LoL's model is great. It makes tonnes of cash, and I don't see it dying anytime soon. It's not like the market is flooded with games like LoL. It's competitors don't even stand close to having as big a player base.
On topic though, article wasn't that well written, but loved the idea behind it. Like Searz, if I was to make a game, the "unauthorised version" that I'd upload myself for torrenters, would have little additions, like a "support us by buying the game" sort of button. I'd probably also cut out any secrets/easter eggs from the pirated version and/or have an achievement count like xx/100 and you can only get 99 achievements because one of the achievements will be "Purchased a Legal Copy of the Game!".
Unlocking 100 achievements would give a bonus round/cut-scene. I guess that sort of thing would be online via Youtube anyway.
tldr; I like the idea of releasing your own torrent of a game with limited/tweaked features to get people to actually purchase a copy for the full game.
On topic though, article wasn't that well written, but loved the idea behind it. Like Searz, if I was to make a game, the "unauthorised version" that I'd upload myself for torrenters, would have little additions, like a "support us by buying the game" sort of button. I'd probably also cut out any secrets/easter eggs from the pirated version and/or have an achievement count like xx/100 and you can only get 99 achievements because one of the achievements will be "Purchased a Legal Copy of the Game!".
Unlocking 100 achievements would give a bonus round/cut-scene. I guess that sort of thing would be online via Youtube anyway.
tldr; I like the idea of releasing your own torrent of a game with limited/tweaked features to get people to actually purchase a copy for the full game.
TF2, PS2, Tribes, Dota 2, League of legends. Those are off the top of my head. What was that about the F2P system not working/ producing bad games?
Bioalchemist wrote:
but it is still difficult for me to swallow that someone gets something for free while I have to pay for it...why? cause they are built into the expected losses?
Did you read it properly?..
Read this part again:
"In the digital world, you don’t have a set inventory. Your game is infinitely replicable at a negligible or zero cost (the cost bandwidth off your own site or nothing if you’re on a portal like Steam, eShop, etc). Digital inventory has no value. Your company isn’t worth an infinite amount because you have infinite copies of your game. As such, calculating worth and loss based on infinite inventory is impossible. If you have infinite stock, and someone steals one unit from that stock, you still have infinite stock. If you have infinite stock and someone steals 1 trillion units from that stock , you still have infinite stock. There is no loss of stock when you have an infinite amount.
Because of this, in the digital world, there is no loss when someone steals a game because it isn’t one less copy you can sell, it is potentially one less sale but that is irrelevant. Everyone in the world with an internet connection and a form of online payment is a potential buyer for your game but that doesn’t mean everyone in the world will buy your game."
And don't look a payment as something you have to do out of moral obligation. Look at it as a way of supporting something you like.
jhoijhoi wrote:
On topic though, article wasn't that well written, but loved the idea behind it.
Well, duh :P
It was a blog post.
Quoted:
Like Searz, if I was to make a game, the "unauthorised version" that I'd upload myself for torrenters, would have little additions, like a "support us by buying the game" sort of button. I'd probably also cut out any secrets/easter eggs from the pirated version and/or have an achievement count like xx/100 and you can only get 99 achievements because one of the achievements will be "Purchased a Legal Copy of the Game!".
Unlocking 100 achievements would give a bonus round/cut-scene. I guess that sort of thing would be online via Youtube anyway.
tldr; I like the idea of releasing your own torrent of a game with limited/tweaked features to get people to actually purchase a copy for the full game.
Unlocking 100 achievements would give a bonus round/cut-scene. I guess that sort of thing would be online via Youtube anyway.
tldr; I like the idea of releasing your own torrent of a game with limited/tweaked features to get people to actually purchase a copy for the full game.
Here's where your reasoning is off:
The moment you remove functionality in a game, however little it is, you'll annoy the people downloading it. Annoying potential customers gets you nowhere.. (yes, everyone is a potential customer; annoying others is always a bad idea)
That will also make people more likely to upload the full cracked(or whatever) version of the game and download that instead, so they won't have the sub-par version. If all the difference is a few small buttons in the corner of a menu then I doubt people would bother with it. Hmm.. I think it might be a good idea to include an option to hide them, to reduce the possible annoyance even further.
Also, achievements are stupid. You just gave me an idea. I'm gonna make Achievement Quest! A parody of how games use Achievements nowadays, similar to how DLC Quest parodies DLC.
90% of achievements nowadays are really damn pointless and only serve to fuel the completionistic behavior running rampant in today's society.
Collectibles are like this in newer games too. They're just a way of artificially lengthening a game with minimal effort. Assassin's Creed games are perfect examples of this. They're just a ****ing snoozefest of grinding and repetitive ****.
The moment a religious person unknowingly calls his own ways stupid: "And lol. I highly doubt you have magic powers. If you proved it I would believe you, but since you 'refuse to', I choose not to."
On short notice:
The game mentioned in OP is like totally one-sided.
Message they wanna get to us:
"Game gets release -> Game's too good -> Game get's pirated like 5-6 times the amount it gets bought -> Game doesn't turn in any profit anymore for the comapany -> company has to close down"
And everything after the 2nd arrow is either totally hyped and/or ridiculous to no end.
The game mentioned in OP is like totally one-sided.
Message they wanna get to us:
"Game gets release -> Game's too good -> Game get's pirated like 5-6 times the amount it gets bought -> Game doesn't turn in any profit anymore for the comapany -> company has to close down"
And everything after the 2nd arrow is either totally hyped and/or ridiculous to no end.
Searz wrote:
Because of this, in the digital world, there is no loss when someone steals a game because it isn’t one less copy you can sell, it is potentially one less sale but that is irrelevant. Everyone in the world with an internet connection and a form of online payment is a potential buyer for your game but that doesn’t mean everyone in the world will buy your game."
And don't look a payment as something you have to do out of moral obligation. Look at it as a way of supporting something you like.
how is it irrelevant that you lose one less sale if your projection is say X. you lose sales due to piracy and you don't meet your projection...what if not meeting your projection creates a situation where you can no longer develop another project without backing from other sources? or you could always raise the cost of your product for your consumers to reach the initial projection, and I guess the original target population who buys games to support the developers will just eat the cost of piracy.
maybe I am missing something but when I think of product development there is an upfront cost until you have created the product that isn't paid off until you start selling the finished product. you base the price of the product on what you need to generate in revenue to reach your projection of profit for the product. once you hit that projection everything after begins to be pure revenue. i might be mistaken but i think the article you sent me to show me I was stupid in my original comment said you need to build piracy into your cost structure..but..how can you estimate the 'rate of piracy'?
Thanks to Hogopogo for my signature!
Bioalchemist wrote:
you lose sales due to piracy and you don't meet your projection...
Two things. One: We've already troubled the idea that pirates are, strictly, people who would have otherwise bought the game. These two are not the same thing. Especially if your piracy-prevention DRM prevents pirated copies from working properly. If someone pirates a game and then the game doesn't work because of its DRM, that person is going to assume that the game doesn't work. Not that they shouldn't have pirated it. And then they are going to tell their friends that the game doesn't work. So piracy-prevention DRM doesn't turn pirates into customers, doesn't tend to prevent piracy, and can adversely impact sales in addition to these two problems. (Oh, and it costs money.)
Two: There are hundreds of reasons that a game might not meet its sales projections. A lot of large, triple-A games aren't meeting their sales projections these days. On PC, piracy certainly has something to do with it. However, many games are also not meeting their projections, by wide margins, on consoles, which are generally not platforms where piracy happens much. This suggests that the problems we're currently seeing with games not meeting their sales projections is cause by problems with the sales projections themselves.
Bioalchemist wrote:
i might be mistaken but i think the article you sent me to show me I was stupid in my original comment said you need to build piracy into your cost structure..but..how can you estimate the 'rate of piracy'?
As the article went over, you can't. Nor did they say that you need to build piracy into your cost structure; it more said that you need to figure out why people are going to buy your game. If you make games without giving people a good reason to buy them, you shouldn't be surprised when people don't buy them.
OTGBionicArm wrote: Armored wimminz = badass.
My posts may be long. If this bothers you, don't read them.
My posts may be long. If this bothers you, don't read them.
Basically the main problem with saying that piracy hurts sales is that most pirates weren't going to buy the game to start with, thus you can't say they cost you any money.
This is ****in genius. Truly genius. Since I started earning money I stopped pirating games except from EA. However after a while I found myself buying a lot of games I actually didn't enjoy, I really wish every game company could make demos :/
Also imma gonna buy this game
E: Also I can understand people pirating games if they have no source of income, but as soon as you earn some money this is just...****ing pocket exchange, srsly...I don't get how some people can be so ****ing greedy, I am not even talkin about the games that cost much money, but 8 bucks? That is really...nothing...
Basically the main problem with saying that piracy hurts sales is that most pirates weren't going to buy the game to start with, thus you can't say they cost you any money.
Source?
Also imma gonna buy this game
E: Also I can understand people pirating games if they have no source of income, but as soon as you earn some money this is just...****ing pocket exchange, srsly...I don't get how some people can be so ****ing greedy, I am not even talkin about the games that cost much money, but 8 bucks? That is really...nothing...
MyRepublic wrote:
Basically the main problem with saying that piracy hurts sales is that most pirates weren't going to buy the game to start with, thus you can't say they cost you any money.
Source?
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League won't die off, pretty sure this champion every month thing will die eventually though.
No but to compare, people still play DotA.