Poll of the Day > Are there real world examples of game studios going under due to piracy?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Including indie devs, they would be the most vulnerable I'd assume

I dont know

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No

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Mead posted...

I dont know

"No, as far as I know" is another way to phrase that answer

one of the biggest problems for indie devs theses days are predatory advertisement companies.

The maker of: https://store.steampowered.com/app/820070/Cube_Universe/ paid 1800 Euros on advertising and got nothing out of it

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It's something that's basically impossible to quantify.

At the height of the piracy scare, a lot of game companies would assume "1 pirated copy = 1 lost sale", which is just obviously stupid.

I believe the video game Spore set the record for the most pirated game ever, but that record may have been broken by now. And even then I still think the game made money.

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No. They just cant buy that second Ferrari in cash as soon as theyd like.

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Blightzkrieg posted...

I believe the video game Spore set the record for the most pirated game ever, but that record may have been broken by now. And even then I still think the game made money.

The argument isn't "it didn't make the money back", it's "what percentage of the money did it make back".
AKA it didn't make enough money to be considered a financial success.

Lokarin posted...

one of the biggest problems for indie devs theses days are predatory advertisement companies.

The maker of: https://store.steampowered.com/app/820070/Cube_Universe/ paid 1800 Euros on advertising and got nothing out of it

They appear to still be operating though

DrunkCaveman posted...

"No, as far as I know" is another way to phrase that answer

idk

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DrunkCaveman posted...

They appear to still be operating though

ya, that's a thing about some indie devs.... you don't really declare bankruptcy and close down, it's all personally funded.


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Lokarin posted...

ya, that's a thing about some indie devs.... you don't really declare bankruptcy and close down, it's all personally funded.

That's fucked up. God bless them for keeping the dream alive though

Just people like the AM2R guys that got takedowns from Big N for daring to make a better game than they can...

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Iron Lore Entertainment and their game Titan Quest are sometimes given as an example. The short version is that a faulty pirate version circulated and lead to two major headaches: bad word of mouth, and a costly wild goose chase to fix showstopping bugs. It's debatable if the former cost them sales, but it's at least plausible. The latter had a tangible cost to the company until the source was discovered.

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Blightzkrieg posted...

It's something that's basically impossible to quantify.

This.

There probably are some where sales kept failing to meet targets where piracy probably had a direct impact, but there's no way of knowing for sure.

LuciferSage posted...

Just people like the AM2R guys that got takedowns from Big N for daring to make a better game than they can...

No, they got takedowns for piracy. The quality of the game was irrelevant. Whether a bootleg is good or bad, Nintendo is going to protect its copyrights and trademarks.

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LuciferSage posted...

Just people like the AM2R guys that got takedowns from Big N for daring to make a better game than they can...

Funny how Nintendo didn't issue a C&D until a week after it was released... someone on the legal team was looking forward to playing it for sure. XD

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Zareth posted...

Funny how Nintendo didn't issue a C&D until a week after it was released... someone on the legal team was looking forward to playing it for sure. XD

I think they were camping the site and weren't legally able to until it released

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Lokarin posted...

I think they were camping the site and weren't legally able to until it released

What are you talking about? 90% of fan games get cease and desist orders before they're finished.

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Zareth posted...

What are you talking about? 90% of fan games get cease and desist orders before they're finished.

I was only guessing - I can be wrong and that's fine

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The Dreamcast arguably flopped because of piracy. Sega's stupidity making the 32X and CD before the Saturn put them in a vulnerable position, and a lack of copy protection on the Dreamcast sorta finished them off, I think.

Before an "ackshully" comes along, I know Sega still exists, but that was a big shift in their business and almost the end.

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Sega's mishandling of the Saturn launch and wanting to rush the Dreamcast out early to beat the PS2 was what made it flop.

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Zareth posted...

Sega's mishandling of the Saturn launch and wanting to rush the Dreamcast out early to beat the PS2 was what made it flop.

The Saturn was only a flop in the west because of the 32X and CD totally obliterating consumer confidence. It would've probably lost ground to the PS1 because of pricing, but it wouldn't have failed. Nobody wanted it after those two clusterfucks.

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Raddest_Chad posted...

The Saturn was only a flop in the west because of the 32X and CD totally obliterating consumer confidence. It would've probably lost ground to the PS1 because of pricing, but it wouldn't have failed. Nobody wanted it after those two clusterfucks.

agreed, it was what made me avoid the saturn, ok?

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ClarkDuke posted...

agreed, it was what made me avoid the saturn, ok?

the controller sucked too, ok?

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Raddest_Chad posted...

The Saturn was only a flop in the west because of the 32X and CD totally obliterating consumer confidence

Pissing off all the major retailers with their launch fiasco, to the point where many of those retailers simply refused to stock the Saturn or its products, was probably the bigger issue. The Sega CD and 32X certainly didn't help matters, but consumer confidence wasn't Sega's biggest problem; their own dumbfuckery and Sony eating their lunch were the one-two punch that killed the Saturn and, indirectly, the Dreamcast.

Raddest_Chad posted...

The Dreamcast arguably flopped because of piracy. Sega's stupidity making the 32X and CD before the Saturn put them in a vulnerable position, and a lack of copy protection on the Dreamcast sorta finished them off, I think.

The Dreamcast didn't flop - it actually sold reasonably well and was received quite positively. Sega had screwed themselves so thoroughly by that point that there was basically nothing the Dreamcast could do to save the company's console business. It would have had to have been a success on the scale of the PS2 to undo the economic damage the Saturn years had wreaked upon the company.

Dreamcast's fate was sealed long before the first console flew off the shelves.

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LuciferSage posted...

the controller sucked too, ok?

it really did, my friend had one and it was awkward, ok?

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Blightzkrieg posted...

It's something that's basically impossible to quantify.

At the height of the piracy scare, a lot of game companies would assume "1 pirated copy = 1 lost sale", which is just obviously stupid.

I believe the video game Spore set the record for the most pirated game ever, but that record may have been broken by now. And even then I still think the game made money.

Wasn't spore heavily pirated because the drm made the game unplayable for most people?

I'll be honest. I've been messing with AM2R for a couple days now, and its better than any official Metroid released in the past 20 years. its on Bloodstain's level as far as MV's go.

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Kotenks posted...

Usually the most heavily pirated media are also the most popular to purchase. GOT was the most pirated show while it was on and HBO made hundreds of millions off of it. When you look at movies, it's the same. It's rare for there to be product that is highly sought out/pirated and people have no interest in buying. Pirates make up only a small portion of the market. If your game studio is going under, you have much bigger issues than pirates.

There are so many things wrong with that assessment that one hardly knows where to begin. First, HBO sells a subscription service, not advertising. Second, a lot of the revenue generated from GoT was merchandising. In fact, many major properties tend to make more on merchandising than they do on the show or movie itself. That's not just apples to oranges, that's like apples to wrenches.

The problem isn't "the most pirated" anything, it's the stuff that's pirated to the point where people aren't buying enough to return a profit where the money is only being made on the game itself. If a game only needs to sell a small number of copies to be profitable and most people are pirating instead of buying, that's far more of a problem than a major thing with multiple revenue streams which is just losing out on an additional return past the point where it's already been wildly profitable.

Or, in other words, if a game needs to sell 5k copies to cover costs and only 2k buy it with another 42k pirating it instead (where, even if it's not a 1:1, enough people would have bought to make it profitable), it has a bigger impact than millions of people pirating something where they've already covered costs.

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Generally the smaller the game the less pirated it is, if that means anything. From my "jobless" gaming days, there was rarely a torrent out there for smaller games.

I guess you could say that it's taken a small chunk out of any big dev's sales.

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DrunkCaveman posted...

"No, as far as I know" is another way to phrase that answer

Gonna start using this at work.