Piracy Isn't Such a Bad Thing, Says Maker of Angry Birds

[jjtober1]

Most pirates "pirate" gigantic amounts of games, way more than they would even consider actually playing. Most of them are not real customers that would otherwise have bought. There is still some advertising to be gained, people although not paying customer that get excited about a game and talk about it may lead others to buy it. It helps create excitement, which is good as developers want to sell their game at release, not from a bargain bin a year later.

 

[mcvf]

Saying piracy is only bad thing is ignoring some historical facts about historical success. Think of Microsoft, where they would have been if the whole world would not have pirated their software from day 1? I think Rovio got the point of how the richest man of the world got at that position.

 

[kartu]

10% of iPhones are jailbroken.
Guys with those generate so much "piracy" traffic, that it goes to "oh, 90% of apple apps are pirated".

For some greedy guys with little brains in management it translates into "oh, our profits could be 10 times bigger than they are, if not piracy, let's add moar DRM!!!". No, idiots, it would only harm your sales.

Unless the point of DRM is to kill used games market claiming it is "anti-piracy" measure. This is what works. (go buy or sell Starcraft 2 for instance). Oh and LAN was removed from Starcraft not because of "piracy" but because Blizzard wanted to get money from Korean Starcraft shows (they have 2 channels (!) dedicated to it in South Korea)

 

[theabsinthehare]

[citation][nom]cloudberry[/nom]I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume we're not talking US dollars here.[/citation]

Nope, that's US dollars. The budget for The Witcher 2 was ~$11,000,000 and Battlefield 3's budget for just its marketing alone was ~$100,000,000 (I think they only spent $50,000,000 though, but that doesn't include development costs).

The average cost to produce a modern, multiplatform game is $25,000,000

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Piracy is illegal and developers lose money because of it!

 

[hardcore_gamer]

[citation][nom]theabsinthehare[/nom]Nope, that's US dollars. The budget for The Witcher 2 was ~$11,000,000 and Battlefield 3's budget for just its marketing alone was ~$100,000,000 (I think they only spent $50,000,000 though, but that doesn't include development costs).The average cost to produce a modern, multiplatform game is $25,000,000[/citation]

You are adding too many zeros .

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]theabsinthehare[/nom]Nope, that's US dollars. The budget for The Witcher 2 was ~$11,000,000 and Battlefield 3's budget for just its marketing alone was ~$100,000,000 (I think they only spent $50,000,000 though, but that doesn't include development costs).The average cost to produce a modern, multiplatform game is $25,000,000[/citation]

Does marketing budget have anything to do with the actual development of the game? Where did you get your numbers?

 

[aftcomet]

[citation][nom]the_krasno[/nom]That's the way everyone should see piracy. Me? I'm a pirate. Do I purchase games, music and movies? Yes, the ones I liked. How else am I gonna decide whether or not to buy a game that lacks a demo?If you go to a car dealership and ask to have a test drive they won't call the cops on you, calling you a thief. Instead, you actually get to have a feel of how it drives, and then make an informed decision.Same thing with games, go for a spin and buckle up the credit card. Or erase the whole damn thing and torch it so it doesn't come back to haunt you in case it was horrible.Not all pirates are the pillage and burn them type, some of us just want to find a sweet game and then show our gratitude by actually purchasing it.[/citation]

I'm sure you're one of those people who plays the entire game, then either decides that you don't like it, or asks themselves, what's the point of paying for it now?

People pirate stuff they can buy in store (I'm not talking about really old shows from another country) because they want a free lunch. Stop trying to justify it through arguments such as piracy isn't theft, or I only pirate to test.

Come on.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]aftcomet[/nom]I'm sure you're one of those people who plays the entire game, then either decides that you don't like it, or asks themselves, what's the point of paying for it now?People pirate stuff they can buy in store (I'm not talking about really old shows from another country) because they want a free lunch. Stop trying to justify it through arguments such as piracy isn't theft, or I only pirate to test. Come on.[/citation]

You're wrong. Don't say you know why a person does something. Sure, some pirates don't just pirate as a feature-full demo and play the whole game, but some do use it as that. Besides, if you wouldn't have bought it in the first place and you do buy it after pirating it the company gets money because you pirated it.

I wouldn't want to pay for something just to find it I don't like it. If I like it I'll buy it, if not I won't want to keep it anyway so I'll delete it. This doesn't take any money away from anyone so I don't see the problem. This way I'm more likely to give them my money.

Even the people whom keep what they pirate instead of buying it afterwards aren't costing the company money if they wouldn't have bought it anyway and those people probably wouldn't have bought it anyway. I won't condone what they do but my method would give these people more money because I won't make a gamble out of buying games on the off chance it might not be to my liking. If I couldn't test it before purchasing then I wouldn't purchase it, that would be the end of that.

 

[aftcomet]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Even the people whom keep what they pirate instead of buying it afterwards aren't costing the company money if they wouldn't have bought it anyway and those people probably wouldn't have bought it anyway.[/citation]

Well they wouldn't have had it either.

Pirating something is against the law, whether or not you agree with a business not giving you a full copy to try. Everyone wants to bend the rules to their liking.

 

[cTs Corvette]

I used to pirate games, now I don't because I buy everything on Steam when it's on sale for $10 or less. Granted, the game companies probably hate me as much as they hate pirates, but that's their problem, not mine.

 

[jabliese]

[citation][nom]area51reopened[/nom]Piracy is illegal and developers lose money because of it![/citation]

DRM is legal, and developers lose money because of it!

 

[danimal_the_animal]

Patchy the pirate from spongebob LOL!

 

[g-thor]

Summary of come of the comments - if software developers made decent demo versions of their games (demos that let you get a real feel for the game) then piracy would decrease.

I think I can accept that. It wouldn't eliminate piracy, but it could decrease the volume.

Back in the Atari 800 days (yeah, I'm that old), I knew people that had over a hundred pirated games (some of them cartridges ripped to disc) and a handful of purchased ones. There was no way they had time to play all of them and they didn't care. It was a matter of ego that they had so many games. Those people weren't lost revenue, they were never customers at all.

So, give us good demos of your product (it doesn't cost you much to do that) and see if piracy drops. Oh, right. That doesn't work because it would be harder to get big headlines about how bad piracy is & how much money you're losing. Then you can't get tech-challenged legislators to make laws that work in your favor. And your lawyers will be upset with you too.

Never mind. It's way too sensible.

 

[theabsinthehare]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Does marketing budget have anything to do with the actual development of the game? Where did you get your numbers?[/citation]

Marketing has nothing to do with development, but both are costs that contribute to the total amount spent on getting the game from an idea to the hands of the customer which is the true cost of making a successful game.

As for source citation: http/www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18389 includes a quote from an Ubisoft Executive that details what their average costs are for each platform group.

http/news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9823945-7.html?tag=mncol;title quotes Reggie Fils-Aime as saying the cost of 360/PS3 production is between 20 and 60 million for high end games.

and there are several articles on how much the marketing costs were for Battlefield 3 (and Call of duty), but I have to go to work!

 

[madooo12]

Sponge Bob (the guy in the picture)

 

[DjEaZy]

... not piracy!!! Free advertising....

 

[_Pez_]

When I first play the game angry birds was a Pirate version, and I liked it. Later I bought all the version of angry birds. They are brilliant with that way of thinking. Now I enjoy the All the versions of angry birds. And now on I will be looking forward to buy more games from them

 

[Guest]

When it comes down to it if the companies wanted to eliminate piracy they could.

Why is blizzard able to keep hackers from getting onto battle.net?

Sure there was a period when you could get onto Warcraft 3 with a pirated copy but that was fixed and the method wasn't easy.


Look at what their Warden program is able to do. Sure it doesn't entirely eliminate pirates/cheaters but they do it to such a large degree that the few % they miss do not really harm their business.

Put forth a good effort into securing your product and you WILL NOT STOP pirates, but you will stop enough of them that your business will not be harmed by it.

 

[jl0329]

People who say they pirate because there is no demo is utterly BS. Stealing is stealing. Games are not necessity. Nobody is forcing you to buy, also, there are trailers and reviews all over the internet for you to decide whether you want it or not. If you were to buy a house, you don't get to just steal the key and live in it for as long as you like before making the purchase (if ever). I am seriously tiered of this excuse. Stop making stealing sounds so honorable, because in truth, you are just a thief.

Quote from above poster:
"Pirating something is against the law, whether or not you agree with a business not giving you a full copy to try. Everyone wants to bend the rules to their liking." 100% agree.

I don't hate piracy (I do it too and I am not proud of it), but I hate people who tries to justify their stealing with pathetic excuses.