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Comment by chaz | Hacker News Reader

World of Goo launched on Steam and still saw 90% piracy.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/my-software-is-bein...

This is the kind of thing that boggles my mind. World of Goo was a huge success! How the piracy rate fits into the relative success or failure of World of Goo is not at all clear. I don't see how anyone can believe that there's a possible reality where World of Goo would be just as successful as it was with a 0% piracy rate, and where information exchange is free. You can't have both! If World of Goo had made a pittance and its developers had died in poverty, maybe there would have been an argument to make there. But as it is, that piracy figure is just a number that has no tangible connection to the number of possible sales in a world where piracy is either morally abhorrent to everyone, or technically impossible. And that world is something for dystopian science fiction to explore, not one that I would ever wish to experience.

I'm not saying that they missed out on 90% of their revenue (though it's fair to say they lost out on some revenue). Rather, they did everything right: a fun game that anyone can play, great press, broad distribution through multiple channels, and no DRM. And yet a huge audience still saw it fit to pirate their game.

It'll be interesting to watch the evolution of game distribution. Xbox and iOS are massively growing platforms that also bring built-in DRM that's significantly harder to circumvent.

Your point is valid, but it is still worth noting that a huge audience also did buy their game. They just sold their millionth game on the App Store alone. http://2dboy.com/2012/01/09/one-million-downloads/

Yes, and the price is dramatically lower as well: $2.99. I paid $19.99 on Steam three years ago. I'd be curious if they could do it all over again today, if they would do iOS first.

I think any game is still going to have the issue of kids not having access to the means to pay for it. Do they wait for heir parents and hope they decide to buy it for them or do they get it for free right now?

I've paid for World of Goo twice (When I first bought it when it came out, and once for the iPhone version). I've also pirated World of Goo three times. When I switched from PC to Mac; when I gave my iPod touch to my sister and installed it on my new iPhone as well (does this count as piracy? I have no idea. Its the same iTunes account running on two devices now...). And once on my Linux box when I wanted the linux version.

Does this count as piracy? Probably. I think they even have platform-free redownloads. I can't be arsed. I've paid for it. When I want it in a different version, I'll get it from the most convenient distribution channel that happens to be the pirate bay.

I also own like 4 Windows 7 licenses. But my Windows 7 computer is running a pirated version because: 1. I lost 2 of the license keys (the sticker at the bottom of the laptops burned out from heat). So much for that. I liked my home-premium install, too. But that's a non starter because the keys can't be recovered. I'm supposed to write down keys in case of this problem? What is this? 1999?

2. There are numerous version incompatibilities. 2 of my Windows 7 licenses are "academic versions" of Windows 7 unlimited because they ran some promo when it first launched that I bought. Apparently, despite being Unlimited, if you get the ISO off the pirate bay for the unlimited version, it doesn't work unless you have the academic version of the ISO. I have no idea how to get the academic version of the ISO, because the ISO downloader on MSDN academic is a Windows-only program. (At the time I had no Windows computers --- I was trying to get my first Windows 7 install up!). SO I got the same ISO from the pirate bay (the only place to get hassle-free ISOs). It's important to note that I have Unlimited-edition licenses. It's not failing because I paid for Home-premium and am trying to run Unlimited. This is different versions of Unlimited. It makes my ears bleed just how many different incompatible versions there are.

It's just a confusing mess. I'm sure I count under the piracy statistics as a pirate user. But in reality, I have 3 computers, two of which have Windows 7 installs, both "pirated". The fact that I own 4 licenses, none of which I could manage to get activated, won't come up on the statistics, will it?

Blizzard deals with the redownload and key issue well, you can login to your account and download the game or any platform and access any key that you need.

I couldn't agree more. Complaining about the piracy rate of a successful game is like complaining about the "people who didn't buy it" rate. Just think of all the people who didn't buy World of Goo! There must be billions of them!

But were they able to make a viable living from selling their game? 90% piracy does not equate to 90% loss of revenue. Not every pirate is a potential customer. Far from it. Were sales of the game higher because of the publicity due to the piracy? I don't know for sure and neither does anyone else. An instance of piracy is not necessarily something bad. Classical piracy is. But not digital 'piracy' necessarily. And by extension, high amounts of digital 'piracy' is not necessarily bad. Just some food for thought.

Why would it have been a better outcome if the same number of people had paid for the game and only 10% as many people got to play? It wouldn't have been better for the game-makers and it would have been far worse for the population.

The fundamental argument for anti-piracy is that at least some of the pirates would have paid for the content if piracy was not available. It's not all the pirates, and it's not none of the pirates. Nobody would care about pirates if they were 100% unmonetizable.

I'm making numbers up, but let's say 10% paid as usual, 1% converted to payment because piracy wasn't available, and 89% didn't want to pay and didn't play. The publisher gets 10% more revenue if piracy wasn't there.

Nobody knows what the actual percentage is.

Your example ignores the potential positive effect of piracy on sales. It's likely that at least some of the pirates purchased the game because they liked it. It's also likely that all the extra people playing it contributed to the publicity.

I've seen the most data from individual authors. Every report/experiment I have seen had the author making more money off books that were available for free.

> 90% piracy

Notably, that's not an actual calculated number. Even so, the unanswerable question is whether it'd have been 91 or 99% without easy distribution.

It's probably not completely accurate, but the publisher does provide some context as to how he estimated that. http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

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