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Forums - Gaming Discussion - The Witness is getting pirated hard — creator Jonathan Blow warns it’ll impact future projects

JOKA_ on 30 January 2016

A lot of pirate apologists in this thread.

Would 100% of pirates buy the game if they couldn't pirate? No
Would 0% of pirates buy the game if they couldn't pirate? No

The number rests in the middle somewhere, which means that, yes, piracy does take money away from developers. I think that Blow has a right to be ticked off that a certain percentage of his money is getting taken away.



Platinums: Red Dead Redemption, Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet, Terminator Salvation, Uncharted 1, inFamous Second Son, Rocket League

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Faelco on 30 January 2016
TheGreatGamerGod said:

You say that, but I personally hated his last game Braid which I played on console so wouldn't even try this one on PC or otherwise without some form of demo. I appreciate I'm in the minority on that one but I also don't think what he is charging for this game really helps for what it is.

Why would he charge less than that?

We shouldn't care at all about "indie or not". The game took years of development. Its beautiful, it has a lot of content, it has good production values. No way it's just a $10-20 dollar indie game, it's not some generic pixelated indie garbage game developed in some random guy's room like we see in new releases everyday. I bought games like Zero Escape for the same price, and the content/production value is not much more than The Witness. Same thing with Portal 2 or a lot of other games. Even FIFA, $60 each year for a few improvements, and nobody complains about it... I don't care at all where does the game come from, I care about what it's worth. We should all do that.

If you pay your game depending on "AAA" or "not AAA", it's really not a good thing for the industry. "Let's kill all indie developers trying to create more ambitious games" is a great way to end up only with the annual Assassin's Creed and FIFA.



Madword on 30 January 2016
Ruler said:

haha what you except if you charge 40€ for an indie puzzle game?

That is not a reason to pirate the game, if you dont want to pay that price, you wait for the price to decrease. It's simple really.





Making an indie game : Dead of Day!

naruball on 30 January 2016
TheGreatGamerGod said:

I think one thing we don't talk about with piracy is actually the positives it can have. I was burned out on Far Cry by the time 3 came out, after saying no more playing the awful Wii one and having skipped 2 entirely, my friends kept telling me how amazing 3 was, so knowing I'd never buy it even at discount I looked for a demo, couldn't find one so I yarr'd it, played it for two hours, fell in love with it and bought it new off Amazon for console and a Steam copy too along with the dlc. I bought Blood Dragon on launch day as well as 4 and all it's DLC which I had for console and then recently picked up the DX edition on Steam. Heck, I already pre ordered Primal. What I'm saying is, while I wouldn't do that anymore quite often people use torrents and piracy because the developers don't put a demo out.

You have a point and I agree with you that some people do end up buying games thanks to piracy. Anyone denying this is just wrong, in my opinion. I disagree with the bolded, though, as I see this point brought up all the time.

What matters is: does piracy do more harm than good? In some cases it does more good (unknown indie that gets a lot of sales thanks to word of mouth from pirates and people who bought it). But is that always the case and with every game? Is it with most game? Even if it is, which I doubt, that doesn't help a developer if he, personally, ends up actually losing money because of piracy (I offered Dante's Inferno as an example). I see people on youtube, 9gag etc bragging how they're gonna pirate x game when it comes out on pc. These people have zero interest in eventually paying for it, and I believe that had they had no other choice, they'd most likely bought the game to play it.



mornelithe on 30 January 2016
Hiku said:
mornelithe said:
HoloDust said:
It's the overhype Blow...or maybe over-expectations.

Saying this as someone who has Myst in 'Top 10 franchises with at least 3 entries', this is quite niche genre...if it was not for Myst, the genre would never touch, even for that brief moment, mainstream audience, and even that only happened on PC.

Honestly, once he went on Sony's stage and introduced the game to their audience, he pretty much changed dynamic of what that game is vs how it will be perceived. In my opinion, he should've kept it away from PC for a while.

That's actually a good point, Myst and 7th Guest/11th Hour games weren't hugely popular.  I loved them though, so did my brother (told him about Witness the other day, he got it).

7th guest. o.o That was one of the weirdest games I've played. And pretty creepy as well.

When I was younger, we had both Myst and the 7th Guest (as well as the sequel), my brother excelled at Myst, I was really good at the 7th guest/11th Hour.  Eventually it just became a mission to shut the house up lol :)  



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GribbleGrunger on 30 January 2016

Six years and one remortgaged house later, people are complaining this beautiful 80 - 100 hour, 600+ puzzle, open world game is too expensive.



 

The PS5 Exists. 


Threalhusanrolla on 30 January 2016

I don't feel for him. Made a dumb decision to release on pc and is paying the price. Next time make the intelligent business decision.

Moderated - Leadified



Darwinianevolution on 30 January 2016

One question, when they say only 5% of the android users have paid for the game, how do they know that? I can understand they knowing how many copies they have sold, but how do they know how many people have the game pirated? How do they follow those numbers?



You know it deserves the GOTY.

Come join The 2018 Obscure Game Monthly Review Thread.

method114 on 30 January 2016
Chazore said:

I can't wait for the incoming generalizations, oh wait it's already happening.

Piracy sucks but so does not having a demo, the 90's brought us so many of those in various ways and the methods they chose.

Also those that always pirate aren't likely to be your customers in the end. I don't condone piracy but I'm not paying full price for the title as is and instead I've put it on my wishlist till it goes a bit lower. Price point is playing a majoor factor for me, it's likely playing an important part for a lot of others as well and this generally happens with thousands if not millions of products when it comes to high prices and deemed value.

If you wish to inject DRM into your future projects then you are only punishing your future and loyal consumers,. You won't get a sale from me with that approach.

 

That said I know for a fact this article is going to be remembered this year on purpose by some and brought up later when sales data is calculated, got to grab ammo from somewhere and keep the war going I guess.

 

Agreed about demos. I've pirated just to make sure I'll like it. Hate wasting money.



Skratchy on 30 January 2016

Don't worry, John, I stuck with the PS4 version. I gave up on illegally downloading stuff years ago.