No Layoffs at Bankrupt World of Goo Publisher

[Logan Frederick]

No Layoffs at Bankrupt World of Goo Publisher

Despite filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Brighter Minds Media intends on saving every employee for when it emerges from its restructuring.

World of Goo, the sequel to developer 2D Boy's Tower of Goo project, was the team's most wildly successful underground game, launching with critical rave reviews on multiple systems.

Sadly, such news wasn't enough to bankroll Brighter Minds Media, the publisher that, a few days ago, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

"This was a voluntary bankruptcy," noted Brighter Minds representative Mia McPherson. "The state of the economy has affected us much like it has affected many other businesses. With sales suffering among retail and other outlets across the board, we've certainly felt the impacts of this as many others have. And this allows us to reorganize and become a much healthier company."

The dismal economic comments might not be news to anyone that watches evening news or reads about the thousands of monthly layoffs [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87130-Electronic-Arts-Faces-Losses-Layoffs]. Fortunately for the employees at Brighter Minds, McPherson assured that the company has "no plans to lay anybody off as we have a great team that is going to do great things."

"We're extremely optimistic that this move will provide a great opportunity for Brighter Minds, as we've been fortunate enough to have the complete support of our lender to reorganize our company and continue to do business during this reorganization," she explained. "We do not foresee this move having any effect on our business whatsoever. If anything, this will allow our business to go stronger, and we are moving forward with several new projects that we're very excited to share with the gaming community."

Permalink

 

[super_smash_jesus]

Well, i surely hope these guys do bounce back from this, because I really enjoyed world of goo, and would like to see more of their stuff in the future. I can't help but wonder if they would be alright if most people didn't illegally download world of Goo, and buy the game to support this emerging indie company.

 

[Chimaera]

I'm going to go there and say it is entirely refreshing to read some goo-d news.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

And people still claim their piracy doesn't hurt companies.

 

[Nimbus]

And people still claim their piracy doesn't hurt companies.

Gee, and here I was thinking that the world-wide economic meltdown had something to do with it. Silly me.

Seriously, Minds Media isn't even blaming piracy.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

And people still claim their piracy doesn't hurt companies.

Gee, and here I was thinking that the world-wide economic meltdown had something to do with it. Silly me.

Seriously, Minds Media isn't even blaming piracy.

Really? A 90% piracy rate didn't hurt them? You can parade around their willingness to put on a good face about it, but they'd probably be a lot better off if people had bought the game instead of stealing it.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.77023

FTA "We're doing ok, though," said Carmel. "We're getting good sales through WiiWare, Steam, and our website. Not going bankrupt just yet!"

 

[unangbangkay]

Really? A 90% piracy rate didn't hurt them? You can parade around their willingness to put on a good face about it, but they'd probably be a lot better off if people had bought the game instead of stealing it.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.77023

FTA "We're doing ok, though," said Carmel. "We're getting good sales through WiiWare, Steam, and our website. Not going bankrupt just yet!"

Are you so sure about that? We all already know that a pirated game isn't automatically a lost sale, and all the information suggest that the estimates for WoG's "90%" piracy rates are based on highly unreliable data and the amount of seeds on torrent sites.

Furthermore, how many games do people actually buy directly from the developer's website? I'd bet my Steam-version copy of World of Goo that 2D boy would have seen much lower sales than they had not made deals with Wiiware and Steam, both of which are distribution systems much less vulnerable to piracy.

Furthermore, this is the publisher we're talking about, a publisher which wasted large amounts of money sending out retail boxed releases of a $20, largely unmarketed (but critically acclaimed) indie game that could fit on the cheapest office-party-giveaway flash drives. Not exactly the "brightest" business decision to make, Brighter Minds.

While it's almost certain that piracy and illegal downloading accounted for SOME sales lost, there are a LOT of factors at work here.

 

[Calobi]

I'm going to go there and say it is entirely refreshing to read some goo-d news.

That actually hurt to read.

 

[Nimbus]

Are you so sure about that? We all already know that a pirated game isn't automatically a lost sale, and all the information suggest that the estimates for WoG's "90%" piracy rates are based on highly unreliable data and the amount of seeds on torrent sites.

This is basically the post I would have made were I not a man of few words.

Also, I would like to point out that one of the "other factors" may be that basically every company on the planet is completely screwed. Just sayin'.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

Are you so sure about that? We all already know that a pirated game isn't automatically a lost sale, and all the information suggest that the estimates for WoG's "90%" piracy rates are based on highly unreliable data and the amount of seeds on torrent sites.

Furthermore, how many games do people actually buy directly from the developer's website? I'd bet my Steam-version copy of World of Goo that 2D boy would have seen much lower sales than they had not made deals with Wiiware and Steam, both of which are distribution systems much less vulnerable to piracy.

Furthermore, this is the publisher we're talking about, a publisher which wasted large amounts of money sending out retail boxed releases of a $20, largely unmarketed (but critically acclaimed) indie game that could fit on the cheapest office-party-giveaway flash drives. Not exactly the "brightest" business decision to make, Brighter Minds.

While it's almost certain that piracy and illegal downloading accounted for SOME sales lost, there are a LOT of factors at work here.

Every time I hear this argument, and it's always the same one with piracy, it claims two things: People who steal games wouldn't be buying them and it's the publisher's fault anyways.

The problem is...if that's going to be what you say to every company that goes bankrupt or has to cut thousands of jobs because of low sales, what incentive do they have to even make games? If you're going to claim that distributing games through every means possible is stupid and people are just going to steal it unless you secure it, how does that not encourage DRM?

They're going bankrupt. Their critically acclaimed game was stolen at an 82% rate (I'm taking this off Rock Paper Shotgun's data now). Had even half, a third of those people bothered to shell out a lousy couple of bucks, then they would potentially be better off.

I just don't understand why people won't accept that money from sales is what keeps these people afloat.

 

[stevenmansour]

I'm usually very wary of complaints about piracy from gaming companies, but in the case of World of Goo, I have to say that they're well founded.

I bought the game for twenty bucks, and it was delivered immediately via a simple web page keyed to my account. There was really no reason to pirate this game - it was cheap, they put no DRM on it, it was a really fun game with lots of replayability. But it was one of the busiest gaming torrents on most sharing sites for weeks. I'm also willing to bet that most people who downloaded it illegally spent far more than $20 bucks that month on stuff of far less use to them.

I think that pirating, say Spore or something, is on different moral ground than pirating World of Goo.

 

[unangbangkay]

I just don't understand why people won't accept that money from sales is what keeps these people afloat.

And I just don't understand why people seem to assume that any argument against yet another "MY GAME DIDN'T SELL WELL IT MUST BE THOSE DIRTY PIRATES" declaration is an attempt to excuse theft.

I'm just saying that there are a lot of factors at work in determining WHAT does and does not add to and subtract from a game's bottom line, and that "piracy" is a dangerous catch-all being used by publishers and developers to justify more and more restrictive (and ineffective) forms of DRM, which punish legitimate consumers and only add ammunition to a pirate's "cause".

Furthermore, I'm not claiming that distributing games through every means possible is stupid, I'm arguing that Brighter Minds should have been picking its more carefully when selecting appropriate distribution pipelines for a game like World of Goo.

And again, that "82%" figure comes from the flawed assumption that every single instance of the game detected would have otherwise been a sale. Sure, Brighter Minds and 2D boy would have been richer if that were the case, but the real question that needs to be answered is whether that "82%" would transmogrify into money if piracy were somehow made impossible. I argue that this would not be the case, in large part due to the myriad factors involved in determining a game's bottom line.

We're discussing in hypotheticals at this point, and there's no way this argument can be resolved without a magic wand and/or time machine. All I can say now that's definite is that Brighter Minds did make the bright decision in partnering with Steam and Wiiware, but would probably have benefited as well by looking at the business models used by the casual games industry, as well as by sellers of office software and accessories like Stardock et al.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

zip

Fair enough. I'm just sad to see them go down despite their attempts to be fair to consumers. It's not like the dude or 2-D Boy ever pitched a fit about this.

 

[Blank__]

And again, that "82%" figure comes from the flawed assumption that every single instance of the game detected would have otherwise been a sale. Sure, Brighter Minds and 2D boy would have been richer if that were the case, but the real question that needs to be answered is whether that "82%" would transmogrify into money if piracy were somehow made impossible. I argue that this would not be the case, in large part due to the myriad factors involved in determining a game's bottom line.

Transmogrify is not really the right word to use there. I've read your statements, unanbangkay, and LB Jeffries, and, while I am inclined to agree with Jeffries a lot more, I dispute this assertion.

First, the 90% rate is accurate -- Kyle Gabler even went as far as describing exactly how he arrived at those numbers, and adjusted his formula [http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/] to account for all the different concerns on how his number is too high. With all of those adjustments made to the extreme, it only fell to 82%, like RPS reported (apparently). He wasn't even looking at torrent data -- though that is a great way to tell how many people are pirating a game -- he was using solid statistical methods to get a good estimate (yes, I understand it's still an estimate) on the piracy rate based on his own numbers. I feel it's even more accurate because it pertains to the demo, which is the only pirated copy I found floating around (and downloaded and played until I was able to buy it on the Wii) the torrent sites.

Second, yes, we all know that not everyone that steals a game would buy it if they could, BUT, many of them, I firmly believe, would have purchased the game if it had strong DRM (a la Steam) or was somehow magically un-piratable. Another indie developer who makes casual games did a lengthy study [http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350] on the piracy of his own games and was able to calculate that, for him, 1000 prevented pirates yields 1 sale. More awesome is the direct connection that changed DRM, resulting in broken keygens and cracks, yielded higher sales!

I would say this number is very low because not many people are going to go out of their way to pirate a casual puzzle game. BUT, if we make the assumption that most of the pirates are technologically proficient 12 to 30 year olds, the lost sales figure (1/1000) has the potential of being much higher (1/100? 1/50?) when the game being stolen is highly rated and popular. Deny this all you want, but I'd would say that is simply willful denial and a refusal to face the facts.

RPS brings up the question that, if piracy doesn't represent lost sales, what does it represent?

Finally, you dig at the publisher for putting WoG in boxes in Best Buys and the like, but I don't think that's a bad move. I don't know about stores in your area, but where I live there is plenty of empty shelf space in the computer games section. So it's not like Best Buy would be like, "Oh, this stupid indie game is taking away space from the next Madden game. Let's throw them in a bin for $5." when they still have plenty of room for AAA products, and lots of crappy $10 pet-raising type games -- which means WoG still has time to slowly trickle off the shelves. Some people (read: "old people", but definitely not limited to them), have this thing about owning a physical product. Maybe they don't understand how to use Steam or buy something through PayPal. Maybe this makes them uncomfortable. It doesn't seem that they made too many boxed copies, either (based on what I've seen and Kyle Gabler's picture [http://2dboy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/wheresworldofgoo.jpg]).

Though I say all that, I'm about to destroy my whole point with this paragraph: A trip to their website reveals that Brighter Minds Media develops and publishes children's games. Maybe the "voluntary Chapter 11" is from what others said earlier; the economy is flaky and parents aren't spending money on "Diner Dash 1 + 2 Platinum Edition," Calliou, or Thomas the Tank Engine games. World of Goo is probably their best selling product, definitely could have sold more without all the piracy, but is just one out of many items in their portfolio.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

This stuff sold like mad on both steam and the Wii. HOW MUCH MONEY DOES A GAME LIKE THIS NEED?!

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

You must work at EA...

I don't think wishing a publisher who mostly does kid's games and indie stuff didn't go bankrupt really paints me as a corporate shill.