Developer Leaks Own Game to Pirates

[antipunt]

Doing so implies that piracy is tolerable, which it isn't.

WAIT A SECOND!

Posting stuff to a torrent site is completely legal, and completely legal to download, as long as the uploader has copyright over said files.

So this is NOT piracy. He's just made his game legally free.

No comrade--your property belongs to the people who have vowed to protect your property from piracy! The sooner you surrender your rights, the better we can make sure they are not violated!

*chuckles* I lean more towards this side of the argument. I realize this whole piracy thing is rather controversial, but that's jut the thing. It's controversial.

Maybe Tero Virtala drank a little too much coffee and Red Bull before his panel?

Hrm...opinions opinions.

 

[RoseBridge]

I have this revolutionary idea. Basically, instead of leaking your full version of the game (minus the online leaderboards) onto torrents, they could instead release a short segment of the game - one or two levels or up until a certain point, and put that up for download for free so people could download it legally off their site and see if they like the introductory product before they buy the full version.

I call this cool new idea a "Demo". What do you guys think?

I like where your going with this, this could be big!

 

[konkwastaken]

Or they could post Trojans on torrent sites with the game as a label, and then when people download it, it'll hijack their computer with tons of... Gay Porn... Or something...

Plus even if it is illegal, what are the pirates going to do about it? "Oh, well I was just ermm downloading this thing I thought was a game which is technically "not legal" when I found out it was a virus...".

People already do that, all the companies have to do is sit back and watch it unfold.

Good idea. Pirates get the SP, then if hey like the game they buy it for leaderboards/mp. Good move I say.

I agree, i pirate most games before i buy them, and if i believe they are in fact worth it i go and buy that game to support the devs. If i think a game is terrible then i will play it for 5-20 mins and throw it away, its like test driving a car.

i refuse to pay blindly for something, sending money to the developers of a game if they don't deserve it.
e.g. I played gta4 for less than 15 mins, got bored threw it away. CoD4 i pirated, played, thoroughly enjoyed and so i bought the game.

Also, before anyone brings any issues up they may be addressed in the following:

Who am i to decide whether a company deserves money for their hard work?
I am a paying customer who will reward them for doing good and not support them when they churn out a heap of shit.

Do you actually get rid of pirated games if you don't like them?
Yes, why would i bother keeping it; its worthless to me.

Do you HONESTLY buy them if they are good or are you just saying that?
I do honestly buy games if i believe them to be worth it, the following is a list of the games i have actually bought.

Tekken 6
Call of Duty Modern Warfare
Gears of War
Gears of War 2
Saints row
Saints row 2
Soul Calibur 4
Burnout Paradise
Burnout Revenge
Red Faction
Assassins Creed
Fable 2
And a few more that i can't remember off the top of my head.

I believe my method of testing games is totally justified, and i do the same when it comes to TV shows, movies and music. Also, i do invite people to share their opinions with me, if you too think its fair or unfair.

 

[AndyFromMonday]

"Without online leaderboards, which Virtala claims is the "soul" of the game. "

And "Pirates" totally give a crap about online leaderboards...

 

[Epitome]

How about a much less preachy arguement next time Tito, serious you took a piece of news and spun it into a rant. Did it ever occur that maybe the company is trying something differant, that every single method sofar has failed to even slow piracy rates? Or have you ever considered that it is downloaders as a demographic that spend the most money on media every year. Actually going after them would be suicide for the industry, or what about the abuse of power that goes on with the publishers and their oligoply on the gobal distribution systems? I can respect anbody having an opinion, if you think pirates are the bane of the industry then thats yours, I think they are merely a represenation of an insatiable lust for media bound within fiscal constraints, I bet if the prices were lowered less people would pirate, basic economic,supply vs demand, but if the publishers are attempting to use their oligopoly to artifically raise prices, then pirates will do the free market thing and bypass them by making supply infinate.

This story was supposed to be about a company trying something differant, recognising that people who pirate their game will do so with or without ther consent and maybe it makes better sense to engage with them than to persecute them. Its not negociating with terrorist we are talking about here, its a fanbase who dont have the means to sate their appetite for media and maybe asking just for what they can give instead of chasing through the courts for money they wont ever pay is the best option. That said i can see flaws in this plan, large gaping ones, but it at leasts represents an attempt by the industry to find middle ground with its consumers.

 

[Emphraim]

I'll go against the general dislike of what this company did, and say I do like how they leaked the game online. Ironclad and Stardock put no copy protection on their games, and yet they meet, and often surpass their sales goals. If you let people try out your game, they will buy it if they like it.

It's the reason why I have Sins of a Solar Empire, Galactic Civilizations, and now this game.

 

[DazZ.]

Or they could post Trojans on torrent sites with the game as a label, and then when people download it, it'll hijack their computer with tons of... Gay Porn... Or something...

Plus even if it is illegal, what are the pirates going to do about it? "Oh, well I was just ermm downloading this thing I thought was a game which is technically "not legal" when I found out it was a virus...".

That wouldn't work, the way torrents are you need people seeding it for other people to download it. If it's a virus, people are going to delete it and defiantly not seed it. Torrented virus' don't really catch on via torrents. Could inject the first few computers with the virus then unless it spreads by itself the virus will die.

What the pirates would do about it is just get rid of it themselves or say "Hey, my computers got a virus. Can you fix it?".
The person fixing it won't care where it came from, 99% of the virus' he fixes will be from porn, I doubt he would even ask.

 

[Dirty Apple]

In my mind, posting even a gimped version of your game to pirate sites is counterproductive to attempting to earn money developing said games. Doing so implies that piracy is tolerable, which it isn't.

One might argue that the only thing one can really do is tolerate piracy. It might well be one of the few things that people actually do do in response to piracy. Lots of people have spent money fighting piracy, inventing complex DRM systems, only to have those games go on to get poor reviews and poor performing sales, and then pirates crack the DRM and get the full game for free regardless. The only real 100% solution would be total Big Brother monitoring of all computers all the time to prevent users from taking illegal actions, which would totally ruin the nature of the internet. And even then, that wouldn't really work as hot as you'd think, since someone would develop a work around.

In fact, the only incentives I've seen for people to not pirate are indeed policies that include toleration of piracy. I'm talking about DLC and rewards/goodies for legitimate customers. The gist of those are "If you buy the game, you get the game plus extra stuff. If you pirate the game, you get the game." At no point does it say "You can't pirate this game," in fact, it acknowledges that.

Also, your argument seems to be a study in self-contradiction. You recognize that pirates aren't paying customers, yet then you turn around in the above quote and suggest that the rate of Piracy has a negative correlation on the rate of Sales. That's not proven fact by any mean. In fact, pirates aren't ever going to be paying customers. In accounting, the term for it is "shrinkage," and it's the rate at which inventory disappears but is not sold. It's recognized as an unwanted, but ultimately pretty permanent (where there is law, there are law-breakers) part of the nature of selling a good. The trouble is because nothing physical is being stolen, lots of people seem to feel that piracy is somehow extremely different from shoplifting. But the data indicates that pirates are choosing between getting the game at no cost, or not getting the game at all. They're not a part of the consumer-base. They never will be. You can accept that these people are criminals, but for some reason, you fail to recognize the nature of crime.

Another fun fact I'd like to point out is there's no way to know if the developers torrenting their own game had a negative or positive effect on the sales of Trials. So your comments are as much conjecture as Mr. Virtala's reasons for torrenting a modified version of the game in the first place. I personally think this makes a lot of sense. He knows his game is going to be pirated at some point. But if he acts first, he can control the nature of the piracy. Here, he's acted to offer a slightly restricted version, not one that would make another pirate actively pursue pirating a full copy, but also not one that gives the full game's capabilities to the pirates. He didn't give them Trials, he game them Trials: Special Pirate Edition.

The only argument I can see against what your saying is that with shoplifting or similar cases of theft, there's an inherent risk that deters the "honest" thieves. By this I mean, people who are only stealing because an opportunity presented itself. With P2P game downloading, there is no risk only a time invesment.

I used to download files all the time, but I eventually got to the point where I couldn't rationalize the action anymore. Theft is theft, and sometimes you just gotta save up your sheckles if you really want a game.

 

[YuheJi]

I'm not sure if that would work for most games, but it does seem like something that would work for Trials 2: SE. I bought the game, and the biggest motivation for me was rising up on the leaderboard and beating all of my friend's scores. So the leaderboards do mean something in that game.

 

[In Limbo]

If you can't beat them, join them. This isn't a great example of how to do it, but the intent was there.

 

[the1ultimate]

My feelings about this are somewhere between "Cool! A company that supports piracy for people who don't care about online features!" and "These guys aren't as smart as they think they are."

Of course it probably won't affect sales too drastically, since it would have been pirated anyway, and the regular pirates would be the ones looking for this game on pirate sites.

 

[jigs160]

now here's an idea:
what if a developer leaked the game puts a tracker/virus to the torrent and put it every where?

 

[Amnestic]

now here's an idea:
what if a developer leaked the game puts a tracker/virus to the torrent and put it every where?

1) The virus would never get past the first few downloads. It'd be stripped out and seeded without it.
2) Nothing at all. If the developer puts the game up on torrents, there are probably legal implications as to whether the game becomes Freeware or not as they are essentially offering it for free.
3) The company gets sued for destruction of property (The torrenter's computers) or something similar
4) No one downloads it in the first place because it wasn't put out by one of the more well known pirating groups.

Or a mixture of the above.

 

[Laura.]

I don't think it is such a bad idea. Many friends of mine have been transformed from pirates to paying customers (granted, only with steam discounts, but still paying). And it was all because of online multiplayer modes and other advantages original games have.
Maybe the leaderboards are not enough, but it's a start.
I think good prices and other advantages work better than any DRM ever will.

 

[HobbesMkii]

In my mind, posting even a gimped version of your game to pirate sites is counterproductive to attempting to earn money developing said games. Doing so implies that piracy is tolerable, which it isn't.

One might argue that the only thing one can really do is tolerate piracy. It might well be one of the few things that people actually do do in response to piracy. Lots of people have spent money fighting piracy, inventing complex DRM systems, only to have those games go on to get poor reviews and poor performing sales, and then pirates crack the DRM and get the full game for free regardless. The only real 100% solution would be total Big Brother monitoring of all computers all the time to prevent users from taking illegal actions, which would totally ruin the nature of the internet. And even then, that wouldn't really work as hot as you'd think, since someone would develop a work around.

In fact, the only incentives I've seen for people to not pirate are indeed policies that include toleration of piracy. I'm talking about DLC and rewards/goodies for legitimate customers. The gist of those are "If you buy the game, you get the game plus extra stuff. If you pirate the game, you get the game." At no point does it say "You can't pirate this game," in fact, it acknowledges that.

Also, your argument seems to be a study in self-contradiction. You recognize that pirates aren't paying customers, yet then you turn around in the above quote and suggest that the rate of Piracy has a negative correlation on the rate of Sales. That's not proven fact by any mean. In fact, pirates aren't ever going to be paying customers. In accounting, the term for it is "shrinkage," and it's the rate at which inventory disappears but is not sold. It's recognized as an unwanted, but ultimately pretty permanent (where there is law, there are law-breakers) part of the nature of selling a good. The trouble is because nothing physical is being stolen, lots of people seem to feel that piracy is somehow extremely different from shoplifting. But the data indicates that pirates are choosing between getting the game at no cost, or not getting the game at all. They're not a part of the consumer-base. They never will be. You can accept that these people are criminals, but for some reason, you fail to recognize the nature of crime.

Another fun fact I'd like to point out is there's no way to know if the developers torrenting their own game had a negative or positive effect on the sales of Trials. So your comments are as much conjecture as Mr. Virtala's reasons for torrenting a modified version of the game in the first place. I personally think this makes a lot of sense. He knows his game is going to be pirated at some point. But if he acts first, he can control the nature of the piracy. Here, he's acted to offer a slightly restricted version, not one that would make another pirate actively pursue pirating a full copy, but also not one that gives the full game's capabilities to the pirates. He didn't give them Trials, he game them Trials: Special Pirate Edition.

The only argument I can see against what your saying is that with shoplifting or similar cases of theft, there's an inherent risk that deters the "honest" thieves. By this I mean, people who are only stealing because an opportunity presented itself. With P2P game downloading, there is no risk only a time invesment.

I used to download files all the time, but I eventually got to the point where I couldn't rationalize the action anymore. Theft is theft, and sometimes you just gotta save up your sheckles if you really want a game.

There's a risk to downloading files, especially on Peer-to-Peer. They can track torrents to discover what IP Addresses are sharing, and then charge those people with the crime. That's what the MPAA and the Music Industry tried to do (and still engages in to a far lesser extent) until it discovered that people who steal generally don't have a whole lot of cash to begin with, and big business taking money from poor people has never really been very popular (it also accidentally publicized P2P sharing to a large audience). I'll bet the ability to catch people pirating data is higher than it is to catch a shoplifter. The trouble is that it's done so widely spread that they have to focus on big fish, people who take way too much, because they'd be overwhelmed trying to prosecute all the people who download an album here or a game there.

Frankly, I don't really see any rationalization either for it except for one: abandonware or games no longer in production. It does Broderbund no good (not that they exist anymore) for me to buy a used copy of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? or Maxis any good if I get the original SimCity (or even SimCity 2000) via resale. They'll never see a penny of that cash, and I'll probably pay only a penny anyways. Lots of those old classics exist almost exclusively in the realm of people's computers, who have painstakingly saved them over the years, and figured out Vista compatibility. In those cases, I say let the pirates do their thing, and hopefully preserve them for later on.

 

[Dirty Apple]

There's a risk to downloading files, especially on Peer-to-Peer. They can track torrents to discover what IP Addresses are sharing, and then charge those people with the crime. That's what the MPAA and the Music Industry tried to do (and still engages in to a far lesser extent) until it discovered that people who steal generally don't have a whole lot of cash to begin with, and big business taking money from poor people has never really been very popular (it also accidentally publicized P2P sharing to a large audience). I'll bet the ability to catch people pirating data is higher than it is to catch a shoplifter. The trouble is that it's done so widely spread that they have to focus on big fish, people who take way too much, because they'd be overwhelmed trying to prosecute all the people who download an album here or a game there.

You've just argued my point for me here. While it is possible to track downloads and trace them back to the orginators, this is infrequently done at best. Any authorities who may look to press charges wouldn't be after the addicts, but rather the dealers. Those high volume P2P users with a mind for re-distribution and re-sale.

On a side note, I find it truly refreshing to have a level headed, intelligent argument in a forum setting. Your arguments have been succinct and pertinent. Thank you.

 

[Something Amyss]

I think the article raises a point, though it may be clumsy in doing so. I think the point is less saying it's tolerable and more that publishers are outright accepting and condoning piracy. Then again, I'm not completely sure that matters. The only way it would really be detrimental is if there was some sort of way to verify people are downloading instead of purchasing because of such a deliberate leak. That's assuming anyone did anyway, since downloads don't automatically correlate to sales. Both of those notions are mentioned above, so it's not new information per se.

It seems likely this may change nothing, except in an era of publishers, developers, and manufacturers all being jerks, they might come off as decent guys for the effort. That might have some real currency, but I wouldn't bank on it.