alt Hacker NewsTo give you an idea of the scale of the problem:
Greenheart Games famously released a "cracked" version of their own game (Game Dev Tycoon) onto torrent sites on launch day. In this version, the player's in-game studio eventually goes bankrupt because "pirates" steal their games.
The Data: Within 24 hours, 93.6% of players were playing the pirated version.
The Consequence: The developer's blog post highlighted the irony of pirates posting on forums complaining that the "in-game piracy" was unfair and "ruining" their fun. The experiment proved that even at a low price point ($8), a massive majority of the PC audience will choose "free" regardless of the developer's size or struggle.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161118042043/http://arstechnic...
https://web.archive.org/web/20131214165241/http://aussie-gam...
P.S.: It bears repeating that the game cost only 8 dollars.
Replies
> The experiment proved that even at a low price point ($8), a massive majority of the PC audience will choose "free" regardless of the developer's size or struggle.
Several points:
* A pirate can pirate infinity +1 games for free, that will skew any statistic compared to legitimiate buyers that have to manage a finite budget. It also means that you aren't looking at 93% lost sales.
* It wasn't a new indy game, but a port of an existing mobile game, so I wouldn't be surprised if legitimate buyers weren't in a rush to get their hands on it on day one. The steam statistics from the first month mention a peak concurrent player count of over 7000 so it certainly didn't stay at 200 copies.
Unhinged take I checked that was 2013 and the game cost almost as much as you you would pay in a month's rent in India in small towns.
Most pirates aren't people who could pay for this stuff. This is utterly meaningless.
So much in fact I don't even want to link counter examples to it.
No/very few paying user pirates even single player games these days if they can afford it as a luxury please understand that.
I would likemy regular updates bug fixes patches and new feaures ASAP. And on sale at 8$ for a game is less than 0.01% of my income so sure.
But if it costs 800 USD I will get it for free because I am literally too poor for it.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is beyond deluded.
Instead of denuvo you can use simple steam drm, non trivial to pirate for small games cracks will take days or weeks to appear and updates won't be available instantly.
It's safe simple and easy. And doesn't hurt any one.
Denuvo is just invasive bullcrap that deluded people think helps anyone.
Thats playing with statistics and you know it. Why such game?
If they would release only the paid game, there wouldn't be 93% + 7% of the gamers playing, far from it.
Cost is almost irrelevant to pirates, either its free or its not, like it or not. There is mix of folks who do it for the lulz, some do it to have higher performance gaming without denuvo taking resources and computing power, and some are outright poor. Even 8-usd-is-too-much poor.
I've lived like that. Don't judge too easily. Don't do stupid mistakes and count those as otherwise-paying-gamers. Thats PR for denuvo and similar, not a fair discussion.
The number of pirated copies doesn't translate to missed sales.
Someone playing/watching/listening to something for free doesn't mean they would still do it if they had to pay for it.