Piracy of Demigod - The Real Story™

Ha, that does indeed take some balls to come out and say, unlike 2D Boy, who blamed pirates for their ****ty sales and production costs that drove them to bankruptcy, not piracy. There's a 1:1 purchased to pirated ratio for Spore, and yet that hasn't stopped EA from still making oodles of money. Want to know why? Because nothing is actually being "stolen." What's actually being lost is a sale. I don't know how many times I have to make this point, but stealing data isn't the same as taking a ship by gun point. The only one getting hurt when a copy of a game is downloaded illegally is some ***** boy crying about the loss of a sale. If your game is well-designed and enjoyable, then piracy isn't going to kill your product. Again, EA seems to prove that quite well on a constant basis.

 

Not to nitpick but 2D Boy is definitely not bankrupt and they definitely don't show bad sales on World of Goo. Maybe you're thinking of Iron Lore (devs of Titan Quest)?

 

Great, just when I need to find an old Hellforge article talking about how 2D Boy was going out of business, I can't find it. Might've been Iron Lore though. I think they were the ones that blamed piracy for why they went bankrupt.

 

There's a 1:1 purchased to pirated ratio for Spore

It may be nearing that now (not even sure of that though), but on launch it definitely wasn't.

But like you say, way to man up and admit fault where it lies, Stardock guys.  An honest attitude unhindered by silly marketing overseers is always a good thing in my book.

 

That was December 2008 data, back when EA boasted ~1,000,000 in sales and then torrentfreaks.com brought in their end-of-the-year review and showed Spore had been downloaded 700,000 times. No, not a clear 1:1 ratio, but a damn close one, especially when you look at that data today. Notice EA hasn't boasted about their sales of Spore since then as well. Plus there is also the problem that not every pirated copy of Spore worked or that it wasn't, say, downloaded more than once by one user.

 

"I don't know how many times I have to make this point, but stealing data isn't the same as taking a ship by gun point. The only one getting hurt when a copy of a game is downloaded illegally is some ***** boy crying about the loss of a sale."

I agree completely with you regarding the use of the word "piracy" - software piracy is nothing like traditional piracy, and because the word brings up associations with the raiding of ships at gun-point, it makes it harder to look at the issue of software piracy objectively.

I disagree with your statement that it's a victimless crime, however. While it's not true that every illegal copy of a game necessarily implies a lost sale, in some cases it will, and at the end of the day that "***** boy" who is crying about the lost sale is the developer. Very few games sell the record numbers of copies where it starts not mattering how many people pirate the game instead of buying it. Even those studios who publish through the giant publishers like EA have to meet the required number of sales or the publisher will stop funding them.

Any individual illegal copy won't kill a game, but every copy that isn't purchased increases the chances slightly that the developer will fold. If you enjoy the games produced by a developer, you can help to ensure that they continue making games by purchasing those you like.

Having said that, software piracy is a reality, and I applaud Stardock for realising that, and not penalizing their legitimate customers by slapping in all kinds of protective measures which make playing the game they purchased difficult, annoying or expensive.

 

Have you ever wondered why developers seek publishers? Or why some publishers are able to call the production shots for the developers? I will give you a hint. A lot of them don't have the money for production. That's why they seek publishers to invest in the opportunity for them. They are most definitely getting paid when they are working on the game and after the game launches. Profits on the game are cut by the publisher to such a small margin that by the time a developer gets what's theirs after taxes it's enough to feed the kids for a few more weeks. Given volume of purchases does mean more meals, but I think we all know why and when a big spree of purchasing goes on, and it has nothing to do with how well or not you can pirate the game.

When I call certain developers or publishers "***** boys," I specifically call out the ones that blame piracy for their faults in the industry. Hell, I'm sure Bill Roper would blame piracy for Flagship Studios as the reason it went under, except bunk all of no one bothered to pirate their garbage game. I made this point in a previous article of mine with World of Goo--the market for puzzle games is not a large one, especially when you market it only to one platform that even has a narrower amount of customers. When I heard the staggering statistic of "90% of activated copies were pirated," I wondered afterwards how many copies were activated in total for a game that wasn't on anyone's radar before they screamed "pirates!" If anything that PR stunt most likely boosted their sales--more than they predicted for sure.

And I know I didn't say stealing digital information was a "victimless" crime. It's rather more of a petty crime, but it's so hard to put a value on a creative medium, especially when that price is supposed to be determined by the buyer. Notice I can't bargain a price with a $60 Collector's Edition for Hellgate: London with Walmart. And while the three other big creative mediums, music, tv, movies, have changed their pricing and localization on how and when we can enjoy such creative mediums, the video game market, on the other hand, has done no such thing in an attempt to bring down their prices. Rather they are bringing them up and are finding new selling ventures like DLC to sell to the consumer. All I'm saying is that those in the business of nickel and dimming customers shouldn't be so surprised when piracy strikes.

 

Reading your first paragraph I think you misunderstood or misread Nerosis' post. He didn't imply that developers see a cut of the profits, just that if their games don't sell a certain amount that publishers wouldn't be inclined to fund them again.

Actually the PR stunt that boosted the sales of World of Goo most dramatically was supporting MacOS and Linux. It got them publicity in ways that the mainstream media just wasn't willing to give.

And according to 2D Boy (which you may or may not consider a valid source for this counter-point, that's up to you), they didn't break the news of the 90% piracy. They mentioned it under questioning in an interview. Then the news got Slashdotted. The rest, as they say, is history.

 

And I know Sol has made this very counter-point to that point, because piracy does achieve notoriety with your game. There are people that do the "dry test run" approach, pirate a game to "test drive it," and then buy the game afterwards. I don't know how many, but I know it happens (and I'm proof of that). And, of course, there are people who just pirate the game because they have no intentions of buying the game, but if they enjoy it that still doesn't stop them from generating hype about it or telling their friends it's a good game.

Point is if there was a way to release games with a 0% chance of piracy, then we'd probably see a much emptier PC market, and that is saying something, because it's pretty empty as it is now.

 

Not that this is the case here, but I wish more publishers would use at least 1 digital distribution option. Trying to get hold of DMC4 for the PC in the UK was a total nightmare, and nobody stocks it digitally :/

 

Which point are you referring to? The "...if their games don't sell a certain amount that publishers wouldn't be inclined to fund them again" one? Because if you're referring to any of my 2D Boy arguments/statements I don't quite get how your first paragraph addresses them.

I agree with the point in your second paragraph somewhat and I plan to write a blog post on how Stardock and/or Gas Powered Games leverage that concept in Demigod.

 

The point of, "If piracy didn't exist, then PC games would sell just fine" hogwash.

 

"It’s easy and convenient to blame piracy for the launch debacle of Demigod but that would be inaccurate. Even had Demigod had some nasty copy protection on the DVD, it would still have been cracked and this problem would have come up anyway."

Not to condone intrusive DRM schemes or anything, but had this game been cracked by pirates I bet they would have gotten rid of any phone-home mechanisms in place just to be safe. Because of this, I'm not sure his comment is entirely accurate, but hats off to him for stepping up instead of laying blame on an easy target.

It's also because of that integrity that I feel sad that Demigod received such horrid reviews which [from what I read] mainly cited poor multiplayer performance and some other bugs. Who knows how much higher their scores would have been without this issue. So in a way, pirates did in fact affect sales in this instance - I know I, for one, dismissed the game at that point and just made a mental note to check it out when it was in the bargain bin to see if they had finally done any work on it.

Just saying.

 

And thanks for doing so .

As it turns out the multiplayer issues are much deeper than the hammering Stardock's server took in the days just after launch. Even now the multiplayer-matchmaking is not working 100% but from Frogboy/Draginol's recent blog post they're working on rolling out the 'once-and-for-all' patch to the problem over from beta to release.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's difficult to speculate around the "what if there was no piracy" assumption because there were so many other factors affecting Demigod's online multiplayer. I didn't deal with the other factors because my article/post was already tl;dr :P

Another point to consider (which isn't mine, but Brad Wardell's) is that piracy is a constant, it's an unfortunate reality, and so game designers, developers, and publishers can, and should, plan around it.

 

I'd argue that without the piracy, the game wouldn't have received as much attention
as it did -- from both players (who spread word about the game via word
of mouth) and from the media, which covered the server crashing debacle.

 

I'd argue that without the piracy, the game wouldn't have received as much attention

as it did -- from both players (who spread word about the game via word

of mouth) and from the media, which covered the server crashing debacle.

This is also partly because they haven't started their PR campaign yet - they're pushing back all the money they were planning to spend on marketing until they've sorted out some of the problems of the game.

 

You make an interesting point, Sol. I think it's difficult to judge the
net effect of the piracy though. The extra publicity might have been
good, but the bad publicity might've scared off potential buyers.
Exactly how much was gained or lost? Speculation, but oh how fun it
will be to wax philosophical about this .

It actually irritates me how the media was all over the story when it sounded like piracy had caused the anti-DRM company's game to tank on launch day. But when Wardell/Frogboy/Draginol owned up and said it was actually miscalculation, inexperience and a silly design decision on their part that caused the problem and that the deeper connectivity issues had nothing to do with piracy at all, no-one picked up the story.

 

That's why it's rad that you followed through. It's good for GPG (who always seem like a solid gang) and it's good for the players, who deserve to be represented and spoken to with respect. Great post!

 

I for one feel it's right to support a game that you love, also showing in the general popularity of the copies sold that it's doing well among the fans.
OK sure, it's possible to play Demigod multiplayer using a third party peer-to-peer app, but the fact is it's a hassle each time, it crashes and some have immense lag the more ppl are playing in one game.

Best is just to buy the game. It will work best through Impulse and you'll have no problem with patches and have the benefits Sol Invictus mentioned.

Honesty is the best policy, and I personally appreciate them telling the truth in the time we needed it.
Thumbs up for that, and a good game despite it's early release leak. I would like to see what new things they have in mind for Demigod as it's talk among many that this "only 8 heroes" thing is just the beginning.