*) pirated loss ment as “The on who does not buy it because of downloading it”

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So we are talking an 80% piracy rate, and reducing it wouldn’t really convert pirates to paid. So is the game really crap or something that 80% of people wouldn’t pay for it if they couldn’t get it for free? If they wouldn’t pay to play the game, that seems to me to indicate a game that sucks. I can see the point of a “rental” pirate (although a demo does exist, and is generous, as mentioned) but this seems to me to be saying that world of goo is crap, and not even worth 20 bucks.

Yet the game is an award winner. I can’t help to think the whole “piracy prevention not leading to sales” has to be flawed. If there is a well-made, fun game out there that can’t be obtained for free, of course people will buy it. That whole argument to me has serious flaws, because it’s really saying that most people don’t find the game fun or engaging enough to pay money for it, if the ability to get it for free was taken away. The lack of piracy will return increased sales if it is strong enough, because the product is fun. It is only when it isn’t that pirates wouldn’t be converted in good sized numbers.

Also, we really need 2Dboy to come clean on how piracy has affected them in terms of financials. Can they develop new games from the money they’ve obtained? Everyone is talking in abstractions, but if high piracy rates prevent developers from being sustainable enough to make new games, expect to see a lot more Bratz Petz games and F2P MMOs.

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Who says they are?

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“Only because you don’t want to understand it.

Not everyone has enough money, and even if they did it wouldn’t make your position any less short-sighted. It’s the classic industry view of “if you don’t like how we’re doing things, don’t buy it” which, if things actually played out that way, would itself lead to the collapse of the industry in many regions all the same. To cling to it is no better than daring everyone to just let the industry die. And that’s just pure arrogance.”

@Jon R

It has little to do with arrogance. If you don’t buy games because you’re not satisfied with the industry, but download them illegally anyways… then you’re just another hypocrite.

Everyone does have enough money… People that really are too poor wouldn’t even have a PC. If you can’t own both Unreal Tournament III and Far Cry 2, then you’ll have to make a choice which one to buy (first).

There’s really nothing unfair about that!!!! It certainly doesn’t give you the right to pirate [i]both[/i] games.

There are a gazillion people out there downloading their music illegally. They have this same argument; “we’re poor, don’t blame us”.

It’s stupid. Those same people go out to dance clubs, bars, restaurants and what not more. Spending their precious money on booze, food, entertainment and so on.

Spending money on games is a choice, people nowadays just don’t feel inclined to.

Even when I myself think games are generally too expensive, they will usually end up in a budget bin eventually. You do know some of the great games can be bought for 10$ if you wait about a year or so. So either you save more money and buy earlier, or you wait and buy cheap.

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“Another random point – not so much about World of Goo, since it’s pretty lightweight in requirements, but… just because someone has the money to buy the hardware with which to run a game does not mean that, after purchasing the hardware, they would also have the money to buy the game. And I for one, were I offered the choice between buying a game that I couldn’t run, and pirating a game that I could run because I’d spent all my money on hardware. Well. I think you can see where I’m going with that. I imagine that there aren’t very many people genuinely in that situation, but the argument that having money for hardware = having money for games is not correct.”

@Malkav11:

You’re wrong. If you had money to buy expensive hardware, this means you have a certain income. It means you can afford to spend several hundred bucks on hardware. It means you had a choice what to spend your money on. It also means it’s very likely you will have money left afterward.

Only a fool would spend their very last money on something as ‘useless’ as computer hardware, if it would REALLY mean not being able to spend money on anything else.

You’re fooling yourself thinking you can’t buy games afterward. In fact, just to take an example… why buy an expensive PS3, if you can’t regularly spend about 60$ on new games?

Having money for hardware does mean you have money for games. It’s just that you do not wish to spend your money on games… that’s totally something different.

People that can buy the latest hardware really aren’t poor enough by far to justify their personal piracy.

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Not everyone has enough money, and even if they did it wouldn’t make your position any less short-sighted. It’s the classic industry view of “if you don’t like how we’re doing things, don’t buy it” which, if things actually played out that way, would itself lead to the collapse of the industry in many regions all the same. To cling to it is no better than daring everyone to just let the industry die. And that’s just pure arrogance.

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