Indie Developer Finds Game On Torrent Site, Gives Away Free Keys Instead Of Freaking Out
from the super-chill dept
When game developers find their products available for download on torrent sites and the like, it's understandable if their reaction isn't exactly positive. Many gamemakers pour their hearts into developing their art and finding it available for free, fully cracked of any DRM that they might have included, can be understandably frustrating. It's typically that frustration that launches into DMCA takedowns, complaints about piracy harming the gaming business, and talk of site-blocking and legal threats.
But not every game developer falls into that category. While it doesn't happen enough, some developers try to understand what piracy is and isn't, and where inroads with the gaming community can be made, even amongst those dastardly pirates. A recent example of this would be Jacob Janerka, who created the indie game Paradigm, only to find the game available on torrent sites across the internet.
But, instead of being filled with anger and rage while running to the nearest anti-piracy outfit, Janerka decided to reach out to the pirates. Not to school or scold them, but to offer a few free keys.
“Hey everyone, I’m Jacob the creator of Paradigm. I know some of you legitimately can’t afford the game and I’m glad you get to still play it :D,” Janerka’s comment on TPB reads. “If you like the game, please tell your friends and maybe even consider buying it later,” he added.
Rather than playing whac-a-mole or, even worse, spending many calories and minutes complaining about the reality of video game piracy existing, Janerka decided to engage this community, give away a few free game keys, and include a request to spread the word about the game if those on the torrent site truly enjoy it. That's about as congenial as it gets, especially when we keep this within the frame of this group being one downloading Janerka's game for free when he's attempting to make a business out of his work product.
In the aftermath of this, someone posted the exchange on Reddit, leading to a chorus of approval from the internet community, to further coverage of the story and his game by proxy, and to news coverage of Janerka. In those interviews, Janerka revealed that this isn't some marketing ploy that went well, but rather that he has personal experience with pirating games.
“I did it because I understand that in some cases, some people legitimately cannot afford the game and would like to play it. So maybe HOPEFULLY for a lucky few, they got the official keys and got to play it and enjoy it. I know for sure that when I was a young kid, I was unable to buy all the games I wanted and played pirated games. And when I actually got that disposable income, I ended up buying sequels/merch/extra copies,” Janerka adds.
The developer doesn’t think that piracy hurts him much, as many people who pirate his games don’t have the money to buy them anyway. In addition, having non-paying fans of the game is more valuable than having no fans at all.
Janerka's approach is the polar opposite of most of the larger studios that tend to see game pirates as vermin fit for the judicial system. To see news of the game spread like this, simply because the developer decided to be awesome and human rather than heavy-handed or litigious, should be a signal to creators big and small how to handle having their games show up on torrent sites.
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Filed Under: games, jacob janerka, keys, paradigm, piracy, torrents
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Dupe?
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Did you even read the whole article, or just the headline? The whole point of the article is that the developer understands, and even admits, that these unauthorized downloads are NOT lost sales. They were never-sales - many of the downloaders never had any intention of buying the game, with lack of disposable income being one possible factor. Who knows; it may even increase sales - the ones that used it as a demo may buy it if they like it, but without that initial download they may not have ever purchased it.
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This in contrast to say EA or Ubisoft, both companies who seem to regularly make the news, but tend to come out looking like total assholes. Like that wonderful mess that was Sim City. Really smooth way to handle pirates don't you think? Lock the game up with always online requirement, but then don't bother to actually build out the server farm needed to handle the load. Then no one can play, not even those stupid enough to pay for the game.
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Don't you mean that only pirates can play the game, due to the removal of the DRM?
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Treating people like people rather than criminals and treating non-paying fans the same as paying fans gets him positive press and possibly a bigger fanbase. Imagine that.
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All the "fans" in the world can't buy you a cup of coffee, let alone pay for development of a new product.
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Development already occurred. Non-sales, including people who got it free, have zero effect.
All the distribution industries know this, deep down, which is why they want to charge the same as if you were purchasing a hard copy that had to be manufactured and distributed. Some creators and publishes actually get it, others don't.
Burn down libraries, right? They are so evil. And heaven forbid you lend or sell something you are done watching, reading, playing, or listening to, if it is a hard copy medium.
But as for digital content, the production cost is effectively zero. 90% of the world can pirate it (which i am sure is exactly what y'all imagine in your frothing, fevered dreams), 10% can buy it, and you are well into happy profit land.
You seem to fail to realize that most people who infringe a thing or two occasionally are precisely future paying customers. "Fans" _does_ equal profits. Fans are advertisers and future customers. If you don't believe that, explain free samples, coupons, and Microsoft giving away free or low cost shit to China and schools.
Pretty sure anyone in industries subject to non-counterfeit infringement, who spend so much time and money whining and trying to "stamp out piracy" are wasting far more than any theoretical "lost profits" could possibly amount to.
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But games that have an online component are a very different case. The designing and running the server components cost a lot of money and takes a lot of resources and that forces companies to find new ways to make money, and they sometimes (really more often than anybody wants) get it wrong either technically, socially or monetarily.
Something people don't realize is that pirated copies of an online game are a major component of a griefer's ability to make the gameplay bad for others. They know they will get banned so they find a "free game" using a throwaway account to be jerks. Then the rest of the community blames the game company for the bad experience.
As for the giveaways... well that is not really an option either for bigger companies... A small independent doesn't really have to worry about people coming out of the woodwork to take advantage of a nice gesture.
I have seen for myself the inner happenings of a major video game company support queue. There is a strong timing correlation with a new reddit comment about how to get a game for free from a company and the phone queue being overwhelmed with people that want to game the system. Don't forget that every call costs the company between $5-10 (at least one with good service) per phone contact, so every call not helping somebody with a legitimate issue is taking away from resources that can go into the making better games. Now multiply that by thousands of calls an hour and you will start to understand why Steam doesn't have a phone support number.
Does that make being "anti-pirate" and using DRM the right thing to do (very debatable)? But what other tools and techniques do a big game company have (vs a small one)? All companies have to make a profit, but game companies also employ a LOT of people in a very specialized area of expertise. If they go out of business then a lot of people lose could their jobs and the economy of the gaming industry may not support them all being rehired quickly. I am not saying any company is too big to fail, just that assuming a "they have deep pockets" mentality isn't good for the industry as a whole.
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On the other hand, online multiplayer games require constant checking for cheating, etc., and so are less vulnerable to piracy. Even if players choose a private server they're likely to also want to access public servers. People caught cheating are banned. Other buy DLC and the company profits overall. I don't like forced DLC or the fact that free to play tactics are finding their way into AAA games, but online games are less vulnerable to piracy generally, which is why you too often find crappy multiplayer elements shoehorned into single player games that don't need them.
"Something people don't realize is that pirated copies of an online game are a major component of a griefer's ability to make the gameplay bad for others."
Then they're caught and are banned from public servers.
"But what other tools and techniques do a big game company have (vs a small one)?"
DRM screws paying customers. If companies can't think of another way to convince people to pay them money, they don't deserve to be paid.
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The Summary: I have worked for a major PC game publisher for half a decade and can attest that making games is extremely complicated and hugely expensive.
Any way you look at it profits are important. Even the most passionate of indie game dev that makes something awesome as a labor of love needs to pay the bills and would LOVE to make enough from their game to do nothing but make a new one.
The most successful strategy for making money is a complicated mix of the type of game, the audience, the market, timing (and current events at launch), game content, the publisher, cost of dev, available dev resources, future content plans, ongoing support strategies, what platforms are supported, digital only or are there packaged goods, and a bunch of other things.
I am a big fan of CwF + RtB but that relies on some sort of scarce resource that can be monetized, it is difficult to find a way that fits the game and is successful. Remember also that those monetization strategies work best when they are planned in from the start which is often a couple of years before release... public desires change a lot in that timeframe.
Given that there are not many ways to produce and protect a successful revenue stream from a game and your post shows disdain for most of the tools that game companies have and that highlights part of the problem for game devs/publishers in that whatever they do or try (there has been a LOT of innovation and strategies in the last decade) there is always a vocal group that hates it or sees as justification to game the system to "not reward that behavior" but yet still play.
I challenge you (and everybody who reads this) to discuss the possible solutions and get beyond the simple statements of "DRM is bad", "Paying for DLC sucks", or "microtransactions are evil".
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You always have, you always will. You pay for shoplifters every time you shop in a supermarket, you pay for people who never buy a copy every time you buy a newspaper, you pay for everyone to use parks for free every time you pay taxes.
It's reality, deal with it.
"the paying customers are lining up with the freeloaders, because they know as soon as it's cracked, everyone gets it for free."
Yet, in the real world, that doesn't mean that the paying customers suddenly stop paying. It just means that you have to cater to those who do pay.
I'm sorry if this basic concept is still alien to you. Perhaps if you put as much effort into reading comprehension as you do with idiot trolling, you'd have grasped this by now?
"All the "fans" in the world can't buy you a cup of coffee, let alone pay for development of a new product."
Unless they actually pay you. Which is why there are so many business models that are successfully doing this. The one that's failing? Attacking your fanbase while whining about all the pirates.
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Maybe you weren't in the right place at the right time to score one of the free keys. Life is a series of missed opportunities. But the only ones that count are the ones you are aware of in time to take advantage of.
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I assume he means that by paying full price for a product, he's paying for the product to be developed while the "freeloader" is not. Therefore, the existence of the product in on him and he resents paying for a product's existence that others enjoy for free.
Like most of his ideas, it's very flawed and some aspects of the argument are easily refuted by objective reality. It also ignores that there's plenty of ways in which he's been paying for "freeloaders" his entire life - and has probably been one many, many times over without realising it. But, at least it's easy to see where he's coming from for once.
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The thought has honestly never occurred to me, or given me even a moment's pause in deciding whether or not I should spend money on something I want.
If you honestly recoil at the thought of paying creators because you can't stand the thought that other people are getting the same thing without paying for it, then maybe you're the one with the questionable morals.
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The thought has honestly never occurred to me, or given me even a moment's pause in deciding whether or not I should spend money on something I want.
If you honestly recoil at the thought of paying creators because you can't stand the thought that other people are getting the same thing without paying for it, then maybe you're the one with the questionable morals.
This kinda reminds me of the single-payer healthcare debate, or Universal Basic Income.
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Glad to have you on board with reality for once!
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I know of various people who spend little on marketing budgets but have huge marketing programs. They are always looking for ways to have free marketing, it means more profit in the end.
He is another one who has used a loss leader to generate a huge marketing campaign that has essentially cost him nothing but has raised his profile above the masses.
The ship may have sailed without him, but he has already reached the next port because the ship has docked there.
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For me, I've seen this story reported a couple of times, Paradigm was not on my radar before. It is now. I've not bought it yet (funds tied up in summer activities, massive backlog of games on various platforms that I'm trying to to add to), but I will certainly buy at some point in the future and keep my eye on his future projects. I wish I could offer more at this point in time, but when you spend the summer travelling and going to film/music festivals and the like, it's hard to justify videogame purchases!
Giving away "a few" keys and not freaking out over piracy probably netted "a few" immediate purchases from sympathetic minds in the community, but almost certainly gained some more from some free positive exposure. While, there's some developers I actively avoid because of negative actions in the past.
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I thought I would check it out last night despite thinking it's probably just another generic low budget indie puzzle or arcade game I would have no interest in. How pleasantly surprised I was to find out it would be a creative new point and click adventure game with a fun new style I've been craving, and very highly rated on user reviews.
So as a result of this article on the developers cool and reasoned response to piracy, I found a new game I might never have found otherwise and bought a copy. According to some of the reviews on Steam, I'm not the only one. Looking forward to playing this one over the weekend.
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Are you seriously just working this out, or is this one of those "I can't find anything to disagree with in the article so I'll just whine that the site isn't covering what I want it to" kind of deals?
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Despite the trolling up there, this generates a lot of goodwill AND sales. Not now maybe but in the future? Sure.
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Publicity
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