Demo to Help Stop Piracy?

I don't think demo's wil ever stop pirates.
It definatly never stopped me when i was younger.
I think it's like bigbawmcgraw puts it, a question of growing up.

 

Pirates are thieves, 9/10 they would never pay for the software in the first place, no matter how much they say they would if they like it.

 

Link to evidence please?

 

A good article about piracy. http://kotaku.com/5533615/another-view-of-video-game-piracy

 

No need for evidence, its common knowledge. I have done it myself with many films and CD's in the past.

 

I certainly wish I'd had a demo of many games before I paid because so many games today are just over-hyped and under-deliver.

I imagine a lot of people pirate a game to be able to demo it.

If a game is then good many may well buy it at that stage.

Also consider that a pirated game usually avoids DRM which can make a game horrible to use/play a few years later when support has ended by the developers and some simple function in the DRM or similar systems renders the game un-usable.



Personally I think AC should have a demo, because by release date it'll be important for people to know what they are buying with AC.

Right now I have no idea what AC is going to end up being, it might end up being a game I don't even like by the time it goes final.


From my perspective I think a demo is a sign of confidence in a game makers product. If they don't offer one it's usually for a good reason (good for the developer that is)

Dave

 

Simcity 5 is a great example. EA, a publisher arguably so awful that they ruin every developer they touch and a game so poor it almost deserves to be pirated, yet the always online features ironically mean it's very hard to pirate.

 

All the more reason for a demo to not be released until V1.0

 

In your original post you said "they would never pay for the software in the first place". CD's and movies are different to games. Also just because you do something it doesn't mean 90% of the population does the same.
Paying £20+ for 2 hours of entertainment in the form of a Blue Ray movie is not good value for money IMO, therefore I can understand why some people would pirate them. If they were more reasonably priced then there would be less piracy (IMO).
Games are different. I've already clocked up over 110 hours of 'entertainment' in AC, and I'm quite sure many more hours will follow, so for me at least it's money well spent. I couldn't imagine the average consumer watching the same movie 55 times in 3 months just to get their money's worth out of it.

 

Hehe, a great point.

I'm almost of the idea these days that unless there is a demo I won't buy a game because it's proof itself that the demo would be more likely to put off customers than attract them to make a purchase.

I think what we see right now in the game market is a transitional state. We have games like World of Tanks with free advertising, through to the Candy Crush type with micro-payments, through to Forza 5 with initial high cost AND micro-payments AND dlc packages, to classical models where we can just buy a game outright and enjoy a full complete game without being pestered... at least if you ignore the pestering DRM!

Where will we end up? Well in the end I don't think it matters, all I know is that in the end people are not stupid and won't be willing to pay more than they think something is worth.


How does this play out for AC? Well I think the more time goes on the more KS will need to get ROI, and that means appealing to a wider audience since their price is fixed. Or adding DLC for a relatively narrow market at higher price, or making DLC for a wider market and at lower price.

However you cut it, KS need to plan this very carefully. If the sim is too wide appeal it's just a PC version of Forza or GT. If it's too narrow appeal and focussed sim then it's too expensive ala iRacing.


I think a demo at final release is the only fair way to sell AC because as we've seen everyone expects different things from their 'simulator', and it's clearly a very emotive matter.


Dave

 

I'm sure most won't pay for software after they have pirated, but I agree that blue rays etc aren't great value at all.

I don't want a penny stolen off KS as they are producing the best sim there is to my mind. But I can't say piracy is good for games at all. Especially for small studios like KS.

 

With minor regular updates you can decrease piracy (a nightmare for the guys who spend her time cracking games) or for industry/professional software you can release under GPL, MPL, etc license (BSD if you are a badass hippie ) and gain $$ with the technical support of the product.

Anyway, always remember that behind a software there are a group of people who don't live in a cave and eat only air, usually we have the same needs as you.

 

Minor regular updates seems to be an excuse these days to make a crappy product. It also makes it terribly hard to enjoy these games years later when the developers decide to not support the games any more.

Release a game, get your money, then try find motivation to fix all the problems with updates haha.

When I do work for people I get paid at the end once the client makes sure they are happy with it. The games industry is in a weird position of being able to send out a product then fix it later, if they want to. Assuming they haven't run into financial issues right after release... thinking TDU series games here.

Dave

 

TDU2.......Shudders.........That one by itself will leave a bad, bad taste in one's mouth....could have been so good...such a waste of money

 

This. A demo released before 1.0 would be incomplete and buggy, which may give a sour impression. You could update it with the Early Access builds, sure, but that's just more unnecessary work for the devs.

And anyway, what's wrong with watching videos and going by word of mouth to evaluate? I've never laid a finger on Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing, but from the videos and reviews I've seen I know it's hilariously bad. I bought AC purely from word of mouth and prerelease dev videos and I didn't regret it one bit. Wasn't even able to play with the tech demo to test as I've not got Netkar Pro.

 

Regular updates =/ fix problems/bugs, you can add more features that were not planned for 1.0 (or whatever)
If you have a product with good sales for an extended period of time obviously you going to continue supporting, but if sales decrease, we must take a step forward, software developers don't live only with air, everything has a life cycle.

It is a general rule for any product/service, including those we create the keyboard workers.

 

I agree that updates after initial release are a welcomed and good thing, but they shouldn't be planned elements to complete a game. A game should, imo at least, be complete at release in every way that the developers and buyers planned and expected.
Beyond that then everyone is happy if the game is a flop, and if the game does exceptionally well then the developers can update things to make the game an even bigger success and generate more sales.


I just think it's dangerous for consumers to give up their only bargaining chip which is their decision to invest in a game or not before they even play it.

Cripes, you can't even get a demo of early-access games to see if it's feeling like something you'd like or not

Early access is probably the most risky thing buyers can do to give up any power to control the way a product might go. It seems from most projects it just lets developers make it up as they go along and not feel they have to set any goals because they already have your money.

Dodgy stuff imo.

A demo is the complete opposite, it's honest and is totally in the consumers favour. That is the sign of a good developer imo.

 

Early access games should not have a demo....by it's very nature early access are games that are incomplete and not finished....The only way anybody should buy an early access game is if you are a fan of the dev team, have been following the progress of the game, or if you see videos and reviews from your trusted sources. You should never buy an early access game 30 seconds after seeing it on Steam; it will be missing key features and probably won't run half as good as when it has been fully optimized.

Once a game is actually released if it has no demo and you don't know anything about it and you still buy it without looking up reviews, videos, and any other info you can find and it ends up being no good that sucks for you but you should have done some research; especially since no demo should raise a red flag anyway.

 

It's a very shady practice.

We've not paid for early access, we paid for a pre-order and get early access as a free bonus.

But we can't cancel our pre-order.


Still seems a bit iffy to me.

At least a free demo has none of these twisted motivations because no money has changed hands. The product you are interested in is trialled and if you like it you honestly hand over your money.

You can't get fairer than that. And you generally get happy customers too, because those buying your product demoed it and know they will like it. Win win!

 

Pirates do like pirates do. I cannot imagine why the existence of a demo or not would affect their intentions at all. If they can crack something, they will crack it, demo available or not.