PocketMatrix

Sales report from one game wouldn't really be indicative of much in either direction. Piracy in terms of economic pain is a very fleeting metric. Would those who pirated buy if they had no other option? etc, etc.

The main point we developers have against pirating is that it's OUR property. Not public property. Not necessarily that it hurts sales. We don't like people pissing on our welcome matte and pirates are essentially doing just that.

That is the case if you don't subscribe to the free software movement that is (which I don't).

But back on topic, that's a very impressive feat StephC. The last successful anti-piracy features I've read about were the ones used in Spyro 3.

They were able to stem off the PSX crackers for 6 weeks, which was their highest point of sales. They saw a significant increase in sales from Spyro 2 (More along the lines of what Spryo 1 hit) so obviously there are cases where this investment is worth it.

Wouldn't it be a good way to view it though that you will gain a good deal of good will (and improved reviews) by fixing the bugs? Even if you don't directly get money for the work, isn't the improved reputation of int13 worth the time?

I seem to remember the common thread of most of the negative reviews being "if they just fixed these couple of things it would be a great game".

Just a thought.

Frank, I think that no matter how hard of evidence we could put up that piracy is not as huge of a deal that people make it out to be, the majority will refuse to believe it.

I am not an advocate of piracy at all, but whenever someone makes a game that doesn't sell it’s immediately blamed on piracy.

This is a lot like the article I read about the movie industry blaming text messaging for the low turnout to see the new Hulk movie. Their rational was that people were text messaging people not to see it. Gee..... Could it be that no one wanted to see the movie? No way! It must be text messaging!!!

What I think its the biggest problem is that people directly correlate their time to equate to money. The reality of it is that if the product is not desirable, it doesn’t matter if you spent your whole life on it, its not going to make money.

Im actually willing to bet that the most pirated games actually make the most money. I am not saying that piracy is helping these games, but its a direct corrilation due to the desire to play that game(however that particular person was able to get it).

Back to the thread topic :), I think its pretty cool that StephC's protection scheme lasted so long.

I also think the jaybot review didnt have as much of an impact as did the way the developers handeled it.