[Dark RevenantX]

Piracy is its own problem's solution.


Anyway, Steam is good for the frequent sales they have.  If you can get a solid copy, get it.  Otherwise, there's Steam, Impulse, etc.

[Narwhal]

How do they even know that?  

They had an option to send your score to a central server. Everytime someone did that, there was a check to see whether the game was legitimaly bought or not. 9 out of 10 games sent were pirated.

Actually, they corrected their figures, because people said they bought the game once and copied on several computers, so it was by their estimation closer to 6 out of 7 or 7 out of 8.

Being an indie, I think World of Goo benefited from the piracy. But if you take the same numbers (dubious method I know) and applies it to other games "not indie" who do no profit from piracy, and assume that only 5% of the pirated game would actually have been bought if not pirated, that means (for a very conservative 4 out of 5) +20% games sold, which is enormous given the nature of the product (huge fixed cost).

[Iss Mneur]

Being an indie, I think World of Goo benefited from the piracy. But if you take the same numbers (dubious method I know) and applies it to other games "not indie" who do no profit from piracy, and assume that only 5% of the pirated game would actually have been bought if not pirated, that means (for a very conservative 4 out of 5) +20% games sold, which is enormous given the nature of the product (huge fixed cost).

"not indie" games can benefit just as well from piracy as "indie" games can.  Same increased awareness (but remember this requires the game to not be crap) that World of Goo would have gotten.  Actually the "not indie" games could benefit more because of a lower budget for marketing.

[chief1983]

I don't even know if I can testify one way or the other on that anymore, in the last year or more the only game I pirated was POD (MMX wheee).