The piracy issue touched on is pretty interesting. People lament the use of DRM by pirating and then go around and pirate the indie games for various reasons, including (I'd bet) they're small they won't be able to come after me. And as for subjective gatekeepers, I never thought that this would be an issue. Guess I'm a bit naive in that respect...

trogam

It nice that the article really outlines how hard it is and how many non game development factors that come knocking. Yet despite that its still better and more rewarding going indie. Something that tells you a lot about state of the mainstream workplace, and how little of its tallent is really used. [www.quelsolaar.com]

Eskil

This is very relevant to my interests. Great to hear from people jumping ship from what 'big' gaming has become.

I'd still like to see at least a sect of the development community go back to the 16/8-bit era a bit, when teams were small and games were made quick enough that people were relatively unafraid to take risks. I think it's relatively possible through 'smart' management, it could be done on new consoles.

P-Flute

Meh, every game out there will appear on torrent sites, big or small, DRM or no, all they should really care for is if they get enough revenue to make a decent profit and keep doing what they love for a living. Getting sad because they spot their game on torrent sites is silly, EVERYTHING gets on there at some point.

Did they really think they would get shameless pirates to buy their games? The rational type of gamer excludes DRM by neither buying NOR pirating a given game. There may be a special case of both buying it AND pirating it to install a DRM free version despite owning it, which is also rational if you REALLY want the game but dislike DRM, but those are probably few and far between.

Even if you can make your game uncrackable, chances are the average pirate won't buy it anyway, he'll simply move on to the next game that he can get for free.

Basically, games get pirated regardless of the circumstances, what you can hope to attract with having no DRM is the hardcore gamer neglected by the mainstream studios. If that's who you're after, you can't expect gigantic profits, unless you manage to make your indie title mainstream also, say via Steam or similar services. getting your game reviewed by the mainstream media, a decent enough promotional campaign that hopefully doesn't cost you too much... Stardock have managed well with their Galactic Civilizations titles and other games they publish, that doesn't mean they don't get pirated, only that they have managed to attract the people who do pay for games alongside the pirates.

Agnates

They should look at the bright side of pirating, if they're so small, and some new radical game pops up and get super popular on torrents. Then odds are a sequel to that will be fairly popular as well.

Also, digital distribution is a double edged sword, in the sense that there is very little, to no incentive to pay to download something you could download for free.

You can say, well you get tech support. That's all fine and dandy, until you realize that most people pirating know WTF they're doing, and know where to find much better support then calling some stupid annoying support center in India. That little tidbit is neutralized there.

Then you have the positives with pirated games. Such as free, and free, and did I mention free? If you don't like the game, then you wasted zero money for it. If you download a game, then decide you hate it, you're out the full amount.

Then there's the anti-piracy crapware in most PC games today. If a game is heavy on the crapware, then I'm not going to pay for it. If I buy it, and it fucks up my computer, I'm then out over a grand. Why would I pay money for that? If I absolutely have to have it. Then I'd just pirate it.

I'm not trying to defend piracy, I'm saying that developers are being stupid, and a lot of things they're doing makes piracy a much more attractive source.

If they want to combat piracy most effectively, then they'll drop the draconian DRM. If there's even the slightest chance it'll fuck up that extreme expensive gaming PC. Then people will look at other options, with the DRM removed, which means pirated copies.

Not being able to rent PC games is also a huge disadvantage for PC devs. Because it means that the more "riskier" purchases, will go straight to warez. Where you can get the game for free, and after you already have it, where's the incentive to buy it? But alas, I regret this is one area which is impossible to change outside of online rental services.

Then there is the pure digital distribution games. Devs shoot themselves in the foot with this one, for many reasons. One, they're basically trying to sell to the people whom are more likely to pirate the game, and 2 cutting off their potential customers. You know, the guys outthere with crappy/capped internet connections. Who's going to buy $40/$50 for game that's going to take them hours if not days to download, and then there're those in places like Australia where the average internet connection suffers a ridiculous cap. Who's going to use their entire cap for the month in one download? I think not.

There's other things they can do to make incentives, such as legitimate owners can register for a forum where they can speak easily with the developers and what have you. But no, instead they go for the bull approach and fail to realize they're only making it more difficult for themselves.

Syco Killer

Wait? Hold the phone? Escapist does more than post Zero Punctuation? Who'd of thunk it.

Vezroth

@Syco Killer:

"They should look at the bright side of pirating,"

on a legit gaming blog? madness,

chorx

@chorx: Was talking about developers. lol

Syco Killer

@Syco Killer: The majority of these indie devs don't have DRM, and their stuff still gets pirated. As for the "bright" side of pirating, give me a break. Please name one game that was helped due to piracy. There's only one way to help the developers...buy their game. You buy their game, and they make money. They can spend more money on advertising and getting the word out about their game, and they can finance the next one.

In reading this article, you should have come away with this at least: pirates don't give a fuck about anyone. Not the developers, not the publishers, not the industry they're hurting. You could give them every incentive except the game for free, and odds are they will still pirate it. Really, if you're not going to buy a 20 dollar game after playing its demo, there really isn't anything else to say to these people.

Oh, and you're defending piracy ;)

darthnader

What the hell is this guy on?! What is the difference between mainstream video games and indie games? Is it the suckiness of the video game quality? Is it that indie gamers don't have publishers? If the reason that indie gamers don't have publishers, then these indie guys are wrong and must think that online distribution is not used by mainstream video games...

ChronicLogic

@Syco Killer: That's not a very good defense of piracy. There's arguments that piracy spreads awareness, or that pirated game don't represent a "real" sale lost... but at the end of the day the developer is better off if you buy their damn game.

onidavin

@ChronicLogic: There's actually a number of differences beside the 'publisher' thing. Like cost and time of development, studio size in terms of personnel, how experimental the content of a game can be, which are all huge issues in modern gaming.

There's also the fact that most modern developers DO still have to deal with publishers who more often than not force them to rush their game and tell them how to make it every five minutes. Even the few that use digital distro still suffer under the weight of their own size, as "mainstream games" are such huge time/money sinks that they need to still be much 'safer' sells than most indie games, even if the only voice to worry about is a digital distro gatekeeper. Also, how many companies can afford to make huge, multi-million dollar "mainstream" games WITHOUT a publisher?

Mainstream companies can make bigger, more expensive, impressive and 'epic' games than indie devs can for obvious reasons. But they also have to a much bigger limit on what kind of games they're allowed to make, how many games they can make a year, and they usually have a publisher telling them how to do their jobs.

God forbid, a team of say 1-20 making indie games can actually make more than one game a year and make games that AREN'T about space marines or movie licenses.

@onidavin: The whole piracy thing fell apart when I realized how much of it is pure entitlement issues. Games sure as hell aren't food or shelter, so if you can't afford one or don't want to pay... Don't buy it?

People aren't entitled to be able to play any game they want whether they want to pay for it or not. Play an old game, go to the library and borrow a book...for free!

P-Flute

@onidavin: Amen.

paeper

@onidavin: I wasn't defending Piracy, I was stating what they did what, and what they need to do in order to fix it.

@darthnader: You say there's no cases where piracy helped a single game. But then, name one game company that doesn't think their games are the greatest thing to happen to gaming since pong.

The point of my comment was not so much that it has happened, as much as it could happen. The developers just have to be smart enough to use it in their favor.

What you said about pirates, was extremely generalized, and untrue in the form submitted. It is true about some pirates, not true about others. But if you have a problem with people only caring about themselves, then should you not also have a problem with most gaming companies? For example, EA, MS, Sony, NamcoBandai etc etc? These companies do not care about you, they only care about making more money, Namco probably the worst of them all.

Although, I could prove that pirates do care about other people, for example they take time out of their life to rip/hack and redistribute the games, also sacrificing bandwidth to upload them. Some one had to buy the game before it could be made publicly available. The torrenters(good ones atleast) share the internet bandwidth with you, even though they really don't have to.

But as I said, I'm not trying to defend piracy, because at the end of the day, if no one buys the games then there's no money to make more games. Yes I realize that, which is why I'm not defending piracy.

As for the last part of the post. You kinda shot yourself in the foot, if they're not going to buy the game, then they're not going to buy the game and you have no argument for lost sales or even them hurting the industry.

Piracy has helped indie artists, and movies. Why can't it do the same for video games? Because the developers refuse to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that it's not going to go away, and need to learn to work with the community. Seriously, if I had the choice of pirating say, Ace Combat 6, or buying it and being able to talk with the developers and influence the next game in the series, and/or even the future DLC. I would definitely go with buy. It's just that simple.

Syco Killer

@Syco Killer: "They should look at the bright side of pirating, if they're so small, and some new radical game pops up and get super popular on torrents. Then odds are a sequel to that will be fairly popular on torrents as well."

Fixed that for you.

randomnine

My opinion is that developers should just ignore piracy since they can't do anything about it. Everything will be pirated if it's digital, be it books, music, movies, games, software whatever. And you can't do anything about it so they shoud just ignore it.

Narishma

@Narishma: If developers DID decide to ignore piracy, it [piracy] would increase astronomically, because pirates would realize that they wouldn't get caught! Both devs AND publishers, as a result, would make less and less profit as more and more people got pirated versions of their products, instead of paying for the genuine article. This would continue until the devs and publishers became forced into bankruptcy.

My point: Combating piracy is an absolute NECESSITY if companies are to make the most money possible off their products!

MPgmr

@randomnine:

lol so true:)
if you can't make money and die, it doesn't matter how popular you were in pirating circles.

Justifan

"They should look at the bright side of pirating, if they're so small, and some new radical game pops up and get super popular on torrents. Then odds are a sequel to that will be fairly popular as well."

An indie game that popular on torrents stand little chance of even MAKING it to a sequel. Pirates are choking the non subscription-based PC market to death. I hope they like playing MMOs and casual games cause that's all that will be left on the platform if they keep this up. Parasitic losers... *sigh*

enammy