Xenonauts and piracy

Just saw this on Kotaku:

http://kotaku.com/the-most-pirated-games-by-state-1621803833?utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Facebook&utm_source=Kotaku_Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow

I was surprised to see Xenonauts among them. I guess it's both unfortunate as well as a strange form of praise. I wonder how Chris feels about this.

Chris actually posted his thoughts on this subject on the Xenonauts website. Caused a bit of a stir. I'm reluctant to direct you to the thread, because I'm not keen on seeing old dragons re-awoken.

May I have the link via PM, please?

Not on this specific subject - I wrote a general article on piracy about 2 years ago or something.

Piracy is a fact of life. I'm glad that people want our game enough to pirate it, but at the same time I'd obviously rather they bought it instead. Not much else to say.

There is a surprisingly large number of "Download Xenonauts" youtube "videos" that only show an outdated screenshot and offer a link to an .exe that supposedly will download and install the game. Any bets on whether the .exe also installs some malware? People sometimes get back what they deserve.

I was always amazed how there was widespread software piracy phenomenon, then came kickstarter, something like an anti-piracy phenomenon. How marvellous.

"Like it or not, we live in interesting times" - Robert F. Kennedy

I have an ambivalent attitude towards piracy. I certainly dislike many of the anti-piracy groups more than I dislike pirates themselves. While I certainly prefer that people buy games, I am incapable of blanket blaming all pirates, or of pretending that every pirated download - or even close to it - is a lost sale. (And when it comes to the music and film publishing industry, may they all burn).

Gaming in ex-commie countries some 12-14 years ago was fun. Illegal copy of a game? Burned to a CD, easily available at the city's flea market, at or near a few major shops, and in several street kiosks. Legal copy of a game? Unless it's one of a very few games, it's probably not available anywhere in the country. No game stores exist, but a few of the biggest titles may be sold at a computer store, for a roughly a quarter of your monthly income.

I have an ambivalent attitude towards piracy. I certainly dislike many of the anti-piracy groups more than I dislike pirates themselves. While I certainly prefer that people buy games, I am incapable of blanket blaming all pirates, or of pretending that every pirated download - or even close to it - is a lost sale. (And when it comes to the music and film publishing industry, may they all burn).

Yep. And now we have the dreadded SIIA. Their "mitgefangen - mitgehangen" methods suxx.

There is no point on dewlling about piracy. Because it will always exist. Even if a game would cost 1USD/EUR/GBP some one will pirate it. I think there was this initiative from the devs of "Game dev Tycoon" or whatever. They have released it for free, but still there were some pirate users.

I think one of the ways to at least soothe piracy somewhat is to give the legit buyer better support, extra goodies, patches, upgrades etc, something that a piratized copy of the game doesn't offer.

Hot water already discovered, you say? Aww.

Piracy makes me sad. This game is only 25 bucks and its a fracking gem. I have seen 70 dollar games that where just pure kaka. There are some awesome mods and modders making it even more so.

Unlikely any pirates are reading this but if you seriously go to gog games and buy it. If you kill the awesome indy companies people like Chris and his team will be gone. Then you get EA and all the drek they push.

I read this with interest.

I have bought (happily) two, full price copies of Xenonauts, one for me and one for a mate with a Mac. I reward devs who make quality games with loyalty as well as by evangelising their game. I do this demostratively. I am *that* loyal that I will even buy expansions to a game and not play them for no other reason than lack of time. I choose to spend £5 - £10 on a DLC product I *might* play, because I like the developer.

Goldhawk Interactive has earned my loyalty.

What I find risible is the assumption: piracy == lost sales. I don't believe the world works like this. Do people really believe that if it wasn't for people pirating games, everyone who pirated the game would have bought a copy?

The type of people who pirate games pressumably rarely buy games. This isn't the best analogy but it will do for illustrating market and consumer habits: I enjoy borrowing books from the library as well as buying them. Sometimes I have taken books home on the off chance I might like them. There is no way I would have bought some of these books without first borrowing them because I am not flush with cash. For some I am glad were borrowed because the were rubbish. Sometimes though these books have led me to buy others from the author. Sometimes of ofc if is wasn't for the library I wouldn't read a book anyway.

I believe the piracy == loss of sales stance is backward thinking corporate spin and is rubbish.

I believe, understanding consumer habits, albiet rather superficially, the more likely scenario is: piracy != loss of sales. In fact it could be argued: piracy == increased sales. Steam and GoG being proof of this; both had the ethos of appealing to pirates.

TL;DR

I believe:

piracy == loss of sales is the belief of backward thinking developers

piracy == increases sales

Say something! What?

It's very easy to pirate a game in the guise of trying before buying, then never actually buying. Morally it's wrong, but people will do what they want. You should try games before buying by playing demo versions, not by pirating the full copy.

Confession: I pirated the game when v1.07 was released to try it out as I wasn't sure on the full cost. A day afterwards trying it, I bought two full priced copies directly from the GoldHawk website... so it sort of lead to increased sales and additional positive reviews as I actively mod, support the community and praise the game among all my friends and co-workers.... Piracy has it's uses and while I don't openly condone such actions (I would be upset if someone told me the same thing...oh the irony), I do understand why people do it.

It's very easy to pirate a game in the guise of trying before buying, then never actually buying. Morally it's wrong, but people will do what they want. You should try games before buying by playing demo versions, not by pirating the full copy.

Thats the heart of the problem: Demos of bad games = less sales, so developers/publishers are less likely to let you preview it at all. It's better to sell it sight unseen and enforce the no-return policy on digital goods. On the flip side, demos of GOOD games rarely leads to additional sales also, so its a bit of a paradox.

I read this with interest.

I believe:

piracy == loss of sales is the belief of backward thinking developers

piracy == increases sales

While I agree with most of what you have say I think there's one other important aspect to deal with. Really there are two types of pirates. You have the ones who will buy games but occasionally pirate something. For whatever reason it doesn't matter but they do occasionally pirate either to demo a game before they buy it, because they really want a game but don't have the money for it ect really the reasoning is irrelevant and unimportant in a high level discussion and the above illustrates this type of consumer nicely. Then you have the other type, the type of person who never buys anything and pirates everything just because they can. again weather this person pirates because they cant think of anyone not directly connected to themselves or think they are oh so special they deserve everything for free is irrelevant to a higher level discussion.

In a perfect world (at least in my opinion as a software developer) there would be no pirates. I like getting paid for what I do as does any professional really. We like to buy food and pay our mortgages/rent. And piracy is taking money from our pockets no matter what way you slice it. No its not on a 1 pirated copy = 1 loss sale but there are a subset that would probably buy it if they couldn't pirate it. But we don't live in that world and probably never will. And if we ever do it will probably come at the cost of a large portion of our consumer rights. Just look at the whole assassins creed 2 ubisoft drm thing that happened a few years back.

And ultimately trying to fight the pirates is a costly and hopeless gesture that does nothing but spend what ever consumer good will the publisher/developer has built up by taking away consumer rights in exchange for delaying the pirates by a handful of hours at most. Or by completely poisoning a game before its even been developed (see the whole Sim City thing put on by EA not all that long ago).

But in terms of pirating Indie games I mean come on! That's a bit much. Most cost less then a meal at a restaurant and its not like the companies who make them have a back catalog of a million games still trickling money into their pockets.

TL;DR

I believe:

piracy == loss of sales is the belief of backward thinking developers

piracy == increases sales

Say something! What?

I don't know about the second part of that statement, because there are probably people that would have bought it if they couldn't pirate, but I definitely agree on the first point.

I know for myself, I got introduced to the game trough a friend who pirated it. I had never heard of it and didn't really like the description of it at first even after he told me, but I tried it out a bit at his place and when I got home I bought it. I've also recommended it to my other friends, 2 of which have bought it too, and after telling the original friend about some of the updates to the AI etc that has happened, he's considering getting the retail version too.

So all in all, that 1 pirated copy lead to at the very least 3 actual sales, and possibly a fourth coming up.

I don't know if it leads to more sales overall, but I believe that it at the very least brings in enough extra to make up for the ones that might buy it but choose to pirate instead.

On the original matter in the OP. Well... at least Goldhawk has the kind of viral advertising that you can't pay money for. People are going to see Xenonauts listed on two states and think "what's up with that Xenonauts game?". Might be interesting to contrast sales with the release of that article.

I'm pretty sure most people who pirated the game and liked it would buy it during a sale or something.

Uploaders rarely keep up with the updates for a game, even AAA games. Thus, the pirated version is usually always outdated and missing features which are found in the most up to date version of the game.

It's unfortunate that people do pirate games, but, it's just the world that we live in.

Merciful God (or Max Caine)...please do not allow this thread to start again. Really, there is a huge mega pages discussion of pirating in the Off Topic area.

But in terms of pirating Indie games I mean come on! That's a bit much. Most cost less then a meal at a restaurant and its not like the companies who make them have a back catalog of a million games still trickling money into their pockets.

The scummy pirates shall we say, those who would never buy the game - ever. What I find interesting is how devs deal with these people.

They would never buy the game so there isn't a lost sale and should consequently be removed from a sales equation. But they might be enjoying the game the dev has worked hard to create and wants people to enjoy... I would like to think if I were a dev that I would take that as a complement.

@Steave

I love how you demonstrated my second point, that pirating can cause sales. You mate pirating the game and evangelising about it caused four sales. He's not a pirate, he's are a freelance sales man. Or buy four and get the fifth free! I think that is marketing at its finest.

Sorry Stellar, but I rate as a minion, rather than a master. Guys, you might imagine that everything that you write in this thread is new, but this topic has been beaten to death. Several times. It keeps arising, and the same things keep being said.

Bet you five quid I've been over this more times than you have

Once there had been times when 'releasing' a game was more like: "HAHA! We got it cracked first! Take it and see!" ... Does someone still remember the "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade" copy protection? Those numbers on a sheet of paper you could only read with the glasses ... or the wheel in "The Secret of Monkey Island", or the other number-sheet-stuff on "Sim City", or ... what else was there ... ah yes: "Word 5 on Line 3 on Page 43" ... "Wizardry 7 - Crusaders of the Dark Savant" and "The Settlers" come into my mind here. What else did we have ... hmmm ... ah yes ... "Put Floppy 1 into Drive A:" ... those floppy disc sector protections ... geez.

You know, it was nice to be a gamer in the early 90's ... but it was a shitload annoying to have all those 'copy protection stuff' lying around somewhere if you wanted to play a game. While it's understandable it's not really customer friendly.

Then there was my personal Nemesis ... 'StarForce'. I'm still amazed that this kind of copy protection wasn't removed by law. The way it works is ... well ... thank god it's history. Lost 2 drives to this shit!

I'm pretty glad with where we are today. Steam is fine -> buy, download, let it check and maybe enable offline mode if you don't have a 24/7 line and forget about anything else as DRM. I personally refuse all games that are not available on Steam or gog.com, except a few indie games that don't use any DRM. "Factorio" is a nice game btw. .

Yikes. It's my bad, really. I wanted to share the article as a point of interest, but did so without first performing a search. I only searched after Max_Caine mentioned this to be an old topic.

I'm still grateful for the responses.

I've read an article somewhere on the internet (a long time ago, cant remembe where) that some singer that wanted to release his album over the net for $5. His initial concern was about piracy affecting his revenue, but holds up his goodwill and instead of trying for something like DRM, he instead tries to appeal to the general audience by releasing the video to tell them one thing:

Please don't pirate my game

And apprently it worked, somehow, the expectations he got out of it skyrocketed. Thousands of sales were made just days after he posted his video.(But of course there will still be some piracy here and there)

It seems from here that the person was trying to appeal to his customers, even the pirates, to tell them that he risked something in order to treat the customers fairly rather than slapping a DRM program that could piss off people. The general idea is goodwill, if someone is willing to take one step out, then surely more people would be less inclined to swing their sticks around and be less empathetic.

But of course, there are still piracy going on here and then, no matter how well you marketed for an anti-DRM policy, but should a company just slap the bums off their loyal customers that make up their revenue just to shove off a few bad eggs?