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.
I'm not defending the action itself, but the assertion that the price of the game and the uncertainty of what the game actually is or how it plays should somehow divorce it from its rate of piracy or apparently less-than-expected sales that I'm seeing in this thread is a huge act of willing ignorance or intellectual dishonesty.
Yes, people with the means to do so are going to pirate this game, and they're assholes for it. No one is arguing that. It's the same thing that we say when someone murders someone. Yes, it's obviously wrong that this occurred. That's white noise in the debate and doesn't have to be asserted because we already understand it to be the case.
But when we look at systemic crimes, we have to look at systemic causes. My analogy to Chicago Heights isn't an unjust one for this debate, I don't think. Of course, every individual instance of murder is wrong. That's obvious. But why is there so much murder in that specific area? You've got generations worth of people that have been under-educated and represented, with chunks of the surrounding areas with 50%+ poverty rates. We can, in part, attribute some of the violence to the effects of generational poverty and poor education, and the causes of those. No one should gawk at that kind of idea.
Similarly, of course the individual instances of piracy of The Witness are wrong. That's obvious and doesn't need to be stated and cannot be defended. What we need to figure out is why is it performing below expectations, and why is it being pirated so much relative to its sales? So much so that Jonathan Blow is discouraged?
If we accept that things such as Let's Plays do not truly convey the quality of the game or the sensation of playing the game, and that the game is functionally different enough of an experience to be comparable to other games, we then cannot assert the quality of the game itself as a defense of the game in the case of piracy. The pirate, in this case, by definition, cannot know what it is like to play the game without playing it.
What we have here, is a game by a developer with a single title under their belt, that received good reviews. Their next game, while similar in genre, is entirely different in scope, presentation and mechanics. It is also exorbitantly higher priced than other titles that have been developed in a similar manner. There was already a great deal of consumer skepticism, and it is only exacerbated by the price point. It's some 267% more than Braid was back in the day. When you have a title that is unlike anything else, from a developer that has only ever developed one project, that is being billed at such a high price point, of course people are going to figure out alternative ways to experience the product for as little money as possible.
I'd be interested to see how often the game is being refunded on Steam. I think that'd be a valid measurement of how well the game is doing. If people are purchasing the game and keeping it, that's a good sign. If people are returning it in high numbers, it's a sign that consumer were skeptical and weren't impressed, or didn't think that the price point was justified.
Of course, this isn't a defense of the act of pirating the game, but an explanation as to why the rate of piracy for The Witness is so disproportionately high.
I'll toss in another analogy for the road: Let's assume the first game From Software ever made was Armored Core 2: Another Age. It was well reviewed and everyone loved it. It was new and revolutionary and came from a small developer just getting off their feet. Then they released nothing in the interim between 2001 and 2011, and with E3 2011 we hear about Dark Souls, and see some trailers. It looks amazing. Everyone is excited, but cautious. No one has done something like this before, and some people lack confidence in this new game. Then the bombshell drops that Dark Souls will retail for $160 USD. Would you be surprised if it was disproportionately highly pirated?
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.
Quit being purposefully daft.
