World of Goo has 90% piracy rate

We arrived at the 90% figure by looking at unique ip's that have contacted our leaderboard server for any reason, at least once. So, this should rule out "multiple profiles per computer". Of course, there is a lot of opportunity for error, like ip's that change, playing at work/home/wherever, multiple copies being played from the same ip, etc, but it seems like a good enough fast and decent estimate. Then we divided that number into the total number of PC copies sold, giving us the percentage.

This was a week or two ago, before we released the Mac version. I'm curious to find out if Mac users are more or less piraty! I'm guessing less?

Unfortunately, I hear the 90% piracy rate isn't all that uncommon, even (especially?) for games with DRM. I know it sounds like a gruesome number, but we like to tell ourselves "those people wouldn't have bought it anyway". The good news is, some have mailed us, telling us they bought the game because they first pirated it and liked it. Hurray for (some) humanity!

Even though our game is widely pirated, I still maintain that DRM is a useless symbolic gesture, like taking your shoes off at the airport and crawling under your desk when a bomb is about to go off.

I'm just happy people actually want to play our game at all!Kyle Gabler

I think that when you add risk factor:

people have never seen a game much like this (at least most people)

bad economy

thats why its so bad..i know thats why i didnt purchase it..and i didnt pirate it either..

i want a bunch of games right now but the crunch has been setting in on me economically and i have to wait until things get a bit better for us

'Carmel informs us that he's seen torrent sites with "500 seeders and 300 leechers" and has received emails from people who initially stole the game but ended up buying the full product; unsurprisingly, they make up a "very small percentage." '

Of course the ratio of people who pirated the game andE-mailedthe devs to let them know they were buying it to those that just pirated it, period, is a very small percentage. But that percentage doesn't give any idea how many bought it after pirating it, only those who told the devs that they did, which logically would in turn be a pretty small percentage of the whole. So that part of the article was pointless, which means it was probably intended to mislead and blow things out of proportion in order to make a news story people would give a damn about. Disgusting.

'Carmel informs us that he's seen torrent sites with "500 seeders and 300 leechers" and has received emails from people who initially stole the game but ended up buying the full product; unsurprisingly, they make up a "very small percentage." '

Of course the ratio of people who pirated the game andE-mailedthe devs to let them know they were buying it to those that just pirated it, period, is a very small percentage. But that percentage doesn't give any idea how many bought it after pirating it, only those who told the devs that they did, which logically would in turn be a pretty small percentage of the whole. So that part of the article was pointless, which means it was probably intended to mislead and blow things out of proportion in order to make a news story people would give a damn about. Disgusting.

JP_Russell

[QUOTE="JP_Russell"]

'Carmel informs us that he's seen torrent sites with "500 seeders and 300 leechers" and has received emails from people who initially stole the game but ended up buying the full product; unsurprisingly, they make up a "very small percentage." '

Of course the ratio of people who pirated the game andE-mailedthe devs to let them know they were buying it to those that just pirated it, period, is a very small percentage. But that percentage doesn't give any idea how many bought it after pirating it, only those who told the devs that they did, which logically would in turn be a pretty small percentage of the whole. So that part of the article was pointless, which means it was probably intended to mislead and blow things out of proportion in order to make a news story people would give a damn about. Disgusting.

Makari

And I do the latter. I wasn't trying to say that the percentage of people who buy after pirating was large or anything.

What I want to know is, why come out and say "Our game was pirated thiiiiiiis much! *holds arms straight out*" in the first place? Why do these devs do this? Why? What the hell is their reason? It pisses me off because all it does is hurt them and hurt the industry further by spreading negativity and pushing people away. They're scratching the piracy rash.

500seeders/300 leechers is 90% of their missed profit? So did World of Goo even sell a thousand copies? :|

Pretty much every top game has like 10 times those numbers on torrent sites.

This game would do much better on xbox arcade. No piracy there.

Piracy is so disrespectful to the creators who pour their heart and soul into their work.

That is a pity, it is such a good game and only $20.

I hope they got some good sales figures and turned a tidy profit regardless of the piracy.

To be fair, it's really, really hard to get mainstream gamers to care about a 2D game without guns and stuff. A lot of those downloads probably come from that type of people; they saw the great reviews and wanted to see what the games is about, but will never ever ever buy a 2D game for $20 in their life. It's a shame, really, but that's how today's gaming world works. Indie games are not even considered as "real games" in these forums. People mostly see them as small little games to pass the time between two levels of their generic FPS.

The first step to really increase indie games sales is to give them proper respect on forums like Gamespot's. Make mainstream gamers care. There are so many gamers who have never even heard of World of Goo (yet it would appeal to such a large portion of the gaming community, imo). How many actually know what Steam Brigade, Aquaria, Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!, Gunboy Crazy Adventures, Eets, Gish, etc. are? How many are anticipating Crayon Physics Deluxe, Axiom: Overdrive, Hammerfall, Gish 2, etc.? 

Not all downloaded torrents are not a lost sale. Many people who steal the game would never have bought it in the first place.foxhound_fox

Regardless of the legitimacy, sensationalism, etc. of the 90% claim, regardless of the expectations, it's still very, very, very frustating and disappointing to hear numbers like this.

I remember 2D Boy talking about their "experiment" releasing the game DRM-free. They thought the results from that were encouraging and decided to completely release the full version DRM-free. http://evo-gamer.com/2008/10/10/world-of-goo-no-drm-success/ It's unfortunate.

If there's anything good that can be said about this though, and someone posted this comment on kotaku, is that piracy would have happened anyway, at least with the forms of DRM currently known and perhaps even to the same degree. At minimum what they have achieved is a 100% satisfaction rate among purchasers in this regard.

500seeders/300 leechers is 90% of their missed profit? So did World of Goo even sell a thousand copies? :|

Pretty much every top game has like 10 times those numbers on torrent sites.

F1_2004

Very, very sad to see this.  Even if the figure was 70 per cent or 60 per cent, it's a bit sickening that so few people are willing to pay for their entertainment these days.  There really are no excuses to do this for such a low priced DRM-free game, and I really can't blame developers who opt for console development instead.  Yes, there is console piracy too, but not on this kind of scale, so developers are more likely to get a viable financial return on their investment.

This 'get something for nothing' mentality just ticks me off, and its a sad reflection on our society as a whole.

At least the game is popular.

Better than a game that no one wants to buy or pirate.

i doubt the numbers are so high ...... devs really like to infalte the thier figuresnaval

[QUOTE="naval"]i doubt the numbers are so high ...... devs really like to infalte the thier figuresMakari

yup many inflate their numbers heavily .... like epic said ut 3 has 30-40 million pirated copies or crytek said crysis was pirated 20 times the copies sold ==30 millions copies pirated. So do you believe those figures ?

How many actually know what Steam Brigade, Aquaria, Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!, Gunboy Crazy Adventures, Eets, Gish, etc. are? How many are anticipating Crayon Physics Deluxe, Axiom: Overdrive, Hammerfall, Gish 2, etc.?  ReddestSkies

Eets was a fantastic game especially at the bargain price of $2.50 Steam had (maybe still has) it for.  I've played the Gish demo and it's fun, but the game doesn't play very well with the keyboard and I don't have a controller for my PC.  If Gish was released on something like Wiiware, I'd be all over it.

Anyhow, thanks for mentioning Steam Brigade and Gumboy, they both look fun.

[QUOTE="Makari"][QUOTE="naval"]i doubt the numbers are so high ...... devs really like to infalte the thier figuresnaval

yup many inflate their numbers heavily .... like epic said ut 3 has 30-40 million pirated copies or crytek said crysis was pirated 20 times the copies sold ==30 millions copies pirated. So do you believe those figures ?

We arrived at the 90% figure by looking at unique ip's that have contacted our leaderboard server for any reason, at least once. So, this should rule out "multiple profiles per computer". Of course, there is a lot of opportunity for error, like ip's that change, playing at work/home/wherever, multiple copies being played from the same ip, etc, but it seems like a good enough fast and decent estimate. Then we divided that number into the total number of PC copies sold, giving us the percentage.

It's an estimate and even they admit it could be off.  But, really, even if it's 75% that's pretty ridiculous.

Considering how rampant pirating is in some countries, the figures for UT3 and Crysis are believable.

But, just because the piracy is so high, doesn't mean more people would've purchased these games.  It's really just a testament to how morally devoid society has become.  It would be an interesting experiment to introduce the average user (with high speed internet) to torrents.  Show them how quick and eas it is to get music, movies, games and other software and then calculate how much they then go out to steal over say a month.  Obviously, there'd be a group of them that steal nothing which would probably be divided into those with morals and those who are so non-tech savvy they'd need hand-holding.  But, I'd bet at least 80% of the groups would steal about $500 each.

[QUOTE="Makari"][QUOTE="naval"]i doubt the numbers are so high ...... devs really like to infalte the thier figuresnaval

yup many inflate their numbers heavily .... like epic said ut 3 has 30-40 million pirated copies or crytek said crysis was pirated 20 times the copies sold ==30 millions copies pirated. So do you believe those figures ?

[QUOTE="naval"]

[QUOTE="Makari"] really. so now every single dev is lying about it? :( a lot of them put phone-homes in their game, these guys included.. they're just looking at the numbers re: how many people are actually playing the game. yes, it really is that bad, and no, nothing anybody can do seems like it's going to change that.Makari

yup many inflate their numbers heavily .... like epic said ut 3 has 30-40 million pirated copies or crytek said crysis was pirated 20 times the copies sold ==30 millions copies pirated. So do you believe those figures ?

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19203

Date : june 27, 2008 .... crysis sold over a million in janurary or something .... so it's safe to assume it sold over 1.5m  around the time crytek said these this

Moaning abt selling 1 million in 3-4 months is unreasonable

 and here is another look at crysis piracy : http://www.edge-online.com/blogs/why-piracy-crisis-is-overblown

It's an estimate and even they admit it could be off. But, really, even if it's 75% that's pretty ridiculous.

 

Considering how rampant pirating is in some countries, the figures for UT3 and Crysis are believable.

Skie7

please do you really think 40 million people pirated ut 3 .. they game basically had less than 1000-2000 players worldwide. on any kind of severs

any amount of piracy is bad ... my gripe is the devs just shoot off ridiculous numbers with any proper way of obtaining accurate results

[QUOTE="Skie7"]It's an estimate and even they admit it could be off. But, really, even if it's 75% that's pretty ridiculous.

Considering how rampant pirating is in some countries, the figures for UT3 and Crysis are believable.naval

any amount of piracy is bad ... my gripe is the devs just shoot off ridiculous numbers with any proper way of obtaining accurate results

I have no idea if those numbers are legit, did they provide information on how they figured thm?

[QUOTE="naval"][QUOTE="Skie7"]It's an estimate and even they admit it could be off. But, really, even if it's 75% that's pretty ridiculous.

Considering how rampant pirating is in some countries, the figures for UT3 and Crysis are believable.Skie7

any amount of piracy is bad ... my gripe is the devs just shoot off ridiculous numbers with any proper way of obtaining accurate results

I have no idea if those numbers are legit, did they provide information on how they figured thm?

It's crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now. For one sale there are 15 to 20 pirates and pirate versions, and that's a big shame for the PC industry." I go look at the quote... he gave a rangeMakari

he didn't give any sales numbers,

Makari

and the range he gave is in line with what the World of Goo guys are saying right now.

Makari

Thank you. Understand what I mean by forum users stick words in their mouth and then yell at them for it?

And here's some more for you, from the same interview: "Cevat Yerli: Well, the perception is of course like this because equally rated games on multiple platforms sell three to four times more. That's the reality. And this wouldn't be like this if it was not for piracy to some degree. I don't think we would sell three to four times more. If piracy were to a certain degree reduced, I think we would double the sales, and doubling the sales would be a drastic impact for us to say, "Yes, we remain completely PC exclusive." If we could double the sales, then hell yeah, we would be platform exclusive because we love the PC platform." If piracy were reduced, they might be able, best case, to double their sales on one of the biggest-known titles of the year (to 3 million over 9 months) . Again, does that sound totally unreasonable to you as a best-case scenario?Makari

[QUOTE="naval"][QUOTE="Skie7"]It's an estimate and even they admit it could be off. But, really, even if it's 75% that's pretty ridiculous.

Considering how rampant pirating is in some countries, the figures for UT3 and Crysis are believable.Skie7

any amount of piracy is bad ... my gripe is the devs just shoot off ridiculous numbers with any proper way of obtaining accurate results

I have no idea if those numbers are legit, did they provide information on how they figured thm?

[QUOTE="Skie7"][QUOTE="naval"]please do you really think 40 million people pirated ut 3 .. they game basically had less than 1000-2000 players worldwide. on any kind of severs

 

any amount of piracy is bad ... my gripe is the devs just shoot off ridiculous numbers with any proper way of obtaining accurate resultsnaval

I have no idea if those numbers are legit, did they provide information on how they figured thm?

So, did they say that there are 40 million pirated of copies of UT3 our there or was it simply there have been 40 million attempts to illegally access their server?  In other words are the developers/publishers taking it out of context or are the gamers?

[QUOTE="Skie7"] number of illegal atemots on their servernaval

Everyone likes better sales there is nothing wrong abt it. But moaning abt decent sales, that's pretty retarted. there a lots of highly rated game on consoles that sold less that crysis (okami for one) and many similiar games on pc sold higher than that.naval

I find it ridicules that they actually think they can measure piracy so accurately, there are too many factors to take into account. The fact is methods of measuring piracy accurately are still being investigated, you cannot simply count every torrent download or none unique ID and decide that was a lost sale.

Pretty touching if you ask me. The devs have a real passion to develope innovative games that don't give much a damn about how much money they make, unlike the big corporations (Yeah EA! i'm looking at YOU!) These guys only deserve more profits for that. I give them high props because this game looks pretty fun. Indy developers FTW! I might try the demo.

My take is becoz it's 2D!! Arrrrr! Dats why all dem filthy pirates be downloading it..Arrrr!...2D be worthless deez days Arrrr! 3D games be in deez days Arrrrr!!

Ugh... :(