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But after a day on sale, 3104 of the 3318 copies being played were pirated.That's fucking despicable. |
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| Its a good idea, and the responses are funny, but I still can't get over how much of a Game Dev Story clone this looks like, hell the first two words are the same. Don't get me wrong I love Game Dev Story but this'll have to bring some real innovation or changes for me to consider buying it over the cheaper version already available. |
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| @aeschylus Its not even EA who felt it justified, I like the fact that the gamer came to the conclusion of "I need DRM so I can make money from my games, or else there is little point putting effort into new games". |
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| There's only so much sympathy I can have with a company who appear to have made a game that is extremely similar in both concept and name to Game Dev Story. |
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3104 of the 3318 copies being played were pirated.ouch, that take me back to the dark days of PC gaming, pre-steam where 90% of most games were pirated... what is even worst is companies like EA et al will look at this and feel full justification for their piracy measures... |
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| Screw the leeching pirates , cheap bastards spend thousands on their machines but are too poor to buy original games. |
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@MightyJordan Those playing without paying should have paid for it. Taking a commodity for free, when it should cost a monetary value, because you wouldn't get it normally doesn't make it ok. If you made a product and it was your livelyhood, could I come in and have it for free under the proviso of "I probably wouldn't get it anyway" and then distribute it around? Either you like something and buy it or you don't. If you are playing something, you obviously had some sort of vested interest in it. This is all down to the "if I can get it for free, then I'll get it for free and spend money on things I cannot get for free" mentality. |
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@Crosshash This has been discussed on Reddit with comments from the Developer: dev here: that's hardly a fair comparison. Zynga pretty much copied the game mechanics of Tiny Tower to the point where entire screens look and work the same, added their own graphics and used their power in the market to promote the game. We were inspired by GDS but then invented our own gameplay and mechanics. We developed our game from scratch. Sure, it might seem similar (it's a game dev simulator!) but the inner workings on how to make a game and what creates a hit-game are entirely different. Anyway, a lot of GDS players who have played the full game enjoyed our take on the genre.Zynga are mentioned because the previous comment in the thread gives them as an example of ripping off someone else's game. |
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Wonder what happens when a developer CLONES a game like these have done with Game Dev Story. Maybe they should add that scenario! Just as bad as pirating IMHO! |
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@Psyk "If the developers released their own "cracked" version on file sharing sites, is it really piracy if people download it?" Yes |
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| @henrysaint-dorour: It's not a common thing, but some people still manage to have savings, problem is, they don't last forever. |
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| If the developers released their own "cracked" version on file sharing sites, is it really piracy if people download it? |
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Ironically, the website for actually buying the game is now down. Which is a shame, because this looks great. Edit: Just saw this on Greenlight - They put up a mirror for the demo download since their website is struggling. https://s3.amazonaws.com/gdt-demos/GameDevTycoon+DEMO.exe |
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I find it strange; it is not a game I have heard about and it would seem there has been little or no marketing. So little or no marketing = little or no market. Then they upload the pirate version to the pirate site themselves and wonder why the majority of the games being played are the pirated one. Thats a massively biased way of getting stats. |
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| This kinda looks like a fairly shameless rip off of Game Dev Story which makes this story more than slightly ironic. |
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@Crea Well if we are talking strawmen, inventing stuff on the basis that someone will eventually say it, is the king of strawmen. "No, all those pirated copies would not have directly translated to sales" Nobody said that, and nobody was going to. Nobody EVER says that, except people defending piracy by saying it. Saying it as you have done is the ARCHETYPAL straw man! You are right about the effectiveness of DRM depending on its... effectiveness. If it works seamlessly, it will keep a handful of customers honest, but there are two things to consider - 1) the only people it will keep honest are those that would otherwise burn a copy of their friend's game on a DVD. Nobody who downloads a pirated copy would be kept honest, as some other piratey chap has already removed the DRM for them. So the number of people affected is tiny really. 2) the behaviour of some recent DRM solutions has been so terrible, that a bitter taste has been formed and I doubt people will let go of that now. However much legit players might have previously been "If it doesn't affect me, I don't care", they now (perhaps rightly) assume it WILL affect them, negatively. DRM of the type we have seen over the last year or two has to die now, as it can surely only harm sales. |
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| @Baranga Piracy really isn't that complicated. It's just a group of people prepared to steal from others so long as there are no repercussions (for themselves). |
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@Nithron Yes, I'm confused :) Alas, sometimes tone is hard to convey over the internet, and it seems I've come across as some kind of strident or superior piracy bore / asshole. I'm not, I swear! I think I've been misinterpreted as justifying piracy, I was actually trying to refute a lot of the strawman pro-piracy arguments ("DRM always gets cracked", "a pirated copy isn't a lost sale" etc by making the point that no one reasonable *actually* makes these claims - they're strawmen. More reasonable claims made by anti-piracy folk are that they contribute to *lower* sales. I'm pretty devoutly anti-piracy, but somehow managed to sound the opposite. Oops. |
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| Game Dev story was just a take on a genre that's been around for decades, I remember playing Software Star by Kevin Toms for the Amstrad many years ago... |
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@NimbusTLD "This is one way to educate gamers on the effects of piracy! Love it " I think the sort of twat who won't fork out 8 quid will fail to see the irony. However amazing it is - and it is amazing |
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| If they made it clear to the pirates how and why this was happening to them in game and offered them the chance to "solve the piracy problem" by means of actually purchasing the game then this would be a good strategy. If the pirates don't get the joke, as well they might not, then ultimately this is funny but a bit pointless and a missed opportunity. |
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@MightyJordan It is stealing, it is copyright theft, or theft of Intellectual Property if you prefer. Basically the law decides what qualifies as stealing, so if the law says illegally downloading a game is stealing, then that's what it is. You could of course call it anything you like. It makes no difference. |
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@OliverH They got a game that was previously of interest to only ~200 people on the front page of Eurogamer, Escapist CVG, PC Gamer, Kotaku, IGN etc. etc. That's a massive marketing win, and better than the pros can often manage. Seems like they're doing pretty well in that department so far. |
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Ironically I'm trying to buy this right now but their store is down! Are there any resellers stocking this online at all? Edit: You can get it here until their website comes back online - http://sites.fastspring.com/greenheartgames/product/gamedevtycoon |
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@Flipper79 That's very true, if they wanted to prevent piracy and encourage sales they would just make the game stop working after an hour and pop up a link to where you can buy it. But by doing a clever stunt like thsi they managed to get a game that sold 200 copies onto the front of every gaming website, which will result in far more sales than any more effective anti-piracy measures. It's a clever move. |
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| Read this elsewhere and decided to check out the game: website down, not on Steam, not on GOG, lost interest. Make your game easy to buy. |
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| @Vanmunt Well, he's right, it isn't stealing. It's copyright infringement. Now if you mean he didn't think it was wrong, that's a problem. |
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Are the pirates upset? Their homepage seems to be down. A shame because I'd never heard of the game and was going to take a look at it. |
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As good as Game Dev Story is, it isn't some Sacred Cow of originality. As Skunkfish mentions above, the core idea was around in 1985 with Kevin Toms' Software Star, and that's predated by Millionaire the year before. Updating the concept from its text based origins to a friendly graphical interface does not form a genesis. You need a balding drummer for that. The name, now that's another story. It's deeply unimaginative, both in lifting from one of its most recent genre stablemates, and also the inclusion of that god-awful "Tycoon" suffix. I suppose from a marketing point of view people taking a glance at the game know what they're getting, but the medium deserves more than that, right? Anyhow, all business simulation games for me live or die on their charm, and while it's a lot to expect the heights of a Theme Hospital (now there's a true genre highlight), a game needs to be a lot more than the dry allocation of resources to problems. Game Dev Story managed it. Will this? |
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@libretroretroarch What happened to you to turn you into this? Do you see how weird your behaviour is? To go off on rants, calling people names and claiming it is some kind of public service is not normal behaviour for a well balanced adult. And given the number of times you have used the phrase 'arrested development' I would guess it's one you have learned recently. And a low wage sweatshop? Have you worked as a game developer? I have worked as a games programmer for 8 years and my husband for 9 years. There are sometimes long hours but the pay tends to be reasonable for our education level and you get to spend a lot more time chatting and going for tea and fried breakfasts than I would imagine little children in 3rd world sweatshops could expect. |
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| @MightyJordan There is one point I'd like to raise in response, if I may, which is that you appear to be tilting at windmills. |
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There was a valid excuse for NoCD cracks back in the days before services like Steam, where the games would demand you had the CD in the drive - even though installing the whole thing to HDD was standard. Nowadays? Steam, Desura, GoG, Indie bundles available all online.... absolutely no bloody excuse whatsoever. There needs to be more demos made available, though. Demos are always good, especially if they unlock to the full game. |
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| @Capn_Franky The 'Tycoon' games aren't a franchise, just a million different games by different developers inspired by titles such as Railroad & Transport tycoon. If you want to create a Tycoon Tycoon game feel free. |
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| @Flipper79 Except what it has done is give them a bucketload of free publicity that I'm sure will lead to some decent sales... Well done Greenlight! |
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| @OliverH They've got free advertising to the value of thousands of pounds today. I don't think that's too shabby? I'm sure the article has received far more click-throughs than any paid banner would have... |
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@libretroretroarch I don't have to go to gamasutra 'sweetheart' as I actually work in the games industry as do a great many of my friends. It's not perfect and there are times we rant against our jobs but it's certainly not the worst and saying it is the same as a sweatshop is beyond stupid. The execs don't especially care about individuals on the shop floor in many places but that is exactly the same working for any big company. Both myself and my husband get very good pensions and the place he works has great benefits - lots of free software, private healthcare, free food and drink, great pension and a lot more. There are places with terrible benefits as is the case with every other industry. So maybe you should get some facts from people who experience things first hand rather than spending your time forming opinions from random websites? |
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| Hey guys piracy isn't stealing cause that sounds really filthy, here is a stupid picture someone made to illustrate how noble and totally fine piracy is. I only pirate game that deserve it like DRM free Indie games or Humble Indie Bundles but don't think of me as a hero, I'm just fighting the good fight cause I'm a noble pirate and not a filthy thief. |
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@arcam I think you're spot on. As an anti-piracy exercise this makes no real sense since it is far too subtle to persuade the pirates to buy but as a PR exercise it seems to be working wonders. Whether this is a matter of luck or cynicism on behalf of the developers I won't hazard a guess but at this stage I don't feel confident in ruling out a certain degree of cynicism form the makers of Game Dev IHopeKairosoftDon'tSueUs or whatever it is called. |
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| I just bought this, as I thought the piracy trick was quite funny. It is absolutely identical to Game Dev Story, even down to the tiny details. |
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@OliverH: I don't understand your logic. So if there are other games (arbitrary evaluation from self) as good as this one, it's ok to pirate it? Guess it's the same principle as a pirate unit doesn't equal a sale, so it's ok to pirate because I wouldn't buy it anyway. In my opinion, if I think a product is not worth it I don't get it, I don't just use it and say: "chill bro, your stuff is not that good, I wouldn't have bought it". |
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They actually sent me a thank you message in game for buying it and not pirating it. About the game it's like Game Dev Story but with many more options in terms of both staff management and games. It's also much more challenging. |
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"Looks like a shameless rip-off of Game Dev Story". And Theme Park is a rip off of Rollercoaster Tycoon (or vice versa, I forget which came first), every FPS ever is a rip off of every other FPS ever, PES is just a shameless FIFA clone... come on folks. We can have more than one game based around the same subject matter. If it's OK to have entire genres of basically-the-same-game without getting all up in arms about it, I think we can afford to have a second game about game development. Also as someone who was interested in trying Game Dev Story but who doesn't play on my phone, learning that something along the same lines now exists for my PC is great news! |
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| @Fox89 Your point is valid but they could have at least differentiated the name a little. As it is it reeks of WarZ style brand hijacking. IP theft, if you will |
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| Whys everyone having ago at pirates? It costs alot of money to scrub the barnacles off, and running costs of my ship and jolly roger flags are a rip off. |
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| Brilliant hahahahaha. I din't know this game even existed. I may buy it just for the way they handled their piracy issues. Kudos. |
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@aeschylus That's because there IS full justification for their piracy policies... Although people like to act like it doesn't, this being a free world applies just as much to EA etc as it does to you or me. If they want to put restrictive or irritating DRM on their games then they have every right to do so. Just like you have every right not to buy their games because of it. |
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| Generally speaking (ie not referring to this game in particular) there will be an initial wave of piracy for any game where the developer fails to offer any other way for people to 'try before they buy'. A youtube vid is not enough for a player to know whether they will like the feel and control of a game. NOT an excuse by any means, but it would cut out a lot of piracy if people could try a demo first. |
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| @LetsGo Not even close. Kairosoft just cloned the tycoon model from someone else. What is so much different with Game Dev Story than say Lemonade Stand Tycoon or one of those low-budget games? Kairosoft didn't create the genre like most people are saying. |
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@MightyJordan Thats a massive over simplification of theft, whether or not piracy is theft is irrelevant - it's illegal, and immoral. You're getting something that someone put a lot of effort and money into, and not giving them the recompense for it. Whether or not every pirate is a lost sale is also irrelevant, but can you really say that out of the 93% of people that pirated this game, NONE of them would have bought it? |
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| Am I the only one who remembers the days when, if you wanted something, you saved up your money and you bought it when you had enough...? |
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@frankgrmwallace When people talk about pirating a game not being the equivalent of a lost sale, they're not referring to permission to use the product. They're referring to the economics of the situation. Claiming that 5,000 people pirating a game that costs five quid means you've lost £25k ignores the reality that a majority of those 5,000 people had no intention of giving you the money. Yet this is the sort of spurious thinking that some companies will engage in when painting piracy as an obvious blight. Your perspective might be better described as a lost customer - only a small minority of pirates are likely to go on to purchase the legitimate version. Alas, that's not the thinking that the purveyors of oppressive DRM are running with, because if losing custom was their number one fear, they wouldn't be pushing it. |
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@MightyJordan "No, I can't, but at the same time, you can't say that ALL of the people that pirated the game would have bought it. It's simply something that can't be accurately measured, which is why it's annoying when companies think one pirated copy = one lost sale" Yeah that may be true but that argument is usually trotted out by people as a justification to rip off shit. Just because one pirated copy doesn't necessarily mean one lost sale doesn't then mean you can justifiably go and rip it off (adopts Cartman voice)"because I wasn't going to buy it anyway you guys" |
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| I think it's a genius idea to create your own "pirated" version. I would have gone one step further and displayed a message on backrupcy such as "just what you deserve you filthy parasite!" and then format the C drive. :) |
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| @libretroretroarch You're clearly an absolute fucking nutjob but all the 'quotes' in your posts make them extremely fun to read. I can almost taste the grease building up on the inside brim of your fedora from here. |
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@null I can't remember the title of something I read about three years ago. MUST HAVE BEEN A FAILURE OF A GAME. Excellent logic |
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@moroboshi "Piracy is never acceptable. If you can't afford something, you can't have it. It's really that simple." Yet surely you must realize that those without the money to buy the thing are not the ones who, sans piracy, would be buying it. Thus it's actually more like "If you can afford something, you should make sure to support its creation by buying it." I have several friends, including a mobile games developer, ironically, who pirate games and other media. Of course, we all being reasonably affluent graduate students, we can all afford to be buying the stuff in question. It annoys me so much when I mention the cool boxed Etrian Odyssey IV and my friend says, "I'll have to try to get it on the R4," as though it's a matter of course. Thus the problem is consumers who can afford something who simply don't understand the impact their money (or lack of it) has on things. Those who can't afford things cannot afford them either way, and so don't factor into the equation regardless. |
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| @FarbrorBaku I think vert1go was jokingly insinuating that Greenlight had stolen the game from Kairosoft... |
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| It doesn't count as piracy until you realise that the people were unwittingly played. They thought they were pirating - making it essentially the same thing. |
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"...3104 of the 3318 copies being played were pirated." Does "being played" refer to copies actively launched at one particular instance or to the total number of copies? Also, how did they find the total number of pirated copies? While these numbers could be accurate, it's also true that somewhere around 93.6 per cent of piracy statistics are essentially fabrications. |
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| @Fox89 Seriously it's not just the same theme, from what I played after buying it it's like a PC port of the same game! |
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we should stop referring to these people as 'pirates' cos the word pirate sounds to cool. we should call them what they are PARASITES self-entitled leaches that think gaming owes them something. |
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@libretroretroarch just scrolling through your collection of overly aggressive post on EG would suggest that YOU are the kiddie. ... or very sexually frustrated |
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| And yet, all these anti-pirate people are excited about the Ouya and running emulators to play their illegal Roms etc on it. Or when the PSP was hacked, how they all celebrated that they could play illegal Roms on it. And if you have a browser add-on that lets you download YouTube mp3's, that's piracy, too. Or, if you download basically any fan-subbed anime, that's also piracy. Basically, a lot of people speak of the ills of piracy, yet they're hypocrites who do it in some way themselves; if you do it even in some, small, self-proposed insignificant way, you still do it and can't condemn others for ever doing it. |
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I've had the misfortune to of being really poor and if you have a PC & internet connection you are not so poor that you can't afford a £5 game (or those who pirate newer games your rig has to be pretty decent to run just released games in the first place). I really don't buy the 'oh it's to expensive/ I can't afford it lines' if your that hard up you would of had to sell the bloody PC and cancel the internet the electricity bill alone for running a PC isn't worth it when your brasic. If moneys tight at that particular moment then you wait like every one else. It's simple people see a way to get free stuff with no consequence to themselves and do it. And weather it equals a lost sale or not I don't see how you can feel justified taking something for free after someones busted there ass to make it. Piracy does affect sales (No not every pirated copy equals a lost sale but some percentage do) and for a small developer that can be the difference between success and failure and keeping there staff in a job. I can't blame companies for wanting to get rid of piracy so badly when pirates take the piss at every available opportunity. 3104 of the 3318 for a £5 is simply ludicrous. The only justifications I have any sympathy for is those who download a cracked version of a product they have already brought because the one they brought has being destroyed by DRM it creates a vicious circle I guess but I understand why they would do that. |
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A pirated game DOES equal a lost sale, every single time. People seem to have an oddly myopic view of this. It's NOT about whether you would have paid for it if you couldn't get it free, it's about the fact you ALREADY ARE playing it without having paid for it. If the IP owners have attached a price to their product, handing over the money is the official way of "gaining permission" to use the IP. Why can't people grasp this? This attitude is why more and more oppressive DRM type things are coming. |
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| @Nettacki ??? I think you missed my point. The whole idea is that you already have the IP without the IP owners being paid. That makes it the equivalent of a sale. It's a paid service, the paying is the permission. If you don't pay, you have "stolen" the ip rights according to modern law. A lot of people who pirate probably won't pay for a game, but since the games aren't free, it doesn't matter. You aren't allowed access to a service without meeting the demands of the service provider. |
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Back in the day, as a proper kid, less than 10 years old, I used to pirate practically all my games on my Amstrad CPC 464. I bought a game every month or so with my pocket money, but without piracy I wouldn't have been able to play anywhere the number of games that I did. I would have missed out on lots of stuff that I loved as a kid, and I can square that with my conscience no problem. However now I have a job and can afford enough games to keep me entertained, I haven't pirated a game in about 20 years. As the dev' says in the comment above: "There are still individuals who either can't make a legal purchase because of payment-issues or who genuinely cannot afford the game,"..."I don't have a quarrel with you." In my view, kids, and probably more importantly, those who just aren't in the place where they can afford this stuff should be able to sample what the human race can come up with right now from a cultural standpoint if nothing else. Give it to the masses. But of course if the market becomes unviable, devs can't reclaim their costs, then the market declines. The games market is, I believe big enough to absorb this. |
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| @SilentbobSC That's right, they copied GameDevStory. And Halo copied Doom. And F1 2012 copied Formula One Grand Prix. Unless of course we allow genre's to exist, then it all makes sense. Or is GameDevStory the only game allowed in that genre? |
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| @skunkfish And "The Biz" on the Spectrum (written by Frank Sidebottom fact fans) although it was about the music industry but effectively the same thing |
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| @bluesuits You don't need a Steam key to play it. They're offering a Steam key if and when it gets on Steam in addition to the completely DRM free version that isn't attached to anything that you can already get right now directly from their own website. |
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@feetfly "What was the name of that Russian development team that did this with their horror game? They got by fine on it." They can't have got by that fine if you can't even remember the name of the dev team OR the game. |
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Lol. Wow. Economics really not your strong suit, is it? I've read some painfully dumb crap on here but you, sir, take the biscuit. Today's the day that I learned that Canada attracting billions of dollars of video game investment is costing their economy money! I wonder why it is they keep doing it then? |
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| Oh guys - I've just read through this whole thing, pretty much, and the funny guy's deleted most of his comments. Boo, hiss. |
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| @Psyk in legal terms it would possibly be considered entrapment, but that's not what they're aiming at here. |
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| @andrewsqual Conveniently forgetting the 50m+ users on Steam. Well done with your sweeping generalisation. No really, well done. |
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| @Crea Well yeah, this is what usually goes wrong. Some people will have a very black and white view of an issue like this, in which piracy is stealing which is bad. The problem is more complex however, but when people try and debate the complexities of the issue, they inevitably come out sounding less against piracy than the "piracy is stealing which is bad" crowd, because that stance is, by definition, right at the extreme end of one side of the argument - where piracy is a single, unified act, exactly the same under all circumstances, with the exact same consequences every time. Because this viewpoint is so extreme, and so black and white, any attempt to consider the problem in a more complex manner looks, by comparison, like it is defending piracy, even if the intention is merely to talk about the problem as it really is, in a neutral and detached way. |
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I really like the ingenious ideas developers come up with when they detect a pirated version of their game. However, it is so sad they have to. The piracy number given in the article is terrible. |
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| Had a conversation with one of my younger friends yesterday who couldn't see that downloading games and films off the internet was stealing.. says it all really. |
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| @v.profane In fairness, they're actively in the process of trying to get on Steam via Greenlight as we speak. It's not as if they knew this story was going to blow up traffic to their website to the degree that it has. |
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@georgetm1 Do me a favor: Follow one of these links: www.armorgames.com www.kongregate.com www.newgrounds.com Plenty of games the players of which don't have to pay a single cent to play. It has nothing to do with "being cheap" and everything with assessing what value a product is for you. If you can get games of similar complexity for free, why would you be willing to spend money on something? |
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| @skunkfish: I was just being silly, I don't think it'd be cool, quite the opposite, I think products should have value and that role is for the creators, not the consumers. Consumers role is to evaluate if that value is fair and worthwhile the money and time or not - not to decide on the price, and be judge and jury (judge as in sentencing the price is to high, so give me for free!). It's like interests, they shouldn't be too high, obviously, but they can't also be too low, otherwise people spend like crazy and lose respect for work itself. |
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"Can I research a DRM or something?" Priceless! Also not wanting something enough to pay for it is not a good reason to take it for free. It's only a good reason not to have it. You don't want it, don't have it. If you do want it, pay for it. The middle condition doesn't exist, or rather it only exists in the feeble shit arse excuses to try and justify the unjustifiable. |
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Pirating is stealing. If you wish to debate the morality of stealing or rationalize that it is somehow acceptable, then go right ahead. |
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| @libretroretroarch are they not 2 totally and completely separate issues. can i feel strongly about both issues or do i have to pick a fight to wave the flag for. |
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| @ZizouFC Agreed. I thought Ubisoft were pulling numbers out of their ass when they talked about 90% piracy rates. Now I'm not so sure. |
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| @frankgrmwallace People can't "grasp" it because they realize that a pirated game isn't necessarily an entire lost sale. It's some percentage of it. |
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| I've played the demo and it really makes me sad that a game like this gets pirated. I will buy it once it releases on Steam, I hope you do the same..... |
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| Every time I throw around numbers like 70%-90% of all games played on PC are pirated copies there's always a gaggle of people that freak out on me. "No way it's that high!" they say, and often pretty angrily. But I think it is and I also think it's largely pirates that claim it isn't. |
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| @libretroretroarch Yeah, screw those game developers and their evil tax breaks! Let them move abroad and leave us to our dole checks... |
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| 93% of people who are playing this game freaking stole it. They then go on forums to ask why it isn't working? THEY STOLE THE GAME? They have zero right to any kind of support as they didn't buy the damn game! Am I missing something here??? |
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| This is brilliant. This style game doesn't appeal to me at all, but I want to buy it just to commend the creators on such clever irony. |
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| @twot and pirating a high-budget AAA developer game is also pretty disgusting; pay for the game you play, regardless of who made it. |
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| @bluesuits It says in the very blog post linked in the article: "We know this because our game contains some code to send anonymous-usage data to our server. Nothing unusual or harmful. Heaps of games/apps do this and we use it to better understand how the game is played." - And they also mention the code doesn't stop anyone playing it offline, acknowledging the real numbers might be even more different. |
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| @jebus well said. "Lost sale" or not, however it's phrased or interpreted, people should always buy something rather than get it for free somehow. Seriously people, stop making excuses. If a product is sold in a way that pisses you off, or has obtrusive or ridiculous DRM, don't buy it. You don't have to steal/copy/duplicate/borrow/share it. Excuses. All of them. |
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@bluesuits Games mags use the same images all the time, screaming conspiracy at the idea that developers keep stock shots to send out to interested media is just silly. Everyone does it, it's one of the most obvious things to do as any journo is going to ask 'got any artwork?' while investigating the story. The news cycle runs more quickly than features so often the artwork is stock rather than shot specifically. This goes for every publication in the country. Do you think that every preview, news story or game announcement that shares artwork is a lame marketing stunt too? That would write off 90% of material. |
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| @libretroretroarch Can't remember the last time I've had so much entertainment on the bus to work as I have had this morning, reading your terrible posts, desperately trying to force an unrelated point across and accusing anyone who doesn't agree of being brainwashed or "mentally retarded". What a shining example of human intellect you are. |
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| It's sad that while I follow indie scene to some basic extent, I haven't heard about Game Dev Tycoon until this controversy arised. The positive side of that is I tried their demo and enjoyed it enough to bought it. It's pleasantly challenging to find an inner mechanism and it offers semi-history lesson on HW developers. |
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| @jebus Never played that one, although I did play 'Rockstar ate my hamster' by Codies which I'm sure was heavily inspired by it.. Or to use the terminology of others here, they 'ripped it off'. |
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| @midnight_walker Wasnt It Hotline Miami's creator that did that? He even patched the cracked game so that everyone was playing it at its best. |
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But hold on a second, when I argued that piracy led to a loss of sales I was shot down by most people saying that it was a good marketing ploy to get people trying your product before buying. Don't tell me I was right all along... |
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Most people doesn't pirate a game because they can't afford it, or doesn't have a way to pay for them. Maybe kids who have no jobs yet, but anyone with a work who is into gaming can find the way if he wants to. That's just an excuse and a bad one at that. On the other hand, I almost never buy any game on face value, I've lost my confidence in game developers, and publishers mostly. I'll download it, and if it's worth the money then I'll buy it. And if I find problems with my pirated copy you can bet I'll whine about it. So from that point of view deliberately fracking up the pirated copy is contra productive. I won't even consider buying a broken game. Most of the games I pirate I toss out in less than 10 minutes after installation because it doesn't even worth the time it took to download it. I'd be stupid to pay for games that I reject in minutes. And since publisher refuse to release demo versions because they know that most people wouldn't buy their crap after seeing it, this is the only way to conveniently trial games. There are only a few developers remain whose product I'd buy without seeing it first. |
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Available to buy here DRM free if anyone wants it. I had trouble with their front page, but this is the direct-link to the purchase page: http://www.greenheartgames.com/app/game-dev-tycoon/ |
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@OliverH Stealing or theft isn't just a legal term. Is that too hard to understand. If the law were to suddenly collapse would the words stealing and theft no longer exist? |
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| I saw the story, I really loved the idea. Went ahead and purchased the game. A small game, but still pretty nice feel to it :) |
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@TetsuZaemon We can probably piece it back together between us. His reply to me was: @PlugMonkey Canada can do whatever the hell it wants - let them waste public taxpayer money all they want - it's a pretty lousy investment they're making.As I said before, I'd always assumed that Canada offered the tax breaks it did because it lead to a net gain in their coffers from all the investment it attracted. Apparently they're just being scammed though. It's a sad situation. |
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| I bought this game and I really love it, but I'm just wondering whether anyone will show me this "unique" pirated version of the game? It just looks like a great way to prank a friend. |
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| Good promotional thing, had never heard of the game but it's the kind of thing I'd probably quite like. I'll give the trial a go and see if I think it's worth buying. |
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| So, why does EG post a Luftrausers cloning post one week and then this clone appears and instead, it goes on about the pirating PR stunt?? |
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| Just completed the demo - very similar to Game Dev Story, but different enough to keep me interested. £6.20 or so (when you add VAT) is a little steep though. |
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| @KanePaws I believe they said in their blog that the game sends statistics back to them. So the number is likely to be higher as many people would have this blocked via a firewall etc. |
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@OliverH: It'd be quite cool if I could have whatever I wanted if I wasn't going to buy it anyway, sign me up on that economy 101. I feel like not wanting to buy any software ever again. No lost sale, may I have it ? |
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| Anyone have any idea if this or GDS is actually better? I'm in the market for thing sort of thing, so wouldn't mind getting the better one! I can't seem to actually find a review of this game... |
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| @miiiguel The problem with pirating all of the games that you wouldn't buy anyway is that it doesn't leave enough time to play (or buy) the games that you would buy... It's lose/lose. Can people stop pirating the games they wouldn't buy! It's pointless for everyone! *rant over* |
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@adamdoll But in this situation they did put it there for people to take it. I get the point they're making, but I feel the point would have been better made if they had piracy detection built into the game, rather than leaking an altered version themselves. Of course that would mean that there's a chance it would be triggered for some legitimate customers, so I can see that this way it is better for the people that actually paid for the game. |
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| @ZizouFC One look at my Steam profile will show you I do pay for my shit... http://steamcommunity.com/id/mightyjordan/games?tab=all |
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@Fox89 I was thinking about writing the exact same thing but looks like you beat me to the punch, good job! There's nothing wrong with a bit of competition. |
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| LoL... what´s with all the hate? Oh well, whatever! I bet you bunch of boyscouts only play original games (with daddy´s money)! Most of them should never reach the stores! |
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| upto I looked at the check ov $6980, I be certain that my brothers friend was actually receiving money in there spare time at there labtop.. there best friend started doing this for less than twentey months and just now cleared the loans on their house and got a new Lotus Esprit. read more at, http://All29.com |
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@frankgrmwallace stop abusing terms. "That makes it the equivalent of a sale." - at the price of $0, which is not the price the originator set. However, if I buy a physical copy of a game, and give it away to someone after I have finished it, that is also a $0 sale, but apparently legal... "If you don't pay, you have "stolen" the ip rights according to modern law." No, a thousand times no: The IP rights are retained, an unlicensed copy is just that, an illegal copy made by someone who do not have the rights. If they took the IP rights then they suddenly would be making "legal" copies. So the IP rights have not been taken away from the makers (as opposed to what often happens in some industries where IP laws are skirted for profit by calling the creations "works for hire" even when there is no formal employment contract). (I wonder how many "piracy is theft"-people run revenue-stripping ad-blockers...) |
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Can someone who has played this and Game Dev Story 2DX PC confirm my suspicion it is ripping it off a lot more than they're willing to admit (since barely any people know of it's existence, as being free doesn't make the game text any less Japanese) ? If this is the case, I won't condone piracy, but also won't give a shit for their tears, either. |
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Those are crazy stats for piracy. Quite depressing. But, we rag on Zynga copying other people's ideas. How do you guys feel about someone ripping off Game Dev Story, a £2.69 app? |
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@Number52 Software piracy isn't stealing because it doesn't fulfill the legal requirements for stealing, which is the prevention of the use of the item at issue by the original owner. If I stole something, I'd have it and you wouldn't. If I copy something from you, you still have it and can continue to use it. That's as simple as it is. |
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@skoypidia Let me guess, those legislators are controlled by the Lizard people who live in the centre of the earth? They didn't "steal" or "hijack" anything. This isn't classed as theft because you aren't actually taking anything - the developer still have all their files, you just have a copy. It's the English language definition of stealing that means this technically isn't, not some evil legislators.... |
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@georgetm1 And you can't have any justification for believing yourself to have the authority to rewrite the legal code of the major part of the world. Stealing is stealing and copyright violation is copyright violation, and it takes a great deal of wilfull ignorance to stubbornly ignore the fact that there might be a reason why there are distinct laws covering theft and copyright violation. |
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| I just played the trial from the Windows Store... It's ripped off Game Dev Story a lot more than I thought! Still fun, I'm more likely to play it on the move than sat in front of a PC. Shame, as I wanted to support a developer with a wicked sense of humour :) |
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@Crea You didn't counter the arguments that piracy is immoral, illegal, and is still a loss of revenue for the developers. |
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So, to summarize: Two guys steal idea for a game from another team, then upload their game to the torrent sharing site, and after that go to press and moan that people download their game instead of buying it? Other than asking for a lawsuit for the theft of a game idea, what else are these news about? Certainly not about how bad the piracy is, since the devs temselves are apparently pirates. |
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So, let me get this straight. They released a cracked version of their own game and decided to punish people that downloaded it? Why didn't they do what smarter developers have done in the past and released their game in this manner but instead said "if you like it, pay for it to support us." What was the name of that Russian development team that did this with their horror game? They got by fine on it. Or better yet, why couldn't they - since they were going to be esentially distributing pirate copies of their game anyways - just release a 'limited' version of it, that has some features removed, a "lite" version, if you will, with prompts at points asking people if they want to buy the game. It's just annoying because they did this to themselves and they did it purely to drum up publicity for an unoriginal game. This wouldn't bother me normally, but I can see the kind of affect stunts like this could have on the greater market. Companies like EA will look at this and use it as an excuse to make their games even more retarded than normal. With, uh. Double-always online where you have to be connected to two isps and buy three online passes of the game because piracy. tl;dr kind of a pointless stunt |
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@Baranga actually, they put the full game up, themselves, on the torrent sites. They just added a bit of code server-side that can detect copies downloaded from that, which increases the in-game instances of piracy to real-time figures. It's called "getting people who can to buy it through encouragement". |
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| Isn't this a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face? If the majority of copies are pirated then the vast majority of people playing the game are going to be telling other people, who might actually have paid for the game, that it's no good because they're unwittingly (as shown in the article) playing a deliberately altered version of the game. |
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Sigh, here we go again. Not all those who downloaded the game are lost customers, potentially some are but not all. But some after playing it and liking it could potentially mean someone buys it, a customer gained, not all but some. And this entire story and "controversy" is only going to get them yet more custom. Suspiciously, this just looks like Game Dev Story, how much I can't say as I haven't played it, but if that's the case it'd be a bit rich to complain you've made a phone game clone but for some reason you're not suddenly millionaires and top of the charts! |
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| I don't recall hearing of this game before today and they released their own "cracked" version on the trackers even admitting that they spoofed it to look like a scene release. So really, that's about the size of their marketing effort, and given the game has been out for less than a week and primarily promoted via torrents, it's no wonder it's been so heavily pirated. Finally, they seem to miss the point on the fact they all but copied someone else's work - GameDevStory by Kairosoft who should get a cut for what's amounting to a port. |
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| @Screenpi No, I can't, but at the same time, you can't say that ALL of the people that pirated the game would have bought it. It's simply something that can't be accurately measured, which is why it's annoying when companies think one pirated copy = one lost sale. |
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| @ZizouFC Not for the past couple of years. Steam plus all the different indie bundles weaned me off pirating games. |
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| @Psyk Yes. How is it not? If I put a stack of cash on the sidewalk saying it is mine and please do not steal it and you still steal it is it not stealing? |
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guys guys guys, Patrick Klug had even appealed to those interested in the game pre-release, stressing the fact that the game came DRM-free, with an installer for all three platforms, with copies for three computers, and a Steam key if their Steam Greenlight campaign is successful.if the game was DRM free then why do you need a steam key to play it? (and dont try to BS me that steam isn't a form of DRM) Also, if the game WAS pirated, how would they even know? Steamworks games that have been pirated obviously don't connect to the steam servers for reasons such as avoiding key validation as to make playing a cracked game possible. The coincidence that both EG and IGN BOTH used the same 2 pictures in their articles only points further to that this is most likely (see: IS) a hoax and a viral marketing stunt to put forth on people gullible enough as you in the comments section. Also the fact that you all seem to think this game is great and original despite Kairosoft's version being available for some time now on IOS, Android and PC. try re reading the article and then put some thought into what I just posted and you'll see this is just a lame marketing stunt everyone fell for. |
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| @The_B then how do they even know an exact number of how many copies have been pirated? You see what I'm saying? If they have no way of tracking the copy then they're just making stuff up, but if they game has DRM, then they're liars. |
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HAHAHAHAHA Funny stuff. Still this game actually looks really good, is there a review somewhere? Disclaimer: YAGHHH I will not Pirate this here game I'm thinking of purchasing it should it be any good, and if its not the game can walk ye plank and be sent to Davy Jones Locker. |
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Why make a blog post about this? If the idea was to deter pirates why are you letting them know that they need to avoid this non-working version? The reason I presume is that news stores like this are worth far more to Greenheart Games than some funny but ineffective anti-piracy tactic. It's clever marketing and PR, well done. |
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@jebus actually, no it isn't. They wilfully uploaded it of their own volition, therefore its not piracy. See any linux distro uploaded to torrent sites as an example. Understand, I'm not condoning the illegal file sharing of any type of media, just saying is all. |
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| Whilst its a cool trick, the article gives the impression this is the first time anyone's ever done this, It has been done many times before though, most notable examples being Mother, and Arkham Asylum. |
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@TarickStonefire I wasn't expecting you to 'get this' anyway since you only repeat the 'crap' about piracy that a videogame CEO and his videogame journey lackeys post and retweet on Twitter. You get upset about prepackaged talking points and issues. You don't have a mind of your own to carefully weigh the counter arguments against the 'pap' PR talking points from your precious 'industry'. Precisely because you are in arrested development like I previously alluded to - especially for a guy purporting to be in his late 30s, this is pretty embarrassing on your part. Your parents regretfully never bothered to teach you how to do independent thinking or give you a brain of your own - which is why you listen to what your precious 'industry' has to say all day while never exploring a counterargument. What the industry says = becomes your opinion - because you are dumb like that. |
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| That's PCs for you. Wouldn't they have been better off trying to get this on PSN and Live? Saying that, I expect Microsoft and Sony with their 'little mark-up' would have this priced twice as much as it is now. |
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@jetsetwillie As opposed to 'self-entitled leeching' videogame company 'developers' who think they're 'entitled' to tax subsidies because they would be 'unable' to compete otherwise. That is pretty rich now - they are the very definition of a 'PARASITE' you could imagine - they are not contributing to the economy but rather COSTING IT MONEY and not paying their own fair share. Oh, and don't even start about 'job creation' as an excuse - the same 'developers' who go belly up all the time or refuse to 'invest' in the economy like any other service 'sector' - what it is, is low-wage sweatshop companies being kept afloat by the government while pretending at the same time they are big, bad, mean 'entrepreneurs'. Yeah fucking right. My god you people are ignorant hillbillies - you get all your parrot talking points from some videogame company CEO on Twitter and are unable to think for yourself or to put things into fucking perspective yourself. |
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@miiiguel I don't understand your logic.May I suggest an economics 101 class? So if there are other games (arbitrary evaluation from self) as good as this one, it's ok to pirate it?Never said so. In my opinion, if I think a product is not worth it I don't get it, I don't just use it and say: "chill bro, your stuff is not that good, I wouldn't have bought it".Well, guess what: For the company books, it doesn't make a bleep of difference. Not sold is not sold. |
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@Crea I like that you got negged for a series of statements which are almost certainly factually correct, especially considering most of them are simply logically extrapolated from ideas that everyone would agree with, until you mentioned piracy in there, at which point everyone knee-jerk downvotes someone "defending" the evildoers. That or they just don't want another debate about piracy on here. They do happen an awful lot. |
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"To the rest who could afford the game consider this: We are just two guys working our butts off, trying to start our own game studio to create games which are fun to play."Consider this: If you are two guys trying to start our own game studio to create games which are fun to play, you lack in the number one requirement for a long-term successful business: M.A.R.K.E.T.I.N.G. The number of businesses who had a great product but went bankrupt because they failed to find paying customers is legion. And here's the catch: It's not the duty of people to give you money, it's your duty, running a company, to find paying customers for your product. You are the typical example of a genius with a great product storming out on the street yelling "I'm gonna make a business out of this! Getting paid for what I love to do, how much greater can things be?" University professors have already failed on that level. Just because you have a product you consider great doesn't mean that a)other people know of it and b)other people consider it just as great and c)they consider it so great that they are willing to spend the price you ask. It is YOUR duty as an entrepreneur to ensure they do. Then and ONLY then will you make money. If people consider your game as nice but not above games the likes of which are available on Armorgames, Kongregate or Newgrounds, well, people don't spend a dime there, why should they spend a dime on you? The only thing you serve to demonstrate is that being a great game designer doesn't make you a great entrepreneur. And in that dichotomy, thousands, if not millions of businesses fail constantly. |
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@arcam Promotion is one small part of marketing - and this is actually not an example of good marketing. Why? Because the job of marketing is to ensure you'll still be in business 5 years down the row, if not 10 or 20. This is one promotional boost that works this once. It might create a brief spike in demand. But already with their next game, they can't pull off this stunt again, and if they try will widely be regarded as full of ****. So it's promotion, but it certainly isn't sustainable marketing. But then, we're used from the games industry that they are far better at promotion than actual sustainable marketing. |
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@TarickStonefire And this is about laughing about arrested development idiots like you who can't get that these very same 'developers' who bitch about 'piracy' all day don't seem to mind being the same kind of 'financial leech' as every other multinational company - they deem they're special and that in order to 'compete' - they need to get 'tax breaks' and 'financial incentives'. That makes them financial pirates since they apparently don't believe in a 'free market' - they need to suck off the government's tits in orer to be kept afloat. Zombie 'companies' is what you call this - unable to stand on their own feet. Who's the pirate now little bitch? That enough 'irony' for you or do I need to dumb it down for you even more? |
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The only 'pirates' are the game devs who beg the government for tax subsidies and blame 'not enough tax subsidies!' when they can't meet their sales figures. Know what kind of pirates those are? Pirates of the fucking social safety net - which, note, goes to things of ACTUAL PHYSICAL WEALTH - ie. not dipshitty videogames with no intrinsic value. I'm sory - but developers can't have this crap both ways. Either you are a leech making your 'commercial products' with public taxpayer money or you pay for the WHOLE DAMN THING yourself - and/or get some publisher to do it. It's just so sardonically funny seeing this gutter trash industry create this Pavlovian dog mentality that 'pirates are social welfare leeches' and blablabla and 'how you shouldn't steal Prada shoes if you can't afford it blablabla' (snob appeal of a couple of rich SoCal types whose parents bought them a game console to do the babysitting for them), pretending as if they are some great 'entrepreneuring' libertarians. MEANHWILE..... the same mofo 'game developers' who they regard as their 'real parents' (since their true parents are the SoCal types that have better things to do than raise their children and teach them something else other than gutter trash 'Hollywood' consumption societal values) are actually 'leeching' off the social safety net that frankly was intended for better things than - yes, god forbid - a 'videogame' which really is disposable frivolous entertainment. No, no game developer has a 'right' to tax breaks - no game developer has a right to 'tax subsidies'. The 'services' you provide are non-essential to society - adequate food, housing, education, TANGIBLE PHYSICAL PRODUCTION and the whole lot - those are primary necessities - the stuff your average 'game dev' has to provide doesn't even come anywhere near close to that. No special treatment for game devs - don't be a financial 'pirate' - you pay the whole goddamn lot and if the 'market' (this mystical notion of the market you Libertarians think exists) decides you have a reason to exist and live, then you will live - if not, you will go bankrupt. That is how this works. |
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In before piracy / DRM strawmen arguments: - No, all those pirated copies would not have directly translated to sales. - Yes, a small proportion probably would have (people are price sensitive, and it's hard to beat free). - People pirate games because it's free, often convenient and there's likely to be no consequences. - Purchasing games legitimately must be as frictionless as piracy, if it's to stand a chance. It's at *least* as much about convenience as it is about price. Steam gets this right. - A game with DRM will still get pirated. This does not necessarily make DRM commercially unviable. - DRM will put off some customers. It will also keep some customers honest. Its effectiveness is measured by whichever of these two is greater. |
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| @persus-9 Tilting at windmills? Never heard of that expression before. In defence of my original post, however, the "enemies" aren't exactly imaginary. A lot of people still perceive piracy to be the same as stealing, and that one pirated copy of something equals one lost sale, which simply isn't true. Regarding the second point, a judge in Spain a couple of years ago even agreed that piracy doesn't equal lost sales: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111101/04460416581/spanish-judge-gets-it-pirated-copies-not-necessarily-lost-sales-may-boost-purchases-later.shtml |
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| Pirates crack a game that is basically Game Dev Story? Couldn't care less. Also wouldn’t 'Tycoon' be copyrighted as its already a franchise? Nice 2 IP’s in one... |
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| Nice touch. There are just two little points I'd like to raise. Firstly, piracy isn't stealing. Secondly, there is no guarantee that any of the pirates would have bought the game if there wasn’t a cracked copy available, so the whole "lost sales" argument isn't exactly watertight. |
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Dismiss 9 years ago
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