Ritual on Piracy

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Gameguru Mania News - Jul,26 2006 -

Ritual on Piracy - interview
(hx) 07:02 PM CEST - Jul,26 2006 - Post a comment / read (10)

Ritual Entertainment's Michael Russell made a recent post on his personal blog about how support calls for the recent epsiodic shooter SiN Episodes have been coming in from people who have warez (pirated) copies of the game. According to the blog, the support calls from pirates now outnumber calls from real owners of the game by a factor of five to one. Shacknews now conducted an interview with Russell on the situation.. Here's a taster from the interview:

Shack: When you are relatively sure you've encountered a pirate, what do you do? How do you deal with the person?

Mike Russell: Actually, I contact their ISP [laughs]. I know it sounds silly, but ISPs have been a lot more responsive towards pirates than law enforcement has been. Most law enforcement sees piracy as petty theft. It's under a hundred bucks, it's piddly crap. But ISPs, they're really responsive towards pirates, because most pirates are the people who are munching all the bandwidth. So if they have, essentially, a legitimate excuse to boot a pirate off, they'll take it.

Shack: A common defense of pirates on the internet is that developers are going to receive relatively little of what people pay for games in the first place. I realize you might not be able to discuss a lot of this in detail, but can you discuss at all how developer compensation and royalties work for games released via retail versus Steam?

Mike Russell: I can't go into details on that, but I can actually address how it works for general titles, not SiN Ep. Generally what happens is that a developer is paid, say, $2-5 million to develop a product. When a unit is bought from the publisher, the publisher gets their cut, which covers cost of goods, testing on the publisher side, and so on and so forth. Then, a portion of that money from that sale goes towards what the developer was paid to make it, and it's only once that number reaches what the developer was paid to make the product, that the developer starts making money.

So, a good example is, if I'm working on a first party title with a $2 million budget, it takes about $15 million worth of retail sales before I break even. If I'm a developer, because of the way the royalty structure works, it can take about $40 million worth of retail sales before the developer sees a dime of their advance.

last 10 comments:

xxxx

(08:03 PM CEST - Jul,26 2006 )

Well what you expect? $20US for a 5 hour title(based on n00bs playing).. Go cry somewhere else Ritual.. You just motivate people to rip your game. I refuse personally to pay that money. However I am not as stupid as some to go and ask for support for it. lmfao..

I'm happy to say, my ISP couldn't give a crap and oh gee, be really hard to pickup the phone and get another ISP.. hahahaha!!

And a game 'if it is truly good' you don't need 40million to advertise it nor do I believe the amounts he quotes are even realistic.. A good game sells on IT'S REPUTATION, not cuz of some cheap ad.

P.S. Maybe it's payback Ritual for F'ing everyone over years ago that played your game to hell and back and you abandoned them... Maybe people pissed off that you came back with a venture to gouge people.. Maybe that was your real inspiriation for 'Arena' mode and the upcomming MP... Were you feeling guilty Ritual?

All I can do is laugh at this news and play my violin..

yhancik	(08:23 PM CEST - Jul,26 2006 )
wow, really it's a LOT of morrons that call support when they have a pirated version of the game i can't believe it :D

djRom	(09:35 PM CEST - Jul,26 2006 )
I would love to know who these people are that are pirating the game and calling tech support. Who the hell calls tech support anyway? The internet is the best tech support (in 99% of cases). And its free, and anonymous!

xxxx

(10:14 PM CEST - Jul,26 2006 )

Ya it's pretty funny what people do.. Have you checked the Titans Quest forums? lots accusing others of using pirated versions.. Now THAT game I did buy and I did have genuine problems... unfortunately with my own drivers. I rectified it when I saw the event logs were saying my disk driver and some parts of my mouse drivers were exhibiting errors. I also alerted them that some crashes I was having was a result of not cleaning up hibernation files and related to those that log on and off a lot on their machines. They since posted or someone posted again that you need that fix from MS...

Finished TQ 2 times however I am doing Epic now just for the hell of it. Haven't crashed at all.

Now that I have a new LCD.. It kinda breathes new life into some games..Prey sure looks bloody amazing even if it's...ungh... Doom 3 engine. Piss poor widescreen support and i hope they fix that.. but I fixed the config to allow my 1680x1050 resolution.. :P

Penetreitor

(11:29 PM CEST - Jul,26 2006 )

1) Piracy will never defeated.
2) Piracy helps to the market.

For example, nobody will buy a XBOX or PS if they can't play pirate copies, this is the reason for the easy hack of these devices, and I believe that the makers are aware of this.
Anyway the game/movie makers will NEVER lose money, at least they earn less money, allways there are persons that like to have a original from they fevorite stuff.

El_Coyote

(05:46 PM CEST - Jul,27 2006 )

Penetreitor> 1) Piracy will never defeated.
2) Piracy helps to the market.

For example, nobody will buy a XBOX or PS if they can't play pirate copies, this is the reason for the easy hack of these devices, and I believe that the makers are aware of this.
Anyway the game/movie makers will NEVER lose money, at least they earn less money, allways there are persons that like to have a original from they fevorite stuff.

so what you're saying is that nobody has bought the xbox360? since its not yet running any pirated games, except a few early ones with a specific version of dvd drive...

thats bollocs. most people dont pirate the games.
dont base your "facts of life" on your immidiate surroundings which might only contain pirates.

yessum	(08:27 PM CEST - Jul,27 2006 )
Yeah, El_Coyote is right. Don’t judge the whole ocean by just sampling a puddle.

xxxx

(08:49 PM CEST - Jul,27 2006 )

Funny how you guys have such a problem interpreting peoples posts. Your english must just be attrocious or something.

I know what he was hinting at/saying and the way I understood it was that a lot of people wont get Xbox 360 until the games are rippable. I fully agree, that is how and the reason behind how I will get a Xbox 360. As well most of my friends already have pirated Xbox 360's and it's the chief reason they got one. And before you respond with a I'll be caught blah blah.. I don't have ANY intention of using internet and from my understanding of the option I will have when I get a pirated Xbox 360 is that I can remove the 'added' chip and play online with legit copies all I want. Obviously you guys are very out of touch with consoles.

yessum

(09:18 PM CEST - Jul,27 2006 )

It's not a problem getting caught. It's the numbers. The entire worldwide community of piracy (pirates) is very minute. If you’re common in the circles then you’re surrounded by people who’d rather wait for a modchip than to buy a console. And I deeply respect that, but if you’re drowning only in that tiny puddle, you end up believing that the whole world is like that. And it isn’t so. Simple minded people are growing up today to become world leaders and what not, and they can’t see beyond their little puddle. The whole ocean is foreign to them. And they laugh at people who are different. They think they’re the majority where in fact they’re the minority and they need to understand that.

I do support piracy, but I don't support pirates who can't appreciate/respect the hard work that is often poured into some products. :(

xxxx

(09:48 PM CEST - Jul,27 2006 )

You can't say you support piracy and then say you don't support pirates who dont't appreciate/respect the hard work of others. If piraters respected game companies in the first place they wouldn't rip their stuff. It's not anything to do with respecting what they put out though. Pirating is by 'demand' and is very little just something to do. For a lot of piraters, i know some, it's fun and competitive as hell.