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Positech Games reveals results of piracy survey
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 14th August 2008
Cliff Harris has sought to make a compromise with the pirates by changing the way he develops games in the future.
The question Cliff asked was simple; Why do people pirate my games? And yet the results that the indie developer recieved are not nearly as interesting as his own reaction to them as he takes the advice of the pirates on board and starts designing games with them in mind.
Cliff has thrown a well written and useful guide to the pirates he encountered up on the net, but in brief the pirates gave the usual excuses; DRM, too expensive, games aren't worth paying for and a lack of digital distribution.
He has now taken all that advice on board and started changing the way he designs and releases games to take it all into account.
How? Well, first of all, even though Cliff only used DRM in one of his games previously he has now promised never to use it again. He's also going to be releasing longer, more fully featured and more representative demos of all his games so that people can get a better feel for the game.
On top of that, Cliff is lowering the price on all his current games and considering how to reduce the cost of his unreleased titles. He's also begun investigating better ways of getting the games released in a digital format.
Most astounding of all though is Cliff's reaction to the complaint that his games aren't up to scratch, something which Cliff attributes mostly to the fact that he always knows his games will be pirated.
"My games aren't as good as they could be. Ironically, one of the things that reduces your enthusiasm to really go the extra mile in making games is the thought that thousands of ungrateful gits will swipe the whole thing on day one for nothing. It's very demoralizing."
As a result of the survey though Cliff claims to have found a new enthusiasm for game development and the ex-Lionhead programmer is now going to put far more effort into testing and designing his games.
You can read the full report Cliff has made on his blog and we recommend also checking out some his undeniably impressive games while you're at it. When you're done, scoot back here and let us know what you think in the forums.
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Comments (16)
Couldn't agree more. Even though I don't make games for a living.
Its so true, games that are $10-15 dollars ie £5-8 are generally impulse buys for me, and now the price of many of his games are $9.99 I'm tempted to buy more. Up to about £15 and you've got a strong case for an impulse buy, and if I only play it 3-5 times its still cheaper then a night out and has give more entertainment. I mean I've only played through the penny arcade game a couple of times but i dont feel cheated as it was only a tenner and it was good.
I Have to agree that DD is much easier then buying a physical product either from the shops or online, and often its quicker. But the difference between buying from many small indie developers and buying form Steam is the integration and collation aspect. With steam its 1 password you type in to see all of your games, both installed and just purchased. Its one password to get updates for all of them, to buy new games and install old ones.
To get the same functionality I do from Steam with my indie games I keep an 8gig USB stick with installers, passwords and URLs to installers so that I dont have to hunt around for keys and installers after I've uninstalled a game.
Even at US$ 50 or so, a game is less expensive per hour than going to the movies.
Yes, it is. I wish all you brave pirates go into creative careers - architecture, design, publicity, media... - and learn just how demoralizing and sad it feels to have your work ripped off.
How come every time we discuss the game industry, Steam always comes up as the standard\benchmark?
I hadn't bought CS:S up until now, then I saw it at $9.99 last weekend on Steam. It then fell into the "Impulse buy that the missus won't notice" price bracket. £5-£8 is about right. AudioSurf also fell into that bracket.
Where he really hits home, is with this one: Better quality. The ONLY games that have any real length to them, at the moment, are MMOs. The single-player experience has almost been completed replaced by tutorial-like campaigns, short and hastily put together, repetitive scenarios and all the focus seems to be on multiplayer and graphics. Stuff that looks good in advertising, basically.
Even the few, dedicated singleplayer games have been made into mindless, repetitive experiences, with uninspired stories and soulless characters. Oblivion being the prime example and it's spiritual successor, Fallout 3, showing many of the same symptoms.
And I personally don't care much for the current way digital distribution is being handled. I don't like Steam, because I don't like the idea of being forced to run (another) programme in the background, with more or less constant connection to the internet. Let me create an account on a site, let me download from the site and let that be the end of it (like every other online store in the world) and maybe then we can talk.
A) It's free
B) It's simple to obtain
c) Generally it's been cracked and so easy to run without jumping through security checks.
You cannot compete against something that is available for free, unless the laws get really tough on piracy IMHO.
THAT'S ALL
Yeah, this. I think this guy is setting himself up for a drop in revenue and nothing more. Sure, some games can be marketed as $10 impulse buys, but if you're a larger company with more work going into the product (I mean man-hours here, not effort) you just plain can't sell your game for that little. There might be a few people more who will buy the guy's games because they're cheaper now, but it won't be the pirates. The pirates already "own" it.
The people least likely to give an accurate report as to why people pirate games are the pirates themselves. They know they are doing something wrong, and they will give a litany of the same tired excuses to justify their behavior, when the only real reason is that it's free that way.