World of Goo Experiences 90 Percent Piracy Rate

Yarrrr! Get yer greasy mitts off that goo and nab yer gaming booty the proper way!

There's not much of a dispute to be had, every gaming household should get their hands on the much adored and critically acclaimed hit World of Goo. However, having players actually pay for the game is likely more along the lines of what indie developer 2d Boy had in mind. According to Joystiq, the creators of World of Goo report the title has a massive, 90 percent piracy rate.

The vast majority of the work on the addictive, physics-based puzzle game was done by game designers Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler - the two core members of 2d Boy. Apparently, the game, which is available for PC and WiiWare, has popped up on torrent sites, Carmel told Joystiq. He confirmed the incredibly high piracy rate has reached about 90 percent for the game.

"We're doing ok, though," said Carmel. "We're getting good sales through WiiWare, Steam, and our website. Not going bankrupt just yet!"

For those who are secretly cheering along the basement development scene, it's very exciting to see an independently produced title turn into a runaway hit. A quick look at Metacritic places World of Goo as one of the highest rated titles based on critic reviews. It ties with The Legend of Zelda and is only two percentage points shy of matching Super Mario Galaxy. That's impressive. It also makes the fact such a huge amount of players are sticking it to the little guy by ripping them off particularly frustrating.

Indeed, the title is of such a high caliber anyone who calls themselves a gamer - and even those who don't - should at least give it a shot. That said, show some damn support for future indie development; procure your copy through means that are not uncouth.

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*sigh*

They bitch about the awful DRM laws with one hand while the other fans the flames that makes companies use them.

Never even heard of this game, but honestly, how can they tell how much it's pirated. Oh, it's been seen on Limewire and Bittorrent, guess we'll call that 90 percent?

Whatever the percent is, its pretty terrible. These guys made a pretty good game. I bought it and I have not shared it with anyone. I never thought pirating was that big of a deal, but this shows that it really can effect designers. Of course, DRM has gotten out of control with some games. We need to find a good middle ground. Something that restricts access to those that didn't buy it, but doesn't restrict the legitimate buyer, only the pirate.

Someday we'll figure it out.

This is an indy game! Pirates stow your holier than thou shite, they throw you a DRM free bone and you abuse it!

Khell_Sennet:
Never even heard of this game, but honestly, how can they tell how much it's pirated. Oh, it's been seen on Limewire and Bittorrent, guess we'll call that 90 percent?

Its been on both, its gotta be at least 99%

That's pretty awful. I understand when it's huge companies like EA that make it increasingly hard to play the game, but how hard can it be when it's an indie developer releasing it on Steam? I might give this a try, and if I do, I'll definitely pay for it.

I don't think we'd have much of a problem if people only pirated EA releases ;). When i was too young to afford games (no job) I downloaded a lot of stuff illegally, it was quite easy then without the security you get today - case in point: freelancer, it had a unique key generated on install, mighty foolish since all u had to do to get it free forever was borrow someone else's disc - but you had to really seek it out before bit torrent came around and changed the rules again.

Even Valve's excellent steam system only really protects the MP games, being updated regularly enough to catch pirates out, although I have been told that Crysis, Bioshock and Fallout3 are all very hard to obtain illegally when compared to the 'old days'.

I'd be interested to know how they[2dboy] obtain this data, but it suggests to me that perhaps it is now the indie developer that will truly suffer from loss of revenue. I doubt that

Khell_Sennet:
Never even heard of this game, but honestly, how can they tell how much it's pirated. Oh, it's been seen on Limewire and Bittorrent, guess we'll call that 90 percent?

The game accesses servers for a portion of the gameplay. I'm sure if they have a record of 10,000 sales, and 100,000 people accessing the servers, then it's easy math. Piracy is an extremely detrimental problem to the industry we love. Being part of the industry whose job it is to observe, it's really sad watching how much damage software piracy is causing. And how little attention people pay to it. Or in this case, outright disbelieve it's an issue.

Landslide:

The game accesses servers for a portion of the gameplay. I'm sure if they have a record of 10,000 sales, and 100,000 people accessing the servers, then it's easy math. Piracy is an extremely detrimental problem to the industry we love. Being part of the industry whose job it is to observe, it's really sad watching how much damage software piracy is causing. And how little attention people pay to it. Or in this case, outright disbelieve it's an issue.

I'd say that as a former practitioner of the dark arts, its a serious problem. These days I only download the odd album or rare/old(er) movie, but, as far as I have seen from one particular friend of mine, piracy has grown in proportion to the distribution of high speed internet access. People can download, so they will.

So now its up to some clever-clogs to sort out this mess with an effective method of halting piracy while still appeasing the fact that a lot of people don't have enough money to buy the level of digital content to which they have now become accustomed.

Before we can make any rational conclusions about DRM, we need to know what kind of piracy rates a comparable DRM'd game. Likewise, indie vs major comparisoms.

For all I know (and I don't), it's typical for a PC developer to make their money on the 10% of installs that are not pirated.

It's not good for this to become common knowledge though - who wants to be the chump that's subsidising a bunch of freeloaders, by paying for games?

Elurindel:
That's pretty awful. I understand when it's huge companies like EA that make it increasingly hard to play the game, but how hard can it be when it's an indie developer releasing it on Steam? I might give this a try, and if I do, I'll definitely pay for it.

You'll shudder when you see the $20 price tag. Seriously, 20 bucks? World of Goo is good, but it's no Portal ffs.

Landslide:

Khell_Sennet:
Never even heard of this game, but honestly, how can they tell how much it's pirated. Oh, it's been seen on Limewire and Bittorrent, guess we'll call that 90 percent?

The game accesses servers for a portion of the gameplay. I'm sure if they have a record of 10,000 sales, and 100,000 people accessing the servers, then it's easy math. Piracy is an extremely detrimental problem to the industry we love. Being part of the industry whose job it is to observe, it's really sad watching how much damage software piracy is causing. And how little attention people pay to it. Or in this case, outright disbelieve it's an issue.

See, when you put that last bit of information in there, then I can get all pissed at pirates instead of wondering if the developers are just gabbing bullshit about piracy like EA does.

So I guess my next question would be, is there a way to ID legit purchases versus pirated copies? And if so, can't they just do the old Blizzard move of blocking the duplicates?

Khell_Sennet:

Landslide:

Khell_Sennet:
Never even heard of this game, but honestly, how can they tell how much it's pirated. Oh, it's been seen on Limewire and Bittorrent, guess we'll call that 90 percent?

The game accesses servers for a portion of the gameplay. I'm sure if they have a record of 10,000 sales, and 100,000 people accessing the servers, then it's easy math. Piracy is an extremely detrimental problem to the industry we love. Being part of the industry whose job it is to observe, it's really sad watching how much damage software piracy is causing. And how little attention people pay to it. Or in this case, outright disbelieve it's an issue.

See, when you put that last bit of information in there, then I can get all pissed at pirates instead of wondering if the developers are just gabbing bullshit about piracy like EA does.

So I guess my next question would be, is there a way to ID legit purchases versus pirated copies? And if so, can't they just do the old Blizzard move of blocking the duplicates?

You'd think, but it wouldn't stop people from nabbing the game since the online feature only represents a tiny portion of the game.

It's actually easiest for PC games that have some kind of online element. An ID would be some kind of multiplayer key (some FPS and RTS games do this, or did this). With a game like Goo though, that's hard to do - even moreso if they're a small company. They probably get their numbers exactly how I described.

Imagine how demoralizing that would be. Your sales department lets you know you've sold 10,000 copies of your indie game. Woo! Exciting! So you check with your server guy to see how many people are logged in tooling around with their goo tower. He tells you there's 50,000 at the moment. That's 40,000 people who just grabbed your game and are playing it. And some of those will even post on the official forums, asking for tech help if the game doesn't work.

My numbers are imaginary, but the situation isn't.

As far as I am aware, there is no may to purchase it on steam in the UK, so everyone from the UK that wants to play has to just steal it.
Also, they can tell how much it has been pirated by comparing the amount of copies sold vs. amount of players online.

The game only connects to leaderboards, one connect does not equal one person. a legit copy could connect 50 times in a day. does that mean one person bought and 49 pirated it?

thier figures as always are rubbish and full of holes. anyway, 90% of people who are apparently pirating it... probably played 2 levels and deleted it.

That sucks. I have never pirated a game and most likely never will (I never figured out how to "torrent" or whatever). It is terrible that these guys pour their hearts and souls into a game like this and people basically slap them in the face when they pirate it. I can understand pirating some games (even though its still wrong) but an indie game? Show at least some dignity people...

This article shows how cruel piracy can really be, but it also shows how some major developers are over-reacting to piracy *cough* Epic *cough*.

Here's what I get from this article:

- The 90% piracy ratio is bogus, but I'm quite certain that the real ratio is almost as startling.
- The article does emphasize how cruel pirates can be.
- The article tells us that some of the major players in the gaming industry are over-reacting to piracy, or outright lying.

I heard this was exaggerated but their claims of piracy are still accurate. More high-scores are posted than from people who actually bought the game, but seeing how easy it is to connect to the leader boards it's not exactly as accurate as you think.

Hmmm . . .

Has anyone else noticed that in these piracy threads the people who didn't enjoy the game seem to think that pirating it is no big deal?

adamandkate:
The game only connects to leaderboards, one connect does not equal one person. a legit copy could connect 50 times in a day. does that mean one person bought and 49 pirated it?

thier figures as always are rubbish and full of holes. anyway, 90% of people who are apparently pirating it... probably played 2 levels and deleted it.

Wrong. They did it with IP addresses not connect and they actually got higher than 90% I read somewhere else, just lowered it a bit to make up for the dynamic IPs

To tell the truth, I dont even know why some people bother making games for the computer when they get this. People moan if they put DRM in and pirate the game, the just take it if they dont. Also, to all those looking for a comparison there is an indy game called Riochet which had DRM in it and experienced slightly lower (1-3% lower) piracy.

Khell_Sennet:
Never even heard of this game, but honestly, how can they tell how much it's pirated. Oh, it's been seen on Limewire and Bittorrent, guess we'll call that 90 percent?

Exactly what I was thinking. If you could measure piracy, you could stop it.

I got a strong feeling that those 90% wouldn't even guy the game if pirating wasn't an option. I think the developers are realizing this. I am now currently interested in the game and will likely be trying the demo if there is one.

Edit: $20 is pretty steep for a Indie game, I might try to see if it will drop to 9.99 later on.

L.B. Jeffries:
*sigh*

They bitch about the awful DRM laws with one hand while the other fans the flames that makes companies use them.

Yeah... :( Looks like EA might... have been right *bites his own tongue off in shame*

Khell_Sennet:
Never even heard of this game, but honestly, how can they tell how much it's pirated. Oh, it's been seen on Limewire and Bittorrent, guess we'll call that 90 percent?

Hmmm, true... how do they get figures for the pirate ratings...?

Software 'piracy' is not stealing. Use of software without a license does NOT deprive the licensing entity of revenue. The user's decision not to purchase the product is not theft. The argument that the user WOULD have purchased the product if they couldn't acquire it for free is not logical and is not supported by available data.

In real piracy the victim is deprived of use of the pirated materials. "Software Piracy" can only happen if the author loses access to the pirated software.

Software Vendors: you are not entitled to money from people who are entertained by your products.

To those who are "anti-piracy": If everyone is required to pay for the first copy of the software they download, shouldn't they also pay for the copy of the software they make every time the product is loaded into memory? Should users who play games on their friends' computers also be required to pay for their enjoyment? What about people who enjoy watching videos of people playing games? What about when people talk around the water cool about cool stuff that happened in games they own? Where do you draw the line? Why do you draw the line there?

I draw the line at "the victim must actually be harmed to call it a crime." Loss of 'potential' profit is not harm. They have no less after the event than they had before it.

rdeforest:
Words. Ignorant and misguided words.

Bottom line is that the Canadian and American legal systems have defined software piracy as theft, so it's theft. You can rationalize it any way you want, but it's all bullshit and chips.

rdeforest:
Software 'piracy' is not stealing. Use of software without a license does NOT deprive the licensing entity of revenue. The user's decision not to purchase the product is not theft. The argument that the user WOULD have purchased the product if they couldn't acquire it for free is not logical and is not supported by available data.

Well, dang, amazing. No pirate has ever sat down and downloaded to avoid paying the price. Of course that could never happen, aside from the fact that the same happens with DVD's and movies in general.

rdeforest:

Software Vendors: you are not entitled to money from people who are entertained by your products.

Ahhhh, I see - people who put in vast amounts of time, energy, and money into a project and treat the end-users as human beings is underserving of finicial reward for there risk. By the same token, no-one should bother making games ever as they aren't entitled to be rewarded for doing so. Great!

rdeforest:

To those who are "anti-piracy": If everyone is required to pay for the first copy of the software they download, shouldn't they also pay for the copy of the software they make every time the product is loaded into memory? Should users who play games on their friends' computers also be required to pay for their enjoyment? What about people who enjoy watching videos of people playing games? What about when people talk around the water cool about cool stuff that happened in games they own? Where do you draw the line? Why do you draw the line there?

You seem to be confusing 'anti-piracy' with 'pro-DRM'. I'm not pro-DRM at all, but I am anti-piracy in general (in EA's case and DRM users in general, I'm more flexible as they assume we're all pirates anyway).

-If everyone is required to pay for the first copy of the software they download, shouldn't they also pay for the copy of the software they make every time the product is loaded into memory?
----- No. The 'license'/permission you bought automatically includes the right/need to 'copy' into memory. Of course, I wouldn't put it past EA to charge for that.

- Should users who play games on their friends' computers also be required to pay for their enjoyment?
----- Yes, but if the guy bought World of Goo legally, they wouldn't download it from BitTorrent/etc.

- What about people who enjoy watching videos of people playing games?
----- The game and videos of the game are two wholy different things. After all, you can't influence a video through gameplay.

- What about when people talk around the water cool about cool stuff that happened in games they own?
----- See my reply to videos.

- Where do you draw the line? Why do you draw the line there?
----- Fairly obviously where the producer who created the game in the first place gets to benefit from its success of the game, as reward for the risk they took. I.e. Basic capitolism.

rdeforest:

I draw the line at "the victim must actually be harmed to call it a crime." Loss of 'potential' profit is not harm. They have no less after the event than they had before it.

Theft is not a crime according to you, so long as no actual voilence is involved.

That's so sad! I bought (yes BOUGHT) World of Goo about a month ago, and it's a great game, especially considering the fact that it's only $15 U.S. Games like this need to be supported and encouraged by the gaming community.

rdeforest:
Self-serving and ludicrously fallacious words

I came to this thread ready to condemn the developers for making up useless figures, but you have completely redirected my hatred- into your very soul.

Sorry if that sounds harsh.

Khell_Sennet:

Bottom line is that the Canadian and American legal systems have defined software piracy as theft, so it's theft.

It's copyright violation. The theft angle is from a propaganda campaign to associate the activity with a central moral axiom of society.

rdeforest:
Vaguely comprehensible blathering

Wow, two posts and already you're drawing lots of hate. Being a fan of irony, I'm waiting to hear word of something you spent years on crafting, pouring many resources into it, and then have it stolen. Like a computer.

I love your idea of "The user's decision not to purchase the product is not theft" in regards to downloading it and playing it. As such I would like you to partake in a simple experiment:
-Go to your local supermarket and pick up some superfluous object (i.e. a can opener, notebook, etc.)
-Carry said item to front of the store and proceed through entryway.
-When stopped by clerk/staff/security proclaim "The user's decision not to purchase the product is not theft."
-Note reaction.

"Loss of 'potential' profit is not harm. They have no less after the event than they had before it."
Profit being defined as marginal gain AFTER cost of production, and given that production can run in the millions its a pretty hefty burden to bear. And remember, profit is the gain after cost of production.

Repeat it with me: Profit is gain after the cost of production.

And saying loss of profit is not harmful is not truthful in the least. EA reported a loss of rough $310 million, leading to the lay-off of somewhere between 500-600 people. Not super huge, until you remember there are many thousands of people trying to get into this career. Yet these people are stuck trying to find some other job to fulfil economic stresses like taxes and bills (a horror you yourself may one day face when you are a big boy.) This is also compounded with them saying they are moving jobs overseas for cheap foreign labor. So that's 500-600 jobs gone entirely. The side that is thirsting for irony, hopes that you are a potential cog in the game making machine and that you too will be laid off due to loss of profits and being forced to seek a minimum wage job during an economic recession. After all, you said yourself it is not harmful.

And one more time to pound it in: Profit is gain after the cost of production.

Now for the victim to be harmed for it to be a crime... In the U.S. of A. laws are now in place to pursue offenders for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Considering the world runs on money (and saying otherwise is just a foolish comfort) if you cannot make that hefty sum you're going to see a loss in wages and maybe even a seizing of your personal property. And don't think it stops with you. Should you evade this by means of...for example suicide, they can actually go after your next of kin. So now you've hurt yourself and immediate family. No harm done right?

DRM now that I think about it, I think DRM would have been a fantastic idea for those indie developed titles. Don't take the Secu-ROM bullshit of having limited installs for ONE COPY of the game! Have it so that it's UNLIMITED installs, and the DRM streams most of the data. if it's pirated and doesn't have the DRM files in the disc, they can't play that game (i.e: Pirated/torrent).

It's just because I want, and I am sure lots of people would, want to see those indie developers be recognized for a really great game. Like John Blow is for Braid.

DeadlyYellow:

rdeforest:
Vaguely comprehensible blathering

Now for the victim to be harmed for it to be a crime... In the U.S. of A. laws are now in place to pursue offenders for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Considering the world runs on money (and saying otherwise is just a foolish comfort) if you cannot make that hefty sum you're going to see a loss in wages and maybe even a seizing of your personal property. And don't think it stops with you. Should you evade this by means of...for example suicide, they can actually go after your next of kin. So now you've hurt yourself and immediate family. No harm done right?

So wait? If i do a suicide bombing and kill thousands of people my family will suffer?

Good Grief.
Most of the people here should actually read the original rockpapershotgun article before posting.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/11/14/world-of-goo-vs-piracy/

I'm not advocating piracy, but their methodology is highly suspect. My ISP assigns me a new IP every week I believe. That means everytime I would post scores I would be considered unique. Not that it matters because when I finally do get around to buying and playing this game I'll be turning the score upload option off. This is something else they didn't take into account.