"The question then remains: would World of Goo had more or less sales if it shipped with SecuROM?"

Let me take a stab: less!

no one and i mean no one is safe from torrents.

damn wankers pirating games, that thing that makes it worse is that this game is from a two man team, that's harsh. I for one am not going to buy World of Goo, was never terribly interested it anyways... but I never have pirated anything and I'll stay that way forever.

There's a demo on steam. There's no excuse to have to pirate it. I'll probably be picking this up eventually, but really guys? 90%? That's like...photoshop statistics right there.

The demo sold me on the game, and I'm definitely going to get it when I buy some more Wii points.

The biggest problem with this: it justifies in the minds of publishers the need for things like Securom. The game is cheap and awesome. Everyone who torrented it is a fucking prick.

If a cheap awesome game gets pirated like this, why would a meh expensive game fare any better? People like this are the cause of this fucking fiasco with Securom.

...aaand this is why PC gaming is slowly dying.

If I was a game maker, all my shit would be on consoles only. At least then there's at least a bit more security. Well except for PSP...and DS...and Wii and Xbox 360....shit and everyone knows ps3's got no gaems

This pisses me the fuck off. I mean, one thing is to use an R4 for Kirby games, the homebrew channel for using Super Smash Bros 64 or downloading a crack for StarCraft.

However ripping off an indie game is the whole action of an asshole "gamer".

Whether or not that 90% piracy rate is correct (personally I think it's a bit overinflated), pirating this game is a slap in the face of indie developers.

two words: no demo.

This is just sad.

Wow. How do you even determine those statistics? I don't trust them, until I hear more about it.

I got the demo off this game off steam just lookin for somethin simple to play in between fallout 3 marathon sessions lol. Not gonna lie its a great game, brings me back to the days of lemmings and marble madness and a bunch of physics based games from my childhood. Great art style, physics modelling and a nice online aspect allowing you to compete against other players for the highest tower.

I'm not gonna lie, I've tried the whole download game thing and most games I like I buy later, some games you just have to own a hard copy of. This is one of those games if you like it, I saw it in Wal-Mart the other day and had i been able to afford it at the time I would've snatched it in a second. Can't believe people would pirate such a small, cheap, amazingly cool game...

I'm more pissed off at the creator making blatantly false statements to help drive pity sales than I am at the pirates.

"I'm boycotting (insert mega publisher here) by pirating this game. It's just the type of rebellion the industry needs."

Yeah, buddy, your arguement has just been flattened.

* World of Goo only looks simples. But it´s a difficult game in a good way. And incredibly beautfool. Almost look like high definitiom in Wii.

Bwaahahahahahaha!!!

Can we now officially throw out all the BS justifications for piracy? All the "oh, I did it because of DRM", "I did it because (insert huge publisher) is evil", blah blah blah? Let's just admit that the VAST majority of the time pirates just want a free game and are either too cheap or broke to buy the damn thing.

I mean, good god, download something if you really want to, but save us the long-winded justifications, the bullshit Amazon/Metacritic reviews, and all the bitching and moaning. People will take anything that's not nailed down if they know they won't be caught, plain and simple.

I've vowed long ago to never pirate another PC game again (unless it's from an in house EA dev). And while stealing from other companies is sick, this is just disgusting.

"In this era of market saturation and mass produced crap, indie developers who are capable of making good games need to be nurtured, not crippled."

damn right, pirates suck

Maybe its just a shitty game and they're blaming pirating for the fact that its just well, shitty. Plus its over-priced.

The demo got me interested but it's not high on my list.
Hearing this news makes me wanna help them out.
I'll buy it one day hopefully.

I hope this doesn't force publishers to go the wrong DRM route. The piracy rate would be more, if not equal..

That said, unique IP's is TOTALLY wrong way to estimate piracy. I bought the game, I play from my work computer, I play at home. There you have a legitimate users creating two unique IP's. No wait, at home, everytime I reconnect the ADSL, I have a different IP. That screw things up more. To best estimate piracy levels, you have to have some sort of DRM, along with this data. It could have been a non-invasive DRM.

Going by their stated figures a whole 80 people bought World of Goo.


...

it's ridiculous to use pirate/torrent figures as sales speculation fodder, i.e the audience is very, very different.

1. people don't use steam to buy unknown software. they buy software they know about or would buy elsewhere.

reasons: there's no refunds or exchanges on steam, it's a cautious market. don't tell me you haven't second-guessed a steam preorder purchase when you could have bought the game cheaper in a store and have the supreme ability to refund/exchange it if it didn't work for you.

2. steam doesn't support games, it patches them, it really doesn't do much else.

case in point - i couldn't get bioshock to work for 3 weeks after i bought it from steam, so i don't have the best feeling with valve's douchery when it comes to supporting games after purchase,

3. the pricing is usually made more akward on steam than less difficult or less distinctive than the retail market.

i.e. $4.99 is great, but its not $4.50 or $4. it's also more expensive than the store copy, it doesnt add value to use steam, unless you value intangible achievements.

it is also in USD, which can be a nice shock to those 20 million other steam users around the world being ass-paddled by the economic collapse.

e.g. purchases that i thought would be painless i.e. call of duty 4, were fucked up by steam's foreign support being filled by miserable asshats with no balls to stand up to distributors and publishers, so a game that was US$49.95 is now US$88.50, making it 3x more expensive than the store-purchased copy of the same game. asshats.

in short, steam is a walled garden, and it's not the be-all software distribution platform for unknown and unpublished titles, it still requires a decent 3rd party review from someone who has played the demo or played the full game and can objectively justify the non-refundable purchase.

so, unless you are using torrents to distribute your game in the first place or using torrents to push your demo, reviews, or any game materials, it's a totally separate sphere of influence and communication. steam is a tiny walled-garden on the internet, so don't compare your steam sales to torrent figures, because you'll lose every time, steam's just not that popular.

Oh and on another note: Tower of Goo was freeware. Even if World of Goo provides infinitely more content, the idea of selling it at 20€ cannot but make some people sceptical.