Piracy

It's interesting to read all the opinions. I don't know how old you, how wrote here, are. I assume pretty young. But reading DatapawWolf 's "confession" reminded me of something.

I'm 47 years old. I grew up in a world without computers or cell phones, internet or even video cameras. At the age of 11 I heard of something mysterious called "Pong". I was hooked.

But since the very first "home computers", in contrast to consoles, there also was piracy. I remember my very first C64. A few days after I got that one ("Just to have an advantage in school, Dad. See, I can easily plot graphs of functions with it and calculate so much more complex than any pocket calculator could ever do!"), a datasette full of games fell miraculously into my hands. None of them were bought. And guess, what? We argued pretty much the same than you today, 30 years later. The excuses are so old as the pirated industry. And anyone bringing in almost philosophical aspects is just doing balony. It's a try to distract from the fact that one uses for free what he needs to pay for! It's morally unrighteous. At least back then I didn't pretend to be on some holy mission. Instead I was very aware that I was doing wrong. But it felt so good.

And that's the point. It feels so good. All the freedom of getting anything you want, when you want it, where you want it, without paying respect of another one's good. By pretending there is no "another one's good", but "everyone's good". Yeah, right. Like you always shared your Halloween candy with your family.

Sister: "Oh that's nice. I like it. Give it to me."

Brother: "No, you can't have it. It's mine."

Be honest and smile while remembering the scene. No, you just want other's goods to be shared. And the feeling of getting anything is nothing new. It's what people made to believe in higher entities. No matter the religion (yes, even buddhism), there always is some kind of overly rewarding situation or place. Christians know it as Garden Eden, ancient Vikings as Valhalla, ancient Egypts as the afterlife, the Koran tells of "Jannah", etc. All share the same concept. A place or feeling of everything positive in abundance.

Piracy is just a try to shortcut to Garden Eden.

Back in the stone-age. Gro has a flintstone axe. What a wonderful axe. Sharp and strong. Cuts through meat, can kill animals. A must-have for the up-to-date stone-ager! Sesh is an untalented follower of his tribe. Never had much luck in axe building. But he wants one!

Sesh: Tonight I will use your axe, Gru. You won't miss it while you're sleeping anyway!

Gru: No, you can't have it. I worked a week on it and is very valuable to me.

Sesh: I don't care. I'll take it when you are asleep. You won't even notice it.

Gru: I don't permit it! But you can have your own axe. For all the meat of a mammoth I will craft an axe for you.

Sesh: Mammoth? I don't have that much meat. That's not fair.

Gru: Then keep hunting until you get it. The axe is worth it.

Sesh: That takes way too long! I want it now!

Gru: Well, then you're out of luck.

That night, Sesh waits for Gru to fall asleep, then takes his axe and plays around with it. He throws it as hard as he can. But unfortunately the axe misses the stone Sesh was aiming at, and instead hits Gru's sister, who was sleeping just behind that stone. She dies. Sesh takes the axe, cleans it and puts it back in its place near Gru, who was sad the whole rest of his life, without ever knowing who had killed his sister.

Now tell me, and be honest: Who's right here, and who's wrong?

Oh, and back to the C64 datasette with lots of pirated games. I got it from a close friend at that time. And it had a great influence on both of us. My friend later published a german magazine all about Apple Macintosh, called "MAClife", soon followed by a lot of other magazines and businesses. He became a serious and cunning businessman, making sure to get all the money he could get.

And me? I never forgot how satisfying it was to get something without having to pay for it. It is so deep in my veins, that I since then always published for free whatever I created.

This reminds me of a funny blogpost from greenheartgames game dev tycoon about piracy of there game and how they fooled the pirates i actually find out and bought the game because of it, but its an edge case i think, http://bit.ly/134KuBk

> DatapawWolf this case actually lead me to think that either the company did a really bad job advertising his product, or the pirates were not the targetted audience, both cases are just a lucky shot for the company, but I would not say it is a positive thing, the first case would reveal a weakness that they will not see in their marketing model.

> Aphrodite I *don't care about marketing, I care about what the product actually is. That and combined with the fact that most anime doesn't reach American audiences, I often have to rely on pirated content. It's a straight up fact. Nothing their marketing department can fix.

This has little more to do with luck than just circumstance, of which marketing is all about --> getting the right words to the right people at the right time.

In the case of the content that I have pirated, one could consider the people who provide said pirated content to actually be marketing the product for said company.

Overall, I would argue that pirating is neither good nor bad, and the concept of downloading bits and bytes that one has limited access to to be stealing depending solely on who asks the question and who answers.

Yes, the problem being when the middleware makes money from it, it has no authorisation to do so, when he does not make any money, since you were not the initial target, I would say "who actually cares" (my comment about marketing was for the intended target), I will never actually say to someone "you should not have downloaded it, you are a really really naughty boy, and I will whip you", I think the best would be that everyone could see any link possible of the internet with no issues at all legally wise or anything like that, but maybe I am being too utopist.

tulamide some people actually wants to share their goods and not have a reward for it, I am kind of ashamed to think I will be paid when I will work at a full time job, just for my knowledge and time. And I have kind of a bad feeling when I think about not paying a content that I could pay for, and I do not think I am kind of an unique holy representant of honor, like I am the only one thinking like that, pretty sure others also think like that, and I do not believe in life after death so I do not have this kind of motivation either, so this "wanting it freely" is not an as accurate description as it may sounds at first (but again, some people are like that)

Also why nobody mentionned the fact some people have to download a pirate copy to make it work sometimes? (Drm not working correctly makes us sad).

Well, there's the argument that pirates who steal your game from torrents or wherever are NOT going to be buying it regardless so they did not cause any monetary loss. There may even be a positive as it spreads and some of them end up buying it either due to being alerted by their friends (hey, check out this awesome game!) or guilt/appreciation.

But on mobiles where your app position and visibility is highly dependent on number of downloads, reviews, ratings & +1, its detrimental for your game to be pirated from torrents. It's best therefore, to make your game free (!) so they have no need or desire to pirate it from other sites, but directly download from Google Play. Maybe they even leave you a review or rating or even +1! These "pirates" have actually contributed!

So there's definitely pros & cons, but on mobiles, it's nearly always bad to have your game pirated.

Then again you can't pirate something thats free

I dissagree... Even free games have some legal resources that can be pirated.

For example, lets take a shitty MMO called metin2. It's free to play, but pay to win. See how many private servers

are running, however in this case, priv servers are much better than official, but still, priv server is piracy and stealing, even the source code has leaked from owner to internet

Well, there's the argument that pirates who steal your game from torrents or wherever are NOT going to be buying it regardless so they did not cause any monetary loss. There may even be a positive as it spreads and some of them end up buying it either due to being alerted by their friends (hey, check out this awesome game!) or guilt/appreciation.

But on mobiles where your app position and visibility is highly dependent on number of downloads, reviews, ratings & +1, its detrimental for your game to be pirated from torrents. It's best therefore, to make your game free (!) so they have no need or desire to pirate it from other sites, but directly download from Google Play. Maybe they even leave you a review or rating or even +1! These "pirates" have actually contributed!

So there's definitely pros & cons, but on mobiles, it's nearly always bad to have your game pirated.

If you cannot sell your game because of piracy, then it is bad, giving it for free is not a solution for everyone (and advertisements are not a solution for everyone, so that cannot be done too), it shows that said market is not ready to have customers, only users, which is not reassuring.

Lazarus1988

A good place for ads.

Especially since they are trackable. Even if someone were to replace the code that served up the adds.

Follow the money.

newt

I do not public here any of these. I simply reffered to that game as example that You (we, anybody) can pirate free game.

(If I understand you correctly)

tulamide some people actually wants to share their goods and not have a reward for it, I am kind of ashamed to think I will be paid when I will work at a full time job, just for my knowledge and time. And I have kind of a bad feeling when I think about not paying a content that I could pay for, and I do not think I am kind of an unique holy representant of honor, like I am the only one thinking like that, pretty sure others also think like that, and I do not believe in life after death so I do not have this kind of motivation either, so this "wanting it freely" is not an as accurate description as it may sounds at first (but again, some people are like that)

Glad to hear. I'm also one of those who share, as I have stated in my post. But this doen't affect my statements about piracy. I mean, if someone shares his own goods for free, then no piracy is involved, when I copy and use them.

I stay to the statement that people using pirated software want it free and immediatly. That's the main motivation, despite all their sayings.

Also why nobody mentionned the fact some people have to download a pirate copy to make it work sometimes? (Drm not working correctly makes us sad).

And this is an example for the last sentence above. Why do you think so? Why do they "have to"? If your smartphone doesn't work, you wait for the manufacturer to repair it. And if it doesn't get repaired in an acceptable amount of time, you have the right to get refunded. The same is true for software. But why waiting for an acceptable amount of time, if one can get a pirated version that works, for free and immediatly. There we are again. It's morally wrong. Do you see my point?

If you cannot sell your game because of piracy, then it is bad, giving it for free is not a solution for everyone (and advertisements are not a solution for everyone, so that cannot be done too), it shows that said market is not ready to have customers, only users, which is not reassuring.

I read from other indie devs with paid games and stat tracking. The piracy rate on Android for them (Butterscotch Shenanigans) is close to 95%. For every 100 players, only 5 have actually bought it.

> Also why nobody mentionned the fact some people have to download a pirate copy to make it work sometimes? (Drm not working correctly makes us sad).

>

And this is an example for the last sentence above. Why do you think so? Why do they "have to"? If your smartphone doesn't work, you wait for the manufacturer to repair it. And if it doesn't get repaired in an acceptable amount of time, you have the right to get refunded. The same is true for software. But why waiting for an acceptable amount of time, if one can get a pirated version that works, for free and immediatly. There we are again. It's morally wrong. Do you see my point?

I see the point, I was just surprised to not have seen it being used already, as it is one of the harder one to counter (I actually prefer to have my not working game and remember the sins of the one who decided this drm was a good idea, rather than to download it and play it, and forget, "even if people are blocked by the drm, they will download it by other means and so not be blocked" OR THEY WON'T, and will not forgive easily, pirates in that case actually do the job of the ones who had to verify the drm was not an issue, which is even worse, since honest will have a worse experience that others)

In most of my cases, the acceptable amount of time was not enough for them to fix it, never got to play some of my games because of that, so I kept them, and have all the informations to not choose a game in the future, still looking for patches sometimes.

talking of that, I happenned to apply a community made installer for a game (said installer required the CD, and just adapted the install to patch the game to work correctly on newer systems, and also did it work in a no CD required way), I am wondering if that is considered legal or not now that i think about it.

— holy horsie O-o that is worrying.

— holy horsie O-o that is worrying.

There's a lot of examples, but let me pick this one: Wayward Souls

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... ouls&hl=en

It's a great game, one of the best in it's genre of pixel dungeon crawl (roguelike). Probably the best in a long time. It's lauded by many review sites and game critics, receiving great coverage and awards. It was also Featured by Google on their recommended games list!

It would be the epitome of what a small indie group could hope for, right?

After months, it just broke 10K units sold (with some sale discount periods). Lets assume the best and that each unit sold is ~$7 USD. That's $70K. Google take their 30% cut, left with ~$50K. A lot? It would be, if it was made by 1 developer. But its a pretty big game that took 3 devs awhile to complete. Not only that but those 3 guys are a small studio without major marketing grunt so they got published by NoodleCake which would have a % cut of the revenue.

I mean this is absolutely the BEST CASE scenario and its still lacking in financial reward.

Why? Well, to me, it's a simple one: because pirating games on Android is too damn easy combined with the typical mobile gamer expecting games to be FREE. This sense of entitlement contributes to the rate of piracy, but it doesn't help that Google make it so easy.

Its a well known fact on iOS, the piracy rate is much less, many folds less. Why? Because its a lot harder to pirate iOS games, a lot is involved that is beyond the typical user's ability.

TLDR: IMHO, for Android, if you are releasing a paid game today, you are asking to fail.