This approach makes so much sense from a business perspective.
How many here have this experience: out of my entire friend group that I grew up playing video games with, I can’t think of a single person who kept pirating games after acquiring disposable income, even though we all exclusively played pirated games as teenagers. Without piracy, none of us would have had access to any games, and very likely none of us would still be into gaming today, spending probably thousands of euros every year on games, consoles, PC components, etc.
Yeah it’s a shame demos died out. Now studios (or publishers, more likely) just expect everyone to pay for a game they don’t even know they’ll like, and tough shit if you don’t like it.
But so many games still have demos? I feel like it’s probably more that they’re cheap and don’t see a reason to pay whatever it costs to throw a demo together for free
The last Steam Next Fest in June had so many demos, I only had time for like 4-5. There were quite a few posts and comments (including mine) on the demos we tried.
I often grab a pirated copy to see if I like it first, and if I do, I’ll buy it. If I play it once or twice and don’t really get much out of it, I’m not out anything but some download time.
I know of a certain former boss of mine who, after becoming a millionaire by side-lining the whole (game!) company and selling it to random yanks who didn’t know WTF to do with it, still continued to pirate games. While moving into the most expensive quarter of the city – by renting a house there.
But sane people without a cocaine habit, sure, yes.
is two hours enough for you to get into a game tho? it took me 4 hours to get into stardew and no mans sky alike, and once I was into it, I was hooked. however, after two hours, both games were kinda shit to me
I wish more companies did this; however, I believe most CEO’s have the biased view that everyone has at least some money to spare which, as you probably know (likely on personal level), isn’t true.
I understand that participating in cultural aspects of society must cost money due to the very nature of economics (if you want the artist to continue to make art, make sure they don’t starve to death) but ‘pirating’ things is there not only as a stop gap to terrible service and personal risk (privacy violations, etc.), but also as an equalizer between those that have, and those that don’t.
If I made enough that I didn’t have to worry about money while working full time, I’d be much more inclined to spend money on arts and entertainment. As it stands, my entertainment budget is almost entirely going to get food I don’t have to make myself.
But until society shifts focus to living wages (and not just enough to live, but enough to thrive)…… welp. Maybe those ceos should think on that, and start paying better.
Definitely. I recall a time in my life where I was working while still living with my parents. Needless to say I had A LOT of money I didn’t know what to do with. I ended up with about 2 storage bins of books and CD’s. I eventually got rid of them when computers became much more capable, but I think I would still buy them if I had extra income. I doubt I will though for at least another 2 decades, considering all the student debt I have. Who would’ve thought that loading people with crippling financial debt would be bad for the economy?
I have to imagine a comment like this does absolutely nothing to their sales figures. People who were going to download a cracked version of their games anyway remain unaffected now that they have a blessing, and I doubt people who weren’t going to pirate would now feel more inclined to do so.
This seems like good PR and frankly it should probably be the default position for games studios.
It won't have a large effect, but in previous examples of companies doing this, comments would lead me to believe more people who pirated end up buying the game to support the devs after trying it. It makes sense too, but same pirates are unlikely to buy anything that had denuvo and stuff shoved into it.
Some games you dont even need a crack or anything, just access to the files.
For example with KSP, you can just clone the game directory anywhere and run it from there. Doesnt even need steam. Heck i copied it over to an M1 macbook once just to test the Macbooks performance…
Thats also how the mod managers like CKAN work with the game.
Yeah, the whole piracy crackdown situation is so stupid.
I pirate a lot of media, if you added it all up it would be a lot of money (if I was to buy everything). The difference is, before I pirated I barely bought any of the media.
I pirate some games that i’d never buy. I buy all games I want to support.
I pay TV licence, netflix and amazon. I pirate tons of TV series because they aren’t on those services. I literally can’t buy some of them and if I could i’d need about 10 different streaming services.
Films, I pirate a lot of films. Before I pirated I never bought any films, i’d either wait for netflix/normal TV or just not watch them. I still go to the cinema for big releases.
I subscribe on patreon, github and donate to LOADS of projects, many of which i’ve pirated first or obtained a copy of (books are a big one here).
If you were to objectively look at the value of the pirated media, it would seem that i’ve “stolen” or studios have missed out on lots of revenue, but the truth is I pirate a lot of media, just because I can.
Few years ago there was Netflix and Film1 in our country and an ISP with TV that also had a movie service.
That was about it.
Now there’s Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, SkyShowtime, Apple TV+ and ViaPlay added to it.
It’s impossible to have have just 1 and view what you want. Ofcourse you can keep on switching but some of them but it’s all just making it more complicated.
Solution? Pirate it. One source and everything available even stuff that isn’t on any on those services.
Also some movies can’t be bought digital.
IMO all movies and series should be available on any platform and let the streaming service decide if they want to have it in their portfolio. Only the “originals” should be locked to a platform to keep stuff unique.
And make every damn movie and series available for purchase.
IMO all movies and series should be available on any platform and let the streaming service decide if they want to have it in their portfolio. Only the “originals” should be locked to a platform to keep stuff unique.
That’s just cable though. Not sure that’ll be any better. The second a company sees a revenue stream or thinks they’re missing out. They monetise it to the detriment of the customers.
I was going to say, all artists should share this position, but I’ll do one better: if you don’t have this position, you’re not an artist. Feels bold to make any absolute claim about what makes an artist, but I feel safe on this one. If making sure you’re fairly compensated is higher priority than sharing your art, then you’re not an artist.
Artists, like all laborers, should be fairly compensated for their work. The idea that love of art should necessarily come into conflict with fair compensation is a primary vehicle for continuing the exploitation of creative labor.
That is somewhat orthogonal to the issue of piracy, though. Some of the most strongly anti-piracy platforms out there are also absolutely terrible in terms of labor rights (hence the current strikes in Hollywood, for instance). It’s notable that in this case, the studio seems to be saying fairly explicitly that piracy is indeed not the main obstacle to fair compensation, such that no conflict between their stance and labor rights needs to exist.
If you think I’m arguing that artists should not be compensated for their work, then I’ve completely misrepresented myself. Is that what you thought I meant?
Before this tweet, they also mentioned piracy over grey market keyshops, which seems to be a lot more of a valid reason to endorse it. This seemly links to that tweet.
I mean I don't think the pirates needed their permission, but it's a nice gesture at least. Accepting the reality that people will pirate your games makes for much better PR than trying to crack down on it through DRM.
I’m pretty sure I was friends with the founder of that studio back in the suprnova.org days when his username was RunsWithScissors and he was a full-blown pirate.
Honestly it's all sorts of wrong especially these days, but I've played through the whole thing 3 or 4 times. Surprisingly fun gameplay and enough easter eggs to be interesting on replay.
Theyre all kind of bad and rely mainly on shock humor to grab your attention. Think the GTA series but with more piss and shit jokes. You pee on people… Not exactly high brow. I thought the second one was fun though.
beehaw.org
Aktywne