Who Would Pirate the One-Cent Humble Indie Bundle?

[Modus Operandi]

Funny how everyone is concentrating on the unknown quantity of jerks, who, if the group is divided equally (which is the only sensible thing to do in the absence of any data) between them and the lazy people, people with several computers & people without bank cards, actually constitute only around 6%. 12% if we count lazy people together with the "genuine" jerks.

Another thing that no one seems to have noticed is that this actually proves the fact that not every download is a lost sale. The $0.01 price clearly shows that some people won't pay for some stuff no matter what. Which makes it idiotic to keep insisting that, if only there was some perfect DRM that kept non-payers away (without inconveniencing the payers), there would have been less jerks and more customers.

As Shamus observed in one of his articles (from another game's piracy statistics) -- there is absolutely nothing you can do to force more than a very occasional pirate to become a customer if he doesn't want to, while there are lots of ways to turn a customer into a pirate overnight (for example, treating him like one with DRM or calling him a jerk because he downloaded the game on more than 1 computer).

I'd actually have to say this is good news -- considering the previosly published (both bogus and valid) statistics of piracy rates around 90%, there is no choice but to announce that the developers have won this round by keeping the pirate percentage so low (some unknown part of 25%).

For the record, I did buy the bundle, even though I only know World of Goo (which I already purchased at full price when it came out) and every other game is a complete blank for me. But I believe in supporting both low-price and DRM-free digital downloads (as opposed to protected ones), so I basically just donated money to the cause. And I invite everyone who wants to see a DRM-free, friendly-priced digital future to do the same.

 

[s_glasgow99]

I'm going to go and say this straight up. I don't have a credit card. I just don't never have, want one eventually, but until my college years are up, it's not feasible for me to carry one. It's one more bill at the end of the month I may not have the funds to pay. So his locks out a lot of online sales opportunities for me. I REAAAAALLY want to take advantage of this opportunity, the deal is great and the causes, well, they're reason enough to donate.
That and PayPal can be a ***** to deal with if you don't have a credit card as well. You can latch it on to your bank account (done that before) but it takes close to 3 weeks for it to add funds to your balance, this makes things like EBay (my original intended use for PayPal) pretty much useless.

 

[MurderousToaster]

That's just bloody greedy.

Some of the cash goes to charity. Why would you want to pirate games which give cash to charities?

It's like nicking stuff from a charity shop; it's cheap as chips anyway, and all you're doing is making yourself seem amoral.

 

[John Funk]

So... get a friend to do it, and pay them back?

Perhaps that's exactly what they did? Seeing as how Rosen listed that as one of the reasons for the numbers being as they are?

You seem to be completely fixated on the assumption that every missing sale is a pirate laughing at them behind his/her keyboard and not any of the multiple other causes mentioned.

I see where you're coming from but that's not what I meant, really.

I'm perfectly aware that there are people who aren't exactly "pirates" getting this game for free. But you're horribly naive if you don't think that of those 25% unpaid downloads, a good number of them ARE pirates.

 

[Billion Backs]

Uhhhh let's see...

Perhaps they don't have access to a credit card for whatever reason?
Paying 0.01 cent does utterly nothing, especially when charities are involved - those money grabbing bastards, anyways. They'll just end up spending everything on their own stuff.

 

[oppp7]

It's lazy people. It's not the price, it's the amount of work they have to put into it. They view it as faster to just download the game than send in a penny. And they figure if they don't pay the price, the company is only out 1 cent.

But it's still fun to make fun of the pirates. This kind of thing makes their arguments invalid.

 

[FloodOne]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "ungrateful, self-entitled dicks," that's who.

Hmm. Wow, it's hard to believe that pirates would be this unprincipled. Man, it's almost like the rationalizations that pirates use for their behavior (DRM, price, etc) are actually just flimsy pretenses to get stuff for free. Can you possibly imagine that?!

And that's why I don't care that the uber publishers are being gigantic dicks with their zany DRM schemes.

One person can ruin it for everyone, you all know who you are.

By the by, people who use the excuse "I don't have a credit card" are foolish. A debit card is the same thing and it amounts to no monthly bill at all. If you're old enough for a bank account, you more than likely have a debit card which works the same way.

 

[Keava]

For people without creditcards..i find it very poor excuse. These days many banks offer pre-paid paycards that are perfect for online shopping without risking your actual savings account. Its that easy.^^

And for all the idiots that would rather pirate the bundle rather than pay at least that 0.01% for it... You are not even gamers, just go and find yourself another hobby, like banging your head against wall and see after how many hits you will make a hole <.<

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Well you know most people do actually do it because they just right out don't want to pay which just further proves the point the DRM is useless as some people crack it for a challenge and others so they don't have to pay.

 

[Captain Blackout]

Didn't pirate it, not going to pirate it, not going to support pirating it despite the fact that I've been called a jerk for being a pirate. Then again, if this was produced by **** ***** then I might go for it.

That being said, only 25%? I'm pretty sure I've seen pirating rates that are an order of magnitude of sales, not a percentage. Has it occured to anyone that maybe most pirates are children, or does anyone who not follow the rules regardless of maturity qualify as a jerk? I already know the answer...

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Maybe some people don't believe in intellectual monopoly laws. I know that isn't the party line here but that is worth thinking about as well.

And before you say "that's crazy talk" remember a large percentage of the worlds population sees charging of interest as an immoral act: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking

Different people believe in different things.

And another thing....an email address with a 2-3 hour single ip address expiring download link wouldn't inconvenience anyone. These guys are like the lazy old people on Halloween with the big bowl of candy and the note that says "take only one" being outraged when it is gone after the first 2-3 groups.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

It just goes to show you that some people pirate games and software just because they can and for no other reason.

At least it seems someone has their head on their head on their shoulders rather than up their ass regarding fighting piracy however.

 

[Weaver]

1) Some kids do not have a credit card or paypal account or amazon account. I well knew how to copy software when I was around 6 years old (though the internet didn't make it easy back then). So I'd likely assume there are lots of kids who still aren't old enough to even get a credit card who pirate it.

2) I didn't have a paypal or amazon account so I went the google payment route and it yelled at me saying google takes a larger chunk of their money and that I should use one of the other two payments. Well I don't care, I'm not going to setup a paypal or amazon account to buy this.

 

[Scobie]

DELETED

 

[Gaderael]

Wow, that's pretty fucking lame. I was jobless until today, and even I shelled out a few bucks for these fantastic games last week. C'mon you bunch of hosers, give them something!

 

[Weaver]

To all those people saying "Who's too cheap to pay one measly cent for this?", I would just like to point out that that argument works both ways. If a cent makes no difference to you, it makes no difference to the people you buy it from. Probably, the logic is "Is there much point going to the effort of paying for this just to give the developers one measly cent?", rather than people actually being that cheap.

I'm not trying to defend piracy. I'm just saying that a lot of this self-righteous harrumphing might be misdirected.

I'd say that makes sense too. Also I think the lowest you can pay is $0.10... not that there's much of a difference.

Wow, that's pretty fucking lame. I was jobless until today, and even I shelled out a few bucks for these fantastic games last week. C'mon you bunch of hosers, give them something!

I'm still jobless and I gave them money

 

[NeutralMunchHotel]

W...W...World of Goo? For a fifth of a penny! Time to fire up The Pi-

Seriously, you'd have to have a pretty twisted moral conscience to pirate that.

 

[fenrizz]

Just my 2 cent's:

It seems to me that the old pirate argument "they would not have bought the game anyway" really proves itself in this case.
Even for 1 cent the pirate is not buying your game.
Which suggests to me that the pirate would not have bought your game, even it it wasn't available for free.


I might buy that bundle though.
It is a very nice deal indeed.

EDIT:
Real-time Statistics
- Total raised $768,587
- Number of contributions 88,449
- Average contribution $8.69

That is not bad at all actually.

 

[BeholdMyGlory]

It's lazy people. It's not the price, it's the amount of work they have to put into it. They view it as faster to just download the game than send in a penny. And they figure if they don't pay the price, the company is only out 1 cent.

But it's still fun to make fun of the pirates. This kind of thing makes their arguments invalid.

Well, to be picky this is actually one of the arguments for pirating; convenience. Other services often can't compare to how simple it is to pirate something, especially in cases like this when it's a matter of simply following a direct link to download the bundle (as I understood it from the article). So this doesn't as much make their arguments invalid as give an example of one specific argument.