
Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times - pavornyoh
http://tinybuild.com/punch-club-has-been-pirated-over-1-million-times
======
joshschreuder
On a similar note, here's what the devs of Game Dev Tycoon did with pirates of
their game.

[http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-
when-...](http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-
play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/)

Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5624727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5624727)

Interesting article that after reading it made me go out and buy the game (so
a solid marketing effort too!)

~~~
ChrisDutrow
Just read through the Game Dev Tycoon article:
[http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-
when-...](http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-
play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/)

I was on the edge of my seat waiting for him to say something like "We used
the pirated version that we released to communicate with all the people who
pirated the game and we were able to convert 30% of them into paying
customers!"

But it didn't happen... It sounds like he just used it to really subtly hint
that the people should have bought the game. Seems like a wasted opportunity.
I feel like a popup that said something like this would have converted a bunch
of people and turned the pirating problem into a marketing opportunity: "Haha,
you are playing a pirated copy of this game, that's why you are losing all
your money to game pirates. Its all good, but if you upgrade to the paid
version this problem will go away, here is a _link_ to buy the game. Happy
gaming!"

~~~
supermatt
If they knew they were using a doctored copy, they would go and pirate an
undoctored one.

Anecdote:

This reminds me of the anti-griefer mechanism I put in to heyreddit/reddit
roulette back in the day.

If you received a verified report (following a forced match with myself), you
would only got matched with other griefers.

No-one realised why the penis-to-chat ratio was so low, but its because
eventually all the penis flashers would only be exposing themselves to each
other.

Of course, if I had told people that they would have actively tried to get
around it :)

Yes, the downside was a manual verification step :(

~~~
ChrisDutrow
Cool anecdote, sounds like an elegant way to deal with the griefing problem.

I think there is more to this pirating scenario though. A lot of people
probably pirate games because because they aren't sure if they will like them.
Once they are at the point where they are losing the game because of the
pirated version, they already know they like it. Some of the people who get to
this point will want to pay the $8 because they won't want to risk putting
more effort into the game and losing progress again because of the pirating.
Other people will be more comfortable paying because they no longer have to
worry about paying for a game that they won't play.

Even if they convert only 10% of the pirates, they will have increased their
sales more than 33%, making them over $800,000 more money.

~~~
supermatt
Yeah, i definitely agree with the premise, but as soon as that alert pops up,
people would rate the torrent/whatever and say its a bad copy, and then future
pirates would download an alternate seed.

Maybe they could "leak" a few different torrents in future and do some
testing! :)

~~~
ChrisDutrow
Ah, interesting. I'm not super familiar with torrents and didn't know about
that feature. I suppose he could release many versions with their own unique
hashes. Would people be less likely to put the effort into creating a cracked
version if they felt there were already a lot out there? I always wondered who
does software cracking and how hard it is.

------
kbenson
Since in these breakdowns they invariably seem to be using stats collection
from the games themselves, I would love to see how many of the pirated copies
progress past the fist X% of the game, or continue playing beyond 24-48 hours,
whatever the devs would consider around the mark for what they would consider
releasing a demo for.

Not that I think all the people that pirate are just demoing, but I think
without question many more people pirate than are actual sales, and those that
stop early lone are the type of people that probably wouldn't have generated
many sales anyway, possibly stopping after the demo if there was one or not
have bought it at all.

When these discussions are housed in terms of making enough money to continue,
and loss of revenue, ignoring that aspect is ignoring a large part of the
picture (even if it's still morally valid).

~~~
monk_e_boy
A lot of people collect games like they are pokemon. My mate has a ton of
games on steam that he's not even played.

Plus a lot of those games are being pirated by kids who don't have bank
accounts and/or are not mature enough to realise that pirating hurts people.
If a friend asks another friend 'do you want a copy of <game>' they just say
yes and that's the end of the thought process. The 'does this affect anyone'
doesn't enter their heads. (source: teacher)

~~~
kbenson
> A lot of people collect games like they are pokemon. My mate has a ton of
> games on steam that he's not even played.

I have 558 games on Steam. Almost exclusively from Humble Bundle orders, I've
installed and played maybe 30-40, and that's because I've made a concerted
effort the last year or so. I have another 100+ on GOG.com, mostly titles from
my childhood and teen years I've convinced myself I'll some day have time to
pick up and finally complete. I can relate.

> Plus a lot of those games are being pirated by kids who don't have bank
> accounts and/or are not mature enough to realize that pirating hurts people.

Yes, that was me. The vast majority I never played beyond trying out to see if
I liked them (thus my original question). The few that I didn't buy that I did
pirate and liked? Well, see the GOG.com note above (but a lot of those are
ones I bought _twice_ , or in that case of M&M II or some of the Ultima
Series, 3+ times...).

Edit: A portion that was supposed to be offset as a quote wasn't.

------
legohead
Getting some insight from the pirates would be interesting. If a pirate is
detected, pop up a quick radio selection box:

Thank you for playing the game. I noticed you pirated it and would like to
know why (you can still play the game):

* I can't afford the price

* My parents wont let me buy games

* I want to try the game free first

* I believe games should be free

* My computer is old and I don't know if it can play this game

etc..

We did this on our site when someone downvotes our content, and it gave us
valuable feedback.

~~~
dublinben
It's not surprising that Brazil, Russia, and China top the list for pirate
users. This game is probably very expensive for users in those countries, if
they are even able to easily pay for it.

~~~
Veratyr
> if they are even able to easily pay for it

I think this is something a lot of people don't realise but online payment
systems in China and Russia are near completely different (and isolated) from
ours.

China doesn't do Visa, doesn't do Mastercard, doesn't do AMEX, doesn't do
PayPal. Try buying something from a Chinese website like Taobao or Baidu. They
use things like Alipay which are linked to their local payment systems.

I don't think Chinese CAN buy independent games like this.

~~~
jpatokal
China does, however, widely use UnionPay, which is Discover-compatible.

------
spacehome
How do they calculate the number of times it's been pirated?

> We take overall amount of activations minus legit sales per platform minus
> 10% (to offset for people who activated a legit copy on more than 1 device).

An assumption of 10% multiple device activations is begging the original
question.

Pirating on Windows, Mac, and Android is pretty easy, but on iOS it requires
jailbreaking, which is pretty limiting these days. I doubt his piracy numbers
are anywhere near what he's claiming.

~~~
stordoff
Is a reason given for the 10% figure? (I looked in the article but didn't see
anything) I can easily see the figure being much higher (e.g., for PC:
laptop+desktop, for iOS: iPhone+iPad)

------
yannyu
Whose idea was it to have the 2 initial pie graphs switch colors? It makes it
look like there's some sort of inverse relationship between pirating and
purchasing on a given platform, when in fact it's roughly the same proportion
of pirates and purchasers on mobile and PC.

[http://i0.wp.com/tinybuild.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/re...](http://i0.wp.com/tinybuild.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/revenue-split-1.png?fit=446%2C327)

[http://i0.wp.com/tinybuild.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/pi...](http://i0.wp.com/tinybuild.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/pirated-splits.png?fit=446%2C327)

~~~
Rumudiez
Their analysis doesn't match up with the pie graphs either until you look up
pricing.

Punch Club costs $9.99 on Steam but only $4.99 on iOS, so the volume of sales
in terms of units sold realizes about a 50/50 split between PC and mobile
legitimate players, rather than the implied 70/30 indicated by revenue.

NOW their analysis makes sense (more PC pirates than mobile). If the colors of
the graph actually matched I would have just assumed their text was wrong!

...unless, of course, the piracy chart is in the same relative terms of cost
and instead portrays _lost_ revenue...

------
speeder
I would like to point out that Brazil currently is facing a extremely hard
crisis, where people can't afford even food.

Don't expect people to pay for entertainment here right now.

EDIT: why the downvotes? What I said is entirely facts, to help explain the
massive amount of piracy in Brazil.

~~~
thiagof
You are exaggerating.

~~~
speeder
I am?

Where I live at least, and considering my personal situation, it is no
exaggeration.

I doubt that most of the population in a 5km radius within me can afford to
buy several games, or even only one game.

I know lots of people (including family members) that are having a diet almost
entirely based on potatoes, because anything else is too expensive.

EDIT: some hard data, freely available on IBGE site, I got that data in
february, so now it might be slightly different:

Average wage on last ten years rose 44%, inflation was 78%, and food prices
inflation was 124%

------
xixi77
Ugh, do I see what I think I see, and there is a _pie_ chart of piracy
_ratios_ in different countries (that is, a pie chart of numbers that do not
add up to 1)?!

~~~
prawn
I thought this was going to be a joke: pie + ratio = pirate.

------
kazagistar
Pie charts are terrible

[http://www.businessinsider.com/pie-charts-are-the-
worst-2013...](http://www.businessinsider.com/pie-charts-are-the-worst-2013-6)

~~~
matt_heimer
It doesn't help that in the first two (side-by-side) pie charts they swap the
colors.

------
tristanj
Similar situation happened with Monument Valley, a game that hit #1 on app
store and won a 2014 Apple Design award. The devs tweeted that only 5% of
Android players paid for the app. On iOS, 40% paid [1]. Later they released
some sales numbers that show only 2.4m sales but 10m+ installs, implying that
the majority of their installs weren't paid for. [2]

[1] _Hit mobile game Monument Valley and piracy: ‘Only 5%’ of Android players
paid for it_ [https://recode.net/2015/01/06/mobile-game-piracy-isnt-all-
ba...](https://recode.net/2015/01/06/mobile-game-piracy-isnt-all-bad-says-
monument-valley-producer-qa/)

[2] _Monument Valley in Numbers_
[http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2015/1/15/monument-v...](http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2015/1/15/monument-
valley-in-numbers)

~~~
spacehome
I'm sorry, but the Monument Valley iOS piracy numbers from Dan Gray quoted in
that article are positively nonsense.

> It’s impossible for us to track that data. The only thing we can do is, two
> bits of data: One, how many purchases we have and, two, how many installs
> we’ve got. And we just leave people to draw conclusions from that as they
> wish, because we can’t clarify any further than that.

Once you purchase an app on an iTunes account, you can install the app on any
number of devices that you're logged into. So the fact that Monument Valley
has 2.5x more installs than purchases is 100% consistent with zero piracy, and
with the fact that as people replace their devices they want to redownload the
apps with the greatest replay value. This is not some weird trick that Apple
overlooked, either. They clearly want the user to believe that the apps and
the data are tied to the account rather than the phone, because new hardware
sales are where they make the lion's share of their profit.

(I thought his numbers were bogus, which is what motivated me to read the
article. In recent years, jailbreaking iOS devices, which is a prerequisite
for pirating apps, has become increasingly bothersome and decreasingly useful.
So the thought that there were this many jailbreakers didn't coincide with my
model of the world.)

~~~
tristanj
> You can install the app on any number of devices that you're logged into ...
> So Monument Valley has 2.5x more installs than purchases

No, it doesn't work like that. Android and iOS installs are separate, if you
buy it through one app store it doesn't transfer to the other. Combining the
Android and iOS numbers together to reduce that ratio is dishonest. Just
looking at Android, the installs to purchases ratio works out to 20 to 1 ...
do you seriously believe that can be explained through multiple installs?
C'mon.

Read through the OP article as well. He also a encountered significant amount
of mobile piracy, specifically on Android. There is widespread mobile piracy
going on, arguing about installs-to-purchases ratios does nothing to hide it.

~~~
spacehome
> do you seriously believe that can be explained through multiple installs?

No, I don't. My point was specifically about iOS, because I know how much of a
pain it is to keep a jailbroken phone, and I have a good sense of the general
population and how many of them do so.

(I develop a rather popular iOS app, and we have telemetry in the app that
determines whether the device is jailbroken. We have multiple tests for
whether a device is jailbroken. Jailbreak developers could fool all of our
tests if they chose to do so. However, since we don't actually do anything
with that data, we don't give anyone a reason to spoof them. In our population
of users, jailbreakers make up less than 1%.)

------
alexandercrohde
The one thing that really doesn't resonate with me is the undertone of
bitterness.

First, I bought Punch Club on steam, and enjoyed it.

But I think the assumption that's easy to make is "Look at all the money I
would have made if people didn't pirate." It's not that simple. Some people
who pirate would never have bought it in the first place.

~~~
aaron695
> undertone of bitterness.

I didn't read this at all.

Just the facts and thoughts on solutions.

~~~
danielbarla
I think it depends on what angle you're looking at it from. The article does
kind of read as: "hey look, we could have made 5x more sales if we'd been
smarter about piracy". Not everyone agrees with this, and I think this
argument is unhealthy in general.

I'd wager that if you made piracy completely impossible, most of the current
pirates - who tend to hail from regions where the international pricing is
prohibitive - would simply opt out of buying it. This may even have a negative
effect by limiting the viral advertising indie hits like Punch Club have
("hey, what game is that on your phone", etc).

This is not to defend the act of piracy as such, but I think if someone wants
to have a productive "facts and solutions" discussion, they should frame it
differently.

~~~
soup10
This is an idiotic wager. People are only pirating because they want to play
the game. Of course some percentage them would of bought it if they couldn't
easily get it for free. The marketing effect doesn't make up for thousands of
lost sales. Piracy has completely wiped out music sales, the only reason it
hasn't wiped out games yet is because of anti-piracy measures.

------
milkey_mouse
It sucks that we live in a world where people decide whether to translate a
game into a language, making it accessible for a country, based on how many
people from that country will steal it.

------
ginko
So from the charts it seems like mobile gamers are actually (slightly) more
likely to pirate than PC gamers. Also I would be interested how the
Windows:Mac:Linux split actually looks.

~~~
sluggg
It seems that Android users are very likely to pirate while IOS users are not.
I think the numbers were something like 12 pirated copies for every Android
version sold and 2 to 1 for IOS.

~~~
mschuster91
> It seems that Android users are very likely to pirate while IOS users are
> not.

Yeah because no one actually jailbreaks their device anymore... it's just hard
and risky, and on Android all you need is to install the apk file.

------
pklausler
An amusing incongruity from the article: "Punch Club clearly shows that
localizing games to Western European languages pays off, and has a very low
piracy rate."

Yet the article is primarily about piracy problems with Portuguese, surely the
most westernly language in Europe.

~~~
brotherjerky
Assuming you weren't making a joke, the article clearly states that the piracy
is coming from Brazil, not Portugal.

~~~
kristianp
Still, it's ambiguous whether the article recommends that Portugese
localisation should still be done despite the piracy from Brazil, or whether
other western european languages should be done excluding Portugese.

~~~
gst
There's no harm of translating something into Portugese: If you translate
there will be some piracy from Brazil, but if you don't translate users from
Brazil won't buy your game at all.

------
eridal
> The most interesting conclusion though is Localization and its impact. Punch
> Club clearly shows that localizing games to Western European languages pays
> off, and has a very low piracy rate.

------
odinduty
The tables in the "Top pirated countries on PC, Portuguese Localization Launch
Day" section would make much more sense if they were about the % of pirates
instead of raw numbers...

------
voltagex_
I wonder if Google Play allows pricing segmentation per area. I'm seeing a
$6.55AUD game, which is higher than most, although if it frees me from any
kind of IAP I'd consider it.

~~~
benologist
Prices can be manually entered per country or calculated from a base price in
your account currency. In either case it does not change again until the
developer updates it.

------
andrewclunn
So localize in English, German, and French (maybe Spanish) and don't bother
with an Android version, good to know.

~~~
kbenson
If you are interested in profit, the number of pirated copies is _entirely
irrelevant_. The only metric that matters in that case is the cost of
supplying the game for that demographic and how much money is expected to be
made. This is the same whether it's a language or marketplace.

For example, if it costs you $100,000 to supply and Android version, but you
expect to make $1,000,000 event after all the (assumed) piracy, it still makes
sense to release for Android.

~~~
andrewclunn
No because having an easily pirated version out there might otherwise cut into
sales. I mean it's why a shoe store wouldn't simply give away unsold
merchandise because then they're dramatically reduced the demand for shoes.

~~~
kbenson
You should read my statement again. If the choice is whether to sell in a
market or not, and you care about making a profit, the bottom line is whether
at the end of the day you made more money than it cost to serve that market.
Full stop. This is not about allowing or disallowing piracy in a market you
are already serving.

In your analogy, it's like a shoe store opening a shop in China even though
they strongly suspect if the shoes become popular knock-offs will pop up
fairly quickly. The question of whether it's worth opening the store in China
is answered by whether in the end they can make a profit.

------
scotty79
The only interesting question in this is how many would they sell if 1.5 mil
people wouldn't pirate it.

Unfortunately no-one knows hence the silly debacle. I'd bet they'd be
amazingly happy if it turned out that each 0.5 mil of pirates translates to
100 k in sales.

------
pmontra
If they pirate your game and play it AND if they wouldn't have bought it
anyway, you should be happy because they're not giving money to your
competitors: they don't have the time for it because they're playing your
game. It didn't cost you anything but you're gaining something. Obviously
people plays several games at the same time, still this reasoning works and in
many markets. If they are happy enough with your pirated games, music, videos,
clothes, bags they won't buy your competitors products. If your sales are
higher than theirs, pirates are helping you to starve your competitors.

~~~
izym
I honestly don't think game developers are interested in starving other game
developers.

------
dang
Url changed from [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/game-dev-reveals-
corre...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/game-dev-reveals-correlation-
between-a-translation-and-a-regions-piracy/), which points to this.

~~~
pavornyoh
Thanks Dang :).

