An interesting article.
Interesting article, and gets right to the heart of the matter that has been brought up and polled and discussed here many times.
It seems that pirating does dramatically effect game sales as apposed to help marketing of your game.
From the outset, we decided at Sector3 that we didn’t want to have our games pirated and that a loss of sale would hurt us more than the so called “additional exposure” of more people playing our games (unpaid).
We opted to create our own DRM/Anti piracy solution for our games, and I am pleased to say that we have yet had any of our titles cracked or pirated, and we have experienced a very steady growth in sales since our first title was released.
I highly recommend that anyone that is serious about selling their games and building a business model around the casual game industry, seriously looks at protecting their games with a good DRM solution.
For us, the investment/cost in developing ours has been well worth it.
I found the discussion in the comments section more interesting than the article itself.
I could be way off, but it seems to me that using a game to sell advertising is a better model for casual games than in trying to sell downloads to gamers.
Wasting time developing DRM does not sound like fun to me.
I also read the rest and think its a mixed bag of people that are speculating and not doing.
There is an assumption that the cost of a game needs to go up because of the cost of DRM… not in the casual game marketplace, unless you are making or licensing a very expensive DRM solution.
Our DRM solution was developed at 3-5% the cost of an off the shelf (and already cracked) solution and is now available to us for all of our future game titles amortized forever, so the cost per titles has become almost negligible.
The bottom line is, there is not good “make your money from advertising” avenues available to indie developers just yet… shockwave, though it can be successful, if you have a very successful game that can be found in the quagmire of crap on there… still is a hit and miss way of making money of your games.
We have already developed our own in-game advertising system, that to be honest, really rocks, but there is no one that is going to pay for advertising in it unless you can match the type of numbers of impressions usually seen through banner style advertising, and the $ on offer for that is crap.
I guess at the end of the day a developers has to look at their overall title development costs and work out what they would like to get as a $ return on the title and then decide the best way to achieve that.
The indie scene is still very young and not taken seriously enough in most money making gaming areas (yet)… so what might be a great business plan in 3-5 years is not a viable option now. The only thing that is guaranteed to work now assuming the game title is good enough) is direct sales or online portals.
It would be interesting to know the sales figures of Team Fortress 2, and the piracy ratio.
I know I bought the Orange Box because it was both well priced, convenient to download and that sond… that song!
Well, if it only took 3-5% of your effort on one title and works until it is cracked (presumably after you’ve used it on a few titles) then I agree DRM is a good solution.
Perhaps my thoughts about not wanting to waste any time with DRM comes from doing this as a hobby. I’d rather be creating something than writing security. I DO understand that business is an entirely different motivation.
In the long run however, I do think that DRM should go by the wayside. It is inefficient. What you need is a market in which it is unnecessary. I figured driving advertisement revenue was a good market for that. Perhaps - as you seem to imply - it will just take time to mature.
I guess this is why this dude is doing so well http://www.maidmarian.com/ MMO and all games freely payable but he brings in enough income.
Im not saying its not doable… but define a “comfortable” amount of income? Enough to support a single person maintaining a game? What about a team of 2 or 4?
No one seems to want to share how much they actually make via online, free play websites, so it’s all arbitrary. The sites or evangelists throw around figures, but never state how long it takes to achieve these figures, how long it takes to get paid, how consistent the figures are and more importantly, how much harder it is getting to obtain these figures due to the rapidly increasing number of competitors on these sites.
Someone who has a Unity game on Shockwave wanna step forward and tell us how much they make per month based on X many online plays?
We (Sector3) have enough income per month from direct sales from our 3 game titles to support a full time developer plus tools and hardware… and sales are increasing every month. We also have yet to make any mark (only minor) in the windows sales area so this is a pretty solid business model for us with stacks of room to grow.
Sure, we have had to build our own infrastructure to be able to reliably sell, license and support our games, but that is part of the initial development and gets amortized over all our game sales.
We also have many other direct sales avenues we can expand into before even looking at online free play. We have 3rd party vendors around the globe wanting to sign deals to sell our games in their region, including boxing them up.
We also get feedback from many of our customers that they would rather pay for their game and own it and have it to play whenever they like, whether online or not, and feel that the online realm of free gameplay is for flash based content … which we know is not true anymore… but they dont… yet.
The Indie game industry is still young, and has not solidified itself into clear segments and marketing opportunities yet, so there are definitely more than 1 or 2 paths that can be taken for now to make a living or build a business making Indie games. It’s more about what suits a developers individual needs that should dictate which direction to go, rather than perceived merits of good and bad solutions.
not sure if this is related to the discussion,
there is also a big thread about piracy in Indiegamer Forum which is pretty interesting to read 8)
As a reply to that indiegamer thread, I sort of think people in that thread are missing the point of what pirates are. I think mostly they are ignorant, not that interested in your game, and not necessarily malicious.
I don’t think people should pirate software at all, and in a perfect world they wouldn’t want to. But labeling them all as evil, as if they intend to do wrong is incorrect. I think for the most part they are just ignorant and in a hurry, nothing more.
To me putting artificial limits on digital media to make it more like a product that you can hold in your hand is weird. Obviously there is something wrong with digital media industries because they need to do this, but I don’t see a way out.
If you can make money and get away with never using DRM, you are doing good. For example, I really respect these guys: Blog – Welcome to Metanet Software Inc
I think that if I am ever in charge of a non-webplayer based game project I will tie it to an online account system as an easy way out.
Some out of the stomach or from the belly to the head thoughts…
I don’t know but the way people talk about crackers, pirates and how things like cracks show up often reminds me of the often wrongly used terms crackers and hackers.
Funny article in the respect that you can find quite some Reflexive games on the net Anyway i dislike DRM. It makes me buy less and i only buy DRM crippeled software/music when i really have to and there is no alternative.
Most people don’t like DRM, for reasonable reasons, and therefore it’s kind of fair not expecting it if people are selling software. There are a few companies around which got this and it just feels good buying their products and making word by mouth propaganda for them also to honour this. Tools like Modo or BlitzMax have a very generous crosslicence without any suspicious DRM software on your system beeing installed or on the games side for instance the last two games that i’ve bought Eschalon or Sam&Max just work without any trouble.
Especially TellTaleGames is a very good example of how to do it right.
a) Start small and focused with a bigger goal in mind.
b) Build content that people really want and which does not suck.
c) Do clever marketing and sell through as many channels as you can (take advantage of the digital distribution, special deal with gametap, sell via steam, retail business, deals with local publishers for localised versions, sell on different platforms (in their case pc, console).
d) Listen to your customers. Sometimes when i do have a problem with a product i feel passionate about wink i articulate this and there it had to do with that you had to enter different serials for each episode - blablabla - to shorten it up, now you only have one serial to unlock all your content and you even can give the stuff to your friends or you don’t need it at all when you’re connected to the internet. Wow this felt sweet, someone listening to you and i’m sure it made not only me happy.
I just prefer when i’m not treated like a criminal in advance. There for sure are cases were a pirated versions ruined a good games which otherwise would have deserved it but in a lot of cases the games just aren’t convincing enough. There is quite a lot of hard work behind making someone entering all those numbers in order to buy something.
I guess the biggest risk comes with innovative games which first have to break the ice but if they do they can skyrocket much more than the rest. A problem are those which are good enough to play but not good enough to pay.
If you’re doing client work for a portal then it’s likely you get a game concept which they know it will sell well - according to what i’ve heard this mostly works. For the rest you have to know that portals do get much more games sent in a week than they are willing to release because either the games aren’t good enough, they don’t fit into their portfolio or there are just too many already.
Cliff Bleszinski for sure isn’t known for saying wise things only but he once made a good statement that you either make a new game or you make it twice as good as it has already been done before. If you’re not doing a game which is hip at the moment like people couldn’t get enough of those match three clones, diner dash/tapper games or find the hidden part blabla then this is quite true. I mean look how many games there are out in the world these days. We need food, clean water, less co2 emission, … but there for sure is no lack of games these days.
On the other side it’s kind of easy to moan about if you don’t have to pay your bills this way and you can quite hear some nonsense from those who never did but i still think that it’s best to be fair to your customers (treat them as you would like to be treated) and expect the same from them. The rest in the long run sucks one or the other way around. I more would invest the time into getting a product as good as possible instead of making the DRM as secure as possible, and i would set on cards were i could make an advantage of, like offering and marketing a crosslicence for a game instead of trying to milk those customers who are already honest enough buying your products.
There are quite some ways making and loosing money in this business and i guess everyone has to find his/her/their own way.
There are a lot of people out there who are just pieces of garbage. They will pirate whether they “have to” or not.
However, all the “good” people I know who pirate software do so because they are poor. They are definitely still very interested. I’ve talked about this in another thread on these boards where I was attacked for my stance on this (I can take it 
). Some people want to take part in the software, but if they had to pay for it, never would. You’re not going to get their money. What does it matter if they pirate?
There is really no way for you to judge when it is viable for someone else to purchase your wares. In all seriousness, I think the best solution will be to put people into governmental brackets, allowing poorer people and people with more children to pay less for software. I think this sounds just a little weird when we’re focusing on games, but software in general should continue to become a more intrinsic part of everyone’s life, and in the long run, I think this would cause piracy to go down.
For the time being, the best you can do, other than having a department that works on constantly updating your DRM, is to create pricing for your product that is more in-line with the real world. A $60 console game ($5 off for a used copy in most cases) is a huge investment for some people, and paying for that with a credit card would only make it cost more (if they can even get one). So, a $20 downloadable game is cheaper, but is it worth 1/3 of the $60? Can you sell it to someone if you want, to recoup some of the money if you need it? Not having the money isn’t going to make them not want your product. Maybe try charging them $5 for a month’s subscription, or an installment, as an option. Seriously, what other products can you find, other than games, without some kind of pricing tier anymore?
Now, I am not a fan of pirating anything, but sometimes, even a tiny charge is so stupid, that I feel it is your right to not pay it:
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=7E4EB91E&nplm=D4141ZM/A
Here is a good example of two things in practice:
- filling a hole, by “piracy”, that is not addressed by a legal means (console gaming on a computer, especially for a portable machine)
- excellent and simple pricing tier option: free to use, cheap for a better experience.
sixtyforce | Register
If you want more people to pay for your software, you’re going to have to make it easier for them to pay for it than it is for them to pirate it. When money is involved, that can get complicated very quickly, but that’s really all it comes down to.
In regards to sliding scale and game pricing:
As I have rarely if ever had money for a game, most of my game play has consisted of demos, downloading of games well over 15 years old (eg. Infocom text adventures, Koronis Rift, Lode Runner, and the Ultima series), and the three games I have purchased since 1999 (Riven, NWN, and Civ IV).
I played the hell out of quite a few demos, such as that Dark Wonderland FPS game. And the Unity Demos that people like Neil Carter have posted have also been a blast. (His Yoinks is also a great game BTW.) All this to say that I think there are plenty of no cost gaming opportunities for people without money. So sliding scale already exists. No need to make it up.
Furthermore if someone has the time to waste cracking your DRM just to pirate your game, or whatever other ways one pirates games these days… then they have time to get a job and earn the money to pay for it. Poor people - such as myself - should not be wasting our time playing games anyway. Its a luxury activity for those that do not need to be productive with their time.
I see no reason for a company to bend over backwards to get their game into the hands of gamers for free unless it makes really good business sense.
It usually only takes a few seconds to bypass the security on most games and applications. As for the people who create the cracks in the first place, it’s a hobby for them, many of them don’t even play the game more than what’s needed to test if the crack works or not.
You can play games for free. Not everyone is going to have your taste, or be content with those options, however. You seem to be implying that if you want to play a game, but can’t afford it, some other game may fill the void. I think there is some validity to this concept, but it’s oversimplified. Unless your product is completely derivative, gamers aren’t going to find your unique experience elsewhere. Here’s a lovely example of this idea in action:
Should? People don’t tend to grasp “should”. They eat McDonald’s and watch TV.
I have no idea what motivates someone to allow for someone else to pirate something, but that’s how it works. Piracy can be fast. If it wasn’t, then most pirates wouldn’t use it, and the rest of them would be the ones doing the pirating no matter what. I bet the people who make piracy happen (cracks, keygens, and the like) are actually amply paid at whatever they do in “real life”, judging from the results of their skills and labor.
Here’s a …hypothetical example: I know someone with an R4 card (this allows easy piracy of Nintendo DS games). He had to pay about $50 for it, get it imported from China, and wait 1-2 weeks to receive it. That’s an inconvenience, but he now has access to any DS game, usually before official release, for no other charge.
Some people will use this method, play through many full games, and never buy a physical copy of any game. However, this particular fellow tends to try most games for a total of about 2 minutes, get sick of them, and move on. If there were free demos available for all these games, that might seriously deter this person from pirating.
Console/handheld/non-downloadable computer games are essentially tied to a dongle (the card or disc on which the game is printed). If you are running everything via software, you destroy the need to worry about scratched/ruined/stolen media, something that legal methods will not offer you. Downloadable content is starting to make an impact, but if you can’t sell it, you’ll never find me messing with that stuff. To add further garbage to the mix, in general, if your console is destroyed or stolen, you will have to pay for the downloadable content again.
Agreed 100%. But if you get the price of a game over a year from many more people, that’s going to be better than getting it all at once from much fewer. That’s why credit card companies can do well, and why people can buy houses.
You certainly raise valid points, and your morally sound methods seem to be working out just fine for you. However, asking everyone else to obey your code is just not realistic. There will always be room to make it easier for your customers to give you more money. Optimizing this is the best way to mitigate the negative affects of piracy.