While big game companies like Crytek complain about losing millions of dollars because of piracy, a number of independent game developers are embracing the world of piracy as a way to encourage people to try their games, and maybe eventually pay for them.
Whenever you open up a blog post about gaming, chances are you are going to read about some big name gaming company complaining about how piracy is destroying their business.
From Crytek claiming that Crysis 2 has been illegally downloaded 4 million times to Sony Interactive claiming that its Football Manager series has seen a piracy rate of 80 percent (even Madfinger having to go to a free-to-play model because of rampant piracy of their Shadowgun game), you would think that everyone creating games would like nothing better than to string up every pirate they could find.
However, that is not the case with all developers, especially the smaller indie game developers like Sean Hogan, the person behind the old-style RPG Anodyne game, or Jonatan Söderström, one of the developers behind Miami Hotline. In fact, developers like these two are actually embracing “illegal-file-sharing” as a viable way to get their games out in front of as many people as they can.
Sean Hogan said recently on Reddit that, rather than complaining and fighting against piracy, small developers should be embracing it. Moreover, for anyone who has downloaded the action adventure RPG game Anodyne, Hogan would like for them to upvote it on Steam's new Greenlight Indie Game platform. He also stated that it was a way for the people who couldn't normally afford to buy the game to at least be able to play it, and that it is better for indie developers to have as many people playing their games as possible and then spreading the word about them.
Jonatan Söderström said much the same thing in a recent thread on a torrent site where he and his co-developer had relied on to announce upcoming fixes. Like Hogan, Miami Hotline dev, Söderström, said that he understands the hard economic times and not everyone can afford to spend what little money they do have on games.
For him, it is about getting the name of the game out there and as many people playing it as possible, with the payoff hopefully being that they will tell their friends about the game. Söderström hopes that the studio’s generosity and understand will thereby encourage gamers to pay for the game later down the line.
that probably works well for the people in the music industry to become more popular, but the gaming industry? sure the game will get popular, but how will they reinmburse themselves for the hours of programming? thats like most of the kickstarters, get money and hope they do well, unforunately for gpg they didnt reach their goal so quit.
on a side note girls gen is suppose to tour america this year, hope they do well, i like how psy did well with his gangnam style via youtube, instant success, they even played it at the american football games super bowl lol unfortunately the grammy awards made no mention and clearly he was more popular than those that received awards
That is definitely a unique way of seeing things. That kind mentality may very well be their ticket to beating out their competitors who are willing to devote extra resources to make their products slightly more pirate-proof. How could a gaming company not succeed in coming up with a great product when their No.1 priority is to appeal to as many people as possible. In my opinion a lot of the "almost-legendary" companies (Blizzard for example) are just marketing their brand names nowadays and don't give much thought on qualities and novelties any more.
Personally, if I find a game worth playing a million times over or is truly a classic then I would do everything within my financial capability to secure myself a legit copy for entertainment as well as for collection purposes. I personally own 4 different retail versions of Diablo 2 and Lod and am still hunting down good deals on ebay for Brand New and Sealed games for my collection. With millions of people uploading new game play/review videos and the availability of demos it becomes so much easier to spot a game that is precisely my taste.
Now I'm in no way implying that I have the extra cash to burn (still a student here), I'm not even qualified to call myself a game collector, but building a mini library of my favorite games has always been intriguing and a satisfying project of mine. And a library full of pirated craps just doesn't cut (for the same reason I prefer to get the physical copies rather than the official downloadable-versions). I'm sure the same goes with a lot of people on the planet. Having said that, on the other end of the spectrum are gaming companies offering those extravagant "collector's edition" versions of games. It's such a shame that it has become accepted by consumers that it is alright for developers to withhold certain contents of game for those who are rich/hardcore enough to pay a much jacked-up premium for these collector's items... oh my.. I'm going way off topics...
well they prolly left psy out of the grammys due to psy having his detractors. he was involved in the anti-american movement in the past. tho i think he recently apologised for it after it came to light.
and darkelf, dont forget to grab tickets to girls generation american tour concert. lol~ :mrgreen: