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[JK]

I think there's a legitimate solution for ending piracy of PC games for good. Offer them for free and accept donations OR use pay-what-you-want pricing, no minimum. Of course, the page description should make it clear that paying will support the developers and allow them to continue making awesome games. Also, the devs can suggest donation/purchase amounts should the user decide to buy the games. The players who can and want to support the devs will buy; the players who can't/won't have no reason to pirate. I dunno. Sounds reasonable. What do you think?

P.S. I did a quick search online. Most piraters use the reasoning that they "wouldn't have bought the game anyway", "didn't have enough money", "wanted to try before buying", "didn't want to buy a buggy game", or "hated DRM".

[Cobralad]

itch.io is that


also in my country average salary is $140 and steam prices just half of american. Not to mention that nintendo and other console manufacturers jus dont care and nintendo game costs like car and misses all the support and networking. And its not the worst situation in the world.
Majority of the world has no other option other than piracy and all pricing is suited for usa.

[JK]

itch.io is that

For sure. I created an account on their site because I liked the business model. I think Itch.io is sorely underrated though. More people have heard of Steam. As a result, many think that it's the only real game store online.

[s0]

P.S. I did a quick search online. Most piraters use the reasoning that they "wouldn't have bought the game anyway", "didn't have enough money", "wanted to try before buying", "didn't want to buy a buggy game", or "hated DRM".

imo the actual reasons are

1. people can't afford games
2. people don't have access to payment methods (e.g. kids without credit cards)
3. people like getting stuff for free

so obv the real solution to piracy would be solving world poverty and giving kids credit cards   

for real tho, ive heard some people have had decent success with patreon.

[majormel84]

i hear some pirates only pirate a game due to the product having no demo. I'm not saying that's the main reason as to why piracy happens, but it made me realize not many devs on steam have demos that can be downloaded and played for free at anytime. shit, i remember thinking how I was uninterested in Binding of Issac until i played a demo of the game.

i didn't buy it anyways but that demo changed my perception towards the game. I'll get it one of these days tho

[ProgramGamer]

It's on the 3DS now if you want.

[s0]

i think in the end the onus is on the pirates (esp the ones who just want free games) to stop pirating, not on the developers to come up with ridiculous anti-piracy measures.

oops the post i was replying to is now gone but watever

[Sik]

2. people don't have access to payment methods (e.g. kids without credit cards)

This one for me. Credit cards are not that common in Argentina (and also harder to get due to stricter background checks to ensure you can actually afford having one), so if you aren't the kind of people who has lots of money, chances are you don't have one. The problem is that the only way to buy anything on-line is with a credit card.

Not like I have much money either but I could probably afford a cheap game every month or so. But I can't even do that just for not having a credit card.

[JK]

Huh. So you can't use prepaid cards or anything? Didn't know that, for sure. Hey, it's been ages since I've bought a game. Not a pirate, though. I just don't play them much anymore.

Anyway, there's a colossal ton of legit free games on the online market. Off the top of my head, you could go to Kongregate, Itch.io, GameJolt, or Newgrounds. Lots of great stuffs there if you wade through the games that don't interest you.

[Cobralad]

or you could just play karos online or some f2p garbage that is super popular in some poor country.

[starsrift]

Have you looked into Pay What You Want sales stuff? It's not terribly promising, if you want to support a full-time team of developers. Basically, it seems that all that you're saying is, "You know how to to stop piracy? Stop trying to sell games."

On the other hand, with the rise of online distribution, piracy isn't nearly the problem that it was. Valve seems to have hit it on the head with their notion that most piracy is caused by problems of access.

[Cobralad]

forgot to mention: steam also added support to some obscure paying systems like webmoney which helped a lot.
the problem with humble bundle and other stuff is that they support either credit card or paypal. First one one got mentioned, second is problematic too. Its not fully supported in all countries just like google wallet or amazon. For  example PayPal was allowed to function properly in my country only week ago and they still waiting for a law to be signed.

[JK]

Have you looked into Pay What You Want sales stuff? It's not terribly promising, if you want to support a full-time team of developers. Basically, it seems that all that you're saying is, "You know how to to stop piracy? Stop trying to sell games."

Nah. Not saying that people should stop trying to sell games. I wouldn't be learning game dev if I didn't want to eat somehow from profits. I should do more research on the topic.

But we can all agree that DRM and DLC aren't helping anyone Yes, I include DLC. If I spend money on a game (especially a LOT of money), why do I have to spend even more to get the rest of the content? Not sure if you've heard of the trouble surrounding Star Citizen's ship pricing. On Apple's app store, I've personally never purchased a game that costed more than $2.99, maybe 4.99 max. Because budget. And I couldn't afford to buy expensive games and music with the same gift card. Music won lol I could've pirated that. But I wanted to give them my money.

Point: people who want to support you WILL support you. These are the players to who will pay the suggested $4.99 or return to your page to donate after downloading for free. They want to give you their money. If they didn't, what was stopping them from getting pirated copies in the first place?

For  example PayPal was allowed to function properly in my country only week ago and they still waiting for a law to be signed.

Oh. Well that bites.

[starsrift]

But we can all agree that DRM and DLC aren't helping anyone Yes, I include DLC. If I spend money on a game (especially a LOT of money), why do I have to spend even more to get the rest of the content?

Steam's gonna keep coming up, so I'll just put it here - most folks don't have trouble with DRM as a service, if done correctly. Like Steam does. Yes, there's a few folks who are put out about Steam as DRM. But the Venn diagram they share with people who want to play multiplayer games with hacks fill a lot of the same space.

DLC is a marketing issue. You're saying it as "rest of the content", instead of "more of the content".
People don't seem to have any trouble paying for more content. People have a lot of trouble paying for what they view as "the rest of" the content. The former seems to be doing just fine - Bethesda games, for instance. Payday 2. Even the HoMM games, though they've been falling by the wayside in popularity. And so on.


Relying on the kind nature of the masses is a good way to go broke, unless you can position yourself with something you can convince them that they really want to buy. Ask any priest who's not running an urban megachurch/cathedral, and even some of those. You can find a balance - like some Patreons work out - but I don't know of anyone larger than a pair working out of a Patreon (not including specific bits of work they may have hired out).

[Lauchsuppe]

I think it really depends on the kind of game you want to sell. An ambitious "indie"-project will more likely draw people who are willing to spend a few more bucks on a pay what you want system. Whereas a title like CoD mainly draws many people who aren't exactly game enthusiasts - they will probably not be willing to spend as much in a pay what you want system. A pay what you want system will most likely not be able to cover the massive production cost of a title like CoD anyway.

I think DLC is a good way to make profits from your game in the long run. If it's really additional content (and not "you need this to enjoy the core game" kind of content) then it just makes sense to sell it extra. I mean, often times, people want just more of the same thing - DLC provides exactly this. Also, in the end, it's even better for the end user. It grants the player more control about how money is spent. He/she can decide to pay for DLC 1 because the content is interesting and maybe skip DLC 2 because that's not his/her cup of tea - instead of having to buy the whole package and then only enjoying half of it.

[JK]

Sorry guys. I'm not very old, but I do come from a time where you bought a complete game and enjoyed it until the next release (if the devs wanted to make a series of it). Agree to disagree? It's probably true that a lot of people are OK/don't mind DLC. Personally, I'd rather just buy the title with all the features the devs wanted to include and be done with it.

[s0]

Sorry guys. I'm not very old, but I do come from a time where you bought a complete game and enjoyed it until the next release (if the devs wanted to make a series of it). Agree to disagree? It's probably true that a lot of people are OK/don't mind DLC. Personally, I'd rather just buy the title with all the features the devs wanted to include and be done with it.

expansions have been a thing for a long time though. early 90s at the very least. you're forgetting that creating more content for a game also costs more resources. it's not like e.g. blizzard removed tons of content from diablo 2 so they could sell lord of destruction later.

a lot of devs do scummy things with dlc, like overpriced tiny content packs, day 1 dlc and etc, but that's a problem with the devs (or their publishers), not with the concept of dlc/expansions.

[JK]

Sorry guys. I'm not very old, but I do come from a time where you bought a complete game and enjoyed it until the next release (if the devs wanted to make a series of it). Agree to disagree? It's probably true that a lot of people are OK/don't mind DLC. Personally, I'd rather just buy the title with all the features the devs wanted to include and be done with it.

expansions have been a thing for a long time though. early 90s at the very least. you're forgetting that creating more content for a game also costs more resources. it's not like e.g. blizzard removed tons of content from diablo 2 so they could sell lord of destruction later.

a lot of devs do scummy things with dlc, like overpriced tiny content packs, day 1 dlc and etc, but that's a problem with the devs (or their publishers), not with the concept of dlc/expansions.

I'll explain myself more clearly. Expansion packs are beyond my comprehension atm because I mostly played console games growing up (SNES, Sega Genesis, GC, Gameboy...all of them, PS, etc.) and only occasionally picked up a PC title. Idk

[s0]

ok fair enough.

[ProgramGamer]

If you want an example, I recently bought Starcraft one with the Brood War expansion included in a battle chest I found at Walmart. Starcraft was a perfectly good game on its own and even had like three campaigns just out of the box. But Brood War doubled up on that and included a bunch of new features, units, and made three more campaigns for everyone to enjoy. Basically, it was Starcraft 1.5, and it was glorious. Nowadays, you have things like DLC that contain the proper end to a game, bugfixes behind paywalls and even ten dollar horse armor. Point is, Companies had way more respect for you and your money back in the day. Nowadays they're kind of just looking for more ways to screw you over.