Those crazy cats at RedLynx did what? Yep, they put their PC game Trials up on torrent Web sites. But before you start calling the closest mental institution, hear the plan out.
"Piracy is here, so how can we take advantage of that? What we did actually, on day one, we put that game immediately on all the torrent networks ourselves," said RedLynx CEO Tero Virtala during Develop Liverpool.
"That game relies really heavily on the server side -- the leaderboards are the soul of the game. I don't know if it's helped, I'd assume so because even though the version that we put on the torrent networks wasn't the full version, it's the version of the game without the actual soul, without the leaderboards to play against other players."
So, by beating everyone to the punch with a version of Trials that wasn't complete, yet didn't have the sort of problems that can crop up in pirated games, RedLynx hoped to get the Trials name out there and possibly pick up a few new customers along the way.
Considering the three-year-old game has sold nearly 150,000 copies, and RedLynx has gone on to create a popular follow-up with Trials HD, I'd say the mission was a success.
Contest:
12:30 AM on 11.07.2009
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I guess they realize that piracy is, unfortunately, an unstoppable force and decided to, strangely, Use this to their advantage.
I guess it kinda works for a game that bases almost all it mechanics on getting better and showing it off through leaderboards, as opposed to a game that isn't heavily reliant on that.
Funny that the one developer that's doing this is one with a game that's EASILY worth the money.
And needs the money.
This reminds ne of Morgan Fox's (excellent) indie movie 10 Items Or Less which he released for free on the Internet after it played in all the festivals because he realized it didn't have a high resell value and he was actually saving money through digital distrubution and donations then he would have going through the hassle of a physical distributor.
Actually, there's are multiple ways to almost completely stop piracy. All you have to do is make things pirates don't care about. Or as an alternative, require hardware that a pirate can only get through buying the game (almost like guitar hero). Heck, sometimes both happen.
I do believe it is fair to say that pirates are a very specific demographic; very computer savy gamers who primary system is most likely a PC. Now, there is simply no way to get the full Guitar Hero experience without a plastic guitar. The peripheral, for better or for worse, is very good for the atmosphere for the game, and acts as a partial defense against piracy. The other defense simply requires companies to make a game like Brain Age. Yes some people might pirate brain age, but the type of person who pirates games (tech savy computer gamers) and the type of people that buy brain age don't seem like they would overlap much. The type of person that would be most likely to want brain age probably wouldn't even know that DS games can be pirated in the first place.
Of course, the only problem is that I don't actually have an interest in either game, which means piracy is most likely to hurt genres I enjoy while helping genres I don't care about. So I dislike piracy a bit.
I know whenever I try to find some crazy old PC game on the torrent sites and all I get it gimped copies or things that simply won't work it makes me not bother anymore.
I would throw PSP and Wii (at least I know a lot of Wii pirates) as very popular pirating devices.
I honestly don't know a single person without at least a PSP capable of pirating through downgrading and such. And these people are nor computer saavy.
PSP is a very interesting pirating demographic. I know people who act like PC pirating is the equivalent to baby rape but who'll pirate a PSP game without so much as a blot on their conscience. I find it interesting how people justify PSP piracy.
Worst Nasser of them all? "Well it's not like the games are worth anyway." I've heard that a few times and it infuriates me to the point where I pass the line of anger and enter sympathy for their logic.
...does this mean its okay to torrent Trials? I mean, I already bought Trials HD for my 360...
I'm not familiar enough with the piracy scene on the PSP to comment intelligently, but I know quite a bit about Wii piracy. Interestingly, Homebrew seems to be very popular for Brawl hacks and turning the Wii into a DVD player. After that, it's used to exploit the virtual console. The archetecture is supposedly so similar to a gamecube that most the old hacks carried over.
I don't know if the Wii is particularly popular for piracy or for just hacking though.
Yeah, I'd like to see more action like this taken by others.
Before another reiteration of "piracy is here to stay", I want your (or anyone else who believes that) opinion on how piracy will affect Natal games. Not the wishy-washy games that have Natal support optional, but the games that will integrate Natal necesarily and seemlessly into the experience.
(I'll admit I'm skeptical of Natal, but because of the Xbox 360 PC architechture and large number of PC games, it's more fair to ask how new technologies on the 360 will affect piracy than technology on the other systems.)
But then you still have to buy a $100 sensor bar.
No offense but, its like saying, you need to buy a 360 so that you can play pirated 360 games, or did I miss the point?
Also, DS piracy is pretty prevalent. Did anyone miss that report a few months ago saying that 90% of DS games are pirated?