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90 percent of World of Goo installs are pirated
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 14th November 2008
World of Goo shipped without any DRM at all, but apparently that has made no difference to piracy figures.
Naturally, two thoughts run through our head. First, what did they expect for not putting any DRM at all on the game and distributing digitally? Second, how did they come to that figure? Thankfully, the 2D Boy blog explains.
According to the team, the figures were gained by looking at automatic uploads of online scores and recording which IP those scores came from. The number of unique IPs is then divided by the number of sales, resulting in a 90 percent piracy rate. The team admits that this method neglects to take dynamic IPs or multiple legit installs into account, but reckons it must roughly balance out with those who have multiple pirate copies behind a firewall or who disable online scores.
What's super interesting though is that the team at 2D Boy compared their piracy rates to a similar indie game called Richochet Infinity which had used a similar method to estimate piracy. Other than the games themselves the only real difference was that while World of Goo is totally DRM-free owing to the teams belief that DRM only hurts consumers, the second game was not. The result?
"Ricochet Infinity shipped with DRM, World of Goo shipped without it, and there seems to be no difference in the outcomes," says 2D Boy's Ron Carmel, who also points out that effort used to prevent 1000 piracy attempts of a game will only result in a single additional sale.
"We can’t draw any conclusions based on two data points, but we're hoping that others will release information about piracy rates so that everyone could see if DRM is the waste of time and money that we think it is."
We hope so too, Ron. We hope so too. Tell us your thoughts about game piracy in the forums.
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For this to happen to such a great game is really disappointing.
I can't help but think what utter *******s wouldn't reach in to their pockets for £10.
But people will still pirate by work of mouth, or at LAN get togethers.
As to DRM, my view is that it may frustrate some would-be pirates, but (a) not for long, because someone will crack it anyway, and (b) they probably won't then go out and buy it just because they can't get a free pirate download. I hope 2D Boy isn't so naive as to believe, just because there are 9 pirate copies for every legitimate one, that if they had a foolproof piracy prevention scheme, they would have made 10x as many sales.
You also put off would-be buyers, who can't be bothered with the activation malarkey or get really annoyed because they upgrade their PC and then find the game no longer works, so they then steer clear of games with DRM in future and games from that publisher in particular. Ironically, with sufficiently draconian DRM, it can get to the point where a pirate copy is actually PREFERABLE to a genuine original, because the pirates will have removed the DRM so it can be used without restriction. I have read (on these very forums no less) of people who buy a game to support the developer and assuage the guilt of piracy, leave it in the cellophane, then download a cracked copy because it avoids the hassles of activation or needing to insert the DVD every time they play.
Finally, developers lose potential sales which could have been achieved by someone downloading a pirate copy to try it out, then deciding they like it enough to buy the real thing to support the dev. I know this is a tiny minority of pirate copies, but nevertheless.
In all, given that DRM can be a real annoyance to legitimate customers and is at best a minor impediment to pirates, it is difficult to accept that developers benefit their businesses by buying in or developing DRM for their software.
Stupidity, ignorance, human nature ?
Add to that, if you could "kill" bit-torrent, for example by legislating that all ISPs have to block bit-torrent traffic, other methods of online piracy would quickly arise, be it Usenet, HTTP hosts like rapidshare, FTP, a modified bit-torrent which worked around the blocks, or something altogether new.
The only way to "beat" piracy is by making software which is good enough to justify the price you expect people to pay for it. If it is, and if you can get your software on people's radar (e.g. by making a decent demo), then you will make sales. Yes, people will still pirate it, but so what? The great majority of those people probably wouldn't have bought it otherwise.
DRM really is just a waste of time and money anyway. It doesn't do anything other than annoy legitimate buyers and it's always cracked anyway.
Piracy happens, devs need to get over it, it's not lost sales or anything like that considering the majority of people who pirate a game wouldn't have bought it in the first place.
I frequently download games, and if I like it, I'll go out and buy it, if not, I'll delete it. Some might say, why not just download them demo? Well as you know a demo isn't always an accurate representation of how the final game is.
As for people saying 'pirates are cheap', I've bought more games than ever this last year. I've bought around 50 PC games, 28 PS3 games, 12 Wii games and about 26 Bluray movies.
If I download something, then don't buy it, I wouldn't have bought it in the first place, and at the end of the day, I'm looking out for myself when I do it like that. It's not nice to splash out on a game for full price £30-40 only to play it and realise it's utter crap, yet there's not much chance you'll get a refund.
edit: they came to the conclusion that DRM does nothing to protect you IP... as everyone and their dog knows and has known since this idiocy started.
I think the police need to step up a gear and start arresting people for it on the same basis as shop lifting, then giving out a criminal record and fine/jail time.
Now that would reduce it if the police were pro-active in their relentless persecution of such thieves ! (you know... like they are with motorists who speed!!!)
You for real ? !
Thats like saying if you make it out of the shop without being caught ... its not stealing as somebody obviously put some free stuff there just for you to sample.. and that you will pop back later and pay if you like the stuff you 'stole'.
Not everyone treats downloads as 'try before you buy'. In fact I think you are in the 0.1% minority who do.
If the developers wanted to release a try before you buy version of their product, then they would. Its not for you to take that liberty regardless. Doing so makes you a thief, plain and simple.
Pirates will always try and justify their crimes, but once you cut through the *crap* excuses, a court of law would always find them guilty of theft.. no matter how they justify it.
A court of law will NEVER find them guilty of theft EVER. Its copy right infringement which is very different offense to theft. Theft involves denying some one access to the material stolen ie a physical disk from a physical shop.
This has had the effect (its not just EA but many games companies) that the quality of games is less in many ways. Do you really want to pay £35 for a game that is utter crap? I love the C&C franchise and have every single game but after the disaster that was C&C3 / C&C3:KW I just wont bring myself to get Red Alert 3. Despite the fact my friends have got it and want to play multiplayer (well, trying to, its pretty buggy!) I won't hand over my hard earned cash.
If the games industry is concerned about piracy, then it should address the quality of it's products first. If it tries to screw over the consumers by selling shitty cut down games then fairplay to the consumer who tells them to **** right off. Having said that, I won't even pirate EA's crap, it would be a waste of valuable hard disk space.
Haven't got world of goo but was thinking about it - but don't have the cash and from the soudns of it it sounds short-lived. Since I'm so poor atm the only game I have to tide me over until christmas / january is Fallout 3 which is reassuringly good :)
Also.. they should have stuck with a Steam-only release. Audiosurf did it and it worked out fairly well for them.
lol@you
As Steveo said, it's not theft, it's copyright infringement, there's a big difference between that and theft. By your standards, taking a photograph of a famous painting and then printing it out on a large piece of paper to put up on your wall would be 'stealing' it. From what I can remember, no-one has ever gotten in to trouble for just downloading a game, only if they uploaded it, which makes sense. Cut the source and make an issue of that, don't go after the people accessing material that has been made freely available by some people.
As for you telling me no-one has told me I can 'try before I buy' on games, not all devs play by the rules you know, games have been included with what you would basically call spyware or malware, who gave them the permission to secretly install them?
You need to get out of the mind set that people who 'pirate' stuff are dirty low-lives who are intentionally trying to hurt the industry. It's something that people do, if they're gonna go after anyone, go after the ones who are making counterfeit movies/games etc. on a big sale and making money from the stuff. That's the only time when it's really a negative thing, when others are making money on some one else's products. Casual 'piracy' has existed since it was easy to copy media, and it will exist for ever more, it's just one of those things.
And why not? It's illegal because someone somewhere said it is. It's a moral issue and as such who ever can justify his/her point better and have the support of the majority will be right.
Is the pirating wrong? It's a matter of point of view.
Is there a way to stop/reduce it? Yes and it's not to force people to buy crap games but to make them want to bay [crap] games. As long as developers don't get that simple think there will be piracy.
Great comment, that's exactly how it is, they try to screw us over, then cry and whine when we don't rush out to buy their products, or blame poor sales on piracy rather than having inferior products.
This is the reason I 'try before I buy' because you can't trust that a product is worth the money they're asking, if it's good then I'll hand over the asking price, if not, they can keep their game because I wouldn't have bought it anyway.
I don't buy many games before playing them, but when I do, it's from one of the quality devs, like bethesda, I bought fallout 3 before trying it because I can trust that they're top notch on the quality. Same with valve and a few other devs, their main concern is quality, which is why it takes valve so long to get their games out, but they're always worth the wait.
If you look at the whole terrorism thing. You can never ever totally stop someone from blowing up a plane if they are determined enough. It's an ugly truth but true none the less. People want to feel safe so they try to protect themselves. We bring in laws, change rules, search everybody, grant new powers to the police,etc etc but this will only stop some of the terrorists. In the they'll find a way.
It's sort of like piracy in that regard. You can lock up your software in DRM and other rubbish but it'll be broken sooner or later. So what do you do? Do you grow up and accept that some people will steal and whilst you dont want to make it too easy, you must accept that you wont ever be able to stop them. Or do you keep on trying to stop them until you end up in a place where you've lost what you were trying to protect. In the case of terrorist attacks on planes, just ground all planes. No more planes, no more plane bombers right?! Terrible solution but a solution none the less. In the case of PC Games, just stop making games. Not just for pc as you'll always have pirated console games and emulators etc etc. In order to stop all theft of games, the only way to do it is stop making games. Who wants to go there?
Yep, DRM security is a lot similar to terrorism security. you can pour infinite funds/resources into the security but never be 100% effective.
The problem with DRM on digital media is that even 1 cracked copy = the DRM is now 100% useless, wasting all the time/money used adding the DRM in the first place
Did everyone miss that part.
I don't know about the rest of the world,but here in South Africa about 99% of home users don't have static ips as it just costs too much,so every time some one completes a level (20mins or so) and upload there scores it counts as 1 pirate copy,no wonder there figures show 90%
Harder to pirate... sooo.., the percentage would be lower. Sells and players would be lower as well... but that is small details.
Casual 'piracy' has existed since it was easy to copy media, and it will exist for ever more, it's just one of those things.[/QUOTE]
Wow... So if I were to break the lock on your front door thus allowing anyone to use your house that would be OK? After all I made it "freely available". Or if I break into your car and hot wire it so you don't need a key anymore it would then be justified for everyone else to take your car and use it?
Just becuase it's casual and or easy doesn't mean it's legal or ethical.
why the hell should we spend trillions of dollars and go after the millions of pirates for what is a small crime that causes no direct damage (and by some studies may be beneficial) when you can go after some big criminals that sell russian roulette in a needle or those other guys that have huge profits but have negative taxes.... yes, the ones that remove money from the community pot, the ones that everyone knows about...
In 95%+ of the World private Internet Connections have dynamic ip's by default and static ones cost extra. The other 5% are isps in america that give static ip's by default.
Still, higher quality games are needed. I don't mean better graphics or whatever, but just better games overall.
I wonder what rate shovelware is pirated at? It's probably lower than blockbuster games.
Even that isn't a fix though, Yarrs just have to log onto or setup their own private server and everything is free again.
for like... a day.... then something else gonna pop up. please, we've gone through this at least 4 times the last 2 decades.
as for world of goo, shame on those torrrenting them! it's a wonderful game!
That's gotta be the worst analogy I've ever heard. How do you even think a person's home security compares to the pirating of software? A product? You obviously don't understand what you're saying.
You cannot, 100% validly compare a home to computer software and actually think people are going to take you seriously.
So if you factor that in.... .... .... There is all most no piracy on this game
But legit copies would be just as likely to have dynamic IP's so as they say it would balance out...
I myself bought World of Goo, I didn't think it was really worth $20USD, but at $10USD I would recommend it to everyone.
I don't have a static IP either, but it still hasn't changed in six months. Except when you power-cycle either your modem or the router/computer attached to it, you'll usually keep the same IP indefinitely even if you're not paying for a static IP.
And I doubt that the South Africa numbers are even remotely significant compared to North America and Europe.
Not really, because the very small % of people with a static ip represent a larger than average % of Customers.
That's just so messed up.
I did not buy the game, but refused to install it illegally either (was on friend's thumb drive) due to the makers' good intentions. So atleast being DRM free had an effect on me.
Some of the big guns:
Activision 5 year share price
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=ATVI&t=5y
Electronic Arts
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=ERTS&t=5y
Ubisoft
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=UEN.MU&t=5y
+ the current recession... its either games or food, and I know which one to pick.
People say this a lot, they may even believe it, but it's not true. As an indie dev who has experimented with prices, I can assure you that if you halve the price of a game, the exact same number of people buy it. If you drop it to $5, you don't get any more sales than at $20. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the barrier is getting your wallet open. If you will buy the game for $5, you will buy it for $20 (on average, there may be some exceptions).
People think they are a LOT more price-sensitive than they actually are.
...from consoles. yes.
If they didn't make money from PC sales they wouldn't make PC games.
2nd:
Killing P2P will NOT kill 80% of piracy! UseNet, private boards and (stolen) FTPs are nowhere near that small a number.
3rd:
What was with SC and Korea? Wasn't it 10:1 (pirated:original)?
mj5IV23g-fE
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The ignorant always find ways to justify themselves.
Man, I love Harlan Ellison. He's so angry and talented. I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is one of my top three books.
No excuse in this case. World Of Goo has a very big and very good demo.
No, a better comparison would be my mate buying the game from Gamestation, then ripping the game and giving me a copy with the crack needed to play the game, that's a real life comparison, not the normal stupid one.
Its easier and less dangerous then stopping for a traffic light. You wont get hurt if you download more. If they really need to stop piracy then change the system of distribution and delivery but this is impossible.
So its back to the good old boardgames then.