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Pretty healthy attitude here. Considering there's nothing Team Meat can do about piracy, they could either cry about it, or take the high road. They took the high road. Good on them for that.
Would they prefer that those people bought the game?
Yea, they do care. They just won't get butthurt over it.
Yea, they do care. They just won't get butthurt over it.
To be honest, Team Meat have little to complain about seeing that they've made a ton of money on it. However, they are complete idiots for announcing their thoughts in such a blasé way - it just means that freeloaders take the high road and other indie devs will suffer for it.
*slow clap*
*slow clap*
As much as I think Super Meat Boy is a 'meh' game, I give full props to Team Meat for their stance on the issue. Trying to fully eliminate pirating just leads to developers hurting actual customers with horribly implemented DRM that only hurts the people actually paying for your game.
The only problem with their logic is that you pirated a game and your friends want a it they'll probably pirate it or you'll pirate it for them.
@onomatapedalo Will other indie developers really suffer?
I really doubt that one developers nonchalance towards piracy will illicit more pirating from other studios. Especially considering that a pirates wouldn't normally consult the opinions of the studios they pirate from, because, you know, they're pirates and don't give a fuck.
I really doubt that one developers nonchalance towards piracy will illicit more pirating from other studios. Especially considering that a pirates wouldn't normally consult the opinions of the studios they pirate from, because, you know, they're pirates and don't give a fuck.
I'm sorry, but that just FUCKIN STUPID! It is breaking my brain!!
How the name of sweet holy hell can anyone be fine with that? It just doesn't compute. It doesn't matter how much money you've made. That's a lot of money you won't make. That's a lot of money you guys deserve to make! It's madness to not care!!!
I'm having a brain aneurysm just thinking about it.
How the name of sweet holy hell can anyone be fine with that? It just doesn't compute. It doesn't matter how much money you've made. That's a lot of money you won't make. That's a lot of money you guys deserve to make! It's madness to not care!!!
I'm having a brain aneurysm just thinking about it.
A lot of indie developer seem to fear the backlash of the pirating community if they say something negative about it...
I bought the limited edition last week for $8 at Walmart.
If you pirate an $8 game you should ask your mom for spare change or something.
If you pirate an $8 game you should ask your mom for spare change or something.
Well I bought the game on steam and xbox, but it's whatever I guess no point in getting worked up over things...
nothing they can really do about piracy without making people unhappy.
nothing they can really do about piracy without making people unhappy.
@littlebigd
well your brain only cares about the bottom line, the money, and not the appreciation of the artist.
“If there are let’s say 200,000 copies of Super Meat Boy that are getting passed around for free, that’s 200,000 people who are playing the game."
Team Meat obviously cares about the number of people at least giving their game a try, if not more so than profit.
well your brain only cares about the bottom line, the money, and not the appreciation of the artist.
“If there are let’s say 200,000 copies of Super Meat Boy that are getting passed around for free, that’s 200,000 people who are playing the game."
Team Meat obviously cares about the number of people at least giving their game a try, if not more so than profit.
I agree with them in a sense; piracy will always be a shitty thing to do, no matter the case, but from a monetary standpoint, it may not always have a huge impact. Sure, if piracy weren't an option, those people may act like cunts on the Internet about games costing too much, but they probably wouldn't buy things they can't afford.
That's one type of pirate: the kind that is broke but has an entitlement complex about being able to play anything they want in spite of that. Here and there, they will buy games. While stick reprehensible, they generally don't take away from sales. They are the ones whom Team Meat believes would not go around telling people they stole this and that, so "I'm awesome."
Then there's that other kind of pirate. The one we all want to pretend doesn't exist, but is unfortunately becoming more and more pervasive. The kind that not only pirates games, but shows no remorse for it, and would rather just shout "Fuck you!" to the industry in any way they can, all the while devouring games for free. They're the ones who have said to me, in a chatroom, when I announced that I just purchased Game X, "Haha, I torrented that weeks ago. Why would you spend money on it?" These are the bastards who are ruining it for everybody, who have no respect for games or their creators and who couldn't give a damn how much they steal and for what purpose. Pirates of this nature spread their disease like wildfire, tragically, and they are the ones Team Meat should fucking care about.
That's one type of pirate: the kind that is broke but has an entitlement complex about being able to play anything they want in spite of that. Here and there, they will buy games. While stick reprehensible, they generally don't take away from sales. They are the ones whom Team Meat believes would not go around telling people they stole this and that, so "I'm awesome."
Then there's that other kind of pirate. The one we all want to pretend doesn't exist, but is unfortunately becoming more and more pervasive. The kind that not only pirates games, but shows no remorse for it, and would rather just shout "Fuck you!" to the industry in any way they can, all the while devouring games for free. They're the ones who have said to me, in a chatroom, when I announced that I just purchased Game X, "Haha, I torrented that weeks ago. Why would you spend money on it?" These are the bastards who are ruining it for everybody, who have no respect for games or their creators and who couldn't give a damn how much they steal and for what purpose. Pirates of this nature spread their disease like wildfire, tragically, and they are the ones Team Meat should fucking care about.
As one of the guys who put together the Humble Indie Bundle said, most PC game piracy does not directly correlate to lost sales. The pirated copy to lost sale ratio is much lower than for console games.
Perhaps more importantly, it's pretty useless to care since there is nothing they can do about it. It's like asking someone to be angry at hurricanes or tornadoes. Besides that, gamers today are so entitled that they fly into an internet rage over any kind of DRM, then come to threads like this and moan about piracy. You can count on a tirade by Sterling on both topics on a monthly basis.
Team Meat seems to have about as healthy an attitude on the topic as is possible.
Perhaps more importantly, it's pretty useless to care since there is nothing they can do about it. It's like asking someone to be angry at hurricanes or tornadoes. Besides that, gamers today are so entitled that they fly into an internet rage over any kind of DRM, then come to threads like this and moan about piracy. You can count on a tirade by Sterling on both topics on a monthly basis.
Team Meat seems to have about as healthy an attitude on the topic as is possible.
@littlebigd
What Basstomouth to said. It's also pretty smart to realize you can't do anything about these entitled little bastards, so you might as well endear yourself to them. Pirates may buy their next game based on playing SMB and liking the developers.
What Basstomouth to said. It's also pretty smart to realize you can't do anything about these entitled little bastards, so you might as well endear yourself to them. Pirates may buy their next game based on playing SMB and liking the developers.
But the people who have stolen it will just say they like it and not mention the stealing, and probably share it with those friends that thought it looked cool. I don't see how that's going to come back to sales.
@littlebigd I think the idea more is that, along with their work being appreciated on a larger scale, pirates are going to pirate.
At the very least piracy can turn into sales down the road, I'm not saying piracy is GOOD but say your friend pirates a game, they enjoy it, they rave about it and say you should play it. So you jump onto your trusty Steam/XBL/PSN/etc. account jump into the store and buy said game that you otherwise wouldn't have paid any attention to. There's a sale. Sure it could go the other way and you pirate as well but then you tell X about the game and X may buy it, if not you could post on [social networking site] about it and any number of people could check it out. It's more about word of mouth advertising.
Again I'm not saying it's a good thing, in an ideal world piracy wouldn't happen, but the fact is it does. Team Meat could have jumped on the band wagon and had a good old cry about how piracy is the bane of existence but they didn't, they've seen the potential upside to an overall negative situation and realise that piracy won't just go away so they choose to take a more balanced approach to the issue.
Maybe their wording was too strong and that just gives the wrong impression?
At the very least piracy can turn into sales down the road, I'm not saying piracy is GOOD but say your friend pirates a game, they enjoy it, they rave about it and say you should play it. So you jump onto your trusty Steam/XBL/PSN/etc. account jump into the store and buy said game that you otherwise wouldn't have paid any attention to. There's a sale. Sure it could go the other way and you pirate as well but then you tell X about the game and X may buy it, if not you could post on [social networking site] about it and any number of people could check it out. It's more about word of mouth advertising.
Again I'm not saying it's a good thing, in an ideal world piracy wouldn't happen, but the fact is it does. Team Meat could have jumped on the band wagon and had a good old cry about how piracy is the bane of existence but they didn't, they've seen the potential upside to an overall negative situation and realise that piracy won't just go away so they choose to take a more balanced approach to the issue.
Maybe their wording was too strong and that just gives the wrong impression?
Pirating Super Meat Boy is the same as pirating Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty. It's stealing all the same. In fact, the latter two are worse, as SMB IS cheaper, so you're in effect stealing less.
Similar to Microsoft's stance on windows pirating years ago: the more people using the product (illicit or not) the bigger the potential future market share for Microsoft down the line.
@littlebigd What you're not computing is that piracy isn't as simple as X copies "stolen" = Y $ lost
If someone downloads an unauthorized copy and plays it for 5 minutes, or even an hour or two, and never touches it again, does that really hurt sales if they never would have paid for the game to begin with?
It's absurd to assume that if piracy were impossible, those 200k people who would've illegally downloaded the game would then buy it.
Sales are lost, no question but nowhere near as many as piracy stats migh indicate. The way they're looking at it is that getting the game into the hands of 200k people is worth it if maybe only 25k of them would have actually paid to begin with. Word of mouth can be priceless.
If someone downloads an unauthorized copy and plays it for 5 minutes, or even an hour or two, and never touches it again, does that really hurt sales if they never would have paid for the game to begin with?
It's absurd to assume that if piracy were impossible, those 200k people who would've illegally downloaded the game would then buy it.
Sales are lost, no question but nowhere near as many as piracy stats migh indicate. The way they're looking at it is that getting the game into the hands of 200k people is worth it if maybe only 25k of them would have actually paid to begin with. Word of mouth can be priceless.
That is cool that they are looking upon it as essentially free advertising that people are ganking their game. It is awesome that peeps are getting down on the meat, Super Meat Boy is fun. That said these dudes should be fucking millionaires and all those ppl who pirated the game literally are saying to the market that they don't give a shit about games, they will only buy hype. And some people wonder why activision sucks so many nuts, they are simply banking on a certainty.
I for one am glad to see a dev that actually gives a shit about game quality more than the 20 lbs of coke they can purchase to develop a case of "shit for brains" (IE: Robert Kotick and John Carmack)
I'm surprised Jim didn't go off about the evils of piracy, even though all the evidence is pretty clear that one pirated game does not equal one lost sale.
Piracy can absolutely lead to sales down the lines. Let's say we have a broke-ass college student who scrapes up change for the essentials (food and beer). He wants to play games, but he can't justify spending his limited funds in that manner, so he picks them up off torrent. A few of those he really likes, and takes note of the developers. Eventually he gets a job and begins buying games off Steam. He might even buy the games that he'd pirated previously, perhaps from guilt or maybe just because it's less hassle. Almost certainly he would look for games by the developers he noted before.
I'd wager this is a pretty common scenario. In situations like this, piracy actually contributes to sales, more so than if the guy had remained PureHeart Bear and not pirated and instead went without gaming at all. I still say Team Meat's positive outlook is the most healthy outlook a small-scale developer can have.
I'd wager this is a pretty common scenario. In situations like this, piracy actually contributes to sales, more so than if the guy had remained PureHeart Bear and not pirated and instead went without gaming at all. I still say Team Meat's positive outlook is the most healthy outlook a small-scale developer can have.
Heavy DRM probably causes more lost sales than piracy, so it's better to not give a shit than go all out against it.
@pokota True. The only problem I see with it is for example you pirate a new game, then later buy it off, say, Steam sale for -75%. It's still buying the game you pirated previously but..I don't know. Seems kinda iffy. Better than no sale at all, at the very least.
@pokota True. The only problem I see with it is for example you pirate a new game, then later buy it off, say, Steam sale for -75%. It's still buying the game you pirated previously but..I don't know. Seems kinda iffy. Better than no sale at all, at the very least.
they sold a fucking ton of that game. Your game is allways gonna get pirated, maybe you will find that some people will buy it for 2 dollars later if they liked it.
Yeah, piracy sucks, but if there's nothing you can really do about it, I guess it's better to be accepting of it than angry about it.
Plus, DRM is an expensive proposition for indie devs, especially when the files get cracked a few days after launch anyhow.
Plus, DRM is an expensive proposition for indie devs, especially when the files get cracked a few days after launch anyhow.
To all potential pirates, from a former buccaneer:
Pirating a game is a pain in the arse. You either have to deal with crappy torrent sites, shady warez-crackz forum sites, #irc channels with millions of other pirates in line ahead you, or dead RS links galore before you can even download the game you want - which can take about two months for the DL to complete because of all the aforementioned BS. Afterwards, you'll need to find a working hack for the DRM to even be able to play the damn thing! Worse, you can find out the game file you just spent two months downloading is corrupt and you've just wasted all your efforts for nothing!
Please save yourself some grief; get your games legitimately!
Pirating a game is a pain in the arse. You either have to deal with crappy torrent sites, shady warez-crackz forum sites, #irc channels with millions of other pirates in line ahead you, or dead RS links galore before you can even download the game you want - which can take about two months for the DL to complete because of all the aforementioned BS. Afterwards, you'll need to find a working hack for the DRM to even be able to play the damn thing! Worse, you can find out the game file you just spent two months downloading is corrupt and you've just wasted all your efforts for nothing!
Please save yourself some grief; get your games legitimately!
Ahh - What a refreshing viewpoint from a dev team that has made a boatload of cash.
I'd like for them to have that same attitude if they had only sold 10,000 copies of the game while the other 500k+ copies were pirated. Oh...you mean they wouldn't because they'd be out millions? Right.
I'd like for them to have that same attitude if they had only sold 10,000 copies of the game while the other 500k+ copies were pirated. Oh...you mean they wouldn't because they'd be out millions? Right.
"@pokota True. The only problem I see with it is for example you pirate a new game, then later buy it off, say, Steam sale for -75%. It's still buying the game you pirated previously but..I don't know. Seems kinda iffy. Better than no sale at all, at the very least."
Here's a counter-example. I used to be a pirate, in my younger, poorer, and less moral days. One time, I found a game called Europa Universalis II. I looked up a few reviews online, and, well, my interest was piqued. I gave it a try and loved it.
Now, some 10 years later, I own every game in the EU series and its Grand Strategy cousins in the Victoria, Crusader Kings, EU Rome, and Hearts of Iron series. I also own every expansion pack, except for a few dumb sprite packs and a few of the Hearts of Iron packs (as it's probably my least favorite series in the meta-series). I bought several of these games and several more of the expansion packs at release date rates, with many of those being preordered. I also own a few of the community made releases. Most notably, I have For the Glory, although I'm really really looking forward to Magna Mundi. All because I pirated some interesting looking game I had never heard of before.
Yeah, it's possible that I would've gotten into them anyway, but that's not certain. Regardless, piracy at the least did no harm and potentially helped Paradox to sell quite a bit to one more strategy dork.
Here's a counter-example. I used to be a pirate, in my younger, poorer, and less moral days. One time, I found a game called Europa Universalis II. I looked up a few reviews online, and, well, my interest was piqued. I gave it a try and loved it.
Now, some 10 years later, I own every game in the EU series and its Grand Strategy cousins in the Victoria, Crusader Kings, EU Rome, and Hearts of Iron series. I also own every expansion pack, except for a few dumb sprite packs and a few of the Hearts of Iron packs (as it's probably my least favorite series in the meta-series). I bought several of these games and several more of the expansion packs at release date rates, with many of those being preordered. I also own a few of the community made releases. Most notably, I have For the Glory, although I'm really really looking forward to Magna Mundi. All because I pirated some interesting looking game I had never heard of before.
Yeah, it's possible that I would've gotten into them anyway, but that's not certain. Regardless, piracy at the least did no harm and potentially helped Paradox to sell quite a bit to one more strategy dork.
JamnOnTheOne beat me to it. Fortunately for these guys they've made a decent enough buck to say something as dumb as "meh we don't care we didn't make any money on X number of pirated copies." They'd be crying the blues if they hadn't sold as many copies as they had, and all there hard work had been for nothing at all.
Someone needs to be mad they didn't make as much money as they deserved to! I'll sit here and be pissed on their behalf damn it!
Someone needs to be mad they didn't make as much money as they deserved to! I'll sit here and be pissed on their behalf damn it!
At least one studio knows you can't stop pirating, I always looked at it that way for games anyway which is pretty much try before you buy.
I've got a friend that pirates damn near every game he gets. Several times I've gone over his house, played a game that he pirated, and then came home and bought it myself. If he hadn't pirated it in the first place I wouldn't have even thought twice about the game. Piracy does have a way of circling around to sales.
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