Shack Interview: Ritual on Piracy
A few days ago, Ritual Entertainment's Mike Russell--whom some of you may also recognize from the Shack comments--posted a frustrated blog entry about piracy and its effect on his job and on developers such as Ritual. Recently, Russell has observed that he has been dealing with about five times as many support requests from pirates as he has from legitimate users, a figure that has a significant impact on Ritual's bottom line. I spoke with Mike about his further thoughts on the matter, which extended to a variety of topics: how developers survive (or don't) in the industry, what he does when he encounters a pirate, how Vista might make PC development easier, and more.
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Shack: When you are relatively sure you've encountered a pirate, what do you do? How do you deal with the person? Mike Russell: Actually, I contact their ISP [laughs]. I know it sounds silly, but ISPs have been a lot more responsive towards pirates than law enforcement has been. Most law enforcement sees piracy as petty theft. It's under a hundred bucks, it's piddly crap. But ISPs, they're really responsive towards pirates, because most pirates are the people who are munching all the bandwidth. So if they have, essentially, a legitimate excuse to boot a pirate off, they'll take it.
Anyway, I'm going to try to answer some questions listed that have been brought up here. Several were answered last night in my initial post, which you can see here:
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=12562240
I'll be answering questions as replies to this post, as well as clarifying answers to some of the questions I was asked last night by Remo. While I'm answering these, I'm also working on documentation for the upcoming SDK release for "SiN Episodes: Emergence," so there may be brief delays.
I can say this before I start answering questions, though. Customer service is all about the customer. I try very hard not to put any extra layers between myself and the customer that aren't absolutely necessary. This often means taking additional time and effort, but time and effort spent with a legitimate customer is never wasted in my eyes.
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The same goes for the RIAA. Piracy isn't hurting their sales as much as they think because the majority of pirated CDs would not be bought anyway.
I am totally against piracy. I am a software developer myself and would be upset if people were pirating my software.
If people have Kazaa, or go to warez sites and download the cracked stuff...do you really think the people that put that do that would buy the game if the site wasn't there?
I highly doubt it.
The only company I think that loses a substantial amount of money due to piracy is Microsoft because of the Windows OS. That you basically HAVE TO buy and a lot of people don't.
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While I don't think that PC gaming will ever really die (first timer startups aren't likely going to be able to land the HDKs needed for new console development) it's sad to see indie developers get screwed when they're trying to do the right thing (did I mention it's only twenty freakin' dollars?). I remember the number one justification for piracy was "it costs too damn much" and they take care of that and still get bent over.
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I'll say the reason he's getting so many people who need tech support for the pirated version is those are the people who know nothing about computers or at least could care less. When mommy and daddy buy your computer why should you learn how to fix your own problems or take care of it? Not to mention the way a hacker basically just chops out copy protection can't be good for the integrety of the code.
I still think Mike is making a mountian out of a molehill expecially when the more customer support calls he gets the more secure his job is. On top of that is the fact you cannot stop, slow, halt, arrest, or even intimidate a pirate. They'll keep doing it because hacking code is their hobbie and doing a game is a quick way to get some attention. Consider it like a rookie resume.
I must say, I feel bad for those kids. Now-a-days half the fun of a new game is knowing I had to work my ass off to buy it. Makes you appreciate things more and since gaming is my hobby (and love) anything that makes me appreciate it more at least gets pseudo-kudos from me.
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Perhaps a better solution to this piracy problem might be developing something people want to play?
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1) update itself
2) log me in (bzzzt.. unf.. Reticulating Splines ... zzz)
3) download some patch for Sin Episodes without me asking
I didn't pay $20 + bandwidth to play Stream, so sorry I'm not feeling very sympathetic right now.
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Is it ok for us to discuss this stuff now? Or is it only because this article deals with piracy?
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Still at pretty much every company I've worked at, there have been people who pirate software and games even though it harms the industry they are working with. Most of these people only care if THEIR game is pirated.
Secondly not all pirates are evil - I mean I myself have downloaded games and then paid for those games after. I've done this with stuff like Quake2 and Black&White because I ordered them but they are released here so much later...
I guess all im trying to say is yeah I think the article is very valid, but there are probably people at your own company who also pirate software/games/mp3s and I really cant think of any way to get people to stop :(
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I know this isn't a popular idea. flame away.
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This was made all the more hilarious when Rick Johnson started walking up to people who were playing his company's unreleased game.
"Pretty fun, huh? Glad you like it. I don't remember releasing this. Hey, (other developer), do you remember releasing Jedi Academy?"
Time may have fogged up the details. I'll have to grab some of my friends and see if they remember the specifics better...
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You should put firewalls in place such as an auto-responder for support that makes people fill out a support request through Steam or a web site to authenticate them. It's why publishers HAVE support people, and why it's a full time job.
You can complain all you want about piracy, but it's like complaining about hot weather. It's gong to happen, so you need to be responsible enough to deal with it efficiently as a small studio, and if you're answering every pirate's support request without letting a simple program stop them at the door, you're doing your job wrong.
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Maybe you should tie in user support via Steam-somehow?
There had better be a 'Have you ever pirated a game' question in St Peter's tick box questionnaire at the pearly gates...
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While I don't like the current trend with the rising prices for games such as the $60 X360 games, I don't think it's too much to ask to pay for the work that someone did if you want to enjoy it. Many have tried to justified that all these games are too expensive. Here's an idea.......GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASS AND GET A JOB. I know you love how your parents are giving you an allowance at the age of 22, but you gotta grow up sometime. I'm a huge fan of gaming and if we want good games, then we should support the guys making them. Otherwise, we'll end up playing titles you'd normally find out of Walmart's bargain bin....Yes, that bad.
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I'm hoping it's because theres something very cool planned and its not "we didn't break even so we're dropping Sin Episodes"
The interview was depressing enough, I don't need anymore bad news.....
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Also, Pirating a $50 game I can understand. Pirating a $20 is totally inexcusable. How fucking cheap do you have to be to pirate a $20 game? That is the definition of budget title.
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I seem to remember, from my local area anyway, that Doom II exploded in awareness, credited mostly to illegal copies.
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Let's just say for argument's sake that Mike's 1:5 ratio of real user support calls vs. pirate support calls is the actual ratio between people who legitimately purchased Sin and those who downloaded a pirated version. Let's say that Sin sold 100k copies - that would mean there's 500k pirated copies out there (an almost certainly flawed assumption).
I honestly don't believe that EVERY person who pirated the game wouldn't have purchased it otherwise. I do believe that the majority of pirates wouldn't have purchased the game, but let's say that 20% of the pirates would have actually purchased the game.
20% of 500k = 100k. In the assumption above, had the people who would have normally purchased the game instead of pirating it actually done so, the game would have DOUBLED in sales.
Now, I know this doesn't use real numbers - it's not possible for me to know how many pirated copies of Sin are out there, nor can I honestly know how many people would have purchased the game if they weren't able to pirate it. I do, however, believe that the above hypothetical situation does demonstrate a case where piracy DEFINATELY DID HURT SALES. It doesn't eat into sales by 5%, 10%, etc. The project could have DOUBLED in sales.
Anyone who pirates a $20 game is just lame. I don't care if you think you're helping to "advertise" the game. I don't care if you wouldn't have purchased the game otherwise. It's still ILLEGAL. You're still STEALING. What part of "piracy is illegal" do you not get?
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All this discussion got me curious about the game again. I loaded up Steam and your game is fairly buried in the menus. To find it I have to go to the store and look your game up by developer. Why isn' it, and a demo, in plainer view? This low visibility can't be good for your sales.
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That's a lot of downloads before a game even hits stores and i'm sure some of those people said "well why buy it now since I already have it" and saved $60 bucks. It's almost to easy to get copies of things
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In the end, it's wrong. No matter what they developer gets, it's wrong. If some scumbag stole something from your house and said "hurr it's ok cuz you weren't gonna use it anyway." that doesn't validate what they did. Why does everyone try to validate it?
And for the record, i have warezed probably about 3-4 games. one of them i ended up purchasing, and i usually buy at leaste 2 games a month. There's no excuse for what i did, and the one game i ended up really enjoying and feel bad i never purchased it.
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http://www.shacknews.com/screens.x/sin_episodes/Sin+Episodes/5/thumbs/113005_sineps_3.jpg
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Start your own small company and see how you feel about it. I suspect your narrowminded "I deserve everything for free because im leet" opinions might change a bit.
Sure, these people may have not bought the game anyway, but that is no excuse nor does it justify it.
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