Brit

@Bluebreaker
This is the amount of venture capital going into games, not the amount of revenue. For comparison, wikipedia says the game industry revenue was 11.7 billion in 2008. The amount of venture capitol has more to do with people investing in the industry and making guesses about how profitable it will be.

Also, for all we know, there's a lot more companies in the video game market, so even if there's an increase in revenue, it's spread over more workers. If that was true (it may or may not be), then passing on the savings may not quite work. In other words, if there's a 20% increase of revenue in the industry, but there are 20% more workers, then dropping prices will mean less money per worker. But, this is just conjecture.

> "Piracy is a major issue in selling PC games"
> There's no empirical data to support this in any industry.

Are you questioning the claim about the high rates of piracy on the PC (for which there's plenty of empirical data)? Or, are you questioning whether or not piracy is harming game sales?

> "According to the developer's blog site, " ... only 5-15% of
> Machinarium players actually paid for the game." "
>
> On the blog, it said this was "estimated from feedback they
> received"... which doesn't really mean anything. It's a made > up statistic.

Meh. The piracy numbers match up pretty well with what other PC developers are saying as well. World of Goo placed their piracy rate around 85-90% based on IP addresses. And Stardock said that 85% of the people trying to play Demigod on the first day of release were running pirated versions (presumably based on registration codes). The Modern Warfare 2 numbers (for PC) were something like 4 million copies pirated (based on numbers I saw at a pro-piracy website) and 270,000 copies sold - which would place them at a 94% piracy rate. This means Machinarium numbers are pretty well in line with other numbers I've seen. I don't see why you're raising doubts about them.

> Sales numbers matter, not piracy numbers.
Yes and no. First, there's a 24x difference in the sales numbers I cited: 270,000 versus 6 million. Second, depending on where piracy percentages go, it can increase or reduce those numbers. Given the general trajectory of piracy, I'm not sure that I'd want to place bets on sales numbers in five years because who knows where piracy will be then.

> Also, Blizzard and Valve seem to be doing just fine. In fact, Blizzard could probably buy Epic just with their lunch money.

Blizzard makes most of their money from WOW. Diablo 2 (best selling PC RPG of all time) sold 4 million copies. Starcraft (best selling PC RTS of all time) sold 11 million copies. WOW has over 11.5 million players (in the end of 2008). I'm sure you can quickly see that WOW earns more money every few months than Starcraft and Diablo earned through their entire sales history. Blizzard and Valve are also at the pinnacle of PC game sales. The fact that the "top dogs" of PC gaming are doing well isn't a very good measure of PC Gaming as a whole.

Well, there's two issues here. You raised the issue of whether or not it's worth porting to the PC if 270,000 sales are enough to pay for the port. Yeah, maybe it would be, although it's also hard to see so many pirates grabbing the game - meaning that you're losing sales compared to what they would've been without piracy. Game companies would feel like they're half business and half a public charity for pirates.

Second, there's the more general issue of selling games on the PC versus the XBox 360. Looking at these piracy numbers, if you had the option of bringing your game to one platform, you'd want to go with the XBox over the PC. It's no wonder that companies are starting with an XBox version, and then deciding afterwards whether or not to make a PC port. The PC is looking more and more like a second-class platform because of piracy.

To put PC versus XBox piracy into perspective, here's what a recent article said:

PC version of Modern Warfare 2 was pirated 4.1 million times, and sold 270,000 copies in the US. The Xbox 360 version was pirated 970,000 times, and had six million sales in shops over the same period.

Source: http://www.gamesradar.com/f/drm-necessary-evil-or-consumer-insult/a-20100518133549635045

> "You should [radio broadcasters are] providing all this creativity to MILLIONS of people EVERY DAY for ABSOLUTELY FREE. "
Radio stations are doing ads, and then they turn around and pay the creators (you do know that radio broadcasters pay, don't you?). They also have a limited number of songs they can play (this is to drive sales). This system works well enough for cheap-to-produce stuff like some television shows and music, as long as you've got lots of listeners/viewers. Have you noticed that movies in the theater are higher quality than made-for-TV movies? Have you noticed that HBO has higher quality shows than regular TV? What you're seeing is the fact that ad-based models can only go so far. And, let's be clear - pirates aren't paying or watching ads. They're just getting 100% free entertainment.

> "The record industry has no shortage of cash, quit being a hypocrite."
Piracy has to do with a lot more than music.

> "You "musicians" have so gotten away from the spirit of music it makes me sick."
I'm not a musician.

> "All I have to say to anyone still worried about this, is grow up and join the modern effing age."
The age of not paying people?

Obviously, someone has to pay for the creation of new music, movies, software, etc. I resent the fact that pirates think they should be allowed to get it for free while we pay. They are essentially riding our coattails - reaping the rewards from the fact that we respect the law. Sure, we could become like them, but it would be wrong and it would undermine the creation of new works. So, I have very little sympathy for the fact that they are being harassed; they deserve it.

> "Your comment assumes that these stores are actually available in all countries."
No, my comment is that people continue to pirate even when there are decent download services - case in point: World of Goo. Sure, piracy is increased by a lack of good download services, I'm just saying that's not all there is to the situation. I know plenty of people who pirate because it means getting stuff for free that they would've otherwise paid for, and because it means getting stuff they wouldn't have paid for at all (*which is, in my opinion, less harmful than the first category, though I'm not condoning it).

> "BREIN - the Dutch anti piracy group - has worked hard to stifle and kill off any attempts to set up a decent download service."
Weird. I can understand why cinemas would want to protect ticket sales by delaying DVD sales and rentals, but I can't understand why they would want to stop a download service in general.

How does your comment apply to "Students will open and maintain accounts on torrent sites, hang around forums and IRC channels, maintain and develop link-scanning bots, and issue take-down notices for infringing material."? It sounds more like you're arguing against DRM than the topic at hand.

> "If it's made easier for people to buy this content (as opposed to the effort involved in copying it), I think that they will buy."

Since there are people constantly working to make piracy easier, and piracy doesn't come with the inconvenience of paying (not only do you not have to pay, but you don't have to bother with typing your credit card number anywhere), from a convenience perspective, I don't see how the content creators can really compete with piracy. Also, piracy hasn't subsided with the existence of legal download services (iTunes, Valve, etc). Heck, World of Goo sold their game directly off their website with no DRM and it was still pirated like crazy (their estimate was that 90% of the people playing their game were pirates). Is there anything more that they could've done to make buying easier?

What they seem to be doing with this new strategy is making it more difficult and risky to pirate, which in the "pirate vs pay" equation shifts towards making the "pay" option more attractive by making the pirate one less attractive.