World Of Goo Suffers From 90% Piracy Rate
I usually refrain from ranting too much on these pages, but after seeing an article on Joystiq about the 90% piracy rate on World of Goo, I felt the need. This amazing game, created by the brilliant Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel is one of the finest examples of independent game making out there. When it came time to release the game, Gabler and Carmel made the decision to release it with no DRM in tact. They trusted that gamers would support them for this decision and it would seem that perhaps they were wrong.
For all the complaining by gamers and the bad press games like Spore and BioShock have gotten because of the use of DRM, I think this World of Goo situation proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that many of DRMs detractors are absolute hypocrites. They complain that they won't buy a game if it has DRM but given the opportunity, they will pirate a game without it. World of Goo is still doing well through WiiWare, Steam and the 2D Boy website, but a 90% piracy rate? That is absolutely appalling. And we're not even talking about a high ticket game here. We're talking a very reasonably priced title that is worth its weight in gold.
I can't say that I am a DRM supporter in its current form, but I am absolutely in favor of some kind of copyright protection for games like this. Kyle and Ron should not have to suffer because a faction of people get their panties in a bunch over a copyright. Obviously, it's a necessity.
If you haven't already purchased World of Goo, I urge you to check it out. If you are one of the people who has pirated this game, I double urge you to suck it up and pay for a copy. In the wise words of the immortal Tiny Dancer: "DRM SHOULD exist, and it should work. It just shouldn't also suck."
Fruit Brute
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 13 November 2008
· Comments (16)
Other stuff like this: drm, piracy, world of goo
Simply amazing. A slow-clap all around to the gaming industry, which is chock full of pirates. I don't understand the mentality of people who enjoy something but refuse to pay for it. Don't they understand that by doing that, if it continues to grow, will only hurt that product? I think the music industry knows that all to well...
Very much agreed... as long as people continue to prove that they can't be trusted, they shouldn't whine when people have to do things to protect themselves. I've never had a real problem dealing with DRM on anything I've paid for so I don't find it to be a problem. Meanwhile, if people keep stealing, then the small independent developer especially will find themselves without the money to go on. Look at what's happening with music...
If it makes you feel any better...
Your post was a nice little reminder to me that world of goo is out, and I promptly went and purchased it just now. Thanks!
I'm fine with DRM as long as its not Spore DRM.
My gosh, that's one of the stupidest things I've heard. Unless the game has a hidden phone-home where each person who plays the game can be tracked, there's no way of identifying a percentage. 90% of who pirate the game? The people who pirated the game aren't standing around being counted, are they? I mean, this is absolutely ridiculous. Inventory control (which is what a 90% piracy rate seeks to quantify) is based on the premise that you a) can accurately name how many you had to begin with, b) can accurately name how many you have sold and c) can accurately name how many you have at the end. With a digital distribution model (which is what the torrents are), there's no accurate means of determining how many copies are not being paid for.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's horrible that people would steal the game rather than buy it. In all reality, people who steal games are going to steal them regardless of any other factors (price, drm...) But to say the 90% is about right implies that the people who stole the game would have purchased it, and that's just not true.
Personally, I'm quickly getting tired of this story. We hear it with every PC game these days, crysis, spore, this one. What's the next game that has a staggeringly high piracy rate?
They need to creative incentives that encourage people to buy the genuine article. Like blizzard's buy the game genuine and you will get battle.net for free. Or offer free minor upgrades to genuine purchasers. And if your game is used or pirated you would have to pay a nominal amount of money to become a genuine player.
If companies use secure-rom or any crappy DRM system then they deserve to sell crap in PC games. Thats why PC Gaming is sorta dead to many people and I would rather buy console games.
^Actually, there's a pretty good chance that even if the game is pirated and not registered that if your PC is on a network (and they pretty much always are) there's some small amount of data going back to the company that says "someone is playing this;" just like you said, a hidden "phone home."
It's not that hard to do and it's probably buried somewhere in all that license agreement fine print that no one ever reads that they're doing just that. I'm sure they'd be curios to know how the DRM free experiment worked so it's something they'd naturally track.
@hephaestus: The nice thing about the Wii is that sales numbers are directly tied to the central server. Additionally, World of Goo has a callback system.
Easy way to tell how many people pirate the game. Lets say that a central server has been keeping records for 10k machines (as seen in the "tower of goo" clouds floating over the machine).
The central server would keep track of how many machines are sending information, so they can effectively see how many Wiis are playing the World of Goo (at least, Wii's attached to the internets)
If 10k machines callback to the tower of goo, and only 1k copies were purchased, it is safe to assume that 90% of those machines are running pirated copies of the software.
This number isn't 100% precise, as some machines might be running offline.
I'm also doubtfull about these numbers.
If you can believe the numbers game developers (who are totally impartial and not at all interested in seeing DRM stick around, right?) bring out, nearly every gamer is pirating. Frankly, I just don't believe it.
And I have no problem with there being an anti-piracy messure. But I don't agree that it should make it feel as if you're just borrowing a game.
i would buy it on wiiware if i could, only i can't! they decided not to sell it on wiiware in europe... maybe some people in europe chose for the homebrewchannel because of this i dunno.
my remedy :buy a ps3 and forgot all bout this lil game. i'll try it again in a year or two perhaps!
another thing; starting next december, renting games will be illegal in my country of residence. Gameprices keep on getting higher, no more option to try out games or whatever... i guess actions like these will make piracy issues rise even more :/
One of the first rules of science: Proportion your beliefs to the evidence. 90% is a very, very large claim and the only support is torrents with a few hundred seeders? It sounds like the game isn't available in Europe, how many were from there (in which case it is their own fault for not having a world wide release).
According to one torrent site which tracks number of completions there have been an approximate total of 50,000 tormented downloads. Assuming they are all unique, that represents roughly 5,000 sales.
@ hephaestus: Marry me?
These numbers are vastly exaggerated: pirates would never have bought the game in the first place, so their complaint about lost sales is void.
From reviews and videos I've seen, this game's not really my thing.
If I did buy it, I would do so through Steam. The fact that they put no DRM on it has my attention. They -care- about their customers and that sentiment is now mutual should they release a game of interest.
To be fair to the guys at 2D Boy it didn't look like they were particularly complaining about it but merely commenting.
I agree that it wouldn't be that hard to tell if somebody has stolen this game - at least on the PC. I don't know of anyone that has a PC that isn't connected to a network these days and one of the games large features involves connecting up with the servers. They should be able to work out then how many people are playing and how many people have bought the game. It doesn't have to be done by torrents either. I can see a VERY obvious way that if one person bought this game the world and their friend would then be able to steal it. So the whole idea about there being 500 seeds and whatnot is only part of the story.
I personally find it awful. These two guys have worked so hard on this game and to have that all just taken away from them? It just isn't fair. There is no excuse I'll accept I'm afraid. It's just wrong.
I think it's worth remembering that a portion of people who steal the game would not have bought it if that were their only way to play it. I wonder what that percentage would look like...
To the people saying this number is meaningless and the pirates wouldn't have bought the game anyways (kwyjibo): well, yeah. 2D Boy themselves (at least Kyle did) said that the pirates probably wouldn't have bought the game anyways. They're not complaining about lost sales. They're just talking about the percentage of people playing the game who didn't pay for it.
90% does seem very, very high. After some outcry as to how the number was reached (it was only supposed to be a rough estimate in the first place), they went back & refined their methods, arriving at a more accurate estimate. It's still somewhere like 86%. http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/
Nexus: "If you can believe the numbers game developers (who are totally impartial and not at all interested in seeing DRM stick around, right?)"
They're actually /not/ interested in seeing DRM stick around. World of Goo has no DRM, and Kyle Gabler said in the comments of the original post that he still thinks DRM is a pointless endeavor. Even given these #s.
Now if you'll excuse me, I just found out that the OS X version has been released, so I'm going to go buy the game a second time.
Just to point out guys, Sins of a Solar Empire, which is suppose to be a reasonably big hit, has no DRM either they say. It's actually part of Stardock's mission statement, they believe in minimal DRM and not treating customers like criminals. I think that Stardock's Impulse is the future of gaming, and it doesn't require it's presence for the games it supports as I've heard Steam does. (albeit, I heard that from Stardock).