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[mStudios]

A lot of people are missing the point that the game might not be interesting.

I support almost all indie games, but I haven't bought Witness yet for two factors:

Can't pay 40usd for it.
Not my type of game.

I don't think the witness is a mainstream game that was going to move millions of copy the first month.

 

[KHlover]

The most common GPU on steam is a 970.

No, the most common singular GPU model is a 970. Still only like 4%. Add all integrated GPU together and those are the majority.

 

[cpp_is_king]

.

 

[Already Torn]

Did he need to make some special justification? He thinks the quality of his game is worth that price. Given the reviews, it seems they agreed with him.

Reviews don't usually consider price from what I've seen.

 

[lynux3]

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.

Well I'm super glad you're not anymore and I encourage everyone to support the industry we all love.

 

[Coffee Dog]

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.

but does your example have any more logical basis than saying that the piracy spreads good word of mouth and helps sales?

It doesn't, does it?

 

[daveo42]

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.

It depends. Some Let's Plays actually help boost sales for games because it gets the word out and show people what a game is about without needing to sink time into a demo or outright by the game. It's a visual word of mouth that actually might be good for this game. Sure, some people will just watch the whole thing on YT, but it does help push on the fence gamers into purchases.

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

Can't copyright ones and zeros so you can't steal them. Heyoooo!

 

[GhaleonEB]

Well said.

Well, not really. The Witness was priced what it was because it cost a lot of money to make. Given the kind of game it is, pricing it lower would increase the chances of not making his money back, while not really deterring piracy because people who do that will find any kind of justification to do so, which was the entire point of the post he responded to. The price just provides them with an excuse.

The implied solution to come from that train of thought is to just not make games like this since they cost a lot to make and people will pirate it when you ask a reasonable price. The solution is to cave to those extremely price sensitive thieves who probably won't buy the game regardless. Which isn't actually a solution, or particularly insightful.

 

[Lanrutcon]

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.

In all seriousness: I totally agree.

But the double standard on these forums (and in general) between the two ways of keeping money out of Mr Blow's pocket is very, very real. I find it amusing that folks who would crucify someone who pirated a game they'd never buy anyway, don't have any issues with video material of said game.

 

[moggio]

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

Yes, that is the legal definition.

Piracy is copyright infringement, not theft.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

Citation needed.

There's no citation needed here. If you watch an LP instead of buying the game, the developer "loses" as much money as if you had pirated the game.

 

[LOLCats]

40$ is too much for the puzzler, but as posted, 1 pirated copy does not mean 1 lost sale.

Im sure they did that price point as that would leave them more room for sales and price drops. But for me it was too steep, I'll wait till 10$ on PS4 likely.

 

[SpiceMelange]

Wow people here really think there's no correlation between price and piracy rate?

 

[JohnnyWestlake]

that is the definition of stealing, yes

It's copying and copyright infringement.

Some official definitions of stealing:

: to take (something that you are not supposed to have) without asking for permission
: to wrongly take and use (another person's idea, words, etc.)

Piracy?

(What the legal system says will differ on a country by country basis, although, morally...)

 

[SeeNoWeevil]

This thread is depressing as fuck. Why people feel so compelled to make excuses for pirates is utterly beyond me.

 

[Coffee Dog]

It depends. Some Let's Plays actually help boost sales for games because it gets the word out and show people what a game is about without needing to sink time into a demo or outright by the game. It's a visual word of mouth that actually might be good for this game. Sure, some people will just watch the whole thing on YT, but it does help push on the fence gamers into purchases.

So...by allowing people to experience it without paying for it, it can spread positive word of mouth?

Like piracy?

 

[cpp_is_king]

The irony is that PC gamers are killing their own platform. No going back once devs stop producing for it entirely. Oh wells, right?

 

[outunderthestars]

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.

I can't believe he let the project sprawl to the point of having that much of a budget. I just don't see there being any way for it to recoup that kind of money. I don't think that there just is that much of a market for a puzzle game of that size and scope.

 

[Mass_Pincup]

This thread is depressing as fuck. Why people feel so compelled to make excuses for pirates is utterly beyond me.

Who is doing that?

The irony is that PC gamers are killing their own platform. No going back once devs stop producing for it entirely. Oh wells, right?

Piracy is not a brand new thing, you're acting like developers just discovered piracy.

Just so you know piracy also exist on consoles and handheld.

 

[jmga]

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.

I'm still waiting for a study that shows a relationship between piracy and sales.

 

[Vincent Alexander]

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.

This post can't be quoted enough. Someone give this person a fucking medal because they nailed the shit out of this whole thing.

 

[entremet]

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.

And what?

So Blow can't express his frustrations therein? Very strange line of reasoning here.

He should just shut up and accept it?

That's easy to say from your point of view, not that of someone who has put real creative and financial investments making the game.

It's a tweet, not an OP-ED on the dynamics of piracy in the PC market.

He's blowing off some steam.

Strange that people can't see this.

 

[Ampsicora]

The funny thing about this topic with all this bashing about PC is, Jonathan Blow appear "happy" with the Steam Numbers and he said the PS4 copies are "comparable" to how much it sold on Steam

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/693115863700877312

 

[Sylas]

Yes, that is the legal definition.

Piracy is copyright infringement, not theft.

To add onto that...

The implied difference between the two is that "stealing" involves a physical good that somehow prevents a paying customer from having access to it. If I steal a pair of shoes, someone else cannot buy that same pair of shoes.

With a digital product, you pirating it does not stop someone else from purchasing it.

 

[SentryDown]

The price is pretty high tbh, I will personnally wait for sales to buy it because I don't pirate games but most people aren't patient.

 

[Gojeran]

because piracy isn't stealing
its that simple

How exactly is it not stealing? If I go to a store and can't buy milk and take it from the store that is stealing as I understand the term. But if you can't afford or don't want to buy a game but download it illegally then it's not stealing? How? Is it because there is no actual physical item being taken? If that is the reason then apparently nothing entirely digital has any value whatsoever then and that's not an idea I can wrap my mind around. I don't buy a blu Ray disc with a game on it because I value the disc itself (which likely costs pennies to produce) I buy it because I value the digital information it contains.

 

[GhostOfSparta305]

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.

Uh. I agree with you. See my first sentence.

But pirates gonna pirate. Shaming them after the fact won't stop them, but taking proper preemptive measures can.

 

[Resident_UA]

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.

How do you know it's 9 out of 10 not 9 out of 1000?

 

[Hasphat'sAnts]

but does your example have any more logical basis than saying that the piracy spreads good word of mouth and helps sales?

It doesn't, does it?

I'm sure some consultants have already done the math, and judging by publisher stances on piracy, I will say it has absolutely more merit than what you're claiming.

How do you know it's 9 out of 10 not 9 out of 1000?

I'm gonna assume you just messed up the math and wanted to say it's 999 out of 1000. In which case I'll just say that if people's willingness to buy games is normally distributed, that would be highly highly highly unlikely.

 

[hydragonwarrior]

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

I know it's explained ad nauseum, but how is it not? The guy has a copy he didn't pay for, and it's at the mercy of said person whether he then proceeds to purchase the actual game. Especially when it comes to someone who has issues with money, they are more than likely not going to purchase the game. Hence a lost sale.

And there ARE a lot of poor gamers out there (and it gets more so looking outside of N/A and Europe)

 

[Coffee Dog]

Some official definitions of stealing:

: to take (something that you are not supposed to have) without asking for permission
: to wrongly take and use (another person's idea, words, etc.)

Piracy?

This is entirely semantics, but no, because with piracy nothing is taken. It's copied. Taken means to remove the original.

 

[Hzoltan69]

I don't think piracy is a serious threat to his revenue.
As some people already pointed out, the great majority of those people wouldn't have bought the game in any case. Some of them will treat it as a demo and still buy it if they like it.

Also, as a PC player, it always annoys me when they make such a big deal of a few pirated copies, when I'm pretty certain that the second hand market for retail console games hurts the bottom line a lot more. (Please note that I'm not talking about the moral side of the issue, just the financial side!)

 

[moggio]

The irony is that PC gamers are killing their own platform. No going back once devs stop producing for it entirely. Oh wells, right?

Yeah, Firaxis are going to be gutted at their decision to go PC only with X-Com 2 when they only sell a pitiful few million copies of their game.

Bloody pirates!

 

[SparkTR]

The irony is that PC gamers are killing their own platform. No going back once devs stop producing for it entirely. Oh wells, right?

As long as sales and revenue remain as they are developer aren't going anywhere. Publishers and developer should focus more on protecting their revenue stream now as the PC is more important to their bottom line than it was 5-10 years ago.

 

[Already Torn]

This thread is depressing as fuck. Why people feel so compelled to make excuses for pirates is utterly beyond me.

I'm more confused at the people who just start calling everyone thieves and scumbags instead of trying to find out why piracy may be particularly bad in the case of The Witness.

 

[Coffee Dog]

I'm sure some consultants have already done the math, and judging by publisher stances on piracy, I will say it has absolutely more merit than what you're claiming.

lmao

appeals to authority are one thing, but appealing to the sense of games publishers specifically is downright ridiculous

 

[KingBroly]

I think they should've had a pre-order/week 1 sale incentive for The Witness, tbh. For me, $40 is too much for a Puzzle game. It might be open world, but I have tons of puzzle games that I simply just don't care to finish after a while.

While I can understand him being upset at the lack of sales it's apparently getting, I don't think going out there and saying 'don't pirate my game please' is going to help matters much.

 

[Lulubop]

The irony is that PC gamers are killing their own platform. No going back once devs stop producing for it entirely. Oh wells, right?

So it's dying again? I thought it was dead? But then it came back? Now it's dying I guess tho.

Lmao.

 

[Sylas]

The irony is that PC gamers are killing their own platform. No going back once devs stop producing for it entirely. Oh wells, right?

The irony is that PC sales are strong and getting stronger.

What?

 

[daveo42]

So...by allowing people to experience it without paying for it, it can spread positive word of mouth?

Like piracy?

No, because (hopefully) the person playing the game actually bought the game. At the same time, watching a Let's Play doesn't really let the viewer experience the game in the same way that pirating the game would. You are literally watching another person play. By this reasoning, if my friend watched me play, for instance, TLoU, that's just as bad as piracy because he didn't buy the game.

The main distinction is between actually playing and experiencing a game vs just watching what someone else does on a screen. There isn't a 1:1 correlation there like you so seem to believe.

 

[-MD-]

The irony is that PC gamers are killing their own platform. No going back once devs stop producing for it entirely. Oh wells, right?

You should've sat on this one for a minute or two before posting.

 

[lynux3]

The funny thing about this topic with all this bashing about PC is, Jonathan Blow appear "happy" with the Steam Numbers and he said the PS4 copies are "comparable" to how much it sold on Steam

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/693115863700877312

It's all over, guys. This makes it okay to continue to steal because an out of context quote from Mr. blow.

 

[marvelharvey]

Just as another data point:

For the last game I released, 5% of the initial installs were legitimate purchases and the remaining 95% pirate copies. However, of those 95%, less than half completed the tutorial. And of those, only a small fraction actually played the game in any meaningful manner. By chapter 2, legitimate players outnumbered pirates.

A couple of months after the initial release, I updated with plenty of extra free content and my own DRM... which was cracked 3 weeks later. During those 3 weeks, my game saw a minor 2% increase in sales (which could be due to my DRM or could just be random) and once cracked, no noticeable decrease in sales.

While this is for my own niche software and isn't really applicable to others', it certainly made me realise that wasting my time/money on preventing piracy wasn't worth it. Only a small number of pirates seemed to have been people who may have turned into legitimate customers.

 

[Corronchilejano]

The irony is that PC gamers are killing their own platform. No going back once devs stop producing for it entirely. Oh wells, right?

PC gaming is like a Jedi Master. Strike it down and it comes back more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

 

[Steel]

The irony is that PC gamers are killing their own platform. No going back once devs stop producing for it entirely. Oh wells, right?

You're kidding right? Even in this case, the game is selling no more on consoles:

Well, the good news is that it's still selling despite it.

And these types of games tend to sell more on PC anyway, like the Talos Principle.

 

[RiccochetJ]

That sucks. Hopefully some people who pirated the game will purchase it later on down the line. I've seen people say that they're going to, but I wonder how many actually ever follow through with it.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

How exactly is it not stealing? If I go to a store and can't buy milk and take it from the store that is stealing as I understand the term. But if you can't afford or don't want to buy a game but download it illegally then it's not stealing? How? Is it because there is no actual physical item being taken? If that is the reason then apparently nothing entirely digital has any value whatsoever then and that's not an idea I can wrap my mind around. I don't buy a blu Ray disc with a game on it because I value the disc itself (which likely costs pennies to produce) I buy it because I value the digital information it contains.

It's copyright infringement. Digital does indeed have much less value since you're just buying a license.

 

[Sylas]

Just as another data point:

For the last game I released, 5% of the initial installs were legitimate purchases and the remaining 95% pirate copies. However, of those 95%, less than half completed the tutorial. And of those, only a small fraction actually played the game in any meaningful manner. By chapter 2, legitimate players outnumbered pirates.

A couple of months after the initial release, I updated with plenty of extra free content and my own DRM... which was cracked 3 weeks later. During those 3 weeks, my game saw a minor 2% increase in sales (which could be due to my DRM or could just be random) and once cracked, no noticeable decrease in sales.

While this is for my own niche software and isn't really applicable to others', it certainly made me realise that wasting my time/money on preventing piracy wasn't worth it. Only a small number of pirates seemed to have been people who may have turned into legitimate customers.

Thanks for this! I'm curious--how do you track the number of pirated copies and how far they get into the game?

 

[Coffee Dog]

No, because (hopefully) the person playing the game actually bought the game. At the same time, watching a Let's Play doesn't really let the viewer experience the game in the same way that pirating the game would. You are literally watching another person play. By this reasoning, if my friend watched me play, for instance, TLoU, that's just as bad as piracy because he didn't buy the game.

The main distinction is between actually playing and experiencing a game vs just watching what someone else does on a screen. There isn't a 1:1 correlation there like you so seem to believe.

The thing is that for some people, watching it is good enough. If your friend watched you play TLOU and determined that he no longer needed to buy the game, that is a lost potential sale. If he wasn't able to experience the game in that way, he may have bought it.

And prevention of lost potential sales is the entire discussion.

 

[EventHorizon]

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

I'm pretty optimistic about future tech but I think 3D printing is way overrated at the consumer level. There will be some overpriced parts that will get undercut by 3D printing, but for the vast majority of items it would be far cheaper and quicker to simply order whatever you want and have it delivered to you by some autonomous drone in hours.

Remember that anything that you could 3D print an industrial 3D printer could do too, except it would have all the materials on hand and would be optimized to make that item while your generic home 3D printer would be a jack of all trades and master of none.