Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

82% of World Of Goo players are pirates?

cliffski

According to World Of Goo makers 2DBoy:

http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

And yet, despite this, I’ve been reading comments on the web where people are hurling abuse at them. These are likely from people who pirated the game anyway.

So these guys worked hard over 2 years (AFAIK) to make one of the best original indie games of the year, released it with a demo and no DRM at a good price, and then happened to mention in a comments thread once that 82% of the players stole their hard work, and yet they get insulted and abused for mentioning it.

I’m sick of the attitude of some PC Gamers. Carry on pirating if you insist, but don’t have the cheek to hurl abuse at the people you are stealing from. As usual for daring to suggest something be done about piracy, I got a load of sarcastic insults and abuse from internet trolls today too.

Seriously kids, grow up and get a job, then see how you feel when people take your work for free…

7 thoughts on 82% of World Of Goo players are pirates?

  1. There could be 100 comments of praise, and then the 10 really ranty, absurd, illogical comments are taken to carry a weight they really don’t have. You can get sick of the jerks but you are far more likely to go away then they are. The only thing to do keep is keep your head high and just keep going. There are large numbers of people who pirate games, so you can either deal with it or ignore it. Ignoring it gives you the benefit of not annoying the legitimate people, and some people who snagged the game for free might actually pay for it. Or you can add DRM which experience tells us is futile, or you can try to be clever and find some other way to use this knowledge to your advantage. In a way the fact that a game gets pirated means that you get free advertising. Perhaps you could use this to the point of adding menu options specifically for people who have gotten the game for free. People who pirate games are still human, and they have their reasons be it lack of money, or not wishing the risk their money on a game they know little about. There’s likely only a small portion of people who steal games cause they can. And let’s be honest these kinds of people will NEVER pay for a game if they can pirate it so why bother considering them part of the equation?

  2. That piracy rate actually seems low. I suspect most games are pirated 95%-99%, so it’s nice that they only got 82%. Think of it positively :)

  3. Funny story. I hadn’t heard of world of goo before now. Looked it up, it looked great, so I bought it and have spent most of today playing it.

    That’s not the funny story.

    The funny story is the following conversation I had with a friend (name changed to protect the guilty, etc)

    David: I seem to have got hooked on a computer game. :-)
    anon: uh oh
    David: At least, until my ADD kicks back in
    anon: what is it? :)
    David: “World of Goo”
    anon: it’s awesome!!!
    David: It is!
    David: I found out about it this afternoon, played the demo for about five minutes and then immediately bought it. :-)
    anon: oh, you bought it?
    anon: i, uh
    anon: …
    anon: yeah

    Sigh.

  4. On Reddit, most of the insults and name-calling were tossed at the pirates. I found the numbers interested and supported one of the theories I’ve considered, that pirates aren’t customers, and for every lost sale through piracy there’s at least one new sale from the publicity, and most indies don’t have much publicity outside of their already fairly solid indie fan base.

  5. Just wanted to mention that your link to World of Goo sold a Wii Ware copy. Great game, daughter loves it!

  6. I saw that article as well. Wrote a post about it (http://www.thehonestgame.org/?p=140) I also looked at a Gamasutra article from another company, Reflexive, that was citing a piracy rate of about 92%.

    The interesting thing about the Gamasutra article was that the Reflexive employee writing it concluded, based on how illegal download rates and sales figures reacted to their attempts to counter piracy, that virtually no one who pirates was going to buy the game anyway.

  7. (Sorry for this late comment, but I just want to show some additional information.)
    @Faceless:
    Non the less, that same article say that they made sales by reducing piracy. They made 1 sale per 1000 illegal downloads. While this sounds like very little, they actually managed to increase their profit by 70%.
    If a relativley unadvertised game like that actualy looses sales on piracy, I think the “Piracy is free advertisment” argument is in trouble ;)
    Here is the article by the way:
    http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350

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