Championship Manager Dev Reports 90% Piracy Rate

[mindcycle]

Following in the unfortunate footsteps of World of Goo, developer Beautiful Game Studios' claims that its Championship Manager series of PC soccer simulators is the victim of a 90% piracy rate.

"That's not just a number in the air, we can measure it and we know that there are a huge amount of pirated copies," said Beautiful GM Roy Meredith in an interview with CVG.

World of Goo co-creator Ron Carmel recently stated that his game was suffering from a 90% piracy rate--though Carmel later lowered the estimated figure to a still-staggering 82%.

Despite Meredith's obvious concern regarding piracy, he recognizes that adding DRM copy protection to the upcoming Championship Manager 2009 could create even more problems.

"There's a real issue around DRM... I'd love to defeat pirates, but actually, with all this mess on Spore and Football Manager, which I haven't been able to play this year... I spent about three hours trying to go through this registration process and I really want to play it, but I've got other things to do with my life."

Added Meredith: "There are actually other ways of dealing with piracy too. One is to compete price-wise. We haven't got to pay royalties to Sony or Microsoft, so we can go into territories and price compete."

Smartest thing i've heard in awhile.

Read the rest here: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56607

 

[jamie8dc]

Price compete?! But what will happen to SecuRom devs?!


...someone give this guy a raise.

 

[videogames101]

Wait, a game software dev actually thinking?

 

[Saga]

About fucking time.

 

[AnthroAndStargate]

I'm going to go buy World of Goo out of respect for this man. http://playgreenhouse.com/game/TDBOY-000001-01/

 

[MrPickins]

Originally posted by: AnthroAndStargate
I'm going to go buy World of Goo out of respect for this man. http://playgreenhouse.com/game/TDBOY-000001-01/

Its a good game. Well worth the $20.

 

[Fox5]

I'm really sad to see these 90% piracy rates.
I'd like to know how they measured it though. I wouldn't necessarily equate a torrent download to piracy though. It may never finish, it may be downloaded and just never played, or it may be played shortly (think demo) and then deleted (due to lack of interest perhaps).

It's just weird to think that ungodly amounts of people are interested in playing a game, and 90% choose to steal it. It's more believable for small games though, that don't sell as much to begin with, but it probably also means they're hurt more. I honestly see Steam as the savior of little guys like these, since it provides the user with a secure, convenient store, and the seller with a large sales base. Of course, steam is somewhat picky about allowing games on it, so many devs are screwed anyway.
The developer Troika said that the sales of Vampire: The Masquerade would have been enough to make a profit had they all been on steam. Instead, having to deal with a publisher, they would have had to sell 3x as many as they did just to break even.

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: jamie8dc
Price compete?! But what will happen to SecuRom devs?!


...someone give this guy a raise.

The gullible companies that paid for SecuROM should sue for their money back, and for the business they lost.

 

[LumbergTech]

OH MY GOD

PRICE COMPETE?

a miracle has just occurred

please please please price compete, i will buy your games

im gonna go buy world of goo right now..but sorry..not soccer manager, not my cup of tea

 

[frostedflakes]

I'd really be interested in how they got those numbers. Not to say that piracy isn't a problem, but I'd expect maybe 30-40%, not 90%. If it's true, though... damn.

Have a ton of respect for people who "get it" though and realize DRM only hurts their legitimate customers. Hopefully it works out for them.

 

[Polish3d]

Even if 90% of the copies of the game being played are pirated, that doesn't mean that if pirating were suddenly made impossible that they would have made sales out of that 90%

 

[venkman]

Originally posted by: LumbergTech
OH MY GOD

PRICE COMPETE?

a miracle has just occurred

please please please price compete, i will buy your games

im gonna go buy world of goo right now..but sorry..not soccer manager, not my cup of tea

how do you price compete with zero? :Q

 

[novasatori]

Originally posted by: Fox5
I'm really sad to see these 90% piracy rates.
I'd like to know how they measured it though. I wouldn't necessarily equate a torrent download to piracy though. It may never finish, it may be downloaded and just never played, or it may be played shortly (think demo) and then deleted (due to lack of interest perhaps).

It's just weird to think that ungodly amounts of people are interested in playing a game, and 90% choose to steal it. It's more believable for small games though, that don't sell as much to begin with, but it probably also means they're hurt more. I honestly see Steam as the savior of little guys like these, since it provides the user with a secure, convenient store, and the seller with a large sales base. Of course, steam is somewhat picky about allowing games on it, so many devs are screwed anyway.
The developer Troika said that the sales of Vampire: The Masquerade would have been enough to make a profit had they all been on steam. Instead, having to deal with a publisher, they would have had to sell 3x as many as they did just to break even.

most of it is not even from the US

you gotta remember online piracy is global, in fact there was a chart that showed the US has the lowest piracy rates world wide

 

[Liet]

Why are we in Afghanistan & Iraq when we could be mercilessly dropping JDAMs and cluster munitions on WoW gold farmers in Beijing?

I'm writing my congressman immediately, and I urge you all to do the same!

 

[bobross419]

Originally posted by: Polish3d
Even if 90% of the copies of the game being played are pirated, that doesn't mean that if pirating were suddenly made impossible that they would have made sales out of that 90%

Just pulling some random numbers out of the air here, but....

You are saying that if there are 100,000 total copies, 90,000 of which are pirated, that if piracy was impossible that not a single extra sale would come out of that 90,000? I think it is pretty safe to say that at least 1 extra sale would come out of it and would make the system worthwhile. Software pirates are the scum of the earth and I hope they all diaf and have viruses ransack their computers. (Real pirates are the win though.... AAAARRRRRRRRR!!!)

 

[pontifex]

i find it hard to believe that they have that high % of piracy rates.

 

[Nik]

Originally posted by: pontifex
i find it hard to believe that they have that high % of piracy rates.

Exactly what went through my mind when I read the thread title. No way he can possibly know how much his games are being pirated.

Besides, who the hell cares about soccer video games? Of all the most retarded shit ever...

"Hey guys, wanna come over and play shuffleboard on my 360? ... oh. Well, how about Backgammon!! ... oh. Well how about Soccer!! Okay, Okay I'll go hang myself. "

 

[Viper GTS]

The last guy who made this claim was able to back up his numbers with data. He was tracking unique IP's submitting scores to his high score tracker.

This really is obscene, if you can afford a gaming PC you can afford to buy the damn games.

Viper GTS

 

[Polish3d]

Originally posted by: bobross419

Originally posted by: Polish3d
Even if 90% of the copies of the game being played are pirated, that doesn't mean that if pirating were suddenly made impossible that they would have made sales out of that 90%

Just pulling some random numbers out of the air here, but....

You are saying that if there are 100,000 total copies, 90,000 of which are pirated, that if piracy was impossible that not a single extra sale would come out of that 90,000? I think it is pretty safe to say that at least 1 extra sale would come out of it and would make the system worthwhile. Software pirates are the scum of the earth and I hope they all diaf and have viruses ransack their computers. (Real pirates are the win though.... AAAARRRRRRRRR!!!)

No, I'm saying that its unlikely that ALL 90% would be converted to sales

 

[lupi]

I love when people like MS do that. Oh noes we have 1 million pirated copies of vista in china, let's assume the general public is dumb enough to believe we would charge them the same price we sell it for in the US and that if we could stop all the pirates we would instantly get an extra 1 million copies of sales volumn, so we're down $..... Kabillion dollars in sales.

 

[Modular]

Originally posted by: LumbergTech
OH MY GOD

PRICE COMPETE?

a miracle has just occurred

please please please price compete, i will buy your games

im gonna go buy world of goo right now..but sorry..not soccer manager, not my cup of tea

Yeah, looks like it's working really well for them right now. :disgust:

$20 for a game is what I call price competition. And the game is still getting pirated at the rate of 82%. It's the losers who pirate (many of you reading this) who force Securom to exist in the first place. Let's get some facts down:

1) Piracy, in any form, is stealing
2) If there was no piracy, there would be no Securom


Stop stealing shit and we'll have no DRM, how hard is that to understand. I just wish they would prosecute PC game pirates at random, it would be awesome.

 

[Joemonkey]

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: AnthroAndStargate
I'm going to go buy World of Goo out of respect for this man. http://playgreenhouse.com/game/TDBOY-000001-01/

Its a good game. Well worth the $20.

i bought it and don't even like it that much, was more the principle of it

(actually i'm just pissed i can't get past tower of goo even after watching videos of the level being done)

 

[ultra laser]

If humans are able to steal with impunity they will do so. This is our nature. We are bad.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: Modular

Originally posted by: LumbergTech
OH MY GOD

PRICE COMPETE?

a miracle has just occurred

please please please price compete, i will buy your games

im gonna go buy world of goo right now..but sorry..not soccer manager, not my cup of tea

Yeah, looks like it's working really well for them right now. :disgust:

$20 for a game is what I call price competition. And the game is still getting pirated at the rate of 82%. It's the losers who pirate (many of you reading this) who force Securom to exist in the first place. Let's get some facts down:

1) Piracy, in any form, is stealing
2) If there was no piracy, there would be no Securom


Stop stealing shit and we'll have no DRM, how hard is that to understand. I just wish they would prosecute PC game pirates at random, it would be awesome.

But people will pirate because it is easy to do so. I for one do not pirate. I like manuals and cases and only buy PC games that are worth buying (which recently has sadly become less and less). I will get the nocd exe for a game I purchased for convenience as I usually have my discs all over the place and hate having to constantly hunt them down. But I can see why people would pirate. Its very easy to do. The measures the dev take with DRM suck for the most part but are necessary right now. There will be no solution, only less and less games for the PC unfortunately.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Price compete? I may be missing something here but it sounds like a lot of people want to buy their game but don't because they can get it for free. Would a $5 game stop you from downloading it for free or lead you to assume it blows and thus not even worth the bandwidth?