Demigod: 18,000 sales, 100,000 pirates

[Jean-Luc]

http://kotaku.com/5215528/demigod-18000-customers-100000-pirates

Jesus God.

It's statistics like these that make me reconsider my thoughts about piracy.

[LlamaMaster]

Hopefully a lot of those pirates just torrented it to test out the game. Games are one thing people should not pirate. If the game is good, they deserve our money. I bought the Orange Box immediately after playing Portal.

Edit: Also what goat said.

[InnerGoat]

Even with those numbers, most of the pirates would have never bought it anyways.


er I mean BLOODY PIRATES KILLING MY GAME COMPANIES :ohdear:

[Jean-Luc]

Hopefully a lot of those pirates just torrented it to test out the game. Games are one thing people should not pirate. If the game is good, they deserve our money. I bought the Orange Box immediately after playing Portal.

But music/books/movies are okay? So not following your logic here. Myself, I just work on the philosophy "If I like it, I buy it, if I don't, then I saved myself some money."

[LlamaMaster]

But music/books/movies are okay? So not following your logic here.
The majority of music is generic garbage, and people will see movies in theaters. If something is REALLY GOOD, then they deserve it.

Also, my logic doesn't mean everybody's logic.

[rossmum]

Even with those numbers, most of the pirates would have never bought it anyways.


er I mean BLOODY PIRATES KILLING MY GAME COMPANIES :ohdear:
This is a good point, really, although no doubt plenty of them are simply cheapskates.

[Jean-Luc]

The majority of music is generic garbage, and people will see movies in theaters. If something is REALLY GOOD, then they deserve it.
I completely understand what you're saying, however music and movies have one thing that PC games don't. Rentals/previews. Legal websites such as www.imeem.com allow people to listen to whatever music they want, and if you want to buy it, they provide links. Movies, you can rent em from Netflix for cheap, and if you like it, you can purchase it.

PC games don't have a rental service, and a massive amount of said PC games do not have demos. Therefore, it is much more difficult to justify spending $50 on a PC game you know nothing about outside reviews, when there is no legal way to try it out.

[Heathen]

I mean really, online play is what kills most downloaded games. Which is why I only kept my downloaded version of h2v for about a week.

It was in fact garbage so I returned it. By deleting it.

[flibitijibibo]

What Heathen said. Not about H2V specifically, but about most products in general. The reason there are so few customers is because the pirates aren't buying it, and the pirates aren't buying it because the game is terrible. I, for the billionth time, will refer you to Valve. I don't need to explain further at this point.

[MetKiller Joe]

People won't pay for something they can get for free. Sorry, that is human nature, greatest benefit for the least work.

They need to find a way to capitalize on those 100,000s; the numbers will only get bigger. The person who figures out a system will be very wealthy.

[Sel]

Wait, so they decide to fill their products with shit that turns off people from buying the game, because more people pirate it than buy it?

ok I get it

[ICEE]

People won't pay for something they can get for free. Sorry, that is human nature, greatest benefit for the least work.

They need to find a way to capitalize on those 100,000s; the numbers will only get bigger. The person who figures out a system will be very wealthy.

^ this. Or, they need to find an efficient way to prevent pirating. But then, if man can make it man can break it. There will always be pirating, they just need to figure out a way to slow them down. such as releasing it on console...

[Jean-Luc]

such as releasing it on console...

Right, lets just kill PC gaming altogether :nsmug:

[Cortexian]

Pirate stuff to try it out, if it has any replay value or awesome multiplayer then you fork out the money for it. Nothings worse than trying a demo and then finding out that the demo was the greatest part of the game...

[MetKiller Joe]

^ this. Or, they need to find an efficient way to prevent pirating. But then, if man can make it man can break it. There will always be pirating, they just need to figure out a way to slow them down. such as releasing it on console...

If there is internet, or any convenient way of distributing media, it will happen. They cannot prevent it.

Keys have been broken.

CD required games have gotten their executable hacked.

DRM has been hacked, and when it isn't, it just pisses off customers (Spore).

With the amount of money these companies spend on systems that either screw over their customers or piss them off that don't work most of the time anyway, they could use that money try something else that address piracy for the long term.

I watch south park all the time. For free. They have a free player on the web at southparkstudios.com. They have ads just like on TV, but they are completely free.

[Mr Buckshot]

Pirate stuff to try it out, if it has any replay value or awesome multiplayer then you fork out the money for it. Nothings worse than trying a demo and then finding out that the demo was the greatest part of the game...

You can read multiple professional reviews (Gamespot, IGN, etc), and watch gameplay videos on Youtube. Granted, it's never the same as actually playing the real game, but at least you get a good idea of what doesn't work properly, how demanding the game is on your PC, whether the weapons are cool or not, etc. I know these reviews can be biased but they're pretty reliable when it comes to technical facts, and watching the gameplay videos can reveal the other side of the argument too.

e.g. I did not buy GTA4 for PC because I read enough reviews and saw enough Youtube videos to know that it just wasn't ported well and basically the console version would be a better buy. Didn't have to torrent it or anything to make my decision.

[sdavis117]

How about you stick ads in games (as many as you can without getting in the way of the player actually playing the game, like maybe ads on Menus and maybe ads on Billboards in the game if the game has an atmosphere where that would work), and then release the games for free? Problem solved. The companies make ad revenue, especially if the ad spaces are rented, and not bought, and the players get free games.

[Cortexian]

You can read multiple professional reviews (Gamespot, IGN, etc), and watch gameplay videos on Youtube. Granted, it's never the same as actually playing the real game, but at least you get a good idea of what doesn't work properly, how demanding the game is on your PC, whether the weapons are cool or not, etc. I know these reviews can be biased but they're pretty reliable when it comes to technical facts, and watching the gameplay videos can reveal the other side of the argument too.

e.g. I did not buy GTA4 for PC because I read enough reviews and saw enough Youtube videos to know that it just wasn't ported well and basically the console version would be a better buy. Didn't have to torrent it or anything to make my decision.
A lot of reviews gave Assassins Creed a horrible review. I liked it.

In situations where you're not sure, playing it yourself is the way to do it.

@sdavis:
You haven't played many EA games have you? Ads are fucking everywhere... :/

[sdavis117]

You haven't played many EA games have you? Ads are fucking everywhere... :/

Most EA game ads are mainly for their own games. There are some for products and movies not made by EA, but all the ads in non-racing EA games are hard to find. I have played 2142 alot now, and I have not seen one ingame ad. I can't imagine EA gets much revenue by advertising that way.

Now if EA got really serious about advertising, then they would have almost no ads for their own games, and the menus would have ads. They would still not get in the way of someone playing the game, but they would be seen by the player more. I can see serious money being made this way, with more players playing the game because it is free.

[rossmum]

I completely understand what you're saying, however music and movies have one thing that PC games don't. Rentals/previews. Legal websites such as www.imeem.com (http://www.imeem.com) allow people to listen to whatever music they want, and if you want to buy it, they provide links. Movies, you can rent em from Netflix for cheap, and if you like it, you can purchase it.

PC games don't have a rental service, and a massive amount of said PC games do not have demos. Therefore, it is much more difficult to justify spending $50 on a PC game you know nothing about outside reviews, when there is no legal way to try it out.
Unfortunately even those which do have demos may turn out completely differently, for the better or for worse. As Freelancer pointed out, a demo is usually taken from either the best part of a game, or the climax of the game (often by no means the same thing).


People won't pay for something they can get for free. Sorry, that is human nature, greatest benefit for the least work.

They need to find a way to capitalize on those 100,000s; the numbers will only get bigger. The person who figures out a system will be very wealthy.
I know that humanity sucks and all, but even I'm not cynical to assume each and every person will just freeload if they can. If I want something, I'll buy it (unless it's a song/album a friend has, which I think is fair enough).

Regarding advertising ingame... in some games it'd work, in others it would be really, really out of place. For instance, I don't want to be fighting my way up the Königsplatz only to see ads for Coke and what have you randomly materialising amongst the ruins, but in a game like basically all the skating games, Mirror's Edge, superhero games, and probably even L4D, it'd fit into the environment smoothly. While GTA might seem another obvious choice, GTA is so intent on taking the absolute piss out of everything that a) the ads would be out of place and b) nobody would take them seriously.

Menu ads could be an issue, too. Starting a game only to find the menu screens plastered in advertising strikes me as a really annoying experience. Perhaps have a couple of short ones in the loading intro where the developer's stuff usually goes, but not intruding into the menu unless it's somehow integrated really well.

[=sw=warlord]

If companies were so determined to stop piracy, they would look into more advanced phycial tech instead of software tech.
For instance they could develop a cheap USB drive to store the games data from but also have a check system like the RSA used on the xbox 360.

[Limited]

Step 1 to reduce piracy? Cut all taxes on video games, movies and songs (specifically cd's).

That will cut the price of the items, which hopefully will start people buying.

[Donut]

but shit like has always cost alot of money. more so before than now it would seem. when final fantasy 6 first came out on the SNES (was released as FF3 in america, but was actually 6), people were paying $80 american for it.

lets put this in perspective. around 2004, how much were games when they first came out? usually around 40 - 50 dollars. last summer i picked up a copy of COD4. it had been out for some time at that point, and i still paid $55 for it. now games are coming out for around $60. final fantasy 13 is supposed to come out in america sometime soon. how much do you think that is going to cost? and how good is it going to be?

[JunkfoodMan]

make games £20 or less. Cut production costs. Stop releasing half-assed ports, sequels and what not. Release the game everywhere it can be released at the same time. Release the game on all platforms it was meant to be released on at the same time. Give the game content, instead of giving it 8 hours or less worth of play time and offering the rest as DLC (Mirror's Edge, RE5, etc.). Give the game some actual substance. Make the game worth playing. make an original game. Use an effective DRM system such as steam.

The list could go on. These are ways to reduce piracy.

E: Maybe £20 was too over zealous. £30 would be better.

[jngrow]

They they wouldn't have bought it anyway is a valid point, but I don't think the "if they like it they will buy it" is. Even if a measly 10% of the pirates enjoy the game, I willing to bet money that less than 10% of those who liked it would have bought it. The majority of the 10,000 people who enjoy the game (in my example) will continue to enjoy the game, for free. There's no way to cut this, you can't deny that a significant amount of sales (percentage wise) were lost on this game to piracy.

[Phopojijo]

Step 1 to reduce piracy? Cut all taxes on video games, movies and songs (specifically cd's).

That will cut the price of the items, which hopefully will start people buying.No the RIAA/whoever will just raise their prices to compensate.

They didn't drop it when LPs and Cassettes switched to CDs... in fact they raised it.

[Bodzilla]

my dad said it best.

"These record company's have been fucking over and squeezing people for their money both Artist and consumer for over 100 years.
Fuck them."