This is more a theorie, but I just thought I share it with you to get some feedback or more ideas. The general idea is to create a game and "pirate it". Which means to publish it to p2p sites under the label of a Warez-Group. The benefits would be that you will get a huge audience without any advertising. Especially for a small/indie game this could be a way to get attention to your game. The drawback is certainly that no one pays for your game. You need to sell something to make profit and since everyone allready got your game for free you have to sell content updates or addons. (Or anything else?) What do you think about the idea? Can this work out or is it impossible to generate customers out of pirates? Are there special things to consider while designing a game for this audience? best regards

Putting your own game on a p2p site would probably help in getting your game out to a wider audience, but the people who download it wouldn’t be “pirates” because you, the developer, put it on there willingly. Not everything on p2p sites is illegal. If you want people to eventually pay for your game, just put a demo version out there for people to see, and if they like it enough they might pay for the full version. Or you could set something up that allows donations. Putting your game on a p2p claiming it was pirated when it wasn’t seems like a pretty cheap thing to do. If people find out that you are claiming your game was pirated when it wasn’t, do you think they will still want to buy your game?

Huh, I don't think it's pirating if you consent it. What you say is basically releasing a game for free and selling the extra downloadable stuff (though it would be nicer if you make it look like it isn't pirated but free for real). I'm pretty sure that some software does this already (not them all are games though). Does anybody know how profitable is that, though?

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Original post by Trinavarta This is more a theorie, but I just thought I share it with you to get some feedback or more ideas. The general idea is to create a game and "pirate it". Which means to publish it to p2p sites under the label of a Warez-Group. The benefits would be that you will get a huge audience without any advertising. Especially for a small/indie game this could be a way to get attention to your game. The drawback is certainly that no one pays for your game. You need to sell something to make profit and since everyone allready got your game for free you have to sell content updates or addons. (Or anything else?) What do you think about the idea? Can this work out or is it impossible to generate customers out of pirates? Are there special things to consider while designing a game for this audience? best regards

Don't publish it under the name of another group, its very dishonest.

Don't bother trying to convert "pirates" into paying customers, while it is doable I personally don't think its very easy.

If you wish to make money on the "pirates" your best option imo is to stop trying to make the players pay for the game and instead either sell a service to the players or sell the players to for example advertisers.

If you're only selling the software you have to rely on people being honest enough to pay for what they use. While some "pirates" might pay for software they like after they've downloaded it illegally(We've all heard that argument from "pirates") I believe most won't even consider paying as an option and the only thing you can gain from them is a tiny bit of word of mouth advertising. (Unfortunately they might go a bit further than to just tell people that your game is good, they will probably also tell them how to get it without paying)

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Original post by Sik_the_hedgehog Huh, I don't think it's pirating if you consent it. What you say is basically releasing a game for free and selling the extra downloadable stuff (though it would be nicer if you make it look like it isn't pirated but free for real). I'm pretty sure that some software does this already (not them all are games though). Does anybody know how profitable is that, though?

Redhat for example makes all their money selling services around free software and their profits are very healthy, ID Software has quakelive that anyone can play without paying (Don't know how profitable it is yet though) and ofcourse Blizzard has World of Warcraft which probably would make almost the same amounts of money even if they allowed people to distribute the client freely.

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Original post by Trinavarta The benefits would be that you will get a huge audience without any advertising. Especially for a small/indie game this could be a way to get attention to your game.

I don't know about you, but I'm not going to download random files from P2P just in the hope it'll be an awesome game. You'd still need some sort of advertising.

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Original post by Trinavarta The benefits would be that you will get a huge audience without any advertising. Especially for a small/indie game this could be a way to get attention to your game.

I don't see that. Sure, people who download literally every new release will download yours too, but they probably won't play it... and for the average, "casual pirate", who pirates something specifically because he wants to play it, there's nothing to draw him to your game. It's like saying that since your game is available on your website, it's already "pirated" because it's available for download.

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Don't publish it under the name of another group, its very dishonest.

hahaha

Thank you for your comments.
Yes, you are right its not really "pirating" if I am the one who is offering the game, but does it really matter if I sell a game and wait a week for it to be pirated by someone else or release it by myself as a pirated copy?

In fact this is just a way to offer a freeware game or a demo to a wide audience, but I think that there are more people who will try your game if they think its not freeware. Just think about freeware games or demos you have come across the net and not downloaded because you thought "it might be not worse the time to try it".

On the other hand I have bought retail games which I would have never downloaded if it would be a freeware somewhere in the internet. I think its more a psychological effect to rate a game higher if it costs something.

I personally do not think that I am really offending someone with this method. It's just a way to use a huge network as a sales channel. I don't say "Hey you guys are bad, and have downloaded my game. Talk to my lawyer and pay me for my bad game". (I have heard about a company some years ago who spread a keygen for their software through illegal channels to force the user to buy their application after using this keygen.)


If you follow discussions about why people pirate softawre and if someone looses sales or not you will often hear the argument that people want to try a software before buying it. Thats how I came up with this idea, its not bad if they want to try the game its just a question about how to generate sales through "pirates".

The big flaw with this strategy is that you're targeting your game distribution specifically to people who don't want to pay for your work. That's the worst target market you could pick. [grin]

There are only 2 real benefits to putting it out there on p2p networks

#1. If you have a title that catches the eye some people will look into it where as normally they wouldn't because they never saw the name. Since I read a lot of manga and watch a lot of anime and even i can't watch/read it all a lot of times I'll scroll through huge lists of names and if it catches my attention based on the name I'll look at it's description (same thing with a single frame or picture) and decide whether i want to give it a shot or not.

Once you get past that point it's a matter of word of mouth like most games. If you're first part sucks... you are going to get negative word of mouth. If it's ok at first and then drops off later most people will try to get through that bad spot and you'll probably get a mediocre review from people unless you mess up real bad near the end.

the more word of mouth you get the better this works so that's important especially one p2p sites... some have ratings that if it get bad reviews its' not going to be DLed even if it looks interesting from description/name.

#2. The second thing doing that does for you is saves you money on bandwidth. That's the whole point of torrents and such. If you get a torrent out there and promote it as well as fully support it it will save you tons of money in bandwidth alone. So yeah it's a good idea if only just for downloading purposes and not so much as a way of free distribution...



Also there is nothing wrong with free distribution, many games make their money off the micro-transactions of free games because for every person that is only playing your game because it is free there is someone that wants to look the best by buying $50 worth of micro-transaction gear.

Oh.. I was typing too slow, some new comments appeared after posting :)

Hmm maybe your right and it is not really that easy to generate customers with just spreading a game through these channels.

This leads me to the question: Are there any pirates who really buy games after pirating them? Or are they just saying this to legitimate their actions?

Whatever is the truth; SimonForsman seems to be right with the concept to stop offering a game just for "sale". Rather it seems to be better to offer services or using the micro-transaction-model like Durakken said.


(btw. I never thought about publishing the game under the name of an existing group, just "create" a new one. Maybe the "IPMOG-Crew" - I pirate my own games - ;) )