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I would 3D print the fuck out of a Ferrari.

What a machine.

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

You're right. Let's not examine the economic variables that lead to high rates of piracy. Let's just blindly accept that it can never ever happen for a reason that could be studied and potentially reduced in order to maximize profit. Downloading games is disgusting and makes you a heartless monster and we need to have a zero-tolerance policy for it in all cases and not look at it at all for any reason because reasons.

I mean, could you apply this line or reasoning to any other thing that happens in the world literally at all?

I mean, people conduct huge studies and meta-studies to figure out why 486 people were murdered in Chicago in 2015, or why so many insurgents in the Middle East became militant. People attribute murders to poor economic conditions, or to social trends. States and Nations have managed to reduce drug usage by studying why people take drugs and addressing those issues in contrast to shit like "Just say no to drugs they're bad and only bad people do drugs and need to go to jail because reasons and drugs are reasons no excuse they're disgusting" and then throwing them in jail.

So, you're right. Let's just not talk about it. Let's not look at the relevant points of data that could influence the piracy of this product and how we could have maximized profits for Jonathan Blow, or at least reduced the rate at which his product is being pirated. It's disgusting point blank and deserves no form of introspection. Like every other bad thing that has ever happened, it's not important that we understand how or why it happens, merely to revolt at the fact that it does, and flail like children in response to it.

I feel sooo bad for these impoverished pirates people barely scraping by with their more than competently powerful PC rigs and high-speed internet connection, information-savvy enough to know when and how to pirate a game. Those poor, poor deprived people.

 

[Kaleinc]

There's nothing to worry about as long as Lara is protected.

 

[-MD-]

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.....

Steam family sharing has been a thing since like early 2014.

 

[GhostOfSparta305]

Sure, piracy's absolutely despicable. But I can't help but wonder what Blow was expecting after going radio silent for 3 years and then suddenly dropping a $40 price tag.

He clearly could've done a better job communicating exactly what his game is if even tons of people on GAF still mistakenly think it looks like some $20 puzzle game.

 

[nelchaar]

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

You bring up a really interesting point about the future of piracy and 3D printing. Materials not withstanding, if you obtain a 3D print blueprint via torrent you can basically make anything you want. DRM is going to be HUGE going to the 3D printing future. Need to invest in some stocks brb

 

[patapuf]

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.

I'm pretty sure he sold more day one than the Talos Prinicple. The problem are his sales expectations.

 

[Evolution of Metal]

The only point of reference we have are sales of Denuvo enabled games that are uncrackable, versus sales of similar contemporary cracked games. So far I've seen no noticible increase of sales for the Denuvo enabled games. If someone wants to look at the data I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

It is impossible to measure that. I would say that the amount of pirates that are converted into buyers (because of Denuvo) is low, it is so low that games like Fallout or Black Ops aren't even bothering with it.

Mad Max moved similar number of copies to JC3 in the first month. Mad Max got cracked shortly after release, where JC3 is still awaiting the fix. These two games are really similar and made by the same developer. In this case, an uncracked protection didn't yield any additional sales.

Lords of the Fallen got an infamous name for being uncracked for months. Despite that fact, SteamSpy says that only 330k copies were sold.

In the case of BF: Hardline, that game also lasted for quite some time before being cracker. I don't have any sales numbers on this one, but the online aspect is already pretty much dead on PC.

Arkham Knight was cracked after some time, but only the initial version with a small number of patches. The patched version remains unseen in trackers, but the sales numbers aren't growing.

I have no idea why Battlefront uses denuvo, it is an online-only game that doesn't really need that layer of protection. Maybe Denuvo also helps against hackers and cheaters online, because they cannot mess around with the game files as much...

tldr: Denuvo doesn't seem to convert pirates into paying customers.

 

[Coffee Dog]

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"?

[citation needed]

looks like the game is selling great and he is making quite a bit of money.

 

[sld]

Fuck everyone implying (or outright saying) it's OK to pirate the man's game because it's "too expensive". As the developer it's his decision to price it however he wants. You think it's too expensive? Wait for a sale or just skip it. It's not a human right to play every fucking game in existence and there's plenty of great and super cheap games to get if you're poor and don't have the posibility to fork over 40 bucks for a game.

 

[Lanrutcon]

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.

Exactly.

So if you can't afford it: watch a Let's Play instead. That way you get to experience most of the game while not having to pay a cent and keeping your hands clean.

 

[andycapps]

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.


Second of all, it misses the wider point that assholes would pirate the game anyway, regardless of price.

Historically it was "we're pirating because of DRM!!!" Oops. There's a DRM-free version of The Witness.

Then it was "we're pirating because big companies don't care about us!!" Oops. This is a tiny indie team that worked their asses off for 8 years to bring you one of the most brilliant puzzle games ever.

Then it was "we're pirating because the PC version was shit and we want to send a message!!" Oops. Seems like the PC version of The Witness is fine.

Then it was "we're pirating because I have no idea if it'll work on my PC!!!" Oops. Steam offers no-questions-asked refunds for less than two hours of gameplay.



Stop making fucking excuses and start condemning it without qualification. Otherwise you're part of the problem.

Very well said.

 

[icespide]

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.

when you're right you're right

 

[jacobeid]

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.

Pretttttty, prettayyyy, pretty much.

 

[SparkTR]

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.

True. I have no issue with Denuvo unlike other people. What I want to know is how much sales are increasing (or will increase) with a game that uses Denuvo versus a game that doesn't use it. With Ubisoft and their (albeit old) piracy data it should be a big difference, I haven't seen that though.

 

[Quote]

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.

my dude

 

[pelican]

I don't pirate games, but the equation that a pirated copy equals a lost sale is inaccurate.

 

[Coffee Dog]

Exactly.

So if you can't afford it: watch a Let's Play instead. That way you get to experience most of the game while not having to pay a cent and keeping your hands clean.

If you derive enjoyment from watching that lets play, you are denying Jon Blow proper compensation for that enjoyment.

In both cases you are enjoying the game without paying, and Blow is losing out on the potential revenue that he would obtain if even one person was swayed by lets plays not existing.

 

[Maintenance]

So if you can't afford it: watch a Let's Play instead. That way you get to experience most of the game while not having to pay a cent and keeping your hands clean.

When piracy is gone (because of harder to crack things like Denuvo and etc), just watch as Let's Plays turn into the next boogeyman.

 

[AstroLad]

When I actually read his comments they weren't nearly as strong as some of the headlines/comments I've seen led me to believe. He even saw one of the bright sides in the increased exposure, but of course doesn't want it to get to a point where he can't continue to develop big games. Hope the game is still doing well and the comment is not a related to poor sales. I'm not into puzzle games but I respect the hell out of the guy as a creator.

 

[Rosur]

Yea maybe should of put Denuvo on it then...

 

[BibiMaghoo]

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.

I don't think so. Most people don't have Gaf standard GPU's, and will attempt to run any 'free' game on whatever piece of shit toaster they have. I know this because I did. The most commons GPU's are onboard intel HD's. So not even dedicated.

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!

Spoiler

Plus watching streams of people doing mostly line puzzles really let me know that $5 is the most I'd pay for it.

It is justifiable to the person at the time. Everyone that does it knows it is morally wrong, but it's easy to convince yourself it's of no real harm, and if it was just yourself doing it, that would be true. Obviously there is the debate surrounding stealing vs pirating but I don't want to go over that here, it has been done to death. From the perspective of a person that needs to pirate games to play them at all, someone saying "if you can't afford it then you should be denied it" seems petty, as it's of no consequence to the person that can afford it. I do honestly believe these people account for the majority, and simply cannot pay for the content they are encouraged on all fronts to consume.

I think it's also an age thing. Younger people are less inclined to wait for things, and so if would have the money later but not now, are like to not wait, and then subsequently not pay. As we get older it's cool to just grab it next month or whatever, so it's less of an issue. And of course young people have less money anyway.

 

[Sylas]

I feel sooo bad for these impoverished pirates people barely scraping by with their more than competently powerful PC rigs and high-speed internet connection, information-savvy enough to know when and how to pirate a game. Those poor, poor deprived people.

Are you daft. You can literally type "<insert game titles here> free download" and get a pirated copy of any game. You don't have to be information-savvy to pirate. Nor do you need a competently powerful PC, or a high-speed internet connection. I downloaded a ton of shit on a miserable connection that barely ran on my PC when I was younger, but it still got downloaded.

 

[daveo42]

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

But could you? You'd need the approprate raw materials to 3D print out a proper, working car. It's a bit of a different analogy all together.

Information will be free, but people should still be paid for their content if they came up with the design/product/whatever and compensated for the time they put into creating that thing.

 

[Marty Chinn]

I only saw one person which is ok or defended piracy. Care to show me some others?

You should hop over to a Netflix region thread. The amount of entitlement and justification for piracy is amazing. Same principles there and here used to defend the act.

 

[Lanrutcon]

If you derive enjoyment from watching that lets play, you are denying Jon Blow proper compensation for that enjoyment.

Gasp.

Are you saying that if I enjoy a Let's Play of a game I don't own, I'm a piece of shit thief?

You wound me, sir.

 

[Roberto Larcos]

lol, petty to get a refund for a product you bought

I mean, at least you're being consistent. That is potential dollars.

I think it's petty to scorn a developer who complains about people pirating the game he's spent 8 years and his life savings on, yes.

 

[Tesseract]

When piracy is gone (because of harder to crack things like Denuvo and etc), just watch as Let's Plays turn into the next boogeyman.

I'm Your Boogie Man

 

[moggio]

Exactly.

So if you can't afford it: watch a Let's Play instead. That way you get to experience most of the game while not having to pay a cent and keeping your hands clean.

Or use PS4 Share Play to share the game with a friend who hasn't paid for it.

 

[Saty]

Because he spent close to a decade making it. He also self financed I believe.

He has real skin in the game.

Such a strange statement, honestly.

And? Every high-profile title is heavily pirated. The way Blow tweeted it was like this fact is new, unexpected, surprising or worrisome. Games have sold great while being pirates, games sold crap w\o being pirated. The Witness is going to sell whatever it's going to sell and there's merit to ask questions when we are further from launch. But losing sleep over piracy after the first two days and tweeting about it as an immediate concern is more or less pointless. It has only served as canon fodder for certain posters to sprout nonsense about the PC platform.

Hey, maybe the N++ devs should stop selling the game on PS4 after it cratered. Sure did good for them the game has 0% piracy rate.

 

[Corronchilejano]

Should've just made it so the game was actually a car.

I figure most people who download the game won't actually play it. We really need a studies on the subject.

 

[lynux3]

Are you daft. You can literally type "<insert game titles here> free download" and get a pirated copy of any game. You don't have to be information-savvy to pirate. Nor do you need a competently powerful PC, or a high-speed internet connection. I downloaded a ton of shit on a miserable connection that barely ran on my PC when I was younger, but it still got downloaded.

So you were the problem?

 

[Coffee Dog]

Gasp.

Are you saying that if I enjoy a Let's Play of a game I don't own, I'm a piece of shit thief?

You wound me, sir.

I'm saying that if lets plays didn't exist, you might have just bought the game instead. It denies jon blow potential revenue in the same way piracy does.

 

[patapuf]

I don't think so. Most people don't have Gaf standard GPU's, and will attempt to run any 'free' game on whatever piece of shit toaster they have. I know this because I did. The most commons GPU's are onboard intel HD's. So not even dedicated.

The most common GPU on steam is a 970.

 

[Movalpolos]

because piracy isn't stealing
its that simple

So, it's only stealing if something physical is stolen?
I'm genuinely curious as to what you mean by this comment.

 

[JohnnyWestlake]

Hey Mr. Blow.

1 pirated != 1 sale lost.

1 pirated != 0 sale lost

 

[SRTtoZ]

I won't lie the $40 price tag has pushed me away until a sale or until hype overcomes me but Pirating still sucks. Luckily people pirate to pirate regardless of price. I mean Louis CK was releasing his specials for 5 fucking bucks and you could download them as any times as you wanted and could share it with friends but he asked 'please don't pirate it'. In the end it was heavily pirated even though it was only 5 bucks and all the money went to him, no middlemen, no Ticketmaster.

 

[Sylas]

So you were the problem?

Hell yeah I was. 10 years ago when I had a very small income and still wanted to play games. It's not justifying piracy, but y'know.

 

[TheBryanJZX90]

Though piracy absolutely sucks, I can't help but wonder what Blow was expecting after going radio silent for 3 years and suddenly dropping a $40 price tag on us.

He clearly could've done a better job communicating exactly what his game is if even tons of people on GAF still think it looks like some $20 puzzle game.

Such a bullshit excuse. If I think something isn't worth the asking price I don't have the right to get it for free.

 

[Koh]

Whether a pirated copy would have been a sale or not is only one aspect. If I was a creator, I wouldn't want people to steal my product even if they never were going to pay me.

Just because you never would have given me a dollar doesn't mean you are in a gray area for consuming my product without paying.

I think it's fair to complain about it as a developer. I think it's right to complain about it. As a paying customer, if the dev was apathetic to people stealing what I paid for, I'd be frustrated.

 

[EventHorizon]

No. Demos have historically hurt sales of games. Not sure of the official reasons, but some games don't demo well. It's hard to tell if The Witness would or wouldn't have demo'd well or even how to get across what it does in a simple demo.

I'm also pointing out the issue with your logic on "mainstream audiences" not being interested in the game because (if the numbers are to be believed) a large number of people have pirated the game to play it because these people feel that either $40 is too much for a game about puzzles and/or just pirate everything because that's what they find acceptable.

In my own opinion, the game is not just about puzzles and is worth more than the initial asking price and I've only played it for about 12 hours. This whole "piracy" deal might be in a different place if maybe it was better explained to people, but it's not the easiest game to explain without experiencing or straight up spoiling the experience. Is that a fault of Blow himself? Maybe, but there's always hope that word of mouth and legitimate reviews of the game help sell people on it. I know the reviews earlier in the week were what pushed me from not buying to picking it up day 1.

Demos hurt games that aren't very good. They also don't help well established games that have a following that would likely buy the next game in a series on the release date. Where demos can help is with great games that aren't well known. And of course every free-to-play game is the equivalent of a game with a demo so there are a lot of current examples there of demos working. The best example of a demo working that I can think of is the original Battlefield 1942. That game blew up and launched the franchise on the strength of its demo alone.

I have little insight on why people are pirating the game. I can only say that I don't value The Witness at $40. Reviews aren't going to help either because I'm going to deduct points from any review I read because it is a puzzle game and I generally don't like that genre. There are plenty of games out there that other people love that I can't be bothered with. I'm sure you feel the same. We all adjust any reviews we come across based on our general expectations for the genre of the game. That's why for me The Witness would pretty much need glowing reviews and a free demo before I ever gave it a chance.

 

[Sethista]

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?

I dont understand this point at all, I dont even know why would you make that comparison?

He worked on a game for 5 years. THe game is good and full of content. He deserves to receive compensation for that, based on the quality of what he created.

Anything else is stealing. I dont care if he makes 1 million or 100, it makes no difference. If he makes more, its because the value of what he created is high, its simple.

 

[rezuth]

I think he kinda priced himself out of a lot of initial sales, I imagine it will pick up a lot when it goes on sale.

 

[Coffee Dog]

So, it's only stealing if something physical is stolen?
I'm genuinely curious as to what you mean by this comment.

that is the definition of stealing, yes

It's copying and copyright infringement.

 

[Resident_UA]

Is it weird that this thread made me think that piracy is an option for this? I want to play the game but $40 is way too much for me. I'm still going to wait for it to drop in price, but I'm not sure why developers keep reminding me that pirating is an option.

 

[Hasphat'sAnts]

I hate the 1 pirated copy != 1 lost sale argument.

That's absolutely true, but 1 pirated copy is definitely more than 0 lost sales.

So even if you think 9 out of 10 pirates wouldn't have paid for the game anyway, the remaining 10% still count for a lot.

2 million pirated copieswould equate to 200,000 lost sales x $40 = $8MM in revenue.

That's a hefty chunk of change.

 

[Folstern]

Now that we've heard what Jo Blow thinks, Tom, Dick and Harry need to chime in.

 

[Portugeezer]

I'm saying that if lets plays didn't exist, you might have just bought the game instead. It denies jon blow potential revenue in the same way piracy does.

Citation needed.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

When piracy is gone (because of harder to crack things like Denuvo and etc), just watch as Let's Plays turn into the next boogeyman.

Don't forget used games.

I've had developers tell me outright "I'd rather you pirate my game than buy it used."

 

[Mass_Pincup]

So, it's only stealing if something physical is stolen?
I'm genuinely curious as to what you mean by this comment.

It's technically not stealing since it's just a copy of something unlike taking a physical product which prevent it from being sold.

It's semantics though.