing to pay something like $20 for it, aren't willing to pay $40 for it, and are also too impatient to wait for price drops. So when that theoretical person pirates the game, yeah, it's a lost sale. But are there enough of those people to justify lowering the price to $20 for everyone? Even the people who were willing to bite at $40?

 

[BennyBlanco]

This is the type of game that will have long legs on PC. Lot of people myself included are waiting for a sale.

Piracy comes with the territory.

 

[Om3ga]

BRB I'm going to go steal a Ferrari, but I'll be sure to come back and buy it if I really like it.

Piracy is wrong, but it doesn't equate to stealing a car or even close to it. That's a really bad analogy here. If Ferrari sold VR cars in a driving sim for $40 and people found a way to steal them then fine, but other than that not even close.

It will be terrible if his game doesn't do well considering the praise it's getting, but he should have took precautions against piracy especially when releasing on PC. Even still there are plenty of reasons why people may or may not buy good games, you can't always look to piracy when your game isn't selling well. The $40 price point for a puzzle game seems to be the number 1 reason why people were put off from buying it in this thread.

Just checking the top piracy sites. The Witness has 14K downloads so far. Just for reference I also checked out Undertale which has 41k downloads and that game surpassed 1 million in sales.

 

[Sheroking]

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.

They don't have to hunt anything down. It pops up on these websites and the process is incredibly easy.

There may be some small interest to try a game at 0$, but that doesn't demonstrate any desire to pay any amount of money for it. This is an industry where mobile developers are annoyed at their inability to sell games for the price of a coffee because the standard is either free or .99C.

 

[Maintenance]

Whoa. Thats part of the EULA for the users. If he doesn't like it, don't make games for the system. It is not illegal and not a secret.

That is not Piracy not even close. It is a feature.

Same thing can be said about Steam Refunds.

And yet you might find people shitting on it in this thread.

 

[entremet]

hotline miami built up early buzz with the devs encouraging people to pirate the game and spread word of mouth, and pay for it later when they felt like

they are doing very well for themselves

That's only one game. Moreover, the pricing differential is much bigger.

Do you think pirates will spend 40 bucks after getting this for free?

Also, I don't believe Blow wanted his game to be pirated, nor has he encouraged piracy.

Big difference here, so the nuance you mentioned is less plausible.

 

[JaseC]

Heck, I could see this leading to him pulling Witness off Steam for a few months until the piracy stops for a while.

I don't think you've given this much thought. What would that achieve aside from removing a purchase option for those without a PS4? Scrubbing the PC version from stores wouldn't automagically make pirated copies of the game disappear.

 

[Beerman462]

I'm not going to pull stats out of my ass, but alot of games due well on PC despite pirating. Blaming low sales on pirates isn't a good look.

People saying stop selling games on PC are pathetic. There are lots of legit PC gamers that pay good money for games on PC. I would be curious how much more it costs to release on PC and console. I can't imagine it's not worth the extra cost despite pirates, but thats up to developers/publishers. It would suck if they don't release games on PC just to spite pirates.

 

[Mass_Pincup]

More relevant tweets:

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/692845777811435521



@90% Piracy rate:

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/692848652675514368

That doesn't seem to be possible, unless he is talking for 1st week sales.

 

[Coffee Dog]

C'mon, man. See below. Price is irrelevant. I don't care if it was 400 bucks or 4 cents.

vvv

All I'm getting from this is that piracy is ultimately irrelevant, considering that braid made money. And this game is $40 no less! Blow should be raking it in compared to braid!

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Except, and once more for people in the back, this has proven to be absolutely false with digital music. It's not hard to draw a line between digital music and digital games.

I don't think I'd directly compare music (which has no story, no plot to experience and is readily available to listen to for free from Google, Spotify, Microsoft, etc.) with buying and playing a game, which largely calls to be experienced and directed by you the player.

 

[Sylas]

More relevant tweets:

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/692845777811435521



@90% Piracy rate:

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/692848652675514368

I'm curious as to how games track things like piracy purchase-rate and how many copies of their game wind up pirated (and played) and not just left on some giant server in the middle of nowhere (since, especially with a lot of private torrent sites you have to maintain an up/down ratio or you get banned). Would be interesting data to look at.

 

[Comfort Jones]

lol are you fucking kidding me with this.

I feel like a lot of people here are severely out of touch with any understanding of how you handle business lol. Especially the people acting like it's some no brainer to have strict drm as if they missed the gigantic fucking backlash to that in the last few years? Or the fact that plenty of games do well without it?

 

[Raging Spaniard]

Whole lot of people basically advocating pitacy in this thread. Sad.

 

[digitalrelic]

Except, and once more for people in the back, this has proven to be absolutely false with digital music. It's not hard to draw a line between digital music and digital games.

Music is a very passive medium. Music can be used as background noise while you're cooking or driving. Music can be played easily on virtually any device. Music can be a 2 and a half minute experience.

Gaming is extremely involving and interactive, will require your direct attention for hours and hours, and requires a machine specifically geared towards being able to play games.

Music and Gaming are two very different mediums.

 

[RK128]

I don't think you've given this much thought. What would that achieve aside from removing a purchase option for those without a PS4? Scrubbing the PC version from stores wouldn't automagically make pirated copies of the game disappear.

You're right, hence me removing my post .

I don't understand much about this topic, so should of thought about things before posting in this thread.

Again, sorry about this everyone.

 

[KarmaCow]

So...good games sell regardless? Because that's what I'm getting from this.

Popular games sell regardless but yea. I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment that there's more to it than simply saying piracy is bad, but just that well, piracy is not defensible.

 

[kadotsu]

wrong thread

 

[Icyflamez96]

.

 

[Venfayth]

I assume by piracy rate he meants number of downloads on torrent sites / number of verified purchases. That seems like the easiest way to quantify "piracy" - though it's obviously not a perfect ratio or estimate of lost sales.

 

[Peltz]

Hey Mr. Blow.

1 pirated != 1 sale lost.

So? That doesn't mean he isn't financially impacted by piracy.

What a terrible argument.

You don't need to be able to measure the amount of lost sales to make the case that people do not deserve to play the game without paying for it.