The Witness is getting pirated big time

Updated:10:44 AM CEST Sep,20

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Gameguru Mania News - Jan,30 2016 -

The Witness is getting pirated big time - briefly
(hx) 07:47 PM CET - Jan,30 2016 - Post a comment / read (13)
A lot of people are playing the The Witness, but they're not all paying for the privilege. Celebrated indie developer Jonathan Blow took to Twitter to point out that his new PlayStation 4 and PC first-person puzzler is currently the most popular game on a 'certain popular Torrent site.' Blow said that he's happy lots of people are playing and enjoying the game, but he also warned that he won't be able to build another similar project without sufficient sales. Here are the ten top selling titles on Steam for the week as reported by Valve: It seems The Witness is the #1 game on a certain popular torrent site. Unfortunately this will not help us afford to make another game! :(
Oh well. If you create a game/app it will be pirated. That is just plain and simply put, the truth. I don't defend piracy, but one must admit the download numbers do not equal lost sales, at least not on a one-for-one basis. People pirate lots of stuff they'd never buy.

last 10 comments:

Csimbi	(11:12 PM CET - Jan,30 2016 )
I have not even heard about this game... Some people download anything - without even knowing what it is.

th4t1guy	(11:21 PM CET - Jan,30 2016 )
Or maybe this story is complete bullshit. https://twitter.com/GamesNosh/status/693170842239369217

Csimbi	(11:25 PM CET - Jan,30 2016 )
Can't open that link. Marketing hype?

huldu

(03:47 PM CET - Jan,31 2016 )

I'm not interested in the game but it's a bit sad to hear. However it's just like someone said that people who generally download pirated stuff are not likely to have bought the game in the first place.

Also I would like to point out a "new" threat that has grown immensely over the last few years: streaming. Why buy the game when you can watch someone else play it through. I watched someone stream the witness in front of 6k viewers. I've seen the game, it was almost like playing it myself.

It's just a matter of time until they start blaming poor sales on streamers and let's plays(which they already do to some degree). Streaming however is far more aggressive since it allows people to interact with the streamer while he/she is playing the game - unlike a normal let's play video.

Tom	(04:58 PM CET - Jan,31 2016 )
Csimbi> Marketing hype? That was my exact thought

gx-x	(06:06 PM CET - Jan,31 2016 )
Which torrent site is he looking at? At my fav torr site, The Witness (which I never heard of till now) has been DL-ed ~850 times. For comparison, TW3 has been Dl-ed ~15K times. Late Night with Stephen Colbert has ~2K DL's every time. I know I know, It's not fair to pit that game against Colbert...

th4t1guy	(06:13 PM CET - Jan,31 2016 )
quote: I've seen the game, it was almost like playing it myself. It's time to turn up that difficulty setting.

gx-x

(07:14 PM CET - Jan,31 2016 )

gx-x> Which torrent site is he looking at? At my fav torr site, The Witness (which I never heard of till now) has been DL-ed ~850 times. For comparison, TW3 has been Dl-ed ~15K times. Late Night with Stephen Colbert has ~2K DL's every time. I know I know, It's not fair to pit that game against Colbert...

ok, apparently it's kickass.to and it's been DL-ed like ~15K times (my data that I left is from a closed, private tracker). Wow. If we include TPB and similar sites that will have similar numbers we are looking at most like 100K downloads. Even if we assume that every single DL is a lost sale (which is ridiculous in itself, besides, I am sure that half of of those 100K people deleted the game within the first ten minutes) we are looking at 4 million dollars of which how many goes back to developer? Of course, back here in reality, out of 100K maybe 100 people would have bought it AND maybe some who wouldn't have bought it will buy it because they liked it.

Thudo

(09:51 PM CET - Jan,31 2016 )

This is sooo [u:2d066821cc]BEYOND[/u:2d066821cc] Moot..

Everything gets its fair pirated download over the decades so why are they all of a sudden piping up about it?

Butt-hurt much? Welcome to the early 80s, noobs! :roll:

Everything that gets cracked (+99% of all s/w) goes online AS IT HAS BEEN FOR DECADES!!

They just cry because they have a fack'n hole in their heads with an option THEN add modern tech called SOCIAL MEDIA where every arsehole can have a voice whereas throughout 99.99% of human history they have not.

lorcro2000

(09:32 AM CET - Feb,01 2016 )

Very few people who pirate it would have bought it. They try it because they can do so for free. And some will go on to actually buy it because they do love it and want to support the creator, and talk it up among their friends and generate sales that way, etc.

The problem for any new art and artist is not piracy, it's being able to find an audience in the first place. He should be thrilled people are playing it and liking it.

Csimbi

(10:03 AM CET - Feb,01 2016 )

lorcro2000> Very few people who pirate it would have bought it. They try it because they can do so for free. And some will go on to actually buy it because they do love it and want to support the creator, and talk it up among their friends and generate sales that way, etc.
This is what I do in general. I bought most of the games I downloaded.
Here's my rubbish-filtering routine:
1. I download everything that matches my interest, has above average reviews and there's no show-stopper mentioned in the reviews (say, I am interested in 10% of the junk that gets released).

Please note that I did download it, but did not play it (nor share it forward) - so this is not a lost sale in any way.

2. Then, I wait two weeks until they patch their shit and if the reviews are still good (this is where most games bleed out - say, 80%), then I actually start playing it (the remaining 20%). At that point, there is a 60% chance that I will buy it when they are on sale (can't pay more, sorry, talk to my employer and raise my salary). The missing 40% are games did not live up to my expectations - and hence I do not waste money supporting rubbish games/studios.

IMHO, that 40% is the lost sale.

Let's do the math.
10000 games are released. I am interested in 1000 so I download a 1000.
80% turns out to be junk within two weeks from release, so 200 games remain.
I play these 200 games and in the end, I buy 60% of these (that is, I buy 120 games).
Conclusion:
120 are the sales which is 1.2% of the total volume (10000) and 12% of the downloaded volume (1000).
80 are the lost sales which is 0.8% of the total volume and 8% of the downloaded volume.

Take those figures with a grain of salt.
Now, scale that up to the internet (this represents only me - how many internet users do you think fit this profile?).

Tom

(02:37 PM CET - Feb,01 2016 )

Csimbi> lorcro2000> Very few people who pirate it would have bought it. They try it because they can do so for free. And some will go on to actually buy it because they do love it and want to support the creator, and talk it up among their friends and generate sales that way, etc.
This is what I do in general. I bought most of the games I downloaded.
Here's my rubbish-filtering routine:
1. I download everything that matches my interest, has above average reviews and there's no show-stopper mentioned in the reviews (say, I am interested in 10% of the junk that gets released).

Please note that I did download it, but did not play it (nor share it forward) - so this is not a lost sale in any way.

2. Then, I wait two weeks until they patch their shit and if the reviews are still good (this is where most games bleed out - say, 80%), then I actually start playing it (the remaining 20%). At that point, there is a 60% chance that I will buy it when they are on sale (can't pay more, sorry, talk to my employer and raise my salary). The missing 40% are games did not live up to my expectations - and hence I do not waste money supporting rubbish games/studios.

IMHO, that 40% is the lost sale.

Let's do the math.
10000 games are released. I am interested in 1000 so I download a 1000.
80% turns out to be junk within two weeks from release, so 200 games remain.
I play these 200 games and in the end, I buy 60% of these (that is, I buy 120 games).
Conclusion:
120 are the sales which is 1.2% of the total volume (10000) and 12% of the downloaded volume (1000).
80 are the lost sales which is 0.8% of the total volume and 8% of the downloaded volume.

Take those figures with a grain of salt.
Now, scale that up to the internet (this represents only me - how many internet users do you think fit this profile?).

Pirating is and has been a problem on PC since almost day 1. Don't like it, don't dev for it. It's as simple as that. We don't need some fictitious bullshit analogy like above. Fuck seriously, don't you have anything else to do man?

@Dev of this game. Don't go whining to the media because you are a dumb shit who knows nothing about what happens to games when they are released or even before they are released. Nobody gives a shit. Your game looks like shit, more like a ripoff of other games. Probably half the reason right there it was pirated on top of probably absolutely no protection. Go whine to your mommy because nobody else gives a shit.

NakedFaerie

(05:16 PM CET - Feb,01 2016 )

exactly.
There are some people that download games and also buy them.
I have downloaded games and brought it BECAUSE I downloaded it. I got to try it out and found out its an awesome game so I went and brought it so not every download is a loss in sales, some sales are because its downloaded.

And not every game I download I will buy, some, actually majority I was never going to buy to start with.

In the start of the year I have a list of games I will buy and when they come out so I know how much I need for when. If I download a different game and I like it I might go buy it thats if its really good. I also download some games because they are not available to buy yet. There are many games that get delayed locally for stupid reasons and as its available to download first I get that version, play it while I'm waiting for it to come out in the shops. Sometimes the hype kills the game, they show videos and hype it up so you expect an awesome game and when I play it its actually nothing like the hype says. To me thats a save as I now dont get to waste my money on a crap game. I'm lucky the game shop I buy from let us return them within 7 days which is great for when I cant download a game and it ends up being crap. Saves time and money if I just download it, try it out and if its as good as the hype I get it the next day.

There you go, piracy is not bad, I've brought many games because of it. A few come to mind, Styx, Dishonored, dying light, goat sim, saints row 4. I brought all them because I download it first. I was never intending to buy them until I downloaded them. Thats proof piracy is NOT bad as I made 5 sales because of piracy. oh, AND the other sales of word of mouth when I tell people its a great game and they go buy it so thats 5+ sales. Again, how does piracy equal loss of sales????