I thought that was a good read, you don’t blame piracy or pirates, just embrace digital media and encourage people to buy your product with features they can’t get with a pirated copy.
wait a second… you are in favor of PIRACY! get him guys! lol just kidding. I agree about giving games online features, it’s much easier to control piracy that way. And ‘potential’ customers that pirated the game might want to get a piece of that online action, so they’d have to buy the game… hmm, so basically i just repeated what the article said… lol 
Its nice to see a developer with their head on straight. That couldn’t have been worded any better.
I see it the same way. I also think that you have an obligation to give users free access to some degree to what you’re trying to sell them - a sample, at least.
I think what Notch did on Minecraft was pretty smart, creating two branches and charging 10 bucks for the more advanced one while giving users much more features if they actually pay for the full game. It’s a lot like the old shareware model.
He finds the easy solution of online services, but what about devs who don’t have any gamedesign fitting to online services?
- It sounds more like a bandage solution.
- I don’t want a videogame world crawled by bandage online services. … Like this DLC craziness we’re seeing for years.
Tough life for them. Ignoring the internet is a bad idea. And is not an easy solution is the way things works. With more and more devices connected to internet or interconnected with each other, developing applications that doesn’t make use of internet or be aware of surrounding tech is like betting on the wrong horse.
I also agree 100% with this statement “Piracy will win in the long run. It has to. The alternative is too scary.” because i live in a country where politicians and economic groups or interests try to push law that limits the freedom of expression. I prefer to adapt to an environment dominated by free exchange of IP rather than enforce laws to control this exchange and the sell of IP.
I still think that a large part is about the excitement about a game, the quality of it, how bugfree it is, not beeing restricted by DRM, a reasonable price, working distribution and good marketing. If that’s fine then there also should be people buying games/music/movies.
I think this works because you’re used to it in other aspects of life and because it makes just sense. The difference between making a tire and making a copy of a game exists but you’re giving away this benefit in form of a reduced price already, at least that’s what you should do.
Most people i know, including me, buy the games which fulfill the above mentioned points. Of course there also exist people who don’t but i only would count a certain percentage of those as potential customers. Games which are beeing copied, simply aren’t 1:1 lost sales. Secondly you’re also leaving out the propaganda benefits he has talked about.
Beside of the more traditional way there also exist some alternatives, which according to the specific game/situation could turn out beeing more profitable as well if that’s what the developer is mainly after.
Just one more aspect because i again am typing this on an iPhone: What i’ve experienced as an effective way of reducing piracy is when you’re offering updates which in a better way enhance the product or in the more annoying style fix bugs. Some indies are making a very good job here and offer matured games out of the box. To be fair, large projects naturally tend to be more buggy but this shouldn’t be the problem of the customers. The company needs to work different then.
Indie game piracy is not on the same level as AAA piracy. Most of my acquaintances gladly pay for indie games they like (almost all of them own Mount&Blade for example) while they “download” a lot of AAA ones.
The difference is in bang for the buck. In sub-developed countries, 49E is 1/4 of the minimum wage. Really, think about it. An AAA title is 1/4 of their monthly wage.
On the same note, a good indie game runs for 9.99e or less in some cases. You probably see where I’m going with this. In this case, they want to buy 'em and gladly do when they think the bang is worth the buck. But you’ll be hard pressed to find a game that’s worth 1/4 of your wage.
I think this also stands (in some form) for developed countries as well.
I would pay quite a lot for a The DIG II, a Ultima X or something brilliant new, as these game provides substance and depth. For sure i won’t do the same for popcorn games like Uncharted.
Some indie games lean torward this uniqueness which btw was a lot more usual in the beginning of the video games. Also today and within the last years great games have been developed but the amount of rubbish, clones and uninspired games is very big and often those who are producing these kind of games are also whining the most.
Videogames felt better when it wasn’t such a big business and apart from the mainstream. Every disk you got those days was full of surprises!
On the bright side a few big companies and some indies are making really good games again, so nothing is lost. It just takes the ability to ignore the rest.
Today, with the right idea, the knowledge, the talent and with all those devtools and the digital distribution, there exist so many opportunities, it’s almost totally up to you.
@taumel, what you’re missing is that the really big games are aimed for the really big masses. With those big masses, you will be sacrificing a lot of the game’s originality, since everyone cannot be pleased, so they try to make the game as blatant as possible.
Indies dont have this problem, since they dont have to please everyone. This means that the indies can afford to be more original.
EDIT: oh and I agree with Notch as well. The economy needs to evolve to cope with these problems. Making more strict laws against piracy is the last thing you’d want to do.
Actually they require it to be.
If they are just mainstream trash they will not have success cause they lack 5 to 7 figure budgets to bring public focus onto the mainstream trash 
The issue is that building a totally secure microtransaction economy requires a fairly hefty prior investment for most developers as well as quite specialized knowledge. That puts it way out of the league of most indie devs, there’s no point in investing time and money on making a hugely complex system that unless your game becomes popular enough in the first place (requiring normally quite a lot of work and/or money on marketing) wont allow you to break even.
Basically, for Joe Bloggs game developer the old economic system may be broken, but so’s the new economic system! At least with the old one anyone got to have a shot and you could earn up front.
Now that’s just how things are right now, in due course this may (should) all change. It needs to be painless to build a totally secure system where you can be assured your customers aren’t in any danger of having their information harvested either by malicious folk or you or whomever is offering the micro-transaction handling and holding service, which means it’s very hard to trust any non opensource solution that allows you to control exactly where the money goes, so currently that limits it down to… pretty much nothing, you have to build it yourself.
We all know that making such a thing should be just a case of building a basic shop with pretty much drag drop server side functionality (not like it needs coding for a repeat region), a single form, and a customer login system. It’s just an extension of asset server behavior. I really hope that game engines like Unity will down the road offer built in functionality and their own service for dealing with microtransactions. I wouldn’t even mind them skimming a small percentage if it meant I could get up and running in as much time and cost to me as it would take to get up and running with the traditional economic model.
Interesting read. Can’t remember who mentioned it, but I completely agree with always having a demo. I buy loads of games based off of demoes, and if you have an easy to access free trial version people are less likely to go to the trouble of downloading it illegally.
On a side note, what is to stop developers from using constant internet access as a means of anti-piracy? I know Starcraft 2 uses this to some extent, because from what I’ve seen you really can’t get around not having a valid CD key.
I know this isn’t really possible at this point and time, since loads of places in the world don’t have constant access to the internet but still would like to play games, but instead of making people pay for a copy of the game, you’d make them pay for a CD key, the privilege to play the game.
What’s interesting to me is the approval and agreement to this, when I see people getting so angry about things like Assassin’s Creed always Online DRM, EA Online Pass, OnLive subscription model, cost DLC for critical features, and general Games-As-A-Service ideas. They are essentially the same concept(bits can be replicated, so provide paying customers with something more than just the straight data) with different implementations.
I’m not saying the people here are the ones who are against those things. I’m actually kind of curious what people think of the more AAA online services route when they agree with Notch’s concepts on piracy.
I have seen even the most strict DRMs (Digital Rights Management Systems) get cracked (UbiSoft mostly) by scene groups and independents.
The scene groups will always win in the end. I agree with that 100% and I also agree that we live in a different era. Unfortunately if we don’t rise up and adapt then our governments will rise up and restrict us out of fear. The ACTA agreement is a prime example.
I suggest you go look at some of the leaked ACTA drafts and some of the reports to see what it is about. But several governments are trying to restrict Intellectual Property in many ways including the internet with harsh (internationally enforceable) penalties.
Why are the governments scared though? Look at pirate bay, it has been operating for several years now openly HELPING ITS USERS distribute software and other digital media to non-paying users. The reason the site is still in business? It doesn’t have any illegal material, it only connects people who do with people who don’t, like a phone book.
Anyways, I think the whole thing is crazy. I agree with the original quoted post that we should not count it as lossed revenue but more as lost potential revenue and then adapt our systems to hedge against that loss.
Another good example that I just thought of. In game currancy. Eve broke down and started allowing users to buy in game items that had value and could be sold for ISK. EQ2 allows you to by things in game using your credit card. All the big games see that change and are trying to addapt.
Games as a service is a bit too far IMO. I think the ability to buy in game items and currency is where it should go. The goal of a game is to hit max level and quit. So why not offer leveling as a service meaning weapons, gold, XP boosts ect. Most people hit max level and quit so your average potential revenue per user is almost predictable. Those who stay on more long term probably won’t use these services. But you know that once a user hits max and is gone so is that revenue, so if you can get 2-5x the revenue out of the user by letting him level faster buy buying his XP then it is a win for you.
@Veli
Partly true, partly not, whilst i see what you are trying to say, i also kind of disagree because there already exist mass markets for different game genres. Someone how is interested in a RPG isn’t automatically interested in a FPS, yet both are considered beeing mass markets and are also beeing targeted in such ways.
Secondly there also exists mass market products which come with more depth and originality than its competitors. Half Life for instance definately is a mass market product and still it’s a very convincing one. It doesn’t have to be flat and unispired per se just because you’re targeting a larger audience but it definately is way harder coming up with one of these games.
I also doubt the logic behind trying to please everyone with one product instead of offering a number of products which in their sum please their audience a whole lot better. Sometimes this can make sense, like a big familiy movie, like Jurassic Park for instance, but then again it doesn’t has to be flat and stupid out of the box and in my opinion it is the wrong strategy if you’re doing this with a large percentage of your productions.
It might generate superfluous pressure on your company and as all those years have shown, it for sure doesn’t produce better video games.
I think this is fine, but what about the thousands of dollars and man hours you and others have invested into creating that? If only one person bought it, and many others copied it…you’re hosed.
Ultimately, Piracy is about getting something for nothing. It’s morally wrong. It would be different if you could just crank out games with the click of a button. But making games is HARD.
And there is -nothing- wrong with expecting to make a profit. Pirates aren’t interested in the least in charity or anyone else, so how can they demand that others produce things for them, for free?
Sorry. No sympathy whatsoever.
Well, it’s pretty easy to say that piracy isn’t all that bad when you’ve just made a ton of money( for an indie ).
The argument that piracy can help sales by having someone share a few copies of the game with a friend is great, but it’s 20 years out of date. The problem isn’t people making a copy of a game and sharing it with a friend, the problem is people making a copy and sharing it with 10,000 of their “friends”. Which is just as easy as sharing a single copy.
The problem that the internet has introduced, is that piracy now takes place over international lines. In the past, pirate BBS’s in the US could be shut down, and it was a legitimate risk for the person running the board. Now, people can just go to sites in countries that allow sites like the pirate bay.
The solution is that there needs to be some kind of rational enforcement of piracy laws. Suing a teenager for 40,000 usd because she shared a few copies of an album, is ridiculous.
But if someone knew there was a serious risk of being slapped with a 50 usd fine when they downloaded something illegal off the internet, I think that piracy rates would drop pretty quickly.
Some people might view piracy as the sharing of culture, and I think there’s some benefit in that, but it is also leading to the devaluation of culture, and the work that goes into creating it.
You can see the effects on these forums, kids just waltz in and demand that people develop their MMO for them, for free. They concept that it costs a lot of money and hard work, even to create a shitty game, is completely foreign to them.