This past Wednesday Rock, Paper, Shotgun ran a story about World of Goo's imminent release in Europe. [more info] But an interesting thing appeared in the comments section. 2D Boy designer, Ron Carmel posted that the piracy rate for the game was around 90%.
Source: Joystiq [ more info ]

The word overreacting is in quotes in the title because I don't feel like I'm overreacting at all. 2D Boy is a 2 person, Indie development house that produced this great little puzzle construction game that kinda mixes the artisitc style of Loco Roco with the construction-based puzzle solving dynamic of Fantastic Contraption. Two guys, an indie dev house, and 90% of the people downloading the game are freakin' stealing it? That's freakin' ridiculous. What makes my neck hot is you know these are the same folks that complain about the cookie cutter games being spewed forth by the big publishers. Yet rather that support the very thing they crave, they steal it. Argghhh!

Okay so some folks might see the $20 pricetag as being a little bit steep. But hey, there's a free demo of the game. As a matter of fact, I'd only played the demo. But when I read the piracy article I went and bought the full game to support 2D Boy. Kudos to those guys for making such a fun game. I encourage all of you to go play the demo and if you like it, buy the full version huh?

UPDATE:
Brighter Minds, the publisher of World of Goo, has filed chapter 11 bankruptcy. No reasons were given, but chapter 11 will allow them to maintain control of the business while the company restructures.
Source: GameDaily [ more info ]

Wow, 90%, that's seriously ****ed up. I'll buy the game and check it out next friday. Looks awesome.

Now how exactly would one come up with numbers such as these? Somehow find the downloads via P2P or something?

I definitely agree about the "if you like it, buy it" approach. Over at Stardock's site, there have been people who admit they had pirated their game, only to like it enough to give the company props by purchasing the game. They had wrote off their piracy as "demoing the full version". Whatever float's their boat...but normally the demo of a game does a decent job at giving you the feel for it.

What do you say to those numbers....Wow, You hear about pirating, when it comes to music, movies and obscure software. And even now recently with a couple titles that have overstepped themselves. But to pirate something that is making an honest attempt to change the standard in digital entertainment. I hope people find that little voice inside, In the past 10 years gamers have been the focus of many a movement to ban violence and any other number of things. I hate to see people start to live down to those expectations.

Same old, same old unfortunately.

I used to write BBS games back in the early '90s. I wrote a fairly popular one called Trade Wars 2002 that got a lot of play. The cost to register this shareware was fifteen bucks *per BBS* where there'd usually be 100+ players involved.

The piracy rates I saw back then were about the same as this 90%

That's the main reason I quit working on the game. Too many cheapazz jerks out there that will steal something they greatly enjoy rather than cough up the price of a pizza for it. (and to help support the developer)

You should read the article they just put out about it. They aren't particularly worried about the 90% rate, I don't think you should be either.

this is in line with a previous estimate by russell carroll (director of marketing at reflexive) for the game ricochet infinity. russell estimated a 92% piracy rate and i found his analysis quite interesting (check it out here if you’re curious). one thing that really jumped out at me was his estimate that preventing 1000 piracy attempts results in only a single additional sale. this supports our intuitive assessment that people who pirate our game aren’t people who would have purchased it had they not been able to get it without paying.

in our case, we might have even converted more than 1 in a 1000 pirates into legit purchases. either way, ricochet shipped with DRM, world of goo shipped without it, and there seems to be no difference in the outcomes. we can’t draw any conclusions based on two data points, but i’m hoping that others will release information about piracy rates so that everyone could see if DRM is the waste of time and money that we think it is.

interesting article, wine. I too would be interested in seeing the results of a more detailed analysis.

also, if anyone reading this has played and enjoyed the game but did so for free, go buy the damn thing! I mean, if you don't enjoy a game you shouldn't have to pay for it and I don't have an issue of pirating the game, but just pay for it if you enjoy it. seriously. sheesh!

It's not a matter of "being worried" about it. It's that pirates are thieves pure and simple. Any explanation or justification that they offer for stealing software is rendered moot by the "World of Goo" situation. There is nothing about this game that justifies pirating it. It's original, it's fun, it's cheap, it's not a clone, and it doesn't come from a giant company that can "afford" to lose the money. It's only $15 on the Wii!!

Software pirates are cheap, low class punks who think they deserve something that they have no right to, and in this case they're taking money directly out of the pockets of a couple of really talented guys. I suspect the 90% rate is pulled directly out of thin air, but there's no doubt that the game is getting pirated.

When I was younger and unable to paid "all" the games I wanted to play, I admit I pirated somes, if not all of them. I had a PS1 chipped with like 100 games copied and was getting ~1-2 new PC game / month. Most of the time, I played ~10hrs they stopped. In my head it was "the game is cool but... I don't feel I'll pay for this since I don't think I'll play long with it". Yeah Demo'ing the full version.

The exceptions were Blizzard and Id Software games. I knew I had enough for my buck. I always feel that if I'm going to play and enjoy a game a lot, I should "reward" those who worked hard for it by buying the game, and those company always offered "good" product. Now I play only 1-2 games and can afford to pay for them.

Kinda why I'm against this bullshit mentality we see often in "MMO" game.... Subscribe to the game and begin to pay now, we'll add content later, don't worry we'll do it we promise... You can do this crap when you have no competitor, with the amount of people playing wow, if you can't deliver what you promised, people won't stay long around, specially if you make them pay for stuff they don't have (whish is not the case in this topic... :P).

/rant off

/Going back in Northrend

Well, I'm glad that they are keeping a positive attitude about the piracy issue, but this is ridiculous.

I don't get the 'I'm only stealing it to try it' idea. Anyone that wants to try it can play the demo. People see media piracy as "Ok" because it's really easy to get away with. It's *exactly the same* as walking into a store, taking an item off of the shelf and saying "Oh, if I like it, I'll come back and pay for it". For consoles, I have Gamefly. I rent the game and if I enjoy it, I use the "Keep it" option or even return the silly thing back to Gamefly and go to the store to buy it new.

Ugh...sorry. I have strong feelings against media piracy.

Awesome comic, Woody! :stands up and applauds: