Rock, Paper, Shotgun

25/11/2011 at 04:42 Laivasse says:

@ Droniac Unfortunately your claim that ‘most’ pirates wouldn’t pay for the games they download anyway is just as dangerous and far more unsubstantiated than Ubisoft’s “95%”. They can at least google for some torrent statistics and willfully ignore the fact that not all of them would’ve been sales, to gain some semblance of substance / realism to their claim. You cannot do anything of the sort for your claim.

Presumptuous to say he can’t back it up, although he didn’t have evidence on hand. It’s not a ‘dangerous’ claim. It’s a true one and I’ll attempt to substantiate it.

The most frequently cited, casual example of pirated-to-legit ratio analysis is the one that 2d Boy did for World of Goo. Kieron linked it above. But everyone tends to overlook the point they made in that same blog post, as well as the more in-depth analysis done by Reflexive about their game Ricochet Infinity, which 2d Boy also cite in their analysis.

Ricochet Infinity was a small indie game which shipped with some DRM but was still heavily pirated. Over a period of time, Reflexive improved their DRM in various ways but discovered that, in their words, ‘for every 1,000 pirated copies we eliminated, we created 1 additional sale’. This could even be a conservative estimate since their analysis appears to assume that 1) the decrease in downloads came as a result of their added DRM measures and not other factors (like the increasing age of the game) and 2) any increase in sales was linked to a decrease in piracy (and not eg. random fluctuation or increase in word of mouth surrounding the title at a particular time).

2d Boy commented on that analysis:
“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. [emphasis Laivasse's]

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.”

So 2d Boy’s much-referenced 80-90% piracy ratio figure actually comes as part of a meditation upon the futility of DRM.

Furthermore, I remember doing some casual research into the impact of mp3 trading on the music industry a few years ago, as part of a report for university. I was dumbfounded to discover that from the period 2003-2005, the British Phonographic Industry (think Britain’s RIAA) enjoyed record-breaking sales of physical CD albums, year on year. That is to say, when Kazaa and various Napster clones were at their height, and when Suprnova (notorious predecessor to thepiratebay) was still around for torrents, the BPI managed to sell more actual CD albums than they ever had done. Then they sold more the year after, and yet more the year after that. They may even have sold yet more in 2006, but my digging didn’t stretch that far, since that was the year the essay was due.

So yes, it is neither dangerous nor unsubstantiated to say that ‘most’ pirates don’t represent a lost sale. In fact it’s probably closer to being a massive understatement.

26/11/2011 at 17:14 Laivasse says:

@ Kieron

2dBoy were just as woolly with their statistics as Reflexive were with theirs. Neither dev gave precise sales figures vs precise piracy figures because neither was intended to be a definitive statistical study on piracy. Instead, both articles were written with the apparent message that DRM is futile and piracy doesn’t appear to be significantly affecting companies’ bottom lines. If anything is glossed over when the WoG post is mentioned, I feel it’s this message.

Reflexive’s ’1000 pirates = 1 sale’ figure is justified at least as well as 2dBoy’s own statistics. The percentage changes for sales and piracy rate are provided in Reflexive’s analysis, for each change to the DRM that they made. They don’t provide the exact figures – nor do 2dBoy – but they are after all in a position of wanting to defend their product from piracy, so why would we assume bad faith? To doubt it because it just ‘seems’ wrong is the same as dismissing WoG’s piracy ratio estimate based on gut feeling.

Conversely, there are plenty of identifiable holes in 2dBoy’s attempt to establish a ‘piracy rate’. Many are covered in these comments. I started to type a load of stats stuff about how dubious I am regarding their IP counting methodology until I remembered that I’m still missing the point. The point, as they made it, was that despite a high rate of piracy (and my gut feeling does say it’s probably very high), they felt that omitting DRM would not significantly affect their bottom line.

So, I have no problem with people tending to attack and dissect woolly statistics about high piracy rates. Although it was not the case in 2dBoy’s analysis, all too often these statistics come as part of an attempt to justify stupid DRM or poor treatment of the PC market. Ubisoft are a walking example. These attitudes objectively harm the user experience in a way we can identify. Meanwhile, and not for want of trying, nobody has quite been able to identify the effect of piracy on the market. That’s why people have a dog in the piracy-isn’t-a-problem debate.