Remember the basic purpose of all IP: it is to support production so the public will get enough supply. So, because some games are ‘pirated heavily’ and some companies can’t make enough money, piracy is a problem? This is incorrectly founded because it assumes the wrong question. Collapse replies (9) Reply View in chronology You guys are so determined to prove that piracy is a non-issue that you will glom on to any success story (and the ones you cited are true but still the vast minority of cases) and say “See, it’s not a problem if you just make good games!” Making good product is essential but to insinuate that it’s all that is needed to guarantee success is ludicrous. Many also agree that Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a fantastic game as well but the developer is on record as saying it was still heavily pirated and despite selling well, hasn’t been enough to give them the stability they need. However, one guy making $350,000/day (a figure which is in dispute as others have already pointed out) and the success of the Humble Indie Bundle (a bunch of games that didn’t sell nearly as well until the price was heavily discounted and which were still pirated to Hell and back) is not a sign that piracy is a non-issue and that just “make a good game” isn’t the universal answer. I do believe a certain amount of this must be considered a cost of doing business and accepted and that’s why I support the idea that things like DRM do nothing to solve the problem while hurting the true customers. There are a lot of entitled people out there who will still steal a product no matter how much “reason to buy” is offered. But to say that this proves that piracy isn’t a real problem is ridiculous. Minecraft is cool and its uniqueness (and the viral nature of it) combined with its low price certainly have made it the deserved runaway success that it is. I take issue with the argument that “all you have to do is make a good game and people will pay for it!” Tell that to System Shock 2, Psychonauts, the Freedom Force games and any other numbers of critically and player acclaimed commercial failures over the years. Still seems like a pretty damn good success story.įiled Under: business models, indie games, markus persson, minecraft, revenue
It looks like a more typical day is closer to $100,000. From that, it looks like the $350k per day claim was a bit exaggerated - though, there was one such day. Update: There’s some discussion in the comments about this, and I hadn’t realized that Persson posts sales stats publicly. Whatever happened to “pirates” killing the gaming market, huh? Just creating a really good game, getting people interested in it, not treating them like criminals, and giving them a reason to buy. And he’s done all this with no distribution.
Apparently, he’s selling a copy every 3 seconds. With alpha software, and without going after “pirates” who are supposedly destroying the industry.
#Penny arcade papers please game of the year update#
Now Jay sends in some news that continues to build on the legend of Minecraft, pointing to a story claiming that Persson is making $350,000 per day (see the update below). More recently, there was a big discussion around the simple coolness of a guy in Minecraft building a working computer within the game itself. We’ve been writing a few stories about Minecraft lately, kicking off with a discussion about how developer Markus Persson doesn’t worry about “piracy,” because he feels it’s better to focus on giving people a reason to buy than caring about what others are doing.