Piracy Causes a 20% Drop in Game Revenue, Denuvo DRM Research Finds

I bet they have done what every other study on this subject does, and estimate the total number of pirated installs out there, and treat every one as a confirmed lost sale, not factoring in that in many cases piracy was the only way that particular install was ever going to happen, and if piracy weren't an option, they would never have bought it either due to being a kid without money, or let's say - protesting things like paid one year store exclusives, forced publisher launcher/stores and requirements to always be online to play single player games?

When I was younger (but this goes back to the DOS days) I would pirate games because I could, and I didn't have the money to buy them. If Piracy hadn't been an option, I just would have had to go without.

As I have gotten older I have grown a conscience. I thoroughly believe the developers deserve to be paid. (though I am not as generously minded towards the publishers who can eff right off in many cases)

I do still help myself to the occasional "community edition", but it is only in protest against anti-consumer behavior from a publisher. Sometimes (I go back and forth on this*) I even buy the game and just never install it, and install the community edition instead so I don't have to deal with things like Store Exclusives, unwanted launcher/stores/accounts, and always online requirements.

*I am torn on this subject. On the one hand, I believe in devs getting paid, and if I buy a game they do, but if I am protesting and still giving them my money, what incentive do they have to change? Of course that assumes they actually see my rants and complaints online, and understand why they didn't get my money, and there are sufficient numbers of others who do the same such that it makes a financial difference. It's a grey area.
 
Zarathustra said:
As I have gotten older I have grown a conscience.
Click to expand...
I am in the same boat. I used to get the occasional "free" copy of a game at our LAN parties back in the day, but now I'd rather just pay for it if I like it enough.
 
If it wasn't for piracy. I probably wouldn't have become the gamer that I am today. Granted I buy games now that I can afford them, but as was mentioned above me. When I was a kid and couldn't afford to buy the games, I would get them using other avenues. All of those games I played as a kid I later bought them as an adult for the nostalgia play through.

Which also brings up another point. Game demos in magazines/downloads back then introduced me to a bunch of new games that I probably would have never bought. Such as, Battlefield 2. I played the BF2 demo for a long time and eventually ended up buying the game and playing it for a really long time as well. I loved that game. Had it not been for the free demo that I played I most definitely would have never given it a chance.

Then, after enjoying Battlefield so much I also bought the Bad Company games and enjoyed them as well. All because of that BF2 demo.
 
LeRoy_Blanchard said:
Which also brings up another point. Game demos in magazines/downloads back then introduced me to a bunch of new games that I probably would have never bought. Such as, Battlefield 2. I played the BF2 demo for a long time and eventually ended up buying the game and playing it for a really long time as well. I loved that game. Had it not been for the free demo that I played I most definitely would have never given it a chance.
Click to expand...

I'm just reminded of those Doom shareware floppies that everyone seemed to have back in 1993. :p

1500px-DoomShareware_1.2_Floppies.jpg

(Though I could have sworn the label was red...)
 
Make Game Demo's Great Again


I obtain linux distro's because there are no game demo's anymore. If I like the game within the first 5-10 minutes I'll buy it.
 
If I'm not convinced a game is good and there is no demo, I just ignore it. I wouldn't even bother to set sail.
 
MadMummy76 said:
We investigated ourselves and found that our product is really beneficial - Denuvo
Click to expand...
This was my thought exactly.

When I was young yeah we used to pass around floppies all the time - we didn't really think anything of it. But I haven't done any of that since I got out of a dorm - It started out as too much hassle to find a working copy, then turned into many rips loaded with "extra bonus" software like malware.

Today - there's no way I'll fork out $50+ on a game I'm walking into cold. If it's a franchise or developer that I know, and I've seen enough pre-release info about the game -- maybe. But that's been ... maybe 1 game in the past 5 years? Most every other game - it needs to drop to a price point where I am willing to take a chance on it actually being a good game.

There are two things I've found that sell games better than anything else:
A) If it's a genuinely good game. It may take a while to get noticed, but word will get out.
B) If your friends are playing it. I guess this could also extend to "influencers" with younger generations, but they don't influence me at all.
 
Zarathustra said:
I bet they have done what every other study on this subject does, and estimate the total number of pirated installs out there, and treat every one as a confirmed lost sale, not factoring in that in many cases piracy was the only way that particular install was ever going to happen, and if piracy weren't an option, they would never have bought it either due to being a kid without money, or let's say - protesting things like paid one year store exclusives, forced publisher launcher/stores and requirements to always be online to play single player games?
Click to expand...
Agreed.

I think they believe a pirated install is a lost sale and I don't think that's often the case. If you are interested in the game and can't afford it, you pirate it so you can play it. If you aren't interested in the game you aren't going to install it either way. Take Concord for example. Very few people played the open beta.

They weren't interested in the game for free. Even fewer actually bought the game when it launched and I'd bet no one pirated it.
 
Dan_D said:
I think they believe a pirated install is a lost sale and I don't think that's often the case. If you are interested in the game and can't afford it, you pirate it so you can play it. If you aren't interested in the game you aren't going to install it either way. Take Concord for example. Very few people played the open beta.
Click to expand...
I think they count downloads not even installs.

I truly couldn't afford games in the 90s and early 2000s in Eastern Europe because they cost the equivalent of 2 weeks minimum wage.
You can't convert people into paying customers with DRM who can't afford to pay for games.

You also can't convert habitual pirates who just download everything and might not even try the game.

Brian_B said:
There are two things I've found that sell games better than anything else:
A) If it's a genuinely good game. It may take a while to get noticed, but word will get out.
B) If your friends are playing it. I guess this could also extend to "influencers" with younger generations, but they don't influence me at all.
Click to expand...
There are so few good and interesting games today that money is really not the issue. I often pay for the deluxe / ultimate / whatever edition of games that look really good. Because there is maybe one or two games like that in a year, if we're lucky.

IDK what happened to the gaming industry, there used to be so many great games. On second thought: I do know what's happened: DEI.
 
MadMummy76 said:
I think they count downloads not even installs.

I truly couldn't afford games in the 90s and early 2000s in Eastern Europe because they cost the equivalent of 2 weeks minimum wage.
You can't convert people into paying customers with DRM who can't afford to pay for games.

You also can't convert habitual pirates who just download everything and might not even try the game.


There are so few good and interesting games today that money is really not the issue. I often pay for the deluxe / ultimate / whatever edition of games that look really good. Because there is maybe one or two games like that in a year, if we're lucky.

IDK what happened to the gaming industry, there used to be so many great games. On second thought: I do know what's happened: DEI.
Click to expand...
There still are so many great games. I've been enjoying all the XB360 games I never played thanks to Xenia emulator. And a ton of older games on Steam that are now dirt cheap.

Good thing about XB360 and PS3 emulators is that the games are no longer being produced, so you can't buy them. And Sony/M$ shut down the stores for those consoles. You can download the rom's from sites like Internet Archives.
 
I'd like to see a study that combines metrics from:

  • Piracy but more comprehensive details including things mentioned in this thread
  • lost sales due to those not wanting a game with DRM, particularly DENUVO
  • and cost to the publisher for DENUVO services but also sales revenue comparisons for those who had it and then removed

I'm fairly confident if all these facts came out the gains for DENUVO could decrease into single-digit territory.
 
MadMummy76 said:
IDK what happened to the gaming industry, there used to be so many great games. On second thought: I do know what's happened: DEI.
Click to expand...
I would blame corporate boardrooms getting in the design process and doing Design by Whatever Buzzword is floating around at the time, rather than letting the producers/developers make the games they want to make.

I'm not a fan of DEI by any means, but one soulless zombie coder is much the same as any other when you just need to crap out corporate beige products and treat your team like assembly line workers rather than a creative unit.
 
Brian_B said:
I would blame corporate boardrooms getting in the design process and doing Design by Whatever Buzzword is floating around at the time, rather than letting the producers/developers make the games they want to make.
Click to expand...
Boardrooms were always a thing since game development grew out of garages and became an industry employing hundreds of people per studio. It's not as if they only started meddling recently. So no, I don't buy this as a reason. If anything there is not enough meddling. Just look what happened to Joker 2 when the studio gave full creative control to the producers.
Brian_B said:
I'm not a fan of DEI by any means, but one soulless zombie coder is much the same as any other when you just need to crap out corporate beige products and treat your team like assembly line workers rather than a creative unit.
Click to expand...
DEI does not only affect the product but the people who get hired to work on the product as well. Their passion instead of how to make a good gaming experience is how to inject their agenda into the game best to "own the chuds". Like hiding rainbow flags in game that can't be removed with a texture mod. True story BTW. Or to make female characters suitably androgynous to not offend radical trans activists, while also showing the middle finger to the dreaded male gaze. And then they go on twitter to do victory laps while their studio burns amid mass layoffs.

Many of the people who work in the gaming industry hate gamers, some of them in positions of power. And the people who are neither diversity hires nor have an agenda are not allowed to criticize the creative decisions due to a culture of toxic positivity. How else would a game like concord make it through 5-6 years of development when even a complete noob can tell that there is nothing marketable about it?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Become a Patron!
Back
Top