Trials developer RedLynx has admitted that in order to market its PC title it leaked it to torrent sites for pirates on the same day it was released to paying consumers.
The pirated version of the game does not include support for leaderboards, said company CEO Tero Virtala, a crucial feature that is the "soul" of the game. Without it, he hoped users of the hacked version would want to upgrade to the legitimate copy once they began enjoying the game.
"Piracy is here, so how can we take advantage of that? What we did actually, on day one, we put that game immediately on all the torrent networks ourselves," revealed Virtala, during a panel discussion at Develop Liverpool yesterday.
"That game relies really heavily on the server side – the leaderboards are the soul of the game. I don't know if it's helped, I'd assume so because even though the version that we put on the torrent networks wasn't the full version, it's the version of the game without the actual soul, without the leaderboards to play against other players."
Virtala said that the game has sold close to 150,000 copies since it was launched 18 months ago. "When we compare that hacked version with those who have access to leaderboards and are accessing our servers they match. So at least people have not cracked out leaderboards yet," he added.
During the same discussion, Torsten Reil of NaturalMotion expressed his frustrations at the amount of piracy for the company's iPhone title Backbreaker – despite the game being sold at the lowest possible price point on Apple's App Store.
"We know anecdotally that even at 59p a lot of people have pirated the game," he said. "At 59p it's pretty fair to assume that a lot of those pirates would have been able and would have bought the game, but there's an overall attitude that it's fine to pirate."
While technology can be employed to hinder piracy of games on all formats, Reil said that it's just as important to try and change the attitude that content should be free for consumers.
"There is in general a feeling that IP and content should be free. That's fine to say, but if you have to pay all the people that actually put their heart and soul into a game – who have to pay a mortgage off and have children – it becomes much more difficult. Yes, you can limit [piracy] with technical tricks, but there needs to be an overall change in the perception of IP and the people who create it."
Those 59p usually turns into 59 eur just because it can. So freakin lame. Prices should be unified regardless of currency mumbo jumbo if there is digital distribution involved. So the game that costs 40 USD in US should cost 26.96 EUR in EU (based on current USD and EUR currency).
Not 40 USD in US and 40 EUR in EU. That's totally lame. And one of many reasons why i sometimes hate certain games.
No demo versions or demo versions released months after retail are also dumb like hell. Do you buy a car without checking it out or test driving it? This might have worked years ago when most of the games were actually innovative and quality enough, but these days, there is so much full priced garbage that's not worth our money, so "test drive" is necessary.
So, whenever i tried a game via alternative channels because there was no demo at all, i was instantly counted as "pirate", even though i later bought the original game. And i have quite few of them. But that's how it is.
__________________
Core i7 920 4GHz (200MHz QPI) | 6GB OCZ Platinum | ASUS Rampage II Gene | Sapphire HD4870 512MB Silent | 750GB HDD | ASUS Xonar Essence STX | Altec Lansing MX5021 | Corsair HX750 | TT LANbox Lite
This is interesting but a step in the right direction I suppose. One other way of doing it would be to release a demo with atleast 1 hour of gameplay. A lot of people including myself would like to actually try the game before paying. Especially when buying games on steam where you can't get a refund unless you pre-ordered it and the game hasn't released yet and you somehow managed to get a copy of the game before release.
Borderlands for example, is a game I paid $45 for but quickly realized how terrible it was and how bad of a console port it is. I mean, pirates can play online so that tells you alot about the quality of the game. That's $45 down the drain for a game I'm barely going to play now and I hate that.
Give players a demo at the same time as release and I guarantee you will slow down piracy, even if only by 10%.
This is actually the first time I heard of this game (as far as I can remember). Still pretty interesting strategy. They might as well have done that torrent version in a more official way, by just putting that torrent on their site and just saying its not the full game.
I wouldn't mind it if game developers gave out full versions of their games through torrents that are only limited in the amount of time you can play that game, like for example 1/20th to 1/10th the playtime of the actually game. They have to consider doing that from the start of developing that game though, to make sure it actually is part of the game and can't be cracked. Would make me try a lot more games and will probably make me buy many more as well.
__________________
"When in doubt, C-4!" -- Jamie Hyneman
My system-The Good Stuff:
Silverstone TJ-09 Case | Corsair HX620 PSU |Auzentech X-Fi Forte Soundcard | Creative T3 2.1 Speakers | AudioTechnica AD900 Headphone |
My system-The Aged Stuff:
AMD Athlon X2 3800+ CPU | DFI LANParty UT nF4 SLI-D Mobo | 2x1GB Corsair DDR1 RAM | XFX GeForce 7800GT GPU | 500GB and 640 GB HDD | My ideal monitor: 24" diagonally - 1920x1200 resolution - 100+ Hz refresh rate - preferable an IPS panel with LED backlight
More game companies don't do this because they aren't confident that people will actually buy the game after testing it :P Half the strategy involves tricking people into thinking the game is better then it is and then when people realize they just bought a polished piece of crap its too late.
i agree, i almost always play a demo before considering purchasing, unless i know i really want the game. on the other hand sometimes a demo can't show you everything or gives you a bad viewpoint on the game, especially if the demo is buggy or needs tweaking making the game crippled stats wise etc.
offtopic: @borderlands: gameplay is really to taste but the story is really great imo. i mean it's been so long since i've seen the level of detail, humor, etc. put into a game. those patricia recordings coupled with the 'photos' of the bosses/people etc. made the game. it was a really ejoyable game.
More game companies don't do this because they aren't confident that people will actually buy the game after testing it :P Half the strategy involves tricking people into thinking the game is better then it is and then when people realize they just bought a polished piece of crap its too late.
That's their problem really. If a company can't be bothered to actually make a decent game then they don't deserve any money at all. It sickens me sometimes when a really crappy game costs the same as a very well polished, quality game.
its kind of funny how music, movies, and games are largely a fixed-price industry, the price has little to do with development cost or quality
which is why in each of those three places its so easy to get away with producing garbage
__________________ ABANDON THE MODERN WARFARE 2 BOYCOTT.
Infinity Ward has promised revolutionary Mouse Control™ and Graphical Settings™ in the PC version of COD:MW2. Nothing more to complain about.
I've logged well over 100hrs of actual game play on Trials and still love it! In fact its probably one of the funnest games I've ever played before (I purchased the full versions about 2 weeks after it came out)! With that said I had no idea that they put out versions to torrent sites, pretty interesting strategy...
__________________
Asus Maximus III Formula (0902)
Intel i7 860 (L924B516)
Corsairs CMG4GX3M2A2000C2 (2 x 2GB) RAM
eVGA GTX295 (Dual-PCB & H20)
Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty Professional
LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray Optical SATA Drive
Thermaltake Toughpower 850w Modular
Intel X25-M 160GB G2 SSD
WD VelociRaptor 300GB
Fesser X-Changer Extreme 240
Laing DDC-3.2TPMP
Danger Den GTX295 H20 Block
ProlimaTech Megahalem DE Heatsink
(as far as I can remember). Still pretty interesting strategy. They might as well have done that torrent version in a more official way, by just putting that torrent on their site and just saying its not the full game. 
Linear Mode
