For a long time now I've found it weird that people who like single player games on PC (and to a lesser extent older consoles which had piracy enabling mods) didn't acknowledge the long game consequences of their actions, or at least were willfully ignorant to them because everyone loves getting something for free. It seems to be a variation on Goodhart's law - you get what you reward - if the reward for a company (big or small) in spending lots of time and money isn't as good as other options, those other options will get more investment in the future and the ones you do like will get less.
The other option I can see for the large companies is that any project involving tens or hundreds of millions of dollars is likely to be insured, and a condition of that insurance is they take all reasonable options available to get the most success out of it that they can. If they don't they need to reduce the risk which probably means less resources allocated which again may not be interesting to the companies capable of making grand experiences versus other options.
> For a long time now I've found it weird that people who like single player games on PC (and to a lesser extent older consoles which had piracy enabling mods) didn't acknowledge the long game consequences of their actions, or at least were willfully ignorant to them because everyone loves getting something for free
Why are you equating people who like single player games to pirates? Are you suggesting devs who made single player games were caving under some kind of market pressure that was ultimately unhealthy for them?
The difference in global, high-speed internet access between Quake and Fortnite is huge. I think that explains why live service games are a recent thing more than piracy. That, and Valve set the blueprint for gambling and loot boxes with TF2.
Regardless, I think the jury is out on Live Service games being "safer" to make. There's certainly a lot of people chasing what Fortnite has, but there's a lot of graves and layoffs. It seems like the single player studios are shutting down less because they were unprofitable, and more because building a sustainable business on selling good products doesn't sound good to investors trying to make an exit.
> For a long time now I've found it weird that people who like single player games on PC (and to a lesser extent older consoles which had piracy enabling mods) didn't acknowledge the long game consequences of their actions
Isn't historically piracy positive for sales [1]?
That said, I'm pretty sure the real issue is that single / local coop games are just not appealing and so they get weaker sales. Like wtf was with Pikmen 2 not letting player 2 control louie? And then when local games start to sell poorly they get divestment but I'm pretty sure it was just lousey games and not piracy.
>Isn't historically piracy positive for sales [1]?
if it was for the companies who use Denuvo and it added negative value then Denuvo wouldn't exist as a business and game publishers would happily post their games to pirate sites themselves.
The level of copium involved in piracy debates is always a sight to behold. I'm no saint, I've pirated stuff too but I did so because I was cheap, not because I'm doing the company a favor. That's a level of rationalization you expect from a drug addict
> if it was for the companies who use Denuvo and it added negative value then Denuvo wouldn't exist as a business and game publishers would happily post their games to pirate sites themselves.
Efficient market fallacy strikes again.
No, is is absolutely possible that use of Denuvo results in a net loss and it is still used. Executives don't always behave rational and it is not like you can AB Test that thing or even easily measure its impact.
How are the game companies supposed to determine that it adds negative value? Speak to the alternative universe where the same game wasn't bundled with it?
>How are the game companies supposed to determine that it adds negative value?
Look at their own/industry data of comparable games that have been published with or without protection. I worked in the game industry, for AAA studios it's a no brainer. Denuvo for a big title that sells millions of copies runs about high six or low seven figures in costs, so about 1-3% of the budget, whereas preventing piracy in the first 12 weeks meant something like a 10-20% increase (tens of millions) in sales.
The use of Denuvo has nothing to do with whether piracy hurts sales, only whether executives think piracy hurts sales. As we just saw, actual research on this topic has been suppressed because the results were wrongthink.
>if it was for the companies who use Denuvo and it added negative value then Denuvo wouldn't exist as a business and game publishers
If everyone colludes, then the game publishers wouldn't need to suffer for including Denuvo. And the nature of the collusion doesn't require some literal conspiracy, it just requires that the personalities at the top of the pyramids (of which there are but a few) are assholes who have an ideological bent. We are all aware of the type: they would spend themselves into the poorhouse making certain no one can "steal" from them, and what they consider theirs isn't entirely congruent with what the law says.
>The level of copium involved in piracy debates is always a sight to behold. I'm no saint, I've pirated stuff too b
I've never pirated anything. I don't hijack ships at sea. I have infringed copyright, but when copyright laws are bought and paid for my lobbyist slush funds, I don't feel any reason to give a shit about those laws. They were only ever utilitarian anyway, not some moral principle, and right now they're not even utilitarian.
It’s hard to see from a US/Euro salary perspective, where not spending $60 is a moral decision, but you can start seeing how someone in a 300/mo salary country doesn’t think “I’ll save a bit and buy it” and instead thinks “I’ll never be able to afford this and this studio made millions anyway” and just pirate it. I’m not that articulate with my words but I hope you get what I’m trying to say.
I think you're saying that piracy is often a no money issue, and you're not wrong.
Somehow I managed to build up a library of Steam games, $1-5 at a time. At that price I am willing to take my risks with possible inconveniences due to DRM and instead consider the convenience of being able to log into Steam anywhere and access my game library.
And though I am loath to admit it, I think "free to play" has shown that it can compete with piracy, though often by including dark patterns and slot machine mechanics to drive monetization.
It's also worth considering how much time you actually play the game. Mario Kart 8 delivered (for me at least) hundreds of hours of fun (often local multiplayer) gaming. If there's a game in that category, it can be worth saving up for (but the console itself can also be expensive.)
Greenheart Games famously released a "cracked" version of their own game (Game Dev Tycoon) onto torrent sites on launch day. In this version, the player's in-game studio eventually goes bankrupt because "pirates" steal their games.
The Data: Within 24 hours, 93.6% of players were playing the pirated version.
The Consequence: The developer's blog post highlighted the irony of pirates posting on forums complaining that the "in-game piracy" was unfair and "ruining" their fun. The experiment proved that even at a low price point ($8), a massive majority of the PC audience will choose "free" regardless of the developer's size or struggle.
Sure it can be zero. It can even be negative. As larger player numbers, including piracy, are a natural form of marketing. That means it's not hard to see this additional marketing could lead to larger sales figures compared to if piracy was not possible.
One reason anti piracy companies make a living is because companies that buy it see concrete increases in revenue as a result. It may not be every pirate who converts to a customer but DRM solutions are priced to be below the expected additional revenue. And it's not always cheap.
Do you have any data to support that? I'd actually be really interested to see. There are a lot of weird ass games with Denuvo (like Handball 17, Bus Simulator 18) I think at least sometimes paying a big DRM subscriptions is part of a money laundering scheme.
Don't have public data, but industry contacts confirmed to me in private on multiple occasions that DRM increased sales. One really old example was a copy protected expansion pack selling much better than the unprotected base game that is required.
Only anecdata which I'm not allowed to publicize. All I'll say is that places that use this stuff are often operating at low margins and if they didn't see benefits they wouldn't pay for it.
> The experiment proved that even at a low price point ($8), a massive majority of the PC audience will choose "free" regardless of the developer's size or struggle.
Several points:
* A pirate can pirate infinity +1 games for free, that will skew any statistic compared to legitimiate buyers that have to manage a finite budget. It also means that you aren't looking at 93% lost sales.
* It wasn't a new indy game, but a port of an existing mobile game, so I wouldn't be surprised if legitimate buyers weren't in a rush to get their hands on it on day one. The steam statistics from the first month mention a peak concurrent player count of over 7000 so it certainly didn't stay at 200 copies.
I basically just Hoover up every new game on the pirate sites once a week. I spend thousands a year on video games. I own a 5090. I’m kind of obsessed.
Unhinged take I checked that was 2013 and the game cost almost as much as you you would pay in a month's rent in India in small towns.
Most pirates aren't people who could pay for this stuff. This is utterly meaningless.
So much in fact I don't even want to link counter examples to it.
No/very few paying user pirates even single player games these days if they can afford it as a luxury please understand that.
I would likemy regular updates bug fixes patches and new feaures ASAP. And on sale at 8$ for a game is less than 0.01% of my income so sure.
But if it costs 800 USD I will get it for free because I am literally too poor for it.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is beyond deluded.
Instead of denuvo you can use simple steam drm, non trivial to pirate for small games cracks will take days or weeks to appear and updates won't be available instantly.
It's safe simple and easy. And doesn't hurt any one.
Denuvo is just invasive bullcrap that deluded people think helps anyone.
Steam DRM is trivial to the point where you may as well not use it and just release on GOG. Until the one actual cracker in combination with the hypervisor guys showed up a few months ago Denuvo had been unassailable for years.
Thats playing with statistics and you know it. Why such game?
If they would release only the paid game, there wouldn't be 93% + 7% of the gamers playing, far from it.
Cost is almost irrelevant to pirates, either its free or its not, like it or not. There is mix of folks who do it for the lulz, some do it to have higher performance gaming without denuvo taking resources and computing power, and some are outright poor. Even 8-usd-is-too-much poor.
I've lived like that. Don't judge too easily. Don't do stupid mistakes and count those as otherwise-paying-gamers. Thats PR for denuvo and similar, not a fair discussion.
The other option I can see for the large companies is that any project involving tens or hundreds of millions of dollars is likely to be insured, and a condition of that insurance is they take all reasonable options available to get the most success out of it that they can. If they don't they need to reduce the risk which probably means less resources allocated which again may not be interesting to the companies capable of making grand experiences versus other options.