20-Sided: 5 Ways to Deal with PC Piracy
Part of the recent closing of Iron Lore studios was an estimate that 90% of people playing the studio’s Titan Quest games were on pirated copies. This isn’t the first time that number has been tossed around – there have been other claims of ~10% purchased copies, and the fact that the PC versions of some high-profile shooters were being outsold 5:1 or 10:1 last year by XBOX versions raises the question of just what the numbers of actual players looked like.
Shamus Young, whose Twenty Sided blog became famous for his incredible ‘DM of the Rings’ comic series, has a two part look at PC game Piracy. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here. While he discusses Piracy in part one as reaction to another article, it is Part 2 that is more interesting as he gets into solutions that will help publishers and developers.
My favorite quotes from Part 1:
I think the main problem is that piracy is a social problem, and publishers are treating it like a technological one.
I’m the one who pays for games, and I wish you’d stop treating me as collateral damage in the war on piracy.
But it is in part 2 that things get serious. Shamus lists out five ways of “converting as many of those pirates into customers”.
1. Make sure the pirates can’t offer a superior product
2. Get closer to the community
3. Offer a demo
4. Entice them with valuable updates
5. Clean House
These seemingly simple ideas are really brilliant, and inherently superior to *every* attempt that publishers have ever used. Why? It is simple Project Management – it will cost you $1 to design for quality and $100 to fix it later. They are paying big bugs for these DRM schemes, payign support because they make PC compatibility even more dicey, and then ending up with people who are annoyed because they have been treated like potential criminals as they payed for a product.
More cool quotes:
People might steal from strangers without regrets, but only a sociopath would steal from a friend. Be their friend, and they will line up buy your game. Some will even flame and shun the pirates on your behalf. These people want to love you. Stop treating them like lepers.
People treat Thomas Riegsecker of Basilisk Games like a friend, and his game Eschalon Book One is getting great press everywhere. Everyone *wants* to say nice things and pay him $25 for the game! Why? Because he did an awesome job of creating a community before he put out the game, and making folks feel like part of the process. It just plain works.
Improve the game over time. If you make it so that registered users can just get the goods via an easy 1-click update, and pirates have to wade around for the right BitTorrent for the right language / release version, you’ve gone a long way towards rewarding customers and punishing pirates, instead of the other way around.
Think about what Ascaron did with Sacred … if only it wasn’t an unplayable buggy mess to begin with. But now, they have
You should at least be able to make it so that the hackers have to buy one copy of your game before they can put it on the net.
That is hilarious but sad – where DO those copies come from when there are pirated versions released a couple of weeks before the game comes out?
Don’t turn curious customers into pirates by denying them a way to try the game before putting their money at risk.
This is again so true – I wish I had a dollar for every time I bought a game that turned out to be a disappointment but that had no demo. Actually I wish I had the full price back. But I would be happy to have more demos and more power over my decision-making process.
I think that all of those suggestions are actually reasonable, but they require a fundamental change in the way publishers treat customers: rather than trying to pound pirates into not pirating, they need to romance them into becoming paying customers by doing things right. No one thought Apple could succeed with iTunes – why pay $1 for something that Napster (or Limewire) could give you for free in the same time? Yet billions and billions of songs have been sold, and Apple is now the #2 music retailer – bigger than Target, Best Buy, or any record store anywhere. It can work. Do something *for* people, and they will reward you. Make them feel screwed over and they will return the favor.
March 6th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
I think pcgaming is a hassle to most folks. I think developers have got themselves into trouble by releasing buggy games. I think videocards that are more than consoles drive people away. And I think consoles are delivering a pretty close substitute to pcgaming in an increasing number of areas. That’s why pcgaming has declined a bit and why it’s currently changing. IT’s why a game like TQ shut down the developers doors.
Also just because you play a pirated game doesn’t mean you otherwise would have bought it. It’s not an excuse for piracy, but it’s reality. I mean just because CW:ET was a free online game and alot of people played it doesn’t mean they would have bought it.
Also look at the console market. Folks can rent and trade-in games. I know that trading-in gamers is a big safety net for gamers. It turns a $60 purchase into a $15-$30 one.
I also think it’s no secret why Blizzard succeeds. They release quality product and support it for a long time. Somehow they succeed even with all this piracy.
March 7th, 2008 at 7:52 am
I agree that the piracy numbers are inflated. I agree that it’s a serious problem. But I don’t believe that more than 20% of the pirates would have BOUGHT the product. The teens I’ve spoken to who pirate do so because they have no money for games – and if they download a game that’s too well protected then don’t go buy it.
They download another game.
Go after the people who sell games illegally, go after the street vendors and the people who supply them. Crack down on famous hackers/crackers you can catch. Don’t go after poor kids – those are fans and future fans – not criminals.
My perceptions are colored by the fact that what I want to be is an author and an author has to accept that a certain percentage of readers are going to get the book for free at the library.
There isn’t a free way for poorer kids to play games.
Therefore there’s going to be piracy.
Good article, nice link!
March 7th, 2008 at 10:28 am
I’d like it if the entire DRM-ized media took this approach instead.
I don’t even like the way every DVD I watch I have to sit through minutes of unskippable threats of large fines for violating the law, in multiple languages. I am a paying customer using the product only as it was intended, not the pirate, yet I’m the one that suffers from the manufacturer’s actions. (Of course, unskippable preview ads are still much worse.)
March 7th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
GamerDad:
– The article focuses on trying to turn pirates-who-can-afford into paying customers. The thought put out is that even assuming the ludicrous 10% paying rate is true, getting another 10% is a double in revenue … heck, adding 1% adds 10% revenue and could be a significant source of revenue.
– While I agree with you that “There isn’t a free way for poorer kids to play games.” … how is it that they would be able to have a PC capable of running Crysis … and a ‘net pipe capable of downloading the gigs of data required? My point – the folks stealing Crysis aren’t using food stamps 😉
Shamus put up a 3rd article today (link http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1559) This one looks at a couple of things:
– Entering serial keys. Here is a thought he has on this:
“at the heart of the issue it’s not the length of the license key that matters, it’s the reason for entering it. Nobody objects to putting the CD in the drive to play a PS2 game, yet lots of gamers object when asked to do the same on a PC. People don’t usually object to entering personal information as part of creating an account so they can get something of value. Yet they will balk at doing so if the process is the digital equivalent of airport security. In the case of both CD checks and license keys, users can tell that they are being forced to do these things because the publisher regards them with a lack of trust. It conveys contempt for the customer and a willingness to needlessly waste their time, which interferes with making the customer view you as a friend. So it’s not really the hassle itself, it’s the reason behind it. The system carries the implied insult, “I think you’re a pirate. Perform this task to prove me wrong.”
– He talks about the demographics of piracy based on a quote from Brad Wardell of Stardock:
“Like I said earlier, people who pirate stuff simply lose their vote when it comes to what actually gets made. I won’t make action games even though I love them (Stardock is full of Orange box addicts) because the cost to make them versus the PC market of people who actually BUY games is not compelling.
I’ve seen people I know pooh-pooh Galactic Civilizations as being a “B” game simply because we “only” spent a million dollars or so developing it. But the game still sold 300,000+ copies grossing into the 8 digit range.
And now Sins of a Solar Empire, with a similar sized budget, is at the top of the sales charts, without copy protection at all. And that’s on a game that’s generated most of its revenue from digital distribution.”