Super Meat Boy creators: pirate our stuff....please

[Zeus]

I like the way these guys think. They're actually thinking logically instead of with a pure short-term profit bias

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/118/1184550p1.html

[Don]

So if those guys end up being bankrupt would you agree that piracy is bad?

Piracy is basically a cost of doing business. If you're in the field you got to pay for it anyway. People don't pirate you any more or less based on whatever stance you have. I've heard of stories of guys who made some money by letting people pirate, but I also have heard stories of people who got practically nothing doing the same thing. I mean sure you can say if Megaman 1 is for free for anybody to play from a major platform (Steam, Xbox live, whatever), that probably helps more than it harms because you're getting exposure from a game that probably won't sell at all, but then Megaman 9/10 actually sold quite a bit too so you could be wrong even on that. The most profitable games of the last 10 years are MMORPGs, and they're extremely pirate-resistant since most of the cost is tied to recurring payment. The money Blizzard makes from WoW box sales is basically nothing compared to its recurring avenue, and you can't pirate the service very easily since that'd require a lot of infrastructure to emulate the servers. So if success is measured by wealth, the most financially successful games happen to be the ones that are most resistant to piracy.

I think the problem you have is there is a lot of people who are unwilling to pay anything more than free for just about any game, but you also have people who may be inclined to pay some money for a game as long as it's significantly lower than its advertised cost, and it's really hard to figure out how your fanbase is divided up. Daisenrayku Perfect DX 2.0 sells for $150 or something ridiculous like that and it's not even much of an improvement over the original Daisenryaku on the Sega Genesis. On the other hand it's still a decent quality title and maybe it's worth $20 or $50 to a wargamer. At $150 it's pretty much pirated nonstop because there's no way the game is worth that money, but it doesn't mean piracy is good or bad. Maybe the game would be more successful priced at $50, but you can't really know that kind of stuff easily so a lot time you end up with just wild guesses. Maybe the game really isn't going to sell much at $20 anyway because it's too much of a niche game so you might as well just ripoff the hardcore guys who will buy it anyway. Because you're not allowed to load in real life it's basically impossible to say if $150 or $20 was the best price for this game. Sure it's not fair to say at $150 a ton of people pirate this game (probably because they wonder why the game is so expensive) so you lost mega money on sales, but again you're dealing with something that has very little volumes, so maybe if even 100 guys pirated this game that would've bought it otherwise that could be half of your potential sales and you lose out significantly.

I think Steam is a good model as it lets you vary your price significantly so if $150 isn't working out you can lower it to $15 and observe how the market reacts, and it'd be very difficult to do that in a normal retail environment.

[Zeus]

That'll depend on their quality....

How long have people been able to pirate Diablo or Starcraft for? Look how well they've sold for over a decade. If a game's good and priced well, people will buy it...period. I can pirate whatever I want, whenever I want, for whatever system I want yet I still own almost 2400 games. Not everyone who is going to buy pirates and vice versa. Particularly for smaller titles, it may be a good way to get them out there, particularly if they're high quality

[Don]

I got the feeling the copies of Starcraft/Diablo are sold to replace copies lost due to attrition. I bought Diablo 2 like 3 times because I can't find my last copy and it wasn't worth the effort to pirate it compared to buying it for $20. I think it's also unfair since there are no remotely credible competitor in those genres (especially Diablo) on the PC.

Obviously there's a point where it's not conceiveable the game will make more sales so at that point you can just give it out for free. But most of the piracy happens well before that point. Again let's make a hypothetical sales chart for a game that is heavily pirated (relative to its sales), Daisenryaku DX at $150. Let's say it sold 100 copies and was pirated for 10000 copies. Does that really tell you anything? Sure the company would like to claim they lost $1.5 million in sales, and that's almost certainly not true. But what if 100 of the guys who pirated would've purchased the game if piracy isn't an option? Then the lost is $15000 or half of its revenue. Now you can say charging $150 is a ridiculous price, maybe they should've charged $50. But this ignores the fact that this is a very niche game to begin with. It's quite possible at $50 per copy it'd still only sell 200 copies (getting the 100 guys who would've bought it if piracy wasn't an option), and 50X200 < 100X150. Now obviously nobody actually knows what all these figures are since you can't rewind time in real life, so all you have is guesses, but it's certainly possible to get hurt by piracy. I suppose you can say piracy is just something you got to live with, but in this case you're talking about a very niche game that has no possibilty of selling a lot, so they really don't have any effective way to deal with piracy and the game maker would be in bad shape.

I'd say the people who are more successful giving stuff away is better at gauging when their product is no longer able to be sold. There is definitely a problem in that too many game makers thinks their useless games should sell for more than anything at all. It's not unlike in MMORPG where people just have overpriced goods on auction houses forever since it costs practically nothing to keep the item listed, especially if your game is distributed virtually. But all that does is create inefficiencies as your game will probably never be sold just like those overpriced goods in a virtual economy, when it'd be better off if you sell the game for less and at least get some returns, especially when you consider the cost to produce each unit of game is practically 0.

[Eric]

Well when you register your SC & Diablo CD keys @ Battle.net now you can just redownload it anytime now.

[Don]

Diablo 2 didn't need CD after one of the patches too. It'd really be a good idea if games eventually releash patches like that. I really have a hard time believing Starcraft and Diablo 2 are selling copies to new players. It's almost certain that most copies sold are just there to replace the copies people lost for whatever reason. Sure you make some money but I think it's better to get some goodwill + convenience for players for future games rather than getting yet another $10 for Diablo 2. I play very few games on the computer that requires the CD in the drive since it's a pain to switch it out, even if I own the game.

[Don]

As a sidenote, I was under the impression that PC retail sales are generally doing pretty bad. I went to Gamestop today and they don't even have a visible section on PC games (it's behind the counter somewhere). There's a long chronicled history of PC games not doing well at retail stores so I have a hard time believing those ancient copies of Starcraft Battlechest is really selling in large numbers. I remember seeing Best Buy had the first EQ expansion on their shelf for at least 5 years and I'm pretty sure it's not because it was in demand. I don't even see RIFT at Best Buy and it seems to have a pretty solid lock on #2 or #3 MMORPG by subscription all-time, and it wouldn't surprise me if the game just completely skipped any presence at the retail level since stores charge a lot for retail space. Certainly every promotion I've seen related to RIFT comes in the form of digital download. I also still see multiple copies of FF14 at Best Buy, and the only explanation I can think of is that since they're not planning to sell any PC games to begin with they don't really care that they've probably the worst reviewed MMORPG ever sitting on their shelves at a prominent position because they're not trying to sell any PC games in the first place.

[Eric]

Don you speak Heresy, the PC Gaming Master Race will argue you into the floor that games sell better on PC.

The best version of Battlefield 3 will be on PC, and it will sell the most copies without a doubt!

[Don]

I think I also saw CrimeCraft and APB at some stores on the PC section, and the former is some kind of Ponzi scheme while the latter game is a MMO that no longer exists. PC games also seem to suffer more from piracy, probably because it at least takes some effort to break the prioritory format for discs on console? It seems to me PC will probably go all-digital soon. I played Chantelise: A Tale of Two Witches demo on Steam the other day. There's no way this game has any possibilty of making it to shelves of a retail store since it just looks way too cheesy, but getting feature space on Steam apparently doesn't cost very much. At some point PC games needs a reliable way (Steam looks as good as any) to authenticate you without switching discs. I used to have towers of CDs and it's just a pain to carry them around and also figure out which one was missing because soandso borrowed it or you misplaced this CD in another box. Console may have the same problem, but I think since you got to turn it on and wait for the system to boot up every time you want to play something the fact that you got to look for the physical disc isn't a big deal. Still, it was annoying when you're getting close to hundreds of CDs.

[Shrinweck]

I buy basically all the games I play now. Anything else is either impatience - leaked early while my legal copy is still locked or something I don't have much interest in but I want to kill an afternoon. That said I should have pirated Super Meat Boy because it fell into the latter category and I haven't played my legally purchased copy since the day I bought it.