The Witcher 2 Pirated "Roughly 4.5 Million" Times, Says Dev Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NEXT | |
These kind of messages need to be expressed before a games release. If a developer comes across genuinely and cares for the fans then it really is a good incentive to buy their game as you do feel that they are worth your money and that you are giving it to a good studio with good people. Hell after reading this I'm thinking of buying Witcher 2 just to support them. | |
Yeah, it's too bad the gaming public at large are selfish pricks. | |
All this was expressed before the game's release. Unless you were under a rock. | |
Most games are pirated pretty heavily, since there is no barrier of entry to a pirate. Most of those pirates wouldn't have payed for the game if the piracy option was taken away, because the piracy mentality is one of (...and I despise this word and how often it is thrown around) entitlement. It isn't bad business sense not to try to prevent the inevitable by punishing your actual customers. Further, I'm willing to bet that Assassin's Creed has been pirated just as much if not more despite the ridiculous DRM. DRM gets cracked every single time. | |
What? How can this be? I bought a total of five copies >_< | |
Expressed where? They talked about anti-piracy before. But I don't remember them talking so sincerely about it and how they hope to help stop piracy by offering more content. Under a rock? Implying this game was a massive release. With huge build up. And a massive advertising campaign. And that their views on anti-piracy were publicised everywhere for months on end. | |
Or that it was news on the site you're posting on now. And since you're in the news room, evidently you can find news on this site. | |
And your assumptions are no more based on anything than either of the posts you quote. 4.5 million may seem like a large number but you have no way of knowing how many copies of things like Skyrim are floating around illegally. The way I see it, they realized that DRM wasn't doing anything except maybe deterring actual paying customers. If someone was going to get a pirated version, the DRM wouldn't stop anybody from doing so, therefore, the base number of people pirating would still be 4.5 million. Add to that anyone who now decides to get a copy that works instead of paying for a DRM nightmare and you increase ratio of pirates to consumers. | |
Implying that everyone reads every article on this site. And their views on piracy were the biggest news and should have been read. Anyway this is really dumb, your rock comment was dumb and arguing about it is dumb. So the end. | |
I have no particullar problem with pirates that actully only pirate to "Demo" the game first. However the ones who actully take a copy through pirating without paying, are assholes | |
Or just that they were mentioned several times and the frequency was meaningful.
Not implying that at all.
I didn't make a rock comment. Did you see someone reply to you and assume it was the same person? The guy you're complaining about is named Frostbite3789. Maybe instead of flying into a blind rage, you'll take a peek next time. Though, if you can't tell the difference between usernames...Maybe that explains why you thought this was some huge secret. | |
I'm not a fan of The Witcher, but I do give big props to CD Projekt for their attitude. I'm sure they aren't happy about all those illegal downloads, but they aren't whining and crying and slapping PC Gamers in the face with DRM like Ubisoft or EA. | |
It all tends to boil down to one thing: People just want free stuff. Personally, it's on my to-get list but requires I update my current rig. My processor is way out of date. I also need to play through the first one, but likely won't do that unless it appears on the GOG Christmas sale. I have the Witcher EE on Steam, but it's far too large to download just to get a message saying it's broken. | |
1 in six people (probably more) have pirated the Witcher. 4.5 million sales of a game that retails at somewhere between 20-60 GBP. This game has lost £180,000,000 (approx) And PC Gamers wonder why no one wants to develop for them anymore? If a game was on the console (I know there is still console piracy, but it's much rarer) then it had the potential to make nearly two hundred million instead of lose it. Maybe if PC Gamers stopped pirating 60-90% of their games people might feel a bit nicer towards them. After all it's been proven that PC Gamers will pirate a game which would otherwise cost them a single penny, so why exactly should I believe they are nice wholesome folk? | |
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105428-The-Witcher-2-Epic-Everywhere-and-No-DRM http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/110422-Witcher-2-Patch-Fixes-Bugs-Removes-DRM http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.249968-Witcher-2-to-be-DRM-free-on-GOG-com So with one search of Wither 2 DRM I found 2 news stories and 1 topic. And I remember seeing more before the game was released. This wasn't some big secret. Here's a handy thing that should shed a lot of light on the subject: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Witcher+2+DRM | |
Should I in turn assume every console player is a 13 year old CoD player? I think that's a fair turn and roundabout. | |
Where do you get your information that it is much rarer? It is as easy as pirating on the PC and much harder to get the actual numbers (get yor pirated copies from the guy who mods your console in 20minutes, you don't even need internet and as long as you are not stupid enough to connect the console to the internet = win)? Also, thank you for calling me a pirate. May I call you prick for that? | |
This company GETS IT! DRM will never work because it simply punishes the wrong people. The best example of DRM I've heard was this. You have two dogs. One dog shits on the floor the other is housebroken. In order to keep the dog that isn't housebroken from shitting on the floor you decide to beat the one that is. DRM is the exact same they are punishing the people that are doing the right thing while totally ignoring the ones doing the wrong thing.
Wrong! We have no way of knowing how much they lost because of those 4.5 million pirated copies. Pirated copies of games do not in any way shape or form equate into a lost sale on a 1:1 ratio. It could just as easily be argued none of those people would have bought it if not for piracy that all of them would have. Many of the people pirating the game are doing so because there is no way they could afford it. To claim they lost out on 180 million is simply not true. It's not like they were physical copies stolen from a warehouse. Those are just people converting 1s and 0s from one computer to another. Sure you could argue that they've lost the time and initial investment they put into making the game but they've made around 50 million off that so far so I'd wager that Witcher 2 is probably already profitable by this point or extremely close to it. | |
Aaand this is why I absolutely adore CD projekt. Not because they make awesome games, which I'm sure they do (never played them myself), and it's not because of GoG, which is a great service and requires a lot of work. No, it's cuz of stuff like this. They believe in something that I just happen to support very firmly, and they stand by it no matter what. Still sucks about all those pirates, but it's just the world we live in. The humble bundle pissed me off way more. | |
Assuming they would have bothered at all. Looking at it as lost revenue they stand to earn is silly and presumptuous.
Yeah, but you can find the search bar. That's hard work. >.> | |
Well yes. But not in a way some publishers think about it. Good example would be Darkspore. One of few games that doesn't have any real crack for it because of the online nature of it. It was not pirated, but also it did not sell all that well. Majority of pirates won't stop doing it only because a crack may take weeks or even months to develop. Sure, a company can show off nice charts saying how their super efficient DRM stopped 10 million from downloading the game, but how many of those 10 million actually added to sales and how many just decided it's not worth the wait and moved on to different title? | |
Well, even though it got pirated a lot there's a chance some of them ended up buying it afterwards, those are the numbers we don't see. OT: It's good to see more companies saying that DRM is bullshit. It should be clear to all developers now that DRM makes it slightly harder to pirate and much worse to play legally. | |
I think we've got to come to a middle-ground on all of this. On one side, folks should understand: On the other side, folks should understand: So, if both sides could make certain concessions, we'd be fine. - Publishers should lower the price of new games to encourage fence-sitters to steer toward legal versus piracy. You're never going to get the die-hard pirates, of course... but the goal is those people who are "pirates of convenience." Make your product a bit cheaper, and you'll get at least some of them. As the free-to-play MMO market has proven, customers get involved in much larger numbers when the price comes down -- and it has always led to more money. - Those fence-sitting pirates need to realize that, by pirating, they're just continuing the cycle that keeps everything working so poorly. If you want a product, buy it. If not, don't buy or play it. This will allow companies to easily spot what folks like and what they don't, and they won't have any distractions (or scapegoats) pulling away from that necessary learning process. If you want to communicate your displeasure to publishers, send a clear message of "I don't want your product the way it is," rather than, "I want your product, but I do not want to pay." | |
*DOUBLE POST* | |
I don't think they saw it as a "lost sale". Only as a "pirated copy" (even if thir estimate is probably VERY off). EDIT: Am I human? I've had 2 captcha errors :| EDIT2: And I double posted... damn, not my day... | |
But surely you can see how this is exactly the problem? How can we expect any company to learn its lesson if we keep sending mixed messages? The point is that they don't know how many dollars they actually lost -- but you can bet it's more than zero. So, since it's their product and their livelihood, of course they're going to assume the worst. As to the "can't afford it," nearly every game comes down in price after awhile. No law or natural force demands that they play it at release. I'm sure at least a handful of those pirates could have afforded the game at $40, or $20. And if they had bought it later on, at those prices, it could show developers that price is the big issue -- such market research could lead them to lower prices overall to generate more early-on sales and beat the secondhand market. But the point is that they'll never know. If someone breaks into your house, and you catch them, and he's trying to tell you that he spotted some home repair issues, are you going to listen? No. First, you're going to deal with the fact that he broke into your house. You're not going to take advice from them on how to fix your house, because they're goddamned thieves. In short, I agree with the message that you (and I, and many others) want to send to publishers. But piracy isn't just sending the wrong message, it's actually drowning out the right message, too. That's the problem.
If that hypothetical guy that broke into your house didn't steal anything, would that be cool by you? Of course not. It's the fact that he's taking liberties with your home that you didn't permit him to take. Maybe he did steal something, and you just didn't notice yet. Maybe he stole something less tangible, by using your water or power, and it's impossible for you to measure just how much he actually stole. Whatever the case, you're not just going to say, "Oh, well -- no harm done!" | |
The fact that the loss can't be absolutely measured doesn't mean it can be completely ignored. "We're not sure exactly how much we lost," isn't the same as, "We lost nothing." Now, I personally agree with you that companies need to focus on whether or not they made enough money to keep on going. But surely you can understand that someone has the right to expect that everyone enjoying the fruits of their hard work should chip in, right? | |
I'm still skeptical about just how these numbers gets added up. I'm not saying piracy numbers are not high, but is this 4.5 million people pirating the game, 4.5 million download attempts, or just the total number of downloads that includes downloading from every single peer in the torrent? | |
I think if game companies are dealing in reality then it's not in any way reasonable to expect everyone playing their game to chip in somehow. Is it right or fair? Likely not but the reality is that if you make a game that it's going to be pirated unless you bog it down with DRM to the point it turns off paying customers and then it only has a punter's chance of not being pirated as quickly. I think that when developing any game for damn near any system these days companies can not allow themselves to get focused on stopping piracy. Piracy is pretty much akin to a force of nature anymore and trying to stop it is about on par with trying to stop an earthquake, or tornado. Any money spent licensing or developing DRM is simply money lost and or wasted. The best that can be done is to make a good game that people want to buy and treat the paying customers well. In a perfect world there would be no piracy and developers would get paid by each person playing/watching/listening to their content. However, this is far from a perfect world and piracy isn't going anywhere. At the end of the day developers and publishers are going to get a lot further focusing on the people that are actually paying them than by worrying about those that aren't | |
And they still are making headlines for how much they got pirated... If even the good guys are getting punished by pirates then there's definitely a piracy problem that can't be waved away as "Meh, they deserve it." | |
I like how the people going "oh you can't prove they'd have bought it anyway" then keep going on to say "if it had DRM even more people would have pirated" like it's a fact. | |
Interesting... did they mention that only the copy from Good Old Games was free of DRM? | |
And here's where I disagree: the misuse of the word "reasonable." It is entirely reasonable to expect everyone playing the game to chip in. The belief that people should pay for things that cost money is grounded in solid logic and reason. It may not be realistic, but it's certainly reasonable. It is, however, unreasonable to say that, because a company can't stop all piracy that they should instead do nothing about piracy at all. I can't stop it from raining, but using an umbrella can stop it from raining on me -- it would be unreasonable to say, "Because you can't stop the weather, you shouldn't bother with that umbrella." So, while I agree that publishers/developers shouldn't allow piracy to govern how they create the game, I think we can also understand why it is that piracy bothers them so much, and why they might want to at least do a little to prevent it. | |
For the guy saying "they have bad business sense", a simple thought experiment: Imagine you have written a game. A single copy costs $50, and there's no used market since it's on PC. Would you rather have: And that's not even getting into the fact that DRM can actually be an INCENTIVE to pirate, since legitimate buyers have to put up with it and pirates DON'T. | |
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The issue should not be the amount of illegal copies. The issue should be: "Has my game made enough money so that I can pay my guys and keep the company going." Yes, it's a huge mind change, especially for the Americans.
CD Projekt is not a public company. They don't have shareholders coercing them into paying dividends, to have a sustained growth, to improve endlessly profitability. CD Projekt is more free, in the end, and can do whatever the hell they want with THEIR product.
People are reasonable, believe it or not. Give them a good, long game, for a cheaper price and with no hassle at all (DRM), and they will be willing to pay for it. Not 100% of them, of course (find me a topic where 100% of the people will behave the same and I'll show you how to ride a unicorn to Mars). But, again, as long as you get enough to live, that should be enough.
It all comes down to human greed.