[citricsquid]

    People have always been, and always will be, willing 
    to pay for good products. We have always understood 
    Return on Investment, even if we don’t call it that.

Which is why World Of Goo[0], a fantastic indie game that was priced at $20, that has a 90 / 100 Metacritic score[1], that has absolutely no DRM is a game that had over 80% piracy rate at launch? The "People want to pay it's just the companies stopping them" argument is so much bunk it's insulting that people continue to write it.

People want stuff consequence free, if they have to pay to get rid of those consequences then they will. For a lot of people the consequences of media piracy are non-existant, they don't believe they will ever be caught (and it's not as if "getting caught" even matters) so the only result of media piracy is... saving money! So they do it. For me a consequence of media piracy is knowing I did not pay for something I have, that is why I don't engage in media piracy. For people that don't have this feeling that they should pay why would they?

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Goo

[1] http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/world-of-goo

[2] http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/11/15/world-of-goo-pira...

[deelowe]

Umm... It was $20 for what was essentially a cell phone game. Once it got lowered to a few bucks and was sold during the steam sales/humble bundles, it did quite well.

As a counter example, what about super meatboy? It did extremely well IIRC.

There are several issues in the entertainment industry and they all result in decreased sales(which is the real issue, right? I mean, should anyone really care about piracy as long as sales are good?)

1. Price point. Video games shouldn't be $60, movies shouldn't be $30, and music shouldn't be >$1 per song. As a consumer, this is just too much for the value I get out of these things. Sorry, that's just the way it is and yes, the internet is a big reason for this b/c there's tons of free stuff on the net that provide as good or better value for the money. This was the problem with WoG btw.

2. Barrier to entry. Simply having to drive to a store to buy a movie is too much effort these days. This is why steam and netflix are doing so well. Make it dead simple for me to get access to the content and sales will increase.

3. DRM. This breaks games. I think twice about buying any game with DRM, because I'm afraid it won't work when I upgrade my pc or the host company shuts down servers. I have NES games that still work from my childhood. It sucks when new games don't get the same level of treatment. If I didn't have principles, I could see myself pirating these games so that I can have a non-broken copy, but I don't pirate.

4. Publishing companies. Lately, these guys seem hell bent on ruining franchises. As an example, I bought battlefield 3. It had origin, the colors were terrible, and it was unclear exactly how much had improved from BF2(there was certainly a lot that was missing), but I still bought it, because I've always been a huge fan of the franchise(desert combat was the greatest mod ever). And.... it is terrible in comparison. I won't be buying battlefield 4. Now, I've been a fan of dice since the first battlefield came out. I watch their dev videos and follow their work. I was ecstatic when they picked up the DC team. These are a great group of guys. But this is not dice's game, it's EA's. They ruined that franchise. Maybe bf4 will sell well, who knows, but it will die just like call of duty has and it's not because of piracy. The same thing applies to movies, tv shows, and popular music these days. The people running the show don't care about the content.

I'm sorry, but piracy doesn't cause lost sales. The above does. The issue is industry wide and the cracks are showing. There's been plenty of indie games that have sold very well recently and have no drm. Piracy isn't the issue, the internet is. People are more informed now and expect better value for their money. Everyone just needs to accept that and move on(and stop scapegoating piracy as the root cause).

[PeterisP]

Who cares about % of piracy? The only value that matters is the absolute number of sales, not what the non-customers did or didn't do with that game.

DRM hurts sales of many products. If one more extra customer pays for your movie because the DRM-free service is better, then it outweighs a billion of freeloaders.

[citricsquid]

The percentage of piracy demonstrates that there is a demand for the product but the consumers don't want to pay for it. World of Goo is the example I used because it's a "perfect" product under the check list provided in the article: great product (90/100) affordable ($20 for a game that takes >10 hours to complete) same price in all markets, unrestricted, same availability everywhere.

[PeterisP]

Actually, statement "consumers don't want to pay for it" by definition means lack of demand; demand is the # of people that want the product at that price.

A pirated copy demonstrates a wish for the product but does not neccessarily demonstrate a real market with a real demand for it at that price point.

For example, if you look globally, there are huge populations that have the capability to play pirated games but (a) can't consider $20 as affordable; and (b) can't use western payment infrastructures such as credit card payments.

If you look locally, a person who would play World of Goo for free but if offered it at $20 would choose some other entertainment - that's not a potential customer, that's shouldn't be counted in demand.

[sanderjd]

The elephant in the room is, of that 80% of piraters, what percentage of them were actual potential customers at the $20 price, and what percentage had no interest in the game at that price. If 0% of the piraters were really customers, then you lost nothing through pirating and sold to the entirety of your actual customer base, which just happens to be only 20% of all the people who have your product. If 100% of the piraters were customers, then you have indeed lost out on most of your potential revenue. Of course neither of us can say what that percentage really is, I think probably very close to 0% and I expect you think much closer to 100%.

[GFischer]

Many pirates in my country (some %, probably less than 50%) would buy a game... but they don't have the tools required - International Credit Card, which basically only adults with a good job are given, and which most DON'T use on the Internet (the local Groupon clone revolutionized local e-commerce by offering payments on a local physical payment system).

When I investigated a micropayments startup (we wanted to try it in our country), we found some surprising facts - a huge % of the world's population don't have access to banking systems, even if they DO have some disposable money and want to pay for online games - non-cc alternatives to buying Facebook currency and such were huge requests when we did our customer research.

[ollysb]

I haven't played games in a long time but when I did magazines would give away discs with demos of games that had just been released. Is it possible to try games before you buy, on steam for example, or do you have to jump in and buy the game without trying it?

[claudius]

> $20 for a game that takes >10 hours to complete

I don’t know about you, but for €15, I could enjoy 10 hours of films in a cinema and back then™ when I was playing and buying games, I got a few months out of a single game (Pharaoh and Caesar III come to mind). 2$/h is definitely not a ‘fair price’ for a game I have to run on my own computer.

[crusso]

DRM hurts sales of many products

For the few who consider DRM to be a moral issue or to those who use DRM as an excuse to pirate harder or distribute - but in reality, unobtrusive levels of DRM like those used for DVDs prevent the masses from making near free copies of movies to distribute to friends and relatives.

[PeterisP]

As an anecdote of how DRM hurts sales of DVD's - many of my friends now have 2-5 year old kids.

All of them bought a bunch of kid movie DVDs legally. All of them don't buy legal DVDs anymore as they are a bad quality product compared to downloaded movies:

1) The original discs get scratched quickly and they don't know how to back them up (as they are allowed by law but disallowed by DRM) - if the kids ask to "repair the movie" it is simpler for them to download & burn a fresh copy of the movie they bought, rather than try to break the DRM (again, breaking the DRM is explicitly legal here).

2) The original DVD's contain unskippable ads before the movie. It's defective by design - especially if you want to limit your kids exposure to that brainwashing. Pirated DVDs provide a better viewing experience.

So, a lot of people who would be perfectly willing to pay $$$ for many, many movies got hurt by the substandard product. If the content providers had legally sold the 'piratebay-style' DVDs at the same price, they would get their money.

[marknutter]

And so are you suggesting that if it had DRM it wouldn't have seen such a high piracy rate? The fact is, there's going to be some level of piracy no matter what you do. There will always be people out there who will obtain the game but would have never otherwise bought the game. There will always be people out there for whom $20 is a reasonable price and will gladly pay it to obtain the game. It's up to the game author to determine the optimal price point to maximize their return. The option of preventing piracy, frankly, will never exist (barring egregious internet freedom encroachments). And people like you can continue to feel morally superior to everyone, if it helps you sleep at night.

[citricsquid]

The blog post presented a supposed solution: make it easy for people to acquire something legally and they will acquire it legally. However World of Goo is a perfect example that this is just not the case, even if the product is literally perfect piracy will remain rampant. Why would a company bother investing huge amounts of money into creating a "perfect" tv/movie distribution platform if it's going to make barely any difference to the amount of piracy? I wasn't suggesting DRM is good (I don't like DRM) I was suggesting that piracy is not a result of a poor product it's a result of the consumers desire to get stuff for free.

[PeterisP]

The solution is a bit different - "make it easy for people to acquire something legally and they will acquire it legally." means that there will be a lot of people (group A) who will acquire it legally and you'll get a lot of money from that market.

It doesn't say anything about the group B who'll pirate it anyways, no matter what you do with DRM.

[pc86]

Does 80% really qualify as "some level of piracy?"

Clearly there is a group of people who will always pirate what they want, regardless of the price or what it is (movies, TV shows, games, Photoshop). If that's the case, then I think it's also fair to say that there is a certain group of people for whom even the smallest bit of DRM would cause them to either go without the movie/show/program (I think the most likely) or buy it outright.

[i_cannot_hack]

    > even the smallest bit of DRM would cause them to [...] 
    > go without the movie/show/program (I think the most likely)

And this would benefit the producer how? It would only serve to reduce the userbase, and thereby dampening the word-of-mouth spread and the perceived popularity the game, thus harming the sales of the product.

Of course, it those people bought the game instead, it could make up for it. But you said it was the less likely scenario.

[Nursie]

"I think it's also fair to say that there is a certain group of people for whom even the smallest bit of DRM would cause them to either go without the movie/show/program"

Really?

Because the pirate 'products' I've seen tend not to come with any DRM. DRM only affects the legit versions.

[jamespo]

I don't read that as he feels morally superior, but even if he does it's only over pirates, not everyone

[wfewresrasdasd]

Look, the "people want to pay" argument is as much bunk as your "people want stuff consequence free" argument. Both are oversimplifying, both focus on extreme ends of the truth.

Think of piracy and legitimate media sources as competing services. Looking at the "consequences" of using a service is only one aspect of the value of that service to the user. Likewise, looking at the ease-of-use for a service is only one aspect of its value to the user. There are many criteria to evaluate services on, such as price, availability, convenience, security risks, additional services, legal and moral consequences.

Internet piracy is always going to be cheaper than legitimate sources (unless content providers and ISPs start bundling services together cheaply). This means that legitimate media sources have to beat piracy in other areas in order to stay competitive. The fact is, many media industries have focused heavily on the legal and moral consequences side of things, while continuing to provide a service that is actually WORSE than piracy in terms of availability and convenience. This is probably the least consumer friendly way of dealing with the issue, and rightly draws a lot of criticism.

These days, services like Netflix and Steam provide convenience and availability, with addition services (such as support and recommendation services) that are valuable to the consumer. Plus, there is the added benefit that these legitimate sources don't provide malware and other security risks present in pirated media (especially games).

The "people want to pay" argument is really just a way of saying that there is a significant market share that would be attracted to legitimate media sources that provide a quality of service competitive with piracy, but otherwise would be motivated to use piracy instead. The massive success of Steam and Netflix proves that point.

However, the continued and expanded provision of services like Steam and Netflix hinges entirely on content distribution companies believing that this market segment is large enough to compensate for the income they would otherwise get from providing restricted services where a small number of big spenders pay a lot to access artificially scarce content.

The moral and legal consequences that you care so much about are the result of very high level business decisions. Media industries have used propaganda to change public perception of morality (e.g. "you wouldn't download a car" etc) and lobbying to change the law (e.g. DMCA etc). I expect they did an analysis and found that the money they spent on this was much less than the extra income they got from continuing to be able to provide artificially scarce content for as long as they have.

There is a genuine moral issue with regards piracy, in that people who create beloved works of art should be rewarded for their efforts. However, the content distribution companies are massive culprits in preventing artists from being rewarded for their work (have you read up on how the music industry works?) Content distribution companies don't really deserve to be rewarded greatly for distributing content - it's an easy job that pirates do for free. The only reason they have been rewarded greatly in the past is due to their extremely strong market power (and probably because many artists aren't very business minded). You might argue that content distributors should be rewarded for advertising content - however, the journalistic review system, or external recommendation systems, could easily replace advertising in bringing new content to people's attention. In fact, in some industries (e.g. games) the money spent on advertising actually harms the integrity of the review system. Lastly, the financial rewarding of artists isn't the only moral issue involved in art. Good art being made available to the public is a good thing in and of itself. Content distributors are in a privileged position, protected by law, they should have some moral duty to make decisions that reward them with profits while also ensuring a wide audience. Game of Thrones is a significant work of writing and performance, it would be a terrible shame if people weren't pirating it, because then hardly anyone would get to see it.

[Kequc]

The price was way too high. $20 for a casual 2D touchscreen game? When they shifted to "pay what you want" they made $100,000 on it in one week.

The lack of DRM had nothing to do with the piracy rate that rate would have been identical either way. If they had released it "pay what you want" I imagine that would have made a big difference.

Why people bring up that World of goo was DRM free and got pirated makes no sense to me. Games that aren't DRM free get pirated as much or more, I say more because then there's a legitimate reason to pirate it. To acquire a DRM free version.

[chongli]

I don't know about you, but for me $20 is a lot of money for such a simple game as World of Goo.

[njs12345]

The piracy rate is meaningless. The figure you want is the piracy rate amongst people who would have paid for the game if it hadn't been available to pirate, and determining that is close to impossible.

[claudius]

> For me a consequence of media piracy is knowing I did not pay for something I have

If you don’t engage in media piracy, you often end up paying for something you don’t have – be it because the DRM servers got shut down or because you moved from company X to company Y without being able to export your music collection or because you have to sit through N minutes of advertising/FBI warnings to watch 2N minutes of a movie.

[josscrowcroft]

This seems like a bit too much extrapolation from one example, and I don't think it renders the entire position 'bunk'...

[hawleyal]

Do you think it would have been supremely popular without all those extra players?