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Xenonauts and piracy


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So yes, sometimes piracy will increase sales, but sometimes it will decrease sales. It's impossible to test exactly how much either way, so nobody actually knows what the net financial effect of piracy is.

Apologies but I must beg to differ. As I read it, the research indicates that overall there's a boost to sales due to piracy, this is taking into account the loss from the reduced sales too: it's a net fiscal benefit.

You're right though that there's the invisible cost in those pirates using developer time, but some of them will be contributing positively to the community, although I'm not aware of any research on this one, so it may be net negative.

Myself I do quite a bit towards Open Source so I'm used to people using my work and not contributing back.

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To be fair, that research seemed mostly related to music. It's not necessarily the same for games which probably don't rely as much on piracy advertising due to Steam, LPs, youtube in general, mainstream (p)reviews, etc. Granted, music has all these things as well but they don't seem as effective and small bands seem to have more trouble breaking through than indie developers for example. Maybe it's simply a matter of quantity and the fact that gamers are more "internet proficient".

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The biggest enemy of a product is obscurity and yes piracy does decrease this aspect. As for negative reviews it is a common marketing axiom that there is no such thing as negative marketing exactly due to the previous. If the product has quality that is confirmed by relevant sources the potential costumers who gives a c..p will find those and listen to them because they want to find and hear those opinions and all others are only searching for excuse not to buy something and most of them wouldn't even if there was no free way to get the product.

Even though common marketing sciences still try to work with a model containing "rational" customers it is very very veeery outdated model. Humans create opinions mostly on instincts and feelings and then "rationalize" them afterwards.

Accordingly one cannot deem piracy bad simply due to the largely unknown effects of it and since they are most probably positive in a sales perspective neither convincing "pirates" from it being unwise. If customers would be rational buyers the gaming market would most probably be a desert with a few cactus like lifeforms roaming the endless post-apocalyptic wastelands of emptiness.

As a customer of this and many other products, a pirate of others and an indie "seller" myself i can only urge not to fight piracy by making products more easily available and better supported. DRM and censure is a great way to increase piracy though and if there were a way to "fight" this phenomenon it would come at the cost of much of our humanity. Of course the later is not a high price for some but just take a look at a certain console release not too long ago :)

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I have to jump in with a personal anecdote...

A lot of games in my steam library are there because I played a pirated version of it and liked it, and decided to get the legitimate version. Games I would have never bought otherwise...

I cannot speak to the morality or the effect on business revenue of piracy as a whole, but for me piracy has caused me to inject more money into the games industry then I probably should have.

Look... nobody says "Hey, I'm ready to drop 60$ on a game, but I'd rather just play a pirated version." Most pirates have no intention of paying for a game in the first place, and thus when they pirate, no revenue is lost. They will either pirate it or simply not play.

On the other hand, I bet a lot of pirates end up buying games they normally wouldn't have because they got hooked.

The entire concept of data copy-write is retarded anyway. Cyberspace is literally a post-scarcity society, where copying large amounts of information costs fractions of a penny. Imagine if you could copy a car, or a computer, or any other object from someone else at next to no cost, with no harm done to the original and no degradation... The entire concept of free market supply and demand would collapse over night. We are there right now when it comes to digital information, and there are still people trying to make money off of artificial limitation of data. I understand that our entire infrastructure isn't out of scarcity, and that production of data has some very real costs... but there has got to be a better way to go about it then the current system of copy-write protection. A system that is technically illegal according to U.S business laws. (Artificial Limitation of Goods to drive up prices)

For instance I buy a car... and I spend the next 6 months building a new one out of spare parts that looks, handles, and feels exactly like the original. For some reason I decide to give it away to some random dude for free. Who would say that is morally wrong? Nobody in their right mind. But according to copy-write laws, if I do it with data it suddenly is. The fact that computers make it so fast, easy, and cheap is irrelevant, and is in fact a good thing IMO considering the influx of luxury (software) goods getting to (and improving the lives of) people who wouldn't normally get them.

But I'm beginning to rant so I'll shut up.

Edited by legit1337
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The entire concept of data copy-write is retarded anyway. Cyberspace is literally a post-scarcity society, where copying large amounts of information costs fractions of a penny.

Agreed, this would be the pragmatic source of the problem the question being who makes the money? In case of "intellectual" property which software can also be considered the physical production price is not high as mentioned above, but the intellectual effort of devs similar to that of a musician composing song does have effort put into it. Naturally the existing system is built on the old model of product and value but it would be a mistake to not take into consideration: All intellectual effort is a social effort. Everything a person outputs by its mind is pulling data, knowledge, ideas and know-how from the wider range of society (education in school, friends, other artists, devs..etc) cumulative mind.

Does it still take effort to filter, merge, slice and dice then dish up the product? Sure it does and it deserves recognition both monetary and other wise but it could lead to a seriously corrupted system if this "right" is taken too far. See big IT firm lawsuits as negative example. Limitation of intellectual property can lead us to serious problems so it needs to be made with the greatest of care and not like: "Well shoot just burn the heretics already in the name of the emperor :)"

Edited by zolobolo
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It's interesting to read this as the entire discussion is centered around PCs. I'd like to dip briefly into the mobile market, because what the mobile market does has a direct bearing on what happens and what will continue to happen in the PC world.

Madfinger Games released a game called Dead Trigger, initially released on Android. The opening price was 99 cents, which is considered an average, acceptable price for an Android. In this interview with Madfinger, they went from 99 cents to free to play with IAPs within a month because the return on their investment was very, very small. Madfinger claimed a piracy rate of 80%, and they aren't unusual in this respect. A number of other developers also came out and commented on how high the piracy rates were on both iOS and Android. There's a great comment by an unnamed developer on this:

See, we are a small team of programmers. We have recently launched an app, where there's more cracked installs a day than downloads of our free 31-day trial. The app functionality does not permit other business model than paid + trial (you barely use the UI). Certainly, the numbers are not huge yet - we have barely started to market the app. While this does underline, that the app is noteworthy, it steered bigger interest in the shady circles than among the regular users.

Now, how do we know? Recently, one of the cracked versions out in the wild contains a bug, which renders the app half useless. It keep crashing, and we receive the crash reports (with logs) from the users (the user has to manually send the crash!). The exception points at the code the cracker added :) And this is just ONE of the MANY cracked version of the app out there!

People that we get the reports from are not only from countries, where they can not buy apps. They are not only young kids that don't have payment cards. In fact, it's quite the opposite - we get to find out a lot about many of them because of the linked g+ profiles! Retired biker, young doctor, Computer science student, Android developer, Strategist... just to name a few fascinating examples.

In the mobile markets it's very easy to get a cracked version, very easy to install it, and very easy to get on with your life without ever giving the developer the time of day. Word of mouth and publicity doesn't seem to matter jack to the mobile markets - the extremely high rates of piracy for paid apps suggests the mindset is if you can get it for free, you get it for free and sod the developer. So, in order to keep the lights on and the families fed, developers have had to counter this with increasing sophisticated techniques to get people to part with their money without paying an upfront cost for the product. Free-to-play with IAPs isn't the exception in the mobile market - it's the norm, and for-pay games which transform into free-to-play or freemium models is also the norm. You know how Flappy Bird makes its money? Through in-game ads which you can't delete or remove. You have to sit through them while you play the game.

Now, what does this matter to PCs? The models which are successful in making money on the mobile markets in the face of extremely high piracy rates are coming over in force to the PC. Subscription services are now becoming the norm for commercial applications - Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Autodesk are but to name a few. With notable exceptions, online gaming (such as MMORPG or MOBAs or whatever) now offer IAP-style services. World of Tanks, for example, has a very extensive premium membership service which offers bonus XP, bonus gold and even premium ammunition you can take into battle, and that online-many trend has been leaking into the offline-single player as well. EA has been the brand leader for this. Who can forget the IAPs in Dead Space 3? The Prothean from Mass Effect 3? Or how about things like Project 10 dollar? The Cerberus Network was probably the best way to have done it, but good luck ever seeing that again! I think it's going to be highly likely that in-game ads will find their way into PC games. It'll be done clumsily at first (Battlefield 2142 had a massive billboard in the arenas which played ads) but more sophisticated techniques such as product placement are going to be introduced in increasing ways. All these techniques don't rely on a player ponying up for the game, which means a developer can offer it for "free", get massive word of mouth and never have to worry about pirates. While these techniques are currently clumsy, I'm certain they will get more and more sophisticated to the point where a developer will make more off mobile-esque techniques than he ever would from charging an up-front price. The $60 price point is becoming an irrelevance in the face of much more successful techniques to part a player from his cash.

Look to the future, kiddies. It's a IAP one.

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The fact that computers make it so fast, easy, and cheap is irrelevant, and is in fact a good thing IMO considering the influx of luxury (software) goods getting to (and improving the lives of) people who wouldn't normally get them.

But I'm beginning to rant so I'll shut up.

No, no. Ranting is good, even if irrational. It gives you space to breathe out your fustration and getting people to debate about the topic.

Now, getting on topic, if you can afford a computer, calling yourself poor to pirate is like begging in the streets when you can afford to have a roof to live in. There is alot of hurdles to jump over considering people are justifying their actions over luxury goods when owning a computer is considered a milestone over buying necessary things to live for.

With piracy beaten like a dead horse as a less considerable problem in sales, the idea probably is about "copying". Imagine that Developers(Depending on the ethics of it :P) work so hard just to produce their quality content and release it for their deserved earnings, customers pay for it and feel that there is value in the product, hard work from an honest developer. For someone to pirate their game is like: Hey, I'm just going to make a copy of your product, without your permission to get the product free, so I hope you don't mind and die."

Ok, that last bit was unnecessary:p, but that action devalues the product. If this person can take whatever he wants instead of a paying customer, then the product falls short. The customer has little incentive to pay with money for a product when he can get it for free. Imagine if there are less customers to buy the product enough to sustain itself, the developer will lack the funds and the incentive to further create future products. That would certainly justifies the developer cry wolf on such an issue, and teach them a lesson.

But that justification falls flat once the developer started introducing DRM. While it sounds good on paper, it actually intrudes on the privacy of the customer from anti-piracy software and causes technical and convenience problems most of the time when DRM is aggressively stopping any sort of manipulation of the product. That would plummet the value of the product further, causing it to be actually more frustrating to use rather than be enjoyable. Pouring boiling oil over your customers doesn't seem sensible when the pirates aren't the ones feeling the pain.

But of course, these are just rather very abstract views. Thank god for diverse human morality.

Look to the future, kiddies. It's a IAP one.

Hmm, I'm sensing something I have to rant about, so I hope you don't mind about my somewhat aggresive tone,

Advertisements, people can get pissy about these things(esp. me). They don't like their game to be interrupted by something that they are not interested in, flashing in front of them, obscuring the close button so as frustrate the user even more, and giving them about 30 mandatory seconds before they can shove it aside for their game session. And even when you could say, that advertisers has plans to add ads coherent to the market, you should wonder how do they know that you like that Japanese game with that kinky barefoot fetish?(not that I take an interest on that, hehe.:D) Oh well, I believe they do collect info on where you search your stuff online.

Yep, the future is bright. It is a lamppost that is giving my eyes radiation.

Edited by LordJulian
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But the majority of pirates are people who will pirate a game and who will never buy it....and also never would have bought it.

Once upon a time, I pirated so much software, I swear I could have skewed national statistics on piracy on my own. For years, I downloaded every game that was released, and no, I never would have bought them. I never even would have played them. In many cases, I would not have played them unless well compensated for the thoroughly unpleasant use of my time. I continued to do this even when my only use of the pirated games was to play my legitimate purchases (cracked games, with the copy protection removed, offered a less buggy and more convenient experience than uncracked retail copies). I continued this piracy habit for a few years after becoming a Steam junkie that bought more games than I could ever find time to play.

I did this with all software, too, not just games. And I do mean all software. If there was a scene release for anything, I downloaded it. I pirated OSX and OSX versions of software, despite never owning an Apple device of any kind. I seem to recall downloading packs of iOS apps as well. I definitely had a robust collection of software for Sparc and Itanium-based server platforms. IBM WebSphere or MQ series releases? I had that. Oracle middleware products? SAP ERP distributions? You bet your ass I had that.

This was all too much for me to store on hard drives or optical media, of course. When it got to the point that I needed to burn 15 DVDs per day to keep up, I realized that something had to change... so I bought an LTO-3 tape drive. Those retailed for about $2200 at the time, but I managed to get a new-in-box unit for about $1700 from a company that was going out of business. The cost of tape media varied over the couple years I used it, but I was generally spending about $300/month on archiving all my downloads.

Thankfully, I eventually realized that I had a problem, and that it was absolutely insane for a person with a rising debt level to be spending so much time and money on growing an illegal collection of media that I never used. I stopped hoarding digital content; later, I discarded all of the optical media (there were thousands of DVDs) and erased all of my tapes to have them available in case I needed to do large backups or something.

These days, the only time I download a pirated game is if I really want to be sure that I'll have a playable copy in a decade or two (when Steam and publisher activation servers will probably be gone). Last time I can recall actually playing a pirated game was Skyrim, because it was available on Usenet before the release date, and I was impatient to get started.

Not sure why I'm rambling about this. I guess I just find it to be an amusing anecdote about a hoarder of a different kind than you might see on reality TV. Maybe also a little bit to demonstrate that any assumptions you might make about why people pirate games (they're all just cheapskates that want to play for free! ) won't hold true across all pirates.

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This one goes out to LordJulian

LJ, as an educated fellow you must be aware that there are very sophistcated techniques these days to get people to watch an ad without realising they're watching an ad. The best well known of these techniques is product placement. Let's take a game like, say, Last of Us. The characters in Last Of Us are very well realised and fleshed out. By the end, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the decisions they make in the cutscenes, they're more than pixels on the screen. They're people in their own right. There are a number of scenes in the game where you're driving a car or an auto of some sort. What if every vehicle you saw was a brand of Crysler? Or Jeep? Or heck, what if it was a smorgasoard of GA brands? The game doesn't start with the player in a vehicle and the best part of the game is on foot so those sections where the characters are in a vehicle stand out all the more for it, while at the same time the focus is so strong on the characters the player doesn't realise these characters which they identify with are implicitly endorsing a brand of vehicle by choosing it and driving it. For bonus points one might have the characters choose which vehicle they're going to drive, and have several rival brands. The rival brands are made up to look like beat up hunks of metal and the brand that the devs want you to choose is subtly better looking than the others, so the ad goes to the next level, getting the player to self-identify with the brand they want to push.

An equally subtle way to advertise a brand of soft drink like Coca-Cola wouldn't be to include it as say, a health item. That would be too obvious. But if your game is modern-day or sci-fi and features habitations then it's likely to feature vending machines, usually tucked away as background props. All you need to do is make sure that the brand of the product you want to advertise is on the vending machines, and there are vending machines wherever you go. They don't need to be interactive. They don't need to be prominent. All there needs to be is enough of them sprinkled throughout the game in reasonable places, with NPCs going to them and buying drinks.

Truly sophiscated advertising exists, it's done more often than anyone likes and to avoid it you have to be on your toes all the time. The 30-second ad is the crudest way of getting the ad across. Weaving the product into the game so the enitre game becomes an ad is where the smart money is.

EDIT: Forgot to list some of the resources I used. I used a lot more, these are a sampling.

Examples of well-done gamification across all types of media

Ads in games

"Bringing the game to the advertising"

When ads invade games

Edited by Max_Caine
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Now, getting on topic, if you can afford a computer, calling yourself poor to pirate is like begging in the streets when you can afford to have a roof to live in. There is alot of hurdles to jump over considering people are justifying their actions over luxury goods when owning a computer is considered a milestone over buying necessary things to live for.

Just because you could afford a computer once does not mean you still can. For example, I bought mine a few years back when I had a full time job and had plenty of money left over. Now I'm unemployed. For obvious reasons, the fact that I once had the funds to get a (back then) top of the line computer has no relevance on my ability to afford games now.

On top of that, adding up all the games I have bought over the years, I believe I've spent more over the years on games than I have on the actual computer - they are pretty expensive after all, and you end up getting a lot if you're a gamer.

So yes, it is definitely possible to have a computer and not be able to afford a lot of games.

I do pirate a bit because of that, but I still buy as much as I can, with top priority given to pirated games I really liked.

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It's a IAP one.

I can think of at least another way which Xenonauts incidentally also seems to be an example of: community funding. It is of course only one of many new business models but one that is showing potential: Make a contract with your community on the deliverables and have them finance the development. I know I joined Xenonauts because of its premise and the possibility to fund a game I wished to play. Also joined Star Citizen for the same reason and there are already numerous other promising games steering towards this direction.

If the games developed now can show off good quality and customer satisfaction we have got a much more efficient and dynamic model than those of large DEV companies since they are unable to deliver that closely to customer requirements due to their corp water head and other limitations due to size. The only real advantage was larger budgets but if that advantage is nullified...

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An equally subtle way to advertise a brand of soft drink like Coca-Cola wouldn't be to include it as say, a health item. That would be too obvious. But if your game is modern-day or sci-fi and features habitations then it's likely to feature vending machines, usually tucked away as background props. All you need to do is make sure that the brand of the product you want to advertise is on the vending machines, and there are vending machines wherever you go. They don't need to be interactive. They don't need to be prominent. All there needs to be is enough of them sprinkled throughout the game in reasonable places, with NPCs going to them and buying drinks.

Truly sophiscated advertising exists, it's done more often than anyone likes and to avoid it you have to be on your toes all the time. The 30-second ad is the crudest way of getting the ad across. Weaving the product into the game so the enitre game becomes an ad is where the smart money is.

EDIT: Forgot to list some of the resources I used. I used a lot more, these are a sampling.

Examples of well-done gamification across all types of media

Ads in games

"Bringing the game to the advertising"

When ads invade games

Well, you got a point there. I'm often opinionated against the idea of altering things in game just for the sake of revenue. But you're right about advertisements being in the game is fine if it is coherent. But if the ad placed is deliberately out of context from the game itself for the purpose of earning revenue then this is where it draws the line.

And yes I'm an educated person, I tend to get touchy when certain topics get into my head, don't mind me.

Just because you could afford a computer once does not mean you still can. For example, I bought mine a few years back when I had a full time job and had plenty of money left over. Now I'm unemployed. For obvious reasons, the fact that I once had the funds to get a (back then) top of the line computer has no relevance on my ability to afford games now.

On top of that, adding up all the games I have bought over the years, I believe I've spent more over the years on games than I have on the actual computer - they are pretty expensive after all, and you end up getting a lot if you're a gamer.

So yes, it is definitely possible to have a computer and not be able to afford a lot of games.

I do pirate a bit because of that, but I still buy as much as I can, with top priority given to pirated games I really liked.

Well, I do pirate games myself when I was young, until I got troubled by the ethics of it, that I'd steer clear of it if possible.

So when I cant afford new games or the current game releases are still a bunch of dumbed down crap, I'd snoop around online to look at games that can alternatively occupy me. Surely enough, moddb has a few free games that are absolutely free to download, and yet offers th quality comparable to current PC games.

The Dark Mod, S.T.A.L.K.E.R Lost Alpha, twisted Insurrection, they are mostly formed from the incentive of making games that the gaming industry seemed to alienate us from. Not that you have to go hunt for your games free like me and it is definitely time-consuming, but the alternatives are there. It's big, but isn't thoroughly explored because our vision is limited to mainstream game sales and at most indie games. There are open-source, made-from-stratch, mod-to-free-games, and retro games around that are free to play.

And also discounts from digital services, and older games that dont cost as much. Games from all eras can still be enjoyed and considering that the future of innovative gameplay is at a slow pace, I'd say you still have alot of mileage from recent games..

Now, I can't wag my finger at you for pirating, and yes, I probably didnt provide other examples that people pirate for that are not as obnoxious as those described here. To download abandonware games untouched by the game devs of the past, you're in a remote location that cannot get that particular game for a reason. (banned game probably?)

There are possibly legit excuses, I do not know, but I have my doubts if someone pirates and says "I'm too poor" as his first answer.

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To me, if I think it's wrong to pirate games (and I do)

That's the difference between us.

I think it's wrong to pirate games if you would have bought it if you didn't have the ability to pirate instead. Otherwise it's a "crime" without victim, someone gains on it and no one looses. Due to word of mouth, it's sometimes even a win-win.

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That's the difference between us.

I think it's wrong to pirate games if you would have bought it if you didn't have the ability to pirate instead. Otherwise it's a "crime" without victim, someone gains on it and no one looses. Due to word of mouth, it's sometimes even a win-win.

Agreed.

Honestly I don't feel too chuffed pirating games. If I have the money I buy it as the case with xenonauts, if I don't and I want to try out the game, I pirate it. That simple. The developer doesn't lose my revenue because if I could not pirate it, I just wouldn't play. They aren't losing a potential customer, and they are gaining someone who will spread good info about the game if he enjoyed it.

I bought Distant Worlds: Universe on steam earlier this month for full price because I had so much fun with the pirated version.

@LordJulian

You have cogent points.

As I acknowledged in my earlier posts, developers deserve to be paid for the work they do developing software. It is difficult to have a society where half is governed by supply/demand, and the other half is totally post scarcity. It is hard to market something when it's supply is theoretically infinite, and it's demand is a set amount.

However, as I said before I believe the current state of copy-write laws and the the idea of "digital property" is bewilderingly farcical.

The only system I can think of that would alleviate these issues is something similar to what Max_Caine was proposing.

1. Artists/programmers produce digital media.

2. Third parties pay the artists/programmers a lump sum, or a royalty for the "rights" to host the data.

3. Consumers download the data for free.

4. Third parties make money (profit sums) off of ad-revenue generated by site traffic.

Everybody wins. Developers get paid, site owners make profit, consumers get free media. Piracy rendered irrelevant because all digital media is free anyway. It may not work but that is the best I can come up with...

I honestly wouldn't mind watching 10 minutes of commercials if I got a free video game out of it.

but that action devalues the product.

It is hard NOT to devalue something that can be copied millions of times at the press of a button, all for less than a penny.

Artificial limitation of goods is an immoral business practice that is decried as illegal and unethical by the U.S government. Digital Rights Management and current copy-write laws fit the definition. The only reason it flies right now is the fact that a lot of powerful people would go broke if they stopped being able to make money off of digital media by artificially limiting access.

Imagine if we had the technology to make food replicators from star trek. Infinite amounts of food could be generated for almost no cost and world hunger could end in a day. But nope, those farmers need to be paid for growing the original fruits and vegetables used as patterns for a copy, so everyone has to pay 10,000$ each or they don't eat. Not a problem for some, but half the world ends up starving because the farmers got greedy.

Edited by legit1337
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I think we're rapidly coming to the point where a finished game by itself is insufficent for a significant portion of the populace. Financial models for games are changing to reflect that a purchasor is increasingly likely to spend money before owning the game - through systems such as collective funding of development through sites like Kickstarter, or by pre-ordering the product and getting pre-order bonuses. Or inducement to spend money after owning the game, through mechanisms like IAPs or DLC. As I've previously said, these models are going to be increasingly sophisticated. Take the way that Valve funded the prize money for the DOTA international. It was brilliant - a funding thermometer which tracked every purchase of the compendium at took $2.50 from it to pay into the prize pool. At given stages along the way it unlocked new features for the compendium. Imagine doing that with a game! "Hey guys, if we make $75,000 of sales, you get new 5 pieces to customise your armour with. $120,000 in sales we record 20 minutes of entirely new VO. $250,000 and alla you get a new weapon!". It's a fairly crude idea, and it reveals too much of sales figures that devs don't want to share, but that kind of sophistcation is going to find its way in somehow.

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I've been burned too many times by overhyped games that I now pretty much always pirate games before buying them. Demos are nice, but often games don't have one until way after release, or the demo is insufficient or even treacherous.

I had a great time with a pirated copy of Xenonauts (my first game of this kind) and that's what made me buy it.

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in my opinion devs should do it like greenheart did it with game dev tycoon. when you pirated that game your ingame company would go bankrupt because of piracy. ironic isnt it. that realy wouldnt be a way to implement this to xenonauts. thoe people who pirate games should get more aware of how they potentualy hurt the developers of the games that where worth pirating. cuz if its worth pirating its not far from being worth buying.

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It is hard NOT to devalue something that can be copied millions of times at the press of a button, all for less than a penny.

Artificial limitation of goods is an immoral business practice that is decried as illegal and unethical by the U.S government. Digital Rights Management and current copy-write laws fit the definition. The only reason it flies right now is the fact that a lot of powerful people would go broke if they stopped being able to make money off of digital media by artificially limiting access.

Imagine if we had the technology to make food replicators from star trek. Infinite amounts of food could be generated for almost no cost and world hunger could end in a day. But nope, those farmers need to be paid for growing the original fruits and vegetables used as patterns for a copy, so everyone has to pay 10,000$ each or they don't eat. Not a problem for some, but half the world ends up starving because the farmers got greedy.

I agree with those points.(apart from the fact that it's a necessity rather than luxury analogy :P) Monopolization and enforcement is the bane of a equally balanced market.

What people did when they pirate products(depending on their reason) is looked upon as questionable and should be berated about, but when someone comes along and said: "I'm going to call you a TERRORIST, because you copy a product, and that is A CRIME!", you wonder if the government is run by a bunch of monkeys.

If you've snooped for news(not the dishonest ones) back in 2012, you'll notice that Kim Dotcom, a rather extravagant millionaire that owned a file storage website megaupload.com, was arrested for "acts of piracy". Apparently, his mansion was raided by dozens of SWAT teams and police officers armed with body armour and assault rifles like they're apprehending a drug cartel or fending off the alien invasion. Oddly enough, the accusation of his website being "a haven of piracy" when it was just for file storage, and yet many other websites like his are still operational.

So, yes, to call it artificial limitation is an understatement.

I've been burned too many times by overhyped games that I now pretty much always pirate games before buying them. Demos are nice, but often games don't have one until way after release, or the demo is insufficient or even treacherous.

I had a great time with a pirated copy of Xenonauts (my first game of this kind) and that's what made me buy it.

Lol, good for you, I do believe that good quality games have dropped the ball ever since the mainstream market catered to the maximum possible audience(preferably the ones that grab anything shiny that they could find without wondering if they're being ripped off). Some gamers have lost faith in the gaming industry, when the trend of gaming is now reduced to the emphasis of QTEs, cinematic cutscenes, repetitive gameplay. Just paste in another call of duty game with different skins and maps and volia! A brand new game, $60 please.(Not against the idea of gaming that can be shared to a bigger crowd, but the main motivation of them companies is to bleed out our wallets)

Maybe that's the point, the gaming industry has been catering to the audience that doesn't give a hoot about their loyalty to the gaming community that there is this line of apathy that differentiated gamers of the past and the present. The people here in these forums are people who genuinely liked the game and wanted to support or join the community and contribute in many ways, while the mass crowd will just waltz by 50 games without battling an eyelid.

Maybe that's why piracy has been a significant problem. Game companies has been aiming for people's wallets and not their loyalty that they tried to reach out to everyone to be able to squeeze out everyone's wallets, greed has poisoned them to sell unfinished games, charge them unreasonably, and then just rip people off some more with overrated DLCs. Even the mainstream audinence themselves are no better. They aren't that invested in gaming, and cared less for the future of the game developers themselves. While some took the pains to buy these games, others just pirated the games because they dont bother to understand the consequences of piracy, or they aren't invested in the gaming community. Even worse still, gamers like us are disappointed that our favourite games has been reduced to a shadow of their former glory that we had huge reservations whether to buy it.

I probably would want to use the "indie games saves the day" sticker, but that's probably why ThePirateMan bought Xenonauts in the first place. He loves the game and would hate to see it being affected by piracy, and came in to apply an indirect praise to the developers.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be taking my anti-depressants. :)

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I use piracy as a "try before you buy" thing.

For movies, and this is mostly because theater prices have gotten outrageous, I will download them, watch them, and if I like them, I WILL go out and buy it. If not, I delete it.

For games, same thing. I will play it a bit, usually just a few hours, depending on the game. If I like it, I buy it. If I don't, I delete the torrent. There is nothing different from this than back in the day when game companies used to actually release demos. And indeed, if the game HAS a demo (most do not), I'll play the demo and not torrent it.

Xenonauts though, never torrented. And I don't usually torrent games from indie companies. Big companies like EA can afford to lose a few bucks from piracy, indie companies can't, and I feel their hard work is worth a lot more to support than big companies.

Again, I use piracy to demo something before I decide to spend the money on it. I just don't get paid enough to pay the silly prices they want for this stuff now a days to buy it and find out I don't like it.

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There is nothing different from this than back in the day when game companies used to actually release demos...

Except, with demos, you had permission to use something which isn't yours. With the torrent, you do not.

What does it matter that the entity is a large company rather than an indie company? Individuals work at both places. There is no logic in "there a big company so it's okay to take things from them that don't belong to me."

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AH, you're one of those people who equates pirating to stealing. I'm just gonna stop talking then.

But it is digital theft.

Also, for the argument of pirating a game before downloading, there's Yuotube. If a game is bad I don't ever want to waste time with it. Also, for the argument of the time wasted watching the video, you're bound to find someone who you find interesting playing it.

Edited by Betuor
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But it is digital theft.

Oh, so copying something automatically deletes the original? That's some fancy new tech there, but must be the case since the only reason theft is a bad thing is that it takes the item in question away from the owner.

The whole concept of "digital theft" is honestly quite ludicrous.

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