I’m not going to purchase the document to find out, and the abstract doesn’t really cover it, but I’m curious what the methodology was here. I seriously doubt that piracy is that prevalent. It’s possible that people are upset with certain companies and aim to pirate their games, and the fact that those companies are the same ones that use Denuvo is happenstance. It’s also possible that they’re using total downloads of pirated copies vs. total sales as their statistic, which is misleading, because I’d wager the majority of folks who pirate the game would not have purchased it if it wasn’t available to download for free.
I’d also be curious if the price of the game was a factor; I imagine more people are looking to pirate a game priced at $70 than one priced at $40, for example.
Really, there’s too many factors to consider here and I don’t think there’s a reasonable way to say how many folks who pirated a given game actually would have purchased it.
Other studies have shown that piracy actually leads to increased sales in video games. Very curious to know who funded this study. I bet they’re linked to big game publishers and/or Denuvo themselves.
I pirated NieR Automata having absolutely no idea anything about Yoko Taro or his games.
Long story short, I bought NieR Automata 7 times, NieR Replicant 1.22 3 times (including preordering the more expensive White Snow Collectors Edition), imported a Japanese copy of NieR Gestalt and bought it on the Xbox backwards compatibility store, and spent money on the mobile gacha game not even for characters, but literally just to give Square my money and say “I want more Yoko Taro games.”
Nobody can ever convince me that piracy causes companies to lose money long term if they actually make a good product. Piracy is the best thing consumers can do to protect themselves from a bad purchase, and trying to prevent it is a predatory practice to increase sales to people who then cannot return the product for a refund if they don’t like it.
Sometimes I wonder to myself: why pay in advance? Why can’t we get back our money because something is not good as we thought it would be?
You pirated an ebook? You can buy it after reading if you enjoyed it.
A game? Same.
And so on.
I like that indie games are bringing demos back. Like actually playable demos, not like a tech demo, the first 1-5 levels, so you can get a proper feel for the game before you shell out. 6 of the last 9 demos I played in the past year resulted in me purchasing the game.
There was some interesting study how much % of games we buy (on sales) we don’t play. The reality is we can get bored and have a new shiny thing. And also we are limited by finite time.
In elementary school, back in the days when only 2 or so kids in a class had a computer I learned to pirate software, games, and movies my parents said we didn’t have money for. By highschool having a computer was more common and I became one of the nerd heroes by teaching others how to pirate games and avoid viruses, and save their allowance/meager part time pay.
Once I had my first decently paying ‘real’ job I just bought my own games on steam and while a lot of friends stopped gaming they still bought movies and eventually netflix subscriptions because it was cheap, easy, and had customer support included. Now everything is becoming shit again so all the corporate types are inventing bullshit reasons for the losses they created on their own.
It’s possible that people are upset with certain companies and aim to pirate their games
I’m kinda the opposite. I won’t even pirate some companies games because those company’s suck that much…ea and Ubisoft being major players in the slop I don’t even pirate.
I will pirate almost every other game though, as a full version demo. If it’s good, or I boot it up more then once I tend to buy it. Otherwise, I won’t even give it a second though.
The 2 hour refund window is sometimes not enough time to find out how trash a game is, so I use my above full version demo method.
Yeap! On principal, I won’t buy any game that dumps pre-orders of games on Steam in lieu of exclusivity, from other non-Epic platforms, even if I liked the game series before. For instance, I have really liked the Metro series of games. However, as soon as the third game was announced as exclusive to Epic, I refused to purchase it on Steam even after the exclusivity deal expired. It didn’t help that the creator of the Metro games caught wind of people refusing to buy the game and threatened to not make anymore if sales bombed on Epic.
I’m just so tired of all the entities in this world that would rather make a quick buck, then milking as much from the player-base as possible, while standing in the way of me eeking out some sort of happiness in this shit-ass capitalistic hellscape. Would I rather be doing more creative shit with my free time or enjoying life in some capacity? Sure, but until we tear down this shitty pyramid scheme our society has bought into, games are the one thing that I still enjoy. I watch them actively deleting content for games I love, or making the content only available on specific platforms, and it makes me want to flay these wealthy fucks and leave them for the crows…
Not many companies release this number, the only one I remember is of World of Goo, which is pretty old now. They mentioned that there was about 90% piracy rate for their game.
I’m not going to purchase the document to find out, and the abstract doesn’t really cover it, but I’m curious what the methodology was here. I seriously doubt that piracy is that prevalent. It’s possible that people are upset with certain companies and aim to pirate their games, and the fact that those companies are the same ones that use Denuvo is happenstance. It’s also possible that they’re using total downloads of pirated copies vs. total sales as their statistic, which is misleading, because I’d wager the majority of folks who pirate the game would not have purchased it if it wasn’t available to download for free.
I’d also be curious if the price of the game was a factor; I imagine more people are looking to pirate a game priced at $70 than one priced at $40, for example.
Really, there’s too many factors to consider here and I don’t think there’s a reasonable way to say how many folks who pirated a given game actually would have purchased it.
Other studies have shown that piracy actually leads to increased sales in video games. Very curious to know who funded this study. I bet they’re linked to big game publishers and/or Denuvo themselves.
I once pirated Cuphead and loved it so much that I felt bad not supporting and buying it. It was only after First Isle.
I pirated NieR Automata having absolutely no idea anything about Yoko Taro or his games.
Long story short, I bought NieR Automata 7 times, NieR Replicant 1.22 3 times (including preordering the more expensive White Snow Collectors Edition), imported a Japanese copy of NieR Gestalt and bought it on the Xbox backwards compatibility store, and spent money on the mobile gacha game not even for characters, but literally just to give Square my money and say “I want more Yoko Taro games.”
Nobody can ever convince me that piracy causes companies to lose money long term if they actually make a good product. Piracy is the best thing consumers can do to protect themselves from a bad purchase, and trying to prevent it is a predatory practice to increase sales to people who then cannot return the product for a refund if they don’t like it.
Sometimes I wonder to myself: why pay in advance? Why can’t we get back our money because something is not good as we thought it would be? You pirated an ebook? You can buy it after reading if you enjoyed it. A game? Same. And so on.
I like that indie games are bringing demos back. Like actually playable demos, not like a tech demo, the first 1-5 levels, so you can get a proper feel for the game before you shell out. 6 of the last 9 demos I played in the past year resulted in me purchasing the game.
That’s how drug dealers gets you addicted haha
And they do it because it works. It builds good will, shows that the product is high quality, clean and pure.
If it didn’t have an official demo, I “acquired” it before I bought it.
I don’t buy games unless I know it will be something I like.
There was some interesting study how much % of games we buy (on sales) we don’t play. The reality is we can get bored and have a new shiny thing. And also we are limited by finite time.
In elementary school, back in the days when only 2 or so kids in a class had a computer I learned to pirate software, games, and movies my parents said we didn’t have money for. By highschool having a computer was more common and I became one of the nerd heroes by teaching others how to pirate games and avoid viruses, and save their allowance/meager part time pay.
Once I had my first decently paying ‘real’ job I just bought my own games on steam and while a lot of friends stopped gaming they still bought movies and eventually netflix subscriptions because it was cheap, easy, and had customer support included. Now everything is becoming shit again so all the corporate types are inventing bullshit reasons for the losses they created on their own.
I’m kinda the opposite. I won’t even pirate some companies games because those company’s suck that much…ea and Ubisoft being major players in the slop I don’t even pirate.
I will pirate almost every other game though, as a full version demo. If it’s good, or I boot it up more then once I tend to buy it. Otherwise, I won’t even give it a second though.
The 2 hour refund window is sometimes not enough time to find out how trash a game is, so I use my above full version demo method.
Yeap! On principal, I won’t buy any game that dumps pre-orders of games on Steam in lieu of exclusivity, from other non-Epic platforms, even if I liked the game series before. For instance, I have really liked the Metro series of games. However, as soon as the third game was announced as exclusive to Epic, I refused to purchase it on Steam even after the exclusivity deal expired. It didn’t help that the creator of the Metro games caught wind of people refusing to buy the game and threatened to not make anymore if sales bombed on Epic.
I’m just so tired of all the entities in this world that would rather make a quick buck, then milking as much from the player-base as possible, while standing in the way of me eeking out some sort of happiness in this shit-ass capitalistic hellscape. Would I rather be doing more creative shit with my free time or enjoying life in some capacity? Sure, but until we tear down this shitty pyramid scheme our society has bought into, games are the one thing that I still enjoy. I watch them actively deleting content for games I love, or making the content only available on specific platforms, and it makes me want to flay these wealthy fucks and leave them for the crows…
Not many companies release this number, the only one I remember is of World of Goo, which is pretty old now. They mentioned that there was about 90% piracy rate for their game.
How would they even know?
You can get a floor of an estimate if people don’t remove stuff that phones home.
Only if the part phoning home does send some sort of unique id.
Source IP.
Between NAT, CGNAT and the same instance checking in more than once that is not a very reliable way to count anything.
You asked how they could tell and I’m giving a best guess. I’m not saying it’s a perfect approach.