Games: EU says 100 pirated copies will lead to 24 additional legal copies:
"For games, the estimated effect of illegal online transactions on sales is positive – implying that illegal consumption leads to increased legal consumption. This positive effect of illegal downloads and streams on the sales of games may be explained by the industry being successful in converting illegal users to paying users. Tactics used by the industry include, for example, offering gameplay with extra bonuses or extra levels if consumers pay.“ It is totally different for Film/TV series: “For films or TV-series, every 100 illegal streams or downloads are estimated to displace 27 legal transactions.”
No matter what way it’s put, 100 illegal copies is still down 76 purchases + the 24 legit (100 total).
But it’s a fight I’m not even gonna try to fight anymore, it takes too much time away from a single man business, maybe if I had 500 man studios and millions of dollars it might be worth investing into trying to prevent it without harming the legit users.
This will continue to be an ongoing battle with AAA Studios, let them spend their wasted resources why we collect the profits from just building games lol.
The thing people needs to realize is that someoene who pirates your game wouldn’t have bought it.They’re not customers.They wouldn’t pay for your game if it couldn’t be pirated.
@neginfinity : Oh I know this, I’m just saying that from a monetary standpoint you didn’t technically gain anything out of it. Whether they are or aren’t gonna buy your game still doesn’t change you lost out on 100 copies either way.
But I’m not even gonna try to prevent it, no sense in trying unless it’s something that can be obviously correctly within reason.
I have no problem believing those numbers. The question is, how can this statistical average be improved to a higher per-game conversion-rate? Iirc Gamedev Tycoon seeded a modified version of their game into the piracy world, and in that version of the game your gamestudio would go bankrupt after a while due to piracy simulated within the game. Most people didn’t get the message though, they just thought it’s a bad and unfair game. They got a bit of a PR boost out of it, but I have my doubts it was a good idea.
If your game can be pirated, your profit from them is zero. If the game can’t be pirated, your profit from them is still zero. Zero minus zero is still zero. So you lose nothing. And THAT’S the part people need to understand.
Pirate is someone who doesn’t see enough value in your game to buy it. If they can get it for free, they might check your game out. If they can’t get it for free, they won’t pay for it either way.
I always wondered about this and it does in a way make sense. I guess piracy works as a form of advertising to people who were never planning to buy your game. 100 people weren’t ever gonna buy it but will steal it is 100 sales you would never see even if they couldn’t steal it but if 20 percent of em decide they need the paid version for some features because they really like it then you gained 20 sales you never would have seen. On a side note I have always said that I hope someone hacks or pirates any game I ever make. If they do that means enough people care to own it I am definately coming out ahead.
Those folks were never going to buy the game anyway. My guess is that those 24 copies sold were folks who pirated to try the game and liked it enough to buy it.
I can see the numbers as being legitimate. As a teenager I had no money and only played games I could pirate. Not being able to pirate a game meant I didn’t play it at all.
However it still translated to occasional sales. I would ask for legitimate copies games I liked for birthdays so I could get access to online features.
As I’ve gotten older and started making my own income I’ve replaced any of the pirated versions I still play with legitimate ones.
Yes you did, you gained 24 sales. You’re only “down” by anything if you believe that “pirated copies” = “lost sales” which, as @neginfinity points out, is not the case.
Counting pirated copies is a distraction. Sold copies is the number that counts. And what this information is suggesting is that some amount of piracy leads to some amount of sales that you wouldn’t otherwise have got. If the numbers are to be believed, every 3 or 4 pirated copies potentially earns you a sale. If you compare that to, say, paid advertising… that’s a gobsmackingly amazing conversion rate!
(That makes sense to me. People playing dodgy copies of games still talk about them, and talk sells things quite well.)
That said, I take those figures with a grain of salt. Even assuming they’re accurate and backed by solid, repeatable research, there’s a lot of factors in there which we can’t control.
I remember people who use Game Center in their games reporting that the ratio of legal to pirated copies is 1:90 (when looking at number of players in Game Center). But this was something like 5 years ago.
These are dangerous stats. What kind of game was measured? Indie? AAA? Multiplayer? It matters, because not all games are born equal or are consumed equally.
11k sample size is laughable, and horrifically biased, I’m disregarding these findings from 2015.
“PC / console / online Excluding apps and tablets”
Well, at the very least it’s excluding mobile games, because otherwise I could call bullshit… with data to back it up.
Also I have a fever, so it’s possible my cognitive abilities are impaired. but the language is super weird at places:
In any case, skimming it, it feels like they wanted to do a study more for movies and music and while they were doing that, they found studies about games as well and shoehorned them in as well.
Instead they have used parts of the data for a paper in 2016. But the paper is about blockbuster movies only and is the usual condemnation of piracy.
“That Eurocrats are changing English to suit themselves is not unusual. When people with different mother tongues get together to co-operate, they frequently develop a common language.”
I think it does because 11k is divided up among console owners who aren’t even running pirated software (the console is chipped) and various games of different markets and sizes. If I knew what kind of games were being pirated, it would make sense. As it is, there’s no real decent data here.
It’s not uncommon for findings like this be worthless. I don’t disagree with the movie findings but the game findings weren’t really thought through from the skim I gave the doc, plus they were all lumped together. Not just games, but hardware too.
In an age of let’s play, I’m pretty sure piracy doesn’t help you. It doesn’t give you any valid exposure. Also how is it that there’s different findings by other people? Seems like there’s a fresh take on it from various corners of the interwebs.
The data may be statistically relevant on the whole, but it’s statistically relevant on pretty vague findings. Knowing a fact that only applies to “games” isn’t very useful, because any niche within that could fall very far from the mean. I don’t care about average stats for a vague game, I need actionable intel specifically for my RTS aimed at PC gamers focusing on online multiplayer, or my single player puzzle game, or my point and click adventure for teenage girls, or whatever specifically it is I’m doing right now.
And when you need to drill down that far you’ll find that only a fraction of the results are useful to you, and that it may be a small enough fraction that it’s no longer statistically relevant.
Is the morality of a RTS player different to the average?
I would guess it is almost impossible to consider the details you want in such a general statistic. But of course tables like this looks a bit wishy-washy:
