Piracy will save us all?

Right--which seems to be the issue you're intentionally avoiding.

 

Actually, if your game is not something with mass appeal (ie: a niche game, which most are) and you make it EASY and SAFE for anyone to pirate it -- you will lose money.

If you really want to stop piracy's negative effects use significant online content and a key code activation like blizzard does with their games. It's simple, very hard to pirate beyond a cracked single player version of the game that can't be patched. This gives potential buyers / pirates the chance to try the game out in single player and see what the controls are like, game stability, gameplay, storyline, graphics, etc. If they like what they see they'll buy it, but otherwise...

Don't get me wrong -- I'm with you when it comes to software piracy being a form of advertisement. I'd even go so far as to say the government should make it illegal for a video game to be sold without releasing a game without a VERY playable demo. As I said, I am a long term gamer and the #1 thing that boils my blood is paying for a game that looked good at first glance / in the trailers and then realizing it's TRASH.

 

Have any of you considered the piracy issue relating to people in countries where people generally can't afford to pay what we ask for games? I remember going to russia on a research trip (for a game) and found a recent game I had worked on in 5 different (and very nicely translated) versions on the shelves at the price of $2 (they all claimed to be genuine copies). I thought it was fine. We would never be able to make money on a AAA game in a $2 market anyway but I (as a gamedeveloper) was ofcourse pleased that alot of people were enjoying the game (and we sold plenty of copies 'at home').

 

I think Mickwest is correct you can gain brand royalty by pirating your first 2 games and expecting the third to sell. Infact I feel its a very good idea to do so.
Spookjee I feel the equation now stands here:
word_of_mouth - reduced_sales * sale_factor + brandroyalty gained... = outcome

Whats others feel on it?

 

That assumes you are still in business to be able to sell the third.

 

Have you tried exercising your consumer rights and taking it back to the shop for a refund as "not fit for purpose"?

 

To move upto second if not the third you have to give new features(such as tracks,teams etc) regularly to lure those people who are playing pirated games.

 

For 2009, the most pirated PC game as reported in this article was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The PC version had a staggering 4.1 million downloads via torrents alone compared with an estimated 200,000 - 300,000 actual sales via retail and Steam, demonstrating that the most popular game of 2009 was also the most pirated, and more importantly, that the actual number of downloads for the most popular game is now almost three times as high as in 2008, signalling the rampant growth of piracy. It is also interesting to note that while COD:MW2 sold around 300,000 copies on PC and had 4.1 million pirated downloads, the console version sold in excess of 6 million copies during the same period according to this article, and yet had a fraction of the number of pirated downloads at around 970,000.

 

I wish we could do that here =(

 

To be honest, that is a new perspective to me: to look at piracy as somewhat a marketing strategy, that the more people to pirate the game then the more probability that the game will sell through word of mouth. This is a good view at piracy thing. Although, I am still doubtful if piracy creates more positive outcome than negative ones. Maybe if the game is really good enough, then people will buy it after hearing it from the one who pirated it. I am amazed at how quickly the games in our generations have evolved. Video games all got to start out with things like Pac Man and Space Invaders. It is clear that there has been a leap in technology. Video gaming have added $5 billion to the economy as shown in a study called "Video Games in the 21st Century: The 2010 Report," for Entertainment Software that was done by Economists Incorporated. Annual growth for the industry went up 10 percent between 2005 and 2009, or seven times the growth of the U.S. economy alone.

 

My current iPhone game (Sand Slides) I am detecting tens of thousands of pirate copies.

In a recent update I detect (in code) if the game is a pirate version. When a user has finished a game and entered a hiscore I then fire them off to the app store.

I have not seen one conversion from pirate to paid.

 

I was a little shocked when my kid brother told me that there is a parallel app store which is basically a mirror of the real one.. except that everything in it is pirated.

 

Piracy is crime and say no to piracy.

 

Great fight against piracy by valve.
gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-11-28-valve-piracy-a-non-issue-for-steam_9