Last week we published an editorial called “The Hypocracy of PC gamers“. We’ve received a ton of feedback and emails from readers, some good, some bad, but we also got emails from a few game developers as well. One developer wanted to share his story on how piracy affected his studio. These are his thoughts.
I run a small independent PC game studio (which will remain anonymous), and we have a slate of smaller puzzle and RPG games that we’ve made since 2009. We sell the games on Steam and other downloadable services, in addition to selling them on our own site, completely DRM-free. In 2011, we had 12 developers and artists working on new titles, and working on getting our games on the iOS platform. Sales were decent throughout the years, enough to support us and ensure that we could keep updating our games. Then our entire catalog of games was posted on The Pirate Bay and spread to other torrent sites.
“The “bundle” of games hit the torrent sites in January 2011, and by March, sales were down 50%. By May, they were down 80%”We didn’t think much of it at first, piracy affects everyone in this industry, and we believed that sales wouldn’t be affected too much and that gamers would appreciate supporting the devs and buying DRM free games. Then sales went down. A lot. The “bundle” of games hit the torrent sites in January 2011, and by March, sales were down 50%. By May, they were down 80%. We tried to respond to the piracy of our games in several ways. We lowered the price on Steam by 33%. Sales picked up a tiny bit, but it’s impossible because you’re competing with free. We had Steam sales, bundle packs, everything we could. It wasn’t enough, and by October of 2011, I had to let go half of my team — 6 people. We’ve restructured now to focus entirely on iOS games. I dunno how it’ll turn out, but developing on PC and supporting our PC games is not an option any longer. We just can’t afford it.
It’s easy for gamers and game journalists to get on their soapbox and proclaim they know how to fix the piracy issue, they always seem to “know” what developers should do (“Put it on Steam”. “Don’t use DRM”, “Use clever advertising” etc.). But you’re not the ones who have to manage a studio, you’re not the ones who have to make sure your developers get paid so they can feed their families. Our studio was doing just fine before our games hit the pirate channels. Then it all went downhill.
There are some claims that piracy causes millions of lost jobs in the US. I dunno about those numbers, maybe they’re true, maybe they’re much lower. But I know that piracy cost at least 6 jobs in 2011. Six people that I had to fire. Talented, hard-working folks with families.
So to all of you Pirate Bay supporters, all of you “experts” on Internet freedom who support “sharing” and who claim that “it’s not stealing”. From the bottom of my heart and on behalf of those 6 people: fuck you.
UPDATE: Our contributor emailed in this addition to the post: “For all those who ask: I won’t name my company nor the games we make. I’m fully aware that my statements go against most gamer’s beliefs on piracy and I have no intentions of drawing the wrath of the Internet to my company, which is already struggling. And this has nothing to do with quality — our games had a great fan base and we were doing just fine for two years before the games hit the torrent networks.”
That why I have stopped downloading illegally, a long time ago.
You also get much better quality, for a game you bought, and think about the viruses you don’t get!
And if we pc gamer still wanna play on our pc’s then we need to buy games instead of download the game illegally.
“You also get much better quality, for a game you bought”
You are very misinformed. Scene released (Media with copy protection checks removed/circumvented) content has at times been the better of the DRM released versions.
When Bioshock came out, it had, I believe, a 5 install limit.
Mass Effect had a 5 install limit on it as well.
Anno 2070 had limitations, until reviewers blasted them over it. It was a maximum of three installations. Changing a video card caused it to trigger. That isn’t “quality” in the least.
Guess what? The cracked versions of these games didn’t have the draconian DRM that every paying customer had to put up with.
You also say “think of the viruses you don’t get”.
Scene (pirated) releases are of a high quality (The scene has standards for various media formats) and don’t have viruses attached. It’s a cutthroat world in the scene and reputation is everything.
“You are very misinformed. Scene released (Media with copy protection checks removed/circumvented) content has at times been the better of the DRM released versions.”
You are just as misinformed. I was a pirate since about 1999 up to 2010. during that time I barely bought a game, I used to argue the same bullshit points. Let me tell you. even with the DRM, legit games run better MOST of the time. I hate the DRM, but i have much less crashes from game i have bought then when i used to pirate. I’ve since gone back and purchased most of the games that i had stolen then, those too have proven to run better legitimately then the pirated versions. When you buy a game, you pay for quality and reliability.
Having been very much ‘in the scene’ 20 years ago I could say that I am more qualified than most to comment on this,
I remember ripping cutscene’s out of games, Dropping Audio quality all the way down on all the samples packed inside a release just to get the size down to the bare minimum because back in those days the bandwidth really wasn’t there and if you could cut even 20 meg out of a release that would save you hours in the long run.
Then we used to rely on couriers to actually seed our releases to all the boards, There were a few occasions where my work was modified by a few of our couriers, one can only assume it was for “other purposes”.
Now today it is just too easy for a script kiddie to take a release from a 0-day ftp, upload a torrent to TPB and watch zombies start to connect to their servers. For a game its not that much of a big deal since you have to get a ‘little bit’ fancy to get past AV software and rootkit the OS.
But if one is downloading complete images of a OS and then installing it I would guess 90 to 95% of what one finds on most torrent sites to be a pre-rooted installer which will never be discovered by any AV or validation software ( since a admin account in windows these days dosn’t have enough privileges to peek into all the ram & services available on a machine its game over before you even start )
Besides there are almost foolproof ways of making software a pain in the ass to crack that have been forgotten by the industry ( Dongles anyone ?? ) combine a dongle ( similar to a RSA PRNG ) with a executable that connects to a server, uses the dongle for authentication and then downloads the main executable binaries for said game directly into ram and uses the dongle to decrypt said binary, and you have turned what would be a 30 minute job in a debugger into days if not weeks of work.
Ah cry me a river.
Games with DRM are exceptional nowadays. Unless you talk about Ubisoft games.
You are the reason why PC gaming is dying
And yes I’m a PC gamer myself and I’m not a game developer.
Hidden due to lowRated by other readers">comment rating. Click here to see.
How can you call this journalism? You are incredibly biased, and it seems like you’re attacking your audience. further more you don’t even seem to take into account that the longer their products are on the market the lower their demand gets.
Damien:
You say that “you don’t even seem to take into account that the longer their products are on the market the lower their demand gets.”, yet demand stayed constant for 2 years. Then after 2 months of their product being on Pirate Bay (1/12 the time), it dropped by 80%.
I would say it’s biased not to see the correlation.
I can only quote a poster below me on this.
“And if you really think it just popped up one day on TPB, you’re crazy. Most games, even if they’re indie games, are up for torrenting the day of release.”
That said, I re-read the article and comments and I seriously can’t figure out what exactly that company is even doing. First I just thought they made different games over the years and one or more of their latest went down the dumps sales wise after hitting torrents. Now that I re-read it, they update their games over the years? They have bundles of their games? That supported 12 people? Then it hits pirate bay and suddenly it all goes wrong?
Why say this anonymous? So he can “get away” with saying fuck you? Come on. The only reason to stay unknown is either because it’s a load of shovel entirely or because the developer would be an easy target for people giving valid reasons he doesn’t really want to hear. There are plenty of undersold, underrated and overpirated gems out there, but as long as this is anonymous and nothing more than a “fuck you”, I can only assume the games were typical shovelware and once people could try before buy, nobody who knows his way around a PC had to feel regret for spending money on titles that were just plain bad.
Sorry, if you want people to care, then you have to put yourself out there a bit more. Maybe that would’ve helped sales too. It’s one of the things successful indies do. Build communities that love them and want to see them do well.
How come we don’t hear other indie devs bitching, then? Super Meat Boy was a brand new indie game from a brand new company and it just passed the 1 million copies sold mark. Granted it was on XBLA, but it sold MORE on Steam.
What about Magicka? Brand new company, first game. It has now sold over 1.3 million copies on Steam, and that’s without DLC… And there are plenty more examples, buddy.
Piracy isn’t your issue. Pirates don’t buy your game when it’s not on torrent sites. They just find something else to pirate. Don’t give us this shit about how PC is no longer an option and isn’t affordable.
I hate to be the to say this, but what your statement says is that you released a game or two and just updated them over a few years. As an indie developer. THAT would be responsible for declination of sales rather than piracy. And if you really think it just popped up one day on TPB, you’re crazy. Most games, even if they’re indie games, are up for torrenting the day of release.
TL;DR Piracy is probably not responsible for declination of your sales.
I made an indie game. It is selling on Steam. It is also available on torrents.
The fact is that some segment of gamers will always be there to steal your game. But if it’s a good game, it will sell. I don’t believe piracy has ever demolished the sales of a good game.
Hidden due to lowRated by other readers">comment rating. Click here to see.
You, sir, are a GOD DAMN RETARD. FUCK you, FUCK your kind. Everyone else here? They have good, PROPER opinions. You dickheads who would pirate a game even if you LIKED it and WEREN’T trying to circumvent awful computer or game breaking DRM are trash and YOU are all the game industry sees. YOU are fucking the rest of us over.
What a coward. If you want to call people out tell us what games you’re talking about.
Maybe your games stopped selling because they were bad, not supported well and/or too simple for the pc platform market?
A drop in sales after 3 years must be those damn pirates *shakes fist. Takes ball and goes home* – anon coward
Hidden due to lowRated by other readers">comment rating. Click here to see.
Sales were down, months after release?! Yes, that is the general direction that sales of a video game travel in. Sorry to hear you’re a shitty businessman and are blaming your problems on your fans and customers. I take it this is why most games are so shitty.
How about making NEW games and not coasting off sales from 3 years ago? You have to keep making shit to get money – nothing lasts forever.
what is this? indie games sell really well on pc, ask binding of isaac, a flash game that has sold over 400k already and the devs didnt even expect to sell well at all. Super meat boy, bastion, magika, and plenty of other indie devs have left xbla to join steam and have been very successful. That is fine if you want to leave steam, by the looks of it your attitude is off in terms of loving what you do and just wanting to milk some money. The indie games i mentioned, their devs love their jobs and they show it. Updates, dlc, and they are always grateful to their audience for their contributions. Good luck on XBLA, where you wont even have a front page to tell you youre game is out. We wont miss you here on steam.
Neither magicka nor bastion are indie. Magicka is published by paradox interactive and bastion is published by warner brothers.
Can people PLEASE stop falling for this crap. Indie as a concept is being latched onto and used by larger businesses to create hype and interest in their game, and also increase sales in the name of “helping out the indies.”
By letting this slide you are taking the focus away from the people who actually are indie and actually do deserve to the help to survive.
You’re right, a team of 7 people (Supergiant Games) is definitely not an indie DEVELOPER.
It isn’t.
4 people made Mortal Kombat. They weren’t an indie developer. The number of employees doesn’t determine whether or not you’re an indie developer.
Torrents are up for indie games within hours of their release on steam. Its convenient to blame pirates for your decline in sales years after your content was released, but it is not realistic. Games that aren’t great stop making money shortly after they are released, never to be heard from again. If you make a good game, it will sell copies forever on steam. Stop blaming piracy for your woes, make a decent product and people will buy it.
I live on about £50 a week. This about pays for food, internet and leaves me, if I’m lucky with about £20 to spend on games. I started pirating about the same time demos went out of fashion, when I buy any game I’m taking a huge risk. So I’ll download your game and if I feel it’s worth the money, I’ll hop on steam and buy it, if I don’t think the pricetag fits the product I’ll uninstall and move on with my life.
Bottom line is that of people genuinely like your games they’ll buy them if they’re not total douchebags, websites like the pirate bay are not the probelm, it’s douchebags. It’s like blaming free speech for the fact that someone called you a whiney cunt.
Hidden due to lowRated by other readers">comment rating. Click here to see.
>iOS
Well theres your problem
>iOS games
yeah, there’s your problem. you think your games are good and are entitled to sell by default, you don’t even consider that the games are fucking shoddy.
we don’t want phone games.
a shitty game that is graphically worse than fucking sonic 2, who’s entire premise is ‘HEY GUYS WE GOT DA PHYSICS’ like you’ve just discovered gravity is not something we want.
secondly, you’re complaining that sales of your bundle, released in january, were non existent by october? EVERYONE THAT WANTED IT BOUGHT IT. you think they’re gonna keep buying it again or something?
it baffles me how you all want to blame piracy for your own poor game design. if you made the best game to ever exist, it’d sell. and don’t even come back with the ‘hurr but every pirated copy is a lost sale!’, we all know it isn’t. being massively generous towards your stupid numbers, you end up with about 10% max of pirates who would have otherwise bought the game but now wont.
how do you expect consumers to respect you when not only do you make shoddy games, but you constantly spout that nonsense? every pirated copy is not a lost sale. every used game purchase is not a lost sale. you(publishers and devs, not you specifically) just want to be paid multiple times for the same product. please explain to me how you sell your game in a store, you sell one copy, you get paid for that one copy, and then you expect to be paid for it again? 1 physical product = 1 sale.
you’re all becoming entitled and greedy, always after the bigger market at the expense of creating a game you can be proud of or had a vision and passion for.
if your game is good, piracy will make you equal to the money you’d lose at worst, at best more money, through the free advertising it gives you. especially as you all seem to have forgotten that if you don’t advertise your shit it WONT SELL.
What indie developers ‘should do’ is stop putting out garbage and expecting it to sell. Every good game has sold well regardless of piracy.
That’s strange, they have been telling me piracy has been killing the industry for over 2 decades now.
Hell i have known piracy since chip piracy, but i can see how these new generations might have an oversight of this and actually get dragged into the stupidity of the “killing industry” talk.
What i don’t understand is how one can keep saying the same thing for over 2 decades and keep being wrong for all that time.
If anything the industry is thriving and keeps increasing and increasing.
The other thing i love is how piracy gets blamed for the bad quality of products you give. I love that the most. I see a row of first person shooters coming out literally ever month for every platform and i of course see the same thing getting put on the shelves over and over again. Brilliant thing really. Kids love shooters, the movies and ongoing wars market them, you make as many of them as you can in the shortest amount of time (which means the shortcut now involves copy pasting other shooters and just not giving anything quality wise for your product) and presto, you have yourself a crappy product which will still sell. Want to make matters even better ? Well anyone who complains will of course get the promise of DLC improving it. Isn’t that nice ? You sell the crappy game and then you sell the improvements that should have come from the beginning.
Those pockets are all happy and filled aren’t they ? And now we have a thriving industry. Add a few review bribes and you got yourself set.
Too bad the people are getting fed up from the same crap circling and everyone is now seeing beyond the veil of crap.
“The “bundle” of games hit the torrent sites in January 2011, and by March, sales were down 50%. By May, they were down 80%”
Yes, I think you’ll find that sales tend to go down over time, especially in the video game market when there is so much saturation.
He’s got no evidence or indication that piracy caused lost sales, he’s just making an assumption. I’m not saying that piracy never hurts, but you can’t just scream PIRATES whenever your game sells poorly.
The comments of a best selling author about piracy:
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2012/01/20/welcome-to-pirate-my-books/
This one is real and not anonymous !
Here’s what I’m seeing from reading between the lines: an “entire catalog” of games – probably five or more – released in three years, all self-admittedly “smaller” titles; selling for enough to receive a 33% discount but not a larger percent, so probably priced at around $10-15 initially. Basically, little one-shot titles created from a grander plan, segmented to get immediate revenue.
Any game that takes only six months to plan, design, test, and release is going to be of questionable quality and long-term value, unless backed by some tremendous creativity and vision. Although low cost and no DRM removes some of the impediment to purchasing a game, they do not address the final and most important aspect – interest in the game. There are some games so uninspired that they couldn’t be given away for free, and these little games seem to be some of them.
I’ve seen teams of four people or less put out games that made an immense cultural impact (not to mention the revenue), but all those teams spent a long time planning, prototyping, and treating their customers as their most valuable asset. Those teams earned my respect and every cent I spent buying (and sometimes rebuying) their games. I have no interest in a developer who scoffs at their legitimate customers to spite pirates, then hides behind anonymity to callously insult millions of PC gamers who have never heard of that developer’s games.
So, unnamed developer, take your games away, and be forever damned to mediocrity.
I wonder why people keep on blaming pirates, its the bigger companies that portraid pirates in a bad light, did you guys ever go to a library? Its the same, severall people using 1 copy of a book without paying for it. And you dont see writers bitch around about libraries.
Also good games always sell, and why do you think that the sales will stay constant? Less and less people will buy your game because people will already have it, and people will spread the word on how shitty your game was.
I’m no philosopher or mathematician, but the core of the argument is based on bad logic. Torrent went up, sales went down — there’s a correlation so they must be directly related, right?
Sales go down because people stop buying — that’s a fact. What we don’t know is whether or not sales would’ve gone down whether the torrents went up or not, and we’ll probably never know. Also, this anonymous developer only provided stats that support their own bias on the data, data that we can’t see for ourselves since they conveniently chose not to identify themselves. We’re missing important data here: what was the release frequency of these games? How well were they received? What were the sales figures? Was this studio fiscally managed responsibly?
More facts:
-People will steal something because they don’t want to or can’t pay for it (not always, but we’ll keep it simple).
-Some indie developers are very successful despite their game being just as easy to pirate as anyone else’s.
-A pirated copy of a game does not necessarily equate to a missed sale opportunity — not going to touch this one much because there are too many unknowns.
The first two are at odds with each other but are both true, generally. So what’s The Reason? I think that’s what this developer has failed to consider. What I see is a studio that not only decided to get involved in a market that’s known for a high piracy rate, but also in a smaller and very competitive niche (indie games). I’m speculating that games intially sold at a moderate rate, probably due to exposure on Steam and simple curiosity. Based on the words “slate of smaller games” I’m going to assume that they stayed afloat more because of their volume of games. Again, this data is kept hidden from us so we won’t know that or the reason they suddenly couldn’t support themselves anymore.
Here’s another thing I see: Rather than admit that perhaps they didn’t have what it takes, whether it be creative vision or business finesse, the alternative is to blame someone/something else, create justifications, or deflect. This studio failed in a highly competitive market and is now faced with an ego dilemma: either admit they failed or blame someone else. Most people don’t do the former because well, it makes people feel bad! I’m sure nobody wants to admit that they were even partially responsible for costing six people their jobs. The guilt is pretty evident in the language here: “Six people that I had to fire. Talented, hard-working folks with families.” I’m guessing some of the other logic they used was something like “We’ve sold thousands of games for years now, therefore people must like our games or that must mean we make good games.” That is of course, bad logic.
I don’t deny that piracy does affect sales, but if the above statements are taken to be true, it’s not to the devastating, crippling effect that people would like to believe. It sounds to me that this studio was already on its way out the door. Again, no data.
Speaking of data, there are already some compelling guesses as to who you folks are, at least one of which I’m inclined to believe. I’ll leave you to your privacy, but might I suggest changing your company name? Then again, based on this hot-headed lash-out I’m guessing you’re already planning that.
Here’s some honest advice: Talk with the people who bought your game. Try to contact people who didn’t buy your game. Even better, try to get into contact with people who pirated your game and ask them to give an honest opinion! There are creative and effective ways of doing all of these.
>I run a small independent PC game studio (which will remain anonymous)
Aw schucks, i wanted to see what games are so horribly pirated so i could buy one to support you guys. Or maybe they aren’t worth a purchase at all? A lot of people pirate games to see if it’s any good and then buy it. Maybe you don’t get any sales because you fail to impress gamers who are going to play the game instead of believing your trailers and screenshots.
To be honest, most indie games are not even worth buying.
Back in the days, stuff like that was freeware. Nobody would even think of selling a 2D platformer past the 00s.
And now every mediocre “Mario but with a tweeeest” makes the dev tons of money relative to the effort they put into the games, and they complain.
Sorry, but games that use gameplay mechanics from twenty years ago are no better than yearly football sims or CoD-like FPS, as they don’t move the industry an inch towards progress.
Indie games that try something new and actually take advantage of their independence are great, though, and need support.
Hidden due to lowRated by other readers">comment rating. Click here to see.