Cracked Game Released To Get Back At Pirates 509
John Wagger writes "When Greenheart Games released their very first game, Game Dev Tycoon (for Mac, Windows and Linux) yesterday, they did something unusual and as far as I know unique. They released a cracked version of the game, minutes after opening their Store. The pirated copy was completely same as the real copy, except that after a few hours into the game, players started noticing widespread piracy of their games in the game development simulator."
Interesting comparissons (Score:5, Informative)
The ratio of pirate copies vs bought copies may be obscured by platform.
Looking at past Humble Bundle stats [humblebundle.com] (games _without_ DRM management) it shows that even though piracy is still as abundant, the same amount of people are still willing to pay. Even more interesting, though Windows buyers ouranked 75% of others, Linux users payed the most on average. ... and that site link in TFA just went down.
Not that unique (Score:4, Informative)
>they did something unusual and as far as I know unique
If I rememeber correctly, the devellopers of Serious Sam 3: BFE did something very simlar a while back. An invincible monster would appear in the later levels of the game.
Re:So basically (Score:5, Informative)
You skipped the second half of TFS.
The game is a game about game development, right? In the pirated copy, the games you develop will have a chance of getting pirated (!) which goes up as time goes on, eventually causing you to lose as you are then unable to make enough money to continue. It's delicious irony.
Re:So basically (Score:5, Informative)
It's pretty sad when someone can't even work up the reading comprehension to grasp the story from a short summary.
In total, if you play the cracked version of the game, the simulator will ramp up the rate of piracy for your simulated company's games, so you will lose. It stacks the odds against you.
Re:Not that unique (Score:2, Informative)
Same with Earthbound, not unique at all: http://earthboundcentral.com/2011/05/earthbounds-copy-protection/
Re:So basically (Score:4, Informative)
I read the article. Most of it just read like a game dev who was pissed because his game wasn't the next angry birds.
They claim 93% piracy after 1 day but I wonder how many of the 3000 (yes that many) downloaders only found out about the game due to being on the torrent site.
I'd be interested in seeing the numbers after a month and more interestingly what the reviews of the game say. Nobody will buy a rubbish game after playing it. Thats why most games companies dont usually offer game demos & hate piracy.
How many of them would have bought the game if it wasn't broken?
slashdotted, cloudflare fail, here's a copy-paste (Score:5, Informative)
When we released our very first game, Game Dev Tycoon (for Mac, Windows and Linux) yesterday, we did something unusual and as far as I know unique. We released a cracked version of the game ourselves, minutes after opening our Store.
I uploaded the torrent to the number one torrent sharing site, gave it a description imitating the scene and asked a few friends to help seed it.
A minute after we uploaded it, my torrent client looked like this:
Soon my upload speed was maxed out (and as of the time of writing still is) and my friends and I had connections from all over the world and for all three platforms! How does piracy feel?
The cracked version is nearly identical to the real thing except for one detail Initially we thought about telling them their copy is an illegal copy, but instead we didn’t want to pass up the unique opportunity of holding a mirror in front of them and showing them what piracy can do to game developers. So, as players spend a few hours playing and growing their own game dev company, they will start to see the following message, styled like any other in-game message:
Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally. If players don’t buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt.
Slowly their in-game funds dwindle, and new games they create have a high chance to be pirated until their virtual game development company goes bankrupt.
Some of the responses I found online (identities obscured to protect the guilty):
Is there some way to avoid that? I mean can I research DRM or something
And another user:
Why are there so many people that pirate? It ruins me!
As a gamer I laughed out loud: the IRONY!!!
However, as the developer, who spent over a year creating this game and hasn’t drawn a salary yet, I wanted to cry. Surely, for most of these players, the 8 dollars wouldn’t hurt them but it makes a huge difference to our future! Trying to appeal to pirates
I know that some people just don’t even think about buying games. They will immediately search for a cracked version. For this reason, when we released the game, we also published a page which targets people who search for a cracked/illegal version. Unfortunately, due to my lack in search-engine-optimization skills, that page has had no impact yet, but I hope it will convince some to buy the game in the future.
[]if years down the track you wonder why there are no games like these anymore and all you get to play is pay-to-play and social games designed to suck money out of your pockets then the reason will stare back at you in the mirror.
I do think it’s important to try to communicate what piracy means to game developers to our consumers. I also tried to appeal to a particular forum a day earlier after someone who I gave early-access to the Store seemed to have passed on the copy to others:
We’re just a start-up and really need your support. The game is only 7.99USD, DRM free
Clearly, my post hadn’t worked too well since on the same forum someone posted the earlier screenshot (“Why are there so many people that pirate? It ruins me!) just a bit after I made my appeal and this was followed by many others complaining about piracy.
I still hope that it made a difference to someone.
Anyway, how many really did buy and how many did pirate our game during this first day? The awesome/depressing results
Today, one day after release, our usage stats look like this:
Genuine version: 214 users
Cracked version: at least 3104 users
Over 93.6% of players stole the game. We know this because our game
Re:So basically (Score:5, Informative)
What part about the title "Game Dev Tycoon" leaves you wondering what the subject matter of the game is? Even if that didn't make any synapses flash, the last sentence should have done it: "...players started noticing widespread piracy of their games in the game development simulator."
See that "game development simulator" bit? Combine that with the title and let your brain run wild.
Re:Interesting comparissons (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a forum about this with screencaps: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=550032 [neogaf.com] They show that in the first day 6,4% were genuine versions and the rest were pirated copies.
I wonder what's the average conversion rate. Usually not all who pirate buy the game anyway. How about demo downloads versus purchases? It's a neat trick they pulled, but I think some context would be nice.
Re:So basically (Score:5, Informative)
It is a game. Not the real world. In this pretend world they have in the game if your games get pirated you lose income. Whether that is the case in the real world or not is irrelevant.
Re:Hilarious Irony (Score:5, Informative)
For those that aren't aware, the original Deus Ex was released when pirated games were heavily distributed via sneakernet and usenet in the form of spanned 2 MB (or 2.88-- it's been a while) RAR images. Needless to say, this was a lot of diskettes for the games that were coming out on CD at the time, so the cracking teams would cut out every ounce of fat that they possibly could: cutscenes, non-vital sound effects, you name it. The games ran, but you were likely to miss a lot of story and fluff.
An early Deus Ex rip went through the same process, but for some reason would just stop at an early point in the game-- specifically, when you hopped on a police boat and sailed off to the next level. It turned out that the scripts used to drive the in-game cutscenes weren't designed to fail cleanly, and one of the missing sound effects caused this one to hang partway through.
People with pirated copies started complaining and looking for tech help with this baffling bug. It didn't take the devs long to figure out what was going on, and only took slightly longer for people who'd paid for it to start leaping down the throats of anyone asking for help getting past the 'buggy' cutscene.
Re:What does this mean (Score:4, Informative)
The game is a management-sim in which the player manages a game development studio.
In the normal game, you start out in the 8 bit years, writing games and selling them. You use the profits to hire artists and developers, R&D an engine, advertise, licence etc., to make bigger and more profitable games, and as time passes, technology improves. The in-game economy is balanced for a challenging but winnable game.
In the "poisoned" game they seeded the warez sites with, after a couple of hours of play, the in-game advisor says "we're seeing a lot of piracy, it's going to affect our sales". And from then on the in-game economy is deliberately wrecked, so sales figures plummet despite you doing everything right.
On cue, the messageboards see pirate gamers asking why the game suddenly became unwinnable -- asking if they can develop in-game DRM, to beat the in-game pirates.
Re:I suspect their simulation is flawed (Score:5, Informative)
Normally I'd say RTFA, but since it has been slashdotted, I'll give your ignorance a pass and just correct your errors as I encounter them.
Game prices are too high
This game was $8 USD.
People don't want to spend any amount of money without knowing what they will get in return
They offer a free demo to give you an idea, and also offer a pirated version of the game which gives several hours of unadultered gameplay before they introduce their "bug."
So many completed games simply stop being played and it's no longer useful. Is it really worth the $50+ ? Especially since you can't resell it any longer?
Again, this game was $8 USD. Additionally, the game is DRM-free, available on all platforms, and is being ported to Steam as well. This is an indy company with very consumer-oriented and forward-thinking ideas who simply conducted a fun little experiment on sales versus pirated copies.
Every single legitimate argument pirates spout cannot be applied to this situation. The game was DRM free, ported to all major OSes, offered a playable demo on their website, and very reasonably priced at $8 USD (cheaper than many mobile games).
Linux is a ripoff of UNIX (Score:3, Informative)
game itself is a rip off of Game Dev Story
Any more than GNU/Linux is a ripoff of UNIX, or Mega Man is a ripoff of Contra with a life bar?
Re:Interesting comparissons (Score:5, Informative)
The linked forums indicate that the piracy rate is, in fact, 6.4%, and that only ~214 copies were legitimate.
Kind of puts holes into all of the "just make a better product" arguments, huh?
Re:So basically (Score:4, Informative)
$8 / game *214 legitimate copies = $1600.
Woooo what a payday. How many devs, how many days of work? Unless its "one dev" and "2 weeks", its not what you would really call "good profit".