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[Baobab]

First I would like to mention that when I came on here and made a search for threads about indie piracy, I was stunned to find almost nothing. Other than a few blog posts and that lovely rev rant video, there were no other discussions about the topic. That needs to change.
I feel that Indie Games are a truly remarkable gift we have been given and the potential is limitless. The beauty is in the almost Dadaistic approach to design, and the irreplaceable closeness the Devs have to their gamers, filling us in with weekly blog posts, doing almost everything in their power to give us a remarkable game, commonly for little or no payment. But there is a bug in the system, a horrid little reoccurring leech, sucking the life out of us. Piracy has been around for a while now, and it seems to have almost fallen back out of the spotlight, no longer a deadly sin. But it just isn't that way with Indie games. The number of Seeders and Leechers on some Indie Games posted on popular piracy websites is absolutely sickening. I understand that some people really do steal games only to try them, and use the game as a demo to see if they enjoy it. But this is not enough, there are too many people willing to through morality to the wind and ignore the damage being done.
I need your help. The developers do. The Games do. Without your support, they will die. Please spread the word that stealing Indie games is not ok. I would love to hear what you all think.

[handCraftedRadio]

I don't think anyone here is going to disagree with you on that one. I hate piracy, and never pirate indie games. Instead I find it easier (and more rewarding) to break into their house and steal their cash and other valuables. One time I even got this one dev's cat. Oh man, he still has posters up looking for that thing. Well you are NEVER getting that cat back, buddy.

[Baobab]

  I knew that everyone here would agree, but I just wanted to discuss it, because there must be something we can do. Just today I saw Osmos AND Eufloria posted on on a torrent site, and there are already a few hundred downloads. This makes me so mad, because there are very sufficient demos for BOTH of these games, and they're each only a few dollars!!

[Don Andy]

Didn't I start like a massive super controverse thread on exactly that topic a good while ago? In fact, yes, it's the very second thread (and I guess the first if we don't count yours) that pops up when you type "indie piracy" in the little box up there.

So, yeah, the matter HAS been extensively discussed over here although that was over a year ago, so if you really feel like starting this all over again feel free to, I guess.

(Also, my opinion as stated in the thread does not necessarily reflect my current opinion on the matter)

Edit:
I'd like to add that you will find pretty much every commercial indie game on torrent site as these are games that are sold and this happens to all games that are sold, indie or not. The "common pirate" usually doesn't differentiate. And there isn't much that can be done about that either.

[Baobab]

Thank you for the link, I somehow missed it through all my searches. This doesn't need to continue, I just wanted to vent.

[Aquin]

It's the 5 stages of Denial.

1)  "What?  Who would bother pirating indie games...that's just silly!  And mean!"

2) "ARGH!  WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO OUR INDIE COMMUNITY!  THOSE BASTARDS!"

3) "Quick guys, let's discuss ways to appease the customers so they don't turn to piracy.  There must be some kind of special offer or something we can do to make this go away."

4) "We can't stop it no matter how nice we are!  It's terrible!  This is so depressing!  Can nothing be done!?  What a shame!  Cry!  Sniffle!  Weep!  Why?  WHY?  WHY CRUEL WORLD??"

5) "Fuck it, I give up.  Whatever.  Bastards."

Most of the people here have already reached stage 5. 

[brog]

Saying it "must stop NOW" is a bit strong.  Because you know it won't.  And the world won't end, the videogame industry won't die, even some indies will continue to occasionally make it big.. Yes, it'd be great if it stopped.  But it's not necessary.

Still, it is pretty disgusting how people pirate indie games.  The other day a friend of mine said to me that he's playing a pirated copy of Machinarium.. I gave him a pretty stern talking-to.  Piracy does have a place; that place is fixing broken pricing - if EA etc. mysteriously decide to sell games for twice as much as they cost in the USA, we can patch that by pirating every second game we buy from them.  It's sad to see this power being used for evil; to pirate all games, including ones that are already reasonably priced, and from small developers who need the money much more.  But it's not about to stop, and there's nothing we can do to stop it - unless we take ridiculous draconian measures which would be worse than the problem.  The best we can do is just try to make it socially unacceptable among the people we meet.

[team_q]

 The best we can do is just try to make it socially unacceptable among the people we meet.

The issue is most pirates have no shame.

I also don't buy the "well maybe Ill buy the next game if this one is good".

Mainstream Games are migrating to consoles, piracy being a big reason.

[Cheater‽]

The issue is most pirates have no shame.

Fact.

[Melly]

Talk about an emotive first post.

Worrying about piracy will get you little in return, because it won't go away. Honest customers will buy your stuff if it's easy and reliable to do so. The people that would pirate it will pirate it anyway no matter how nice you are to them, but being nice never hurt anyone (in most cases at least). Stuffing your software with DRM will make it annoying for honest customers, and it will still be pirated. If it's not pirated, chances are it's not popular enough to be pirated, in which case you probably didn't make much money off it in the first place. Or you're distributing it on a console.

[Eclipse]

you just need to think about them as non gamers

[Mike Lee]

There have been a lot of studies and report on piracy (some by fellow indies such as 2dBoy with World of Goo and Broken Rules with And Yet It Moves) and it's pretty unavoidable. Piracy is pretty rampant regardless of the amount of DRM, regardless of the number of hurdles, regardless of any tricks developers try to use. Getting worked up over it doesn't do you any good because one thread in a forum isn't going to change the minds of pirates everywhere. The best way to combat piracy honestly is refusing to fight the battle against pirates and instead encouraging legitimate players to support the indie devs out there. That's a battle that I think can be "won".

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

there are mainly two types of pirates -- people who can't buy games and pirate them, and people who could afford them but pirate them.

the first type is forgivable: maybe they don't have a credit card, maybe they're in a third world country and a game is worth as much as a week's worth of food, maybe their parents won't let them buy anything online and they're too young to open up a paypal account.

the second time is more annoying, since it's just people trying to save some money that they can then spend on something else instead. for instance, i know a guy who is fairly rich: owns a state of the art computer with 3 30" apple monitors attached to it, and still pirates almost all his games.

you can't do anything about the second type, they're unchangeable, but for the first type you can decrease poverty and improve living standards all across the world, and eventually piracy will decrease because the number of people who can afford luxuries like games will increase. so i encourage joining the kiva indie games lending team and loaning to the working poor as the best way to fight piracy: http://www.kiva.org/team/indiegames

[Aquin]

Paul, you can twist any thread to match your topic 

You needs to be in marketing. 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

it's not really my topic, it's the one true solution to piracy: if people weren't so poor they wouldn't pirate so much. it's not a coincidence that the poorest countries have the highest rate of piracy. so the only real long-term solution to piracy is ending poverty.

[Nikica]

it's not really my topic, it's the one true solution to piracy: if people weren't so poor they wouldn't pirate so much. it's not a coincidence that the poorest countries have the highest rate of piracy. so the only real long-term solution to piracy is ending poverty.

[team_q]

There isn't a worker on Kiva that is looking for money to kick the pirates, that only download games because they can, in the junk though.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

haha, a kick won't change them either. once someone gets into the habit of piracy they won't buy games no matter how much money they have or how often they're kicked. for instance, cliffski's like the most anti-pirate indie in history, and even he can't convince his father not to pirate games, even though his father knows people paying for games are how his son makes a living

[Eclipse]

i think a lot of people pirate a game because "it's a game, they make billions out of it", they don't know about the indie scene, and they don't know that they're actually stealing the food from the developers mouth.

I once joined a forum where some guys posted a link to a pirated version of armadillo run, and they were all enjoying the game, some of them just downloaded it straight from that site without even searching for the real homepage.
I linked the homepage and i said that the game wasn't made by some big company, but by a dude or two, explaining that the money of the sales were directly handled from the customers to the developers. And also that supporting the game would mean for the author having the possibility do to other games, or to add content to that one. A lot of them said they were going to buy the game, I don't know if it happened or not but at least with words everyone agreed that the developer deserved the low price of the game...

So there's probably a short amount of pirates that are just casual\lazy gamers and they just don't know or are not interested to know from who or where a game comes from

[mirosurabu]

When young man learns to pirate chances are he won't learn the moral benefits of anti-piracy.

When I discuss this topic with someone from my country I usually get that "what's the point" argument followed by "oh, yeah, who cares".