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Well said.
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The Witness is being heavily pirated. J. Blow says piracy could impact his future.
- Thread starter Raylan
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Well said.
Mass_Pincup
Banned
I only saw one person which is ok or defended piracy. Care to show me some others?
Seriously.
It's too early to complain about piracy being bad enough to hurt his next game. I believe this game will do fine enough for him to continue.
I do think Piracy hurts but that's the nature of the beast when you release on PC
"Those people weren't going to pay anyway" is partly true for some but also partly wrong. I'll give an anectodal example: before PS3 was cracked open, a friend bought 2-3 games a year. After it was cracked, he didn't buy a single game.
The shops who let you play PS3's had to buy the originals. After it was cracked open, they filled gigabytes of games onto their harddisks and offered to do the same for existing unpatched PS3's or sell you PS3's with their terrabyte replacement harddisks full of games.
I do think Piracy hurts but that's the nature of the beast when you release on PC
without Denuvo.
"Those people weren't going to pay anyway" is partly true for some but also partly wrong. I'll give an anectodal example: before PS3 was cracked open, a friend bought 2-3 games a year. After it was cracked, he didn't buy a single game.
The shops who let you play PS3's had to buy the originals. After it was cracked open, they filled gigabytes of games onto their harddisks and offered to do the same for existing unpatched PS3's or sell you PS3's with their terrabyte replacement harddisks full of games.
EventHorizon
Member
Nope. I'm part of that mass market. I'm more of a big blockbuster EXPLOSIONS type of gamer. Braid never really grabbed my attention enough to try it out.
There are some smaller puzzle games I like but in general puzzle video games frustrate me because they are so arbitrary. They involve me having to figure out what the one way the dev wanted me to solve the puzzles instead of simply working with the natural mechanics of the world. That usually ends up devolving into some form of trial and error which I can't stand.
On the other hand I like puzzles that lay out the all the rules and actions I can take and the challenge is to string them together in a logical way to reach an objective.
Youre wrong here. Look up pirated rates of the system melting Crysis 1. At the time crappy PCs couldn't play it and the game was pirated into oblivion. If you can afford a nice gaming PC you can afford the game.
Probably true but not justifiable. I'm broke as hell and would like to play The Witness but I'm not gonna steal it. I'll just wait till I can afford it, and by then it'll be even cheaper!
Plus watching streams of people doing mostly line puzzles really let me know that $5 is the most I'd pay for it.
JRW
Member
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
What a shame. Game is fantastic.
Worth every cent.
Fucking asshole thieves.
Worth every cent.
Fucking asshole thieves.
comshoplesce
Member
It's not too expensive if you can buy it retail for 40$, after a month you can sell it for 25-30$.
If you're playing digitally on PS4, you can "share" with someone for 50% the price.
I miss that on steam, where you can't share nor sell after.....
If you're playing digitally on PS4, you can "share" with someone for 50% the price.
I miss that on steam, where you can't share nor sell after.....
johancruijff
Banned
srsly is that hard to understand?
or all the people in this thread believes that JB is so fucking naive?
He said all which is just wrong.
I haven't bought the game yet cause the price point is too high, but If people want to demo the game. There is an easy legal way to do that and that is purchase the game and if the game isnt what you like you can return it on steam within the first 2 weeks of purchase/2 hours played.
Look, you should stop saying this, because your casual observations do not qualify as a meaningful study of the issue.
shortsFortallPeople
Banned
family sharing exists
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Pretty sure he was going by the "deserve", arguments like that make no sense since you can just spin it to stuff like "people deserve to be able to afford it in the first place", etc.
If we go by the world isn't fair then why does Blow deserve compensation more than the poor deserve not being able to afford his game?
$19.99 and I would have jumped on this game in a heartbeat. But I am not spending $40 on a puzzle game......no matter how much content.
Movalpolos
Banned
Watching the game isn't pirating...
It's a great way to completely miss the point of the game though.
Wikipedia's list of Denuvo titles:
Which of these titles do you think had a chance of skipping PC?
These are the officially announced Denuvo titles. Apparently there's been more but the publishers haven't stated that they've used it.
For example, I'm pretty sure the PC release of Tales of Zestiria used Denuvo.
On the one hand, The Witness is a beautiful, endlessly clever game that's easily worth its asking price. On the other hand, people are infinitely resourceful at rationalizing their shitty behavior. Combine those together and you get piracy for any number of self-serving reasons. Sad to see the same tired bullshit being parroted here, albeit discreetly.
Support game developers, kids!
Support game developers, kids!
GankzyMcfly
Member
Couldn't have been said better.
Roberto Larcos
Member
Unbelievably petty.
Portugeezer
Member
Normally when you can't afford something you wait for it to become cheaper, but when it comes to software more people are just willing to pirate. It's not about people never buying the game in the first place, it's people being cheap and just pirating because they can.
Anyway, Blow didn't even make a big deal out of it, he simply made an observation and some tongue in cheek comment.
Tesseract
Banned
i'd 3d print a car right now if i could
information ultimately wants to (and will be) free
that doesn't make piracy right, at least not until automation kicks into overdrive
diffusionx
Gold Member
I don't find the argument that "pirates would not have bought it anyway" convincing. The fact is they are playing it, so they are deriving a nonzero value from it. Maybe that value isn't $40, but maybe it would be $10 in a year, which they probably won't pay either because they already extracted the value from the game.
I dabbled a bit in piracy in my younger days, I rarely bought anything I really liked, I think it's just something people say.
Also, from everything I've read, pirates are responsible for a large chunk of customer support. People pirate a game, it doesn't work, they complain, they post one star reviews on Amazon, etc. This happens frequently. Does the bad word of mouth from pirates cause legitimate users not to buy the game? Probably.
I dabbled a bit in piracy in my younger days, I rarely bought anything I really liked, I think it's just something people say.
Also, from everything I've read, pirates are responsible for a large chunk of customer support. People pirate a game, it doesn't work, they complain, they post one star reviews on Amazon, etc. This happens frequently. Does the bad word of mouth from pirates cause legitimate users not to buy the game? Probably.
Not to say he isn't, but the PC will potentially be the largest salebase for this game if SOMA and Talos Principle is anything to go by. If an element of your largest platform is threatening your income stream he's going to make a fuss.
That's exactly why Denuvo exists. If the PC is becoming a larger share of a company's revenue now compared to five years ago then publishers are going to take precautions to protect their revenue stream.
Has any study showed a relationship between piracy and sales?
Atraveller
Banned
Coffee Dog
Banned
lol, petty to get a refund for a product you bought
I mean, at least you're being consistent. That is potential dollars.
That's part of the issue, there is no data out there to verify any of this for either side of equation. It's a black hole when it shouldn't be.
JRW
Member
This makes no sense, he's still making money with PC version.
Maintenance
Member
I remember a DRM study... made by a company that sold DRM solutions. Heh.
Acquiescence
Member
It's got to be pretty heart-breaking to work on something for eight years, only to release it and have it pirated by god knows how many people right afterwards.
Yes, though I don't know of any good public ones off the top of my head.
geordiemp
Member
Wow, that fact alone shows that either
1. People pirate games even though their PC cannot run the game
or
2. People pirate because they can, and many could afford the game if they so chose.
Your point is great and I would think the latter is more applicable
I would 3D print the fuck out of a Ferrari.
Also, I don't believe piracy would be his biggest burden here. Having such a big budget for a Puzzle game may be a larger factor then that.
Marauder Shields
Member
Really is a black mark on PC gaming, and I say that as someone who is primarily a PC gamer.
Lanrutcon
Member
Does bad word of mouth from people who bought the game and then Steam refunded it cause legitimate users to not buy the game?
Question: How's the one more legitimate than the other? In both cases the Developer gets no money, and loses sales.
YianGaruga
Banned
Iorv3th
Member
It will be cheaper though when it goes on sale. It just wont be at launch. If it were cheaper at launch say 20$ he would have had to sell twice as many and then when it was on sale for 50% off or whatever also received less. It's at a fair price point and people that don't want to pay that much can wait for it to go on sale which it inevitably will.
JRW
Member
More dev's should use Denuvo then, from my understanding Just Cause 3 uses the latest version of it and there's still no pirate version on PC due to being uncrackable, same with Rise of the Tomb Raider.
People will pirate even if they could reasonably purchase the game. The whole 1 pirated copy != 1 lost sale is an argument against big telecoms and publishers who seek gross compensation and legislation to lock down the free-web. Which reprehensible.
You're argument only covers a single facet of the pirate demographic, and it more of as to how do we treat pirates after the fact.
The guy you responded to is entirely right with his points. Many people pirate that could otherwise reasonably save up or purchase the game. Or simply wait for a sale down the road, because we all know how cheap sales eventually are. Piracy does cut into the profits and it really can hurt companies. Especially when the investment costs of software development are very hard to evaluate. There is no argument for the responsibility lying with him to hedge against pirates. It quite simply is the pirates who are wrong. We should be understanding as to their circumstances, but they are still wrong.
Is this a fucking joke? The man's livelihood and his last 6 years of work is literally being swiped from out in front of him, he has no recourse to stop it, and yet he's the one who gets called an asshole because he said "darn"?
Everyone who's in the entertainment industry suffers through this. Indie music artist? Bam. Self-published author? Bam.
It's best to ignore it. Because it ain't stopping anytime soon. If it were me, I'd take it to social media and use it as marketing (which is what's clearly happening now, because I had no idea it was even out!).
tearsintherain
Member
While I mostly console game I do have nearly 2k games in my steam library, but at this point PC gaming has more or less trained me to NEVER, EVER pay MSRP for PC games. I have zero reason to pirate, with years of backlog thanks to humble bundle, bundlestars, indiegala, steam summer/winter sales, amazon sales, etc.
When the game hits $10 and/or my Oculus Rift CV1 is in my hands I will check it out, until then don't really care how many great reviews it has it just seems like a good puzzle game thats pretty but not something I need to play right now. Should have released closer to CV1 release too, thats a huge chunk of users that will be interesting in playing with their new toy and $40 is nothing to that group.
When the game hits $10 and/or my Oculus Rift CV1 is in my hands I will check it out, until then don't really care how many great reviews it has it just seems like a good puzzle game thats pretty but not something I need to play right now. Should have released closer to CV1 release too, thats a huge chunk of users that will be interesting in playing with their new toy and $40 is nothing to that group.
blame space
Banned
If you don't have the money to pay for a game it doesn't give you the right to play it anyway. Anyone who pirated this is a piece of shit.
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