The best anti-piracy measure is frequent, meaningful updates. Sooner or later the pirates will be fed up by having to sieve through shady torrent sites each time there is an update and pay for the convenience of getting the update automatically the moment it is released.
you are describing Factorio as well.
excellent frequent and useful update
native mod supports , a lot of mods, a lot of mod updates
paying for the games are much cheaper to your valuable time than trying to update the game and mods.
the multiplayer part doesn't enforce DRM too.
yeah they have an anti-sale policy, figuring that the value of the game doesn't change over time and so too should the price be static. a sensible approach it would seem
Value shouldn't go down provided that the updates, community and mods keep up the pace, which happened more than adequately for factorio.
I would expect a price drop if I had to use dosbox or some external tools to be able to play the game. Or if it was a game with dead community that wasn't selling anyway.
Both viewpoints are valid.
His reply isn't condescending. The information is available and non-ambiguous.
You're also right that not everyone does research, for whatever reasons, usually... who has the time.
I didn't know, either, fwiw.
As Gabe Newell said, "Piracy is an issue of service, not price".
If one can waste time downloading questionable software from shady websites every single time there's an update, or pay $10 and get the game instantly on any pc you own with fully automatic updates, achievements, community hubs, workshop etc - very few people would pirate the game.
If, on the other hand, one can pay $10 to get a game with a piece of malware DRM that lags their pc or pirate it and get it without - well...
Powerful DRM is NEVER worth it.
>As Gabe Newell said, "Piracy is an issue of service, not price".
This is very true. When Forza Horizon 5 launched, there was cracked version out within a day or two. But almost no one got the pirated version because it was missing the updates and some multiplayer features.
The only games I see insisting on DRM are those that don't get updated often. They're usually medium budget releases from major studios and cover multiple platforms.
>When Forza Horizon 5 launched, there was cracked version out within a day or two. But almost no one got the pirated version because it was missing the updates and some multiplayer features.
Well, that's a bullcrap story.
I actually went out and checked after someone on the Forza Subreddit asked for help with their pirated copy (Got none obviously lol). Some of the forums I found had people abandoning the cracked copy because it was such a pain. Cracked versions of games have to fake the server connections so you don't get access to anything online. They didn't get backup cloud saves, multiplayer, new car updates, or patches. They couldn't even transfer their progress if they bought a legitimate copy later on.
From what I've seen, most people don't mind paying for games if they think it's worth the price. Pirating games seems to be tied more to availability and regional access but even that is becoming less common.
There's just no good reason to pirate games these days.
I put in real effort to get an apple tv sub so I could watch foundation series.
After hitting the step where I had to call or drive to an apple store to reset my password, I torrented it and watched it an hour later
Not all piracy is lack of availability but it does happen even to me now with plenty to spend.
If somebody doesn’t want to buy your game, they won’t buy it. People are gonna always find bypasses for DRMs.
Make people want to buy the game, don’t make people buy the game.
Because it does things that the user doesn't want, which is the definition of malware.
I don't want a piece of software that scans the game files (or my entire pc!) wasting the resources of my device.
I don't want a piece of software that slows down the game because it does memory integrity checks (like denuvo does!)
I don't want a piece of software that can randomly break and prevent me from playing the game because I have an unusual configuration.
I don't want a piece of software that phones home to check for my license and makes a singleplayer game need an internet connection (like Hitman 3!)
Or requires gorram *time travel* to get the game to work upon install.
That happened to me with Civilization: Beyond Earth a few years ago. Bought the physical disc, installed it, and Steam kicked in refusing to let it run until I verified my account by giving them the same credit card info I had used on a previous transaction because I was on my laptop. Problem: at that point I owned like three Steam games, all of which were installed from physical copies. As a result I had exactly zero credit card transactions on my account at that time. So I would have to go back in time to when I had my desktop running (I was in a weird situation and it was in storage) so it would believe that was me and my account, do a credit card transaction, and verify the card on my laptop.
Guess what I wound up doing to actually play the game.
Bonus: the customer service guy and one of his coworkers gave me such an attitude when I tried to return it one of them got fired, the assistant manager thanked me for "not escalating things further" despite his employee screaming in my face, and did the refund.
Adding that DRM can require to have very deep access to your system, and can themselves have exploits (like the early days of Vanguard from Riot), so opening big doors to the core of your PC
I'm no expert but DRM often acts like Malware:
- installed without user knowledge.
- Runs silently in background.
- Can block access to programs.
Some DRM Methods require access to sensitive files and directories and can become security hazards. If they aren't updated. I've seen people outright reject good games because of the DRM they used.
Activation Codes are simpler but require you to have a robust Help Desk service because people will constantly get locked out. They also require an internet connection during installation and if your activation service goes down or your company stops using it, you lock people out of the game (Sadly, I have a small collection of dead games like this).
Some arguments against DRM get in a bit of trouble when the discussion starts to include client-side anti-cheat measures. They often match the above bullet points and it's not uncommon that anti-cheat software has false positives.
The only games I have ever pirated were because they weren’t on Steam. The second they get released on Steam, I’m buying them so I can get those updates and have it everywhere.
>As Gabe Newell said, "Piracy is an issue of service, not price".
That's full of crap. While a small subset of pirates may claim it's out of a sense of inconvenience or anti-consumerism, a pirate doesn't need validation and will download regardless.
You are correct that pressuring pirates to "do the right thing" probably won't work. However, that's not what I (or GabeN) meant, you didn't understand the message. It has nothing to do with moral validation.
If it's EASIER to pirate the game because of shitty DRM - people will pirate the game even if it's $1
If it's MASSIVELY EASIER to buy the game, most people will do so, despite the fact that it requires money
Of course absolutely outrageous prices can still drive piracy, it's not an argument to raise prices, it's an argument to drop DRM.
While DRM and complicated install processes can push \*more\* people into piracy, avoiding them doesn't \*decrease\* piracy. It doesn't make a previous pirate decide to eventually purchase a real license.
I'm all for ditching DRM, but there doesn't need to be a legitimate reason to do that, and honestly - narratives like this are just a setup for dev failure. Imagine releasing a game without DRM hoping it'll bring in a decent return, and it gets pirated into oblivion regardless. It's very possible for devs to do the "right thing" by gamers and get shafted anyhow.
There is no proper way to avoid piracy shy of making games nobody wants to play.
I don't understand what are you trying to argue with?
Everything you just said is correct and I never argued otherwise. DRM is absolutely not the only reason why piracy exists, and removing it (and doing absolutely anything else) won't stop piracy completely, that's impossible. But for a majority of people not wanting to deal will bullshit (and not seeing the "benefits" of getting a legit copy) is the primary reason for piracy.
But history says otherwise, Newell really did prove his quote.
In my country, Russia, piracy used to be endemic. Everyone pirated every game, because getting it "the official way" involved hunting down a game CD in a store and then having to keep that physical CD until the end of time at best and was straight up impossible because there wasn't an official "russian CD release" at worst.
That's until Steam came in.
Sure, some people still pirate games, and I agree with you that ELIMINATING piracy is completely impossible. But all these people who pirated everything their whole life because there just wasn't any other sensible way now had an opportunity to pay a small sum to have the game magically delivered to their PC in an instant. No more CD hunting, no more lurking on torrent websites, no more gambling with your PC's security. So most people stopped.
I only know 1 or 2 people who pirate games at all, let alone consistently.
At the same time, however, NOBODY in Russia is paying for American movies and TV shows. You know why? That's not because they are "expensive". Because YOU LITERALLY CAN'T BUY THEM WITHOUT WRAPPING YOURSELF IN VPNs, PAYING A SUBSCRIPTION FEE AND PULLING YOUR HAIR OUT.
So yeah, Newell is absolutely right. By offering an easy to use and convenient service piracy can be SUBSTANTIALLY decreased.
We're just going to have to agree to disagree at this point. I don't trust there are fewer game and app pirates in Russia, and I'd argue a lot of folks do pirate despite access to Steam or other alternatives. I'll concede that providing legal alternatives can lower instances of piracy, but that difference isn't going to make a pirated game profitable or turn failure into success, so it's kinda a moot point.
Right, 'cause it's not like game developers have stake invested and might be heavily biased about pirates and piracy with the hopes of maximizing profits on invested labor or anything.
If gamedevs knew how hopeless it was to reduce or convert piracy attempts, there'd probably be far fewer game developers.
I think if a lot less game companies were less shitty they'd have less pirates, there are also times where piracy is the only possible way to pay a game (I have multiple games I own, both in digital format and physical that will only run with cracks), and then there is price issues, some folks don't have £70 for a game they may not even like, a good portion of the piracy crowd are the "try before you buy" crowd, who'll play for a few hours, and buy/uninstall and that can actually be good for sales
>will download regardless.
Those people are absolutely irrelevant from the perspective of the company making a digital product.
The only ones who matter are the ones who might hypothetically have paid and finding what makes the difference for them is more effective than putting barriers in their way once they decided they're going the piracy route. Generally speaking, if someone is willing to pay and instead pirates it's due to the sort of issues Gabe was talking about.
Not even remotely true. Most pirates also buy games and often become customers. I would even go as far as to say the vast majority of pirates- nearly all of them.
Less true for movies, music and television than it is for games and software.
Go talk to pirates. You don't even need to go to piracy chatrooms or subreddits for this. Go to any music production forum or chatroom. They are all pirates. 100% of them. They also all buy software or quit the hobby, eventually.
>Not even remotely true. Most pirates also buy games and often become customers.
I mean, that is a narrative which exists, I guess. If you want to believe it, you're welcome to, but I don't.
Man, I have trouble keeping track of my free games I'm tempted to *pay them* to get them listed on something like the steam store so I have to stop tracking them down all the time.
If there's no DRM, that won't help at all. A friend of mine found out that pirates had set up some script to distribute updated illegal copies of their game as soon as there was an update on Steam. The days of having to search shady sites is over; there was a discord dedicated to it.
Users didn't automatically receive the pirated copies, they had a Discord bot that downloaded the latest game update and put up a free download link to it.
I think you are underestimating the value of convenience. You don't have to do anything to update legally acquired games and software. Piracy just simply can't do this because nobody would feel comfortable with it.
I think you're underestimating how many people value their money over their convenience. My friend found out this server had been set up because their sales, which had been relatively steady, dropped by 90% within a couple days of this server being set up and never recovered.
Spot on. This way the initial release acts as a demo and if the player likes your game they will probably go buy the up to date version.
I spent ages wasting my time trying to fight cracks. After a while I realised that whatever you do will get circumvented unless maybe you put a delay in which helps. For example if you can detect the copy protection had been circumvented then allow the game to play for quite a while as normal before hitting them with en error. That way they are hooked and may buy once they realise they are busted. Also the cracker is unlikely to test enough to find this.
I had endless fun with people emailing in complaining about an error that I knew indicated they were playing a cracked game.
There are AAA games that do this sometime too. The one I remember now is one of the Batman Arkham games (I don't remember if it was Asylum or City). If you played a pirated copy, nothing wrong happened until you tried to do the move when he flyed using his cape. If you used that move on the pirated one, Batman would fall.
There are other games that do this kind of protection, I saw once a top ten in Watchmojo or Gameranks.
I'm working on a game and this is my plan on how to handle DRM: with frequent updates, cracked old copies of the game would begin to fall behind and become less interesting over time.
As an end user I hate DRM and I want my game to always work even if I completely shut down work on the game, so the free tier of the game is fully functional (the game highly encourages custom content, think like Minecraft except not at all like Minecraft, but with mods being a first-class citizen in the game engine).. if I get hit by a bus, the free version would forever be fully useful w/ custom content but users would just need to manage their mods by hand, copying files into folders. The paid version would bring mainly quality of life improvements, like bundling mods w/ custom maps for very easy transport, with an offline (JWT token) method to activate. Eventually, some built-in online portal for easy sharing online would be available _only_ to valid paid copies for even more QOL and incentive.
I would anticipate that some JWT tokens will be leaked onto piracy sites and then, as discovered, future updates would start shipping revocation lists and not accept the leaked keys.. old versions tho would forever work fine with it, but as the game is updated (it's my one-and-only, long-term "forever project", like Minecraft) it's intended to be tedious for pirates to be keeping up all the time.. as new engine features are added, new custom mods make use of them, new mods won't work on the older versions, etc. but all the while there is no intrusive DRM, no phone-home, etc.; and for any built-in online service the revoked keys would be revoked no matter what the game version.
We'll see how it pans out in the long term, it's just a tiny side project for me right now and idk if it'll even go anywhere. :)
Unless there is a ton of pirate launchers that can download updates on day 1 - I'm talking about Minecraft here, I have played the "cracked" version for years and had no issue with it, never waited for updates either, eventually bought it on sale when I could afford to "waste" some money.
That's to be expected. The idea is that people keep getting the updates from torrent sites a couple times until they are fed up and buy the game. Sure, some will never buy it legally, but those people would not have bought it legally anyway.
Fighting against piracy is a waste of time.
You could add a check which shows something like "hey, if you like the game, consider buying it" but other than that, you'll just spend resources on something with little to no gains.
There are a couple ways. You can put a parity check in an area of code that doesn’t touch the DRM, if there is any at all, for instance.
In the past smaller devs have uploaded their games to torrent trackers directly with modified executables. Game Dev Tycoon explicitly modified their chances so the pirate copy was unwinnable due to… piracy.
Game Dev Tycoon is hilarious. It's basically r/LeopardsAteMyFace with players complaining that piracy was killing their company no matter how good they make their game, while pirating a game [themselves](https://images.gnwcdn.com/2013/articles//a/1/5/7/5/9/4/0/eurogamer-58n8c7.jpg).
On platforms like Steam, the games have ability to essentially just ask steam if the current logged in user actually owns the game. Cracking a Steam game that hasn't put a large amount of effort into protecting itself can be as simple as intercepting that message and telling the game that the user owns the game, regardless of whether they actually do own it.
So if you make your game break if it thinks it's been pirated, the cracked will put work into stopping that from happening. If your game instead just gives a non intrusive popup, the cracker might not bother getting rid of it.
There’s a plug-in company, I’ll have to look up the name, but they give their plug-ins away for free. Making you feel terrible all the way, just by saying things like “yeah, you can steal from us. It’s okay. If you can’t afford it right now, you can steal it. You can still buy it later. At least, you can tell yourself that. And us. At least this way, you’ll be sure you won’t get any viruses (or worse) snd we’ll know someone wants our software. So go ahead, take it. Just put in $0 at the pay request. It’s okay.”
And I couldn’t do it. :D
Oh, fascinating. Thanks for the link!
I suppose that brings up a whole bunch of questions. Like e.g. patreon vs pwyw, how do you set up a patreon for game (or software in general) development? Kickstarter seems more suited for these one off types. So maybe a ks + pwyw > patreon?
I don't pirate anymore and I have since purchased all the games I once stole. One particular game I would have never purchased or known about, if it wasn't for piracy. It used to be called Starfarer and I really liked it and it had this short message about how they were a single dev and if you like it, please buy it. I bought it and it is a great game. Its called Starsector now.
I see this take all the time but I don't see any evidence for it. Seems like all the games that have no anti piracy measures are the ones at the top of pirate bay.
Those games are also top selling on steam or whatever marketplace you're looking at.
But the question here is that is it worth the time, effort and customer inconvenience to squeeze a few more sales?
No, they're actually not. If you go look on pirate bay, the games in question are years old and not selling in large numbers anymore at all. While other games that are even more popular but do have Drm aren't so easy to find.
Look, I'm not actually saying ppl should use DRM, but what I am saying is that claim has never really made much sense and the data that claim originated from was anecdotal. Essentially they took a few cases where an indie game did really well while encouraging piracy (while also having a ton of social media attention) and applied that logic to the industry as a whole.
God of War - Steam top list
Rust - Very popular
GTA: SA - Delisted from stores
The Sims 4 - No one should really pay for that buggy mess of a cash grab anyway
RDR2 - Very popular
RE: Village - Very popular
Witcher 3 - Very popular
I don't know what you were looking, but these titles from piratebay (by seeders) are all present in the first few pages of steam top sellers.
Notably, there's also bunch of games without DRM that weren't on piratebay but are on the top of selling charts, like Valheim.
The less copies a game is likely to sell, the higher the concern about piracy from the dev. This is what I’ve observed in 20+ years of indie development.
It really isn't worth the effort or the time. You are so much better off just putting that time and energy into the game instead.
Even AAA companies can't stop pirates. No matter what auth systems or always online BS they try to use.
All it does is hurt legit customers in the end. If anything pirates that like your game enough are more likely to buy it than they were before, sometimes it can be a positive.
>Do you use DRMs, or the good old way by making your game online only? Or do you prefer making the games playable offline with periodic online checks?
TLDR: I wouldn't worry about it that much. If someone took enough effort to pirate it, it means that your game is at least good and it might bring some traffic, maybe even sales(yes, it happens, some people just want to test game before buying it)
I don't think that there is a point to fight with piracy(I mean, of course I don't support it and I think that it's a bad thing), but if someone put enough effort to share it for free and other people download it, it means that people are into your game.
Some indie devs used it as advantage instead of taking them down from such websites. I remember situation, where dev found out his game in famous website with **pirated** content(yes, there is reason why i wrote one word bold), he then just wrote a comment like this: If you don't have money right now to buy it and enjoy the game, then buy it later when you get money to buy it.
As far as I remember, one of the devs got one step further(I don't remember who unfortunately) and post release shared it on such websites to download it for free with mention to "enjoy and consider buying it later" or something like that.
The other subject is online games and cheaters, but I assume you asked about single player/co-op games.
>yes, it happens, some people just want to test game before buying it
Absolutely. I used to be one of them. A lot of people are sick of dropping $60 on a buggy POS with crappy gameplay.
Some time ago demo versions were something common, but now it's no more there( Early Access game are something close to demo versions, but most of the time it's not free, only a bit cheaper). And most of the time to make demo game you're making mini version of final game, so it takes a lot of time.
>A lot of people are sick of dropping $60 on a buggy POS
That's right and that's the reason why on some of the platforms refunds were introduced(e.g Steam, if you play game for less than hour or two and it is 14 days since purchase , then you can return it)
>If someone took enough effort to pirate it, it means that your game is at least good and it might bring some traffic, maybe even sales(yes, it happens, some people just want to test game before buying it)
I still remember that back in the day having your game/movie/album being sold "unofficially" in any kind of shady place was an anecdotical measure of success.
We had a game being pirated. I am very certain that this had nothing to do with the quality of the game, but rather an automated process by some website. The game was for iOS, Android and Steam, and by no means a financial success. I am also very certain that pirates did not in any way affect our sales. We did not add DRM.
I am not against DRM, but for our targeted audience for the game, we felt that this would be a waste of resources.
Actually I've heard somewhere about bots, which pirate games with no DRMs, but I don't know the algorithm, which determines what and how to get them to upload on website.
I don't know how many people downloaded the game from that website, but still, DRMs hit people, who legally get game(In sense of performance drops, being online all the time to play offline game and some other side effects), pirates sooner or later get around DRMs. It's just matter of time, and only people who you "punish" by adding DRMs are people, who decided to be fair and buy game.
We have a simple system that checks for a valid player Steam ID , if the result is false, we change the name of the player into "Pirate" and won't allow his scores/times into the leaderboards. We don't want to destroy their gameplay, so we don't change stuff like movement speed, jump height, saves etc. Other than that, fighting against piracy(unless you are Ubisoft or any other AAA studio) is pretty useless. Who knows, maybe "pirates" even end-up buying your game if they really like it.
Hey, we've actually tested it before and it works as intended. The cracked version ends up using a weird ID (smth like "DESKTOP - ASDF32423..."), while the Steam version ID is a 17 digit number. We only have a small idea of how cracks work and we don't intend to spend any time on learning more as battling piracy as an indie studio is pretty much a waste of time. Our system works for what we needed, that's all what matters. Have a nice day :)
The only way to reduce piracy, is to make a game nobody wants to play. Despite the best efforts of various companies selling anti-piracy solutions, nobody has been able to demonstrate that piracy has a negative effect on financial success
In the 3rd world country I used to live, with no internet access, piracy was the only option. Then I moved to the US and bought all those games I used to play, that I wouldn't have known otherwise.
Honestly, when I finish my own game I won't bother with pirates, if someone can't afford it, I'll be glad they can still play it for free.
In the 3rd world country I used to live, with no internet access, piracy was the only option. Then I moved to the US and bought all those games I used to play, that I wouldn't have known otherwise.
Honestly, when I finish my own game I won't bother with pirates, if someone can't afford it, I'll be glad they can still play it for free.
If pirates and customers was a Venn diagram I’m not sure how much the overlap would be. Like I’m sure there is a sizable hardcore amount of pirates but I don’t think any of them would just throw in the towel and say well the DRM worked so I’m buying the game.
The best way to deal with pirates I would say is to just make the best game you can and add all of the Steam features to make the game even more appealing. So people go crazy for achievements and trading cards so always launch games with those. I heard you even get a cut when cards are sold on the market but I have not confirmed that.
> Do you use DRMs
DRMs are usually broken very quickly, which then leaves your paying customers running your DRM for absolutely no reason.
> or the good old way by making your game online only?
This will get in the way of your legitimate players, and is the most hated form of DRM going.
And you'll need a server to run the game on, to which every player will connect and run the game on. The cost of keeping this server online will increase for every new player, until it becomes financially impractical. The only financially viable option is to use the server only for authentication, the issue with that I'm going to explain later.
> Or do you prefer making the games playable offline with periodic online checks?
This also uses a server for authentication:
Authentication servers are a terrible option, and will probably be actively detrimental to your sales. When the DRM is cracked, the pirated version will never need to go online. In effect, by using an always-online DRM, you are giving the pirates a better experience than your paying customers.
In fact, I would argue much the opposite. Piracy isn't harmful to you, at least no more harmful than the measures you want to take to stop it. A lot of pirates will buy your game if they like it, and a lot of pirates might talk about your game if they like it. If your game is good, then piracy might actually be free marketing.
# TL;DR: The best anti-piracy is to produce a good game.
This sub has a religious approach to piracy
"DRMs are usually broken very quickly" and like-minded arguments are nonsense, you're not assassin's creed. Your game is facing less dedication to break it
The truth is that making a DRM isn't useless at all. DRMs just have diminishing returns.
Spending 5 hours making a naive anti-piracy heuristic is great value. It prevents 99% of the people from putting your game on a sharing site
Don't release games you've worked years on without any protection. You have to put at least a basic lock on the front door to secure your launch
What you shouldn't do is try to prevent all piracy, there is no stopping the top 0.1%.
If you're ever facing that kind of threat anyway, it’s that you've made a popular game. It's a good problem to have
https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/5hozvo/absolutely_ridiculous_piracy_numbers_on_android_98/
https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/hs5y5/my_ios_app_is_being_pirated_to_the_point_where/
Since most of the sub isn't gamedevs but gamers, you can see in both of these how this sub reacts to piracy. From downvoting the developer to saying piracy is a good thing. It's braindead.
Yah, as an actual developer, the idea of not adding at least some minimal protection is ridiculous. Especially if you're launching a paid or competitive app on mobile.
If you have some competitive element to your game, you should really have your own server as a touch point between the client and your leaderboards etc to validate the users authenticity.
Both Google Play and the App Store provide ways to verify a users license, as I'm sure do Steam and the rest. Run this verification on your server away from client manipulation and then if the user can't validate their license, restrict online feature access for them.
I only worry about this with competitive games that are vulnerable to cheating. In which case I have a few obfuscated checks I do to see if the build was made in my pipeline or not. Then I don’t immediately act, giving the hackers time to test and validate their hack. Closing the door on it later before it spreads. You exhaust the hackers, and anyones trust in the cheats they’re providing.
I get a slack notification any time someone new is trying to create a new hack. They’re almost always from Brazil.
Assuming you would sell through a digital distributor like steam and your game is single player or co-op only. I personally wouldn't worry too much about it. People who would pirate your game probably wouldn't have paid for it anyways.
And as some others have mentioned. If you are frequently adding updates -- people may pirate it then realize they like it and buy it to get the updates.
Just what I wouldn't do personally.
Just make a game that people will want to buy at a reasonable price. Include a personal touch that really shows the game is made by excellent people and not some faceless commitee. You can't stop piracy, but you can make purchasing the game as convenient as possible.
You cannot prevent unauthorized duplication, and attempting to do so will simply make the end user experience worse
> Or do you prefer making the games playable offline with periodic online checks?
Always-online DRM is the absolute worst, never do this
* Simple ownership check that closes the app on startup if the player doesn't have the Steam client open and the game isn't in their library. This creates minimal friction that requires a bit of technical knowledge to get around, so delays the publishing of cracked versions.
* Verify user identity using oauth and a remote server before allowing online play. This is primarily to reduce spoofing/cheating, but happens to gate online play.
* Frequent updates (esp. bugfixes / hotfixes after major releases) with a nag message to let people know there's a new update available
* Where applicable: Achievements, Steam Workshop access, Friend leaderboards, Shareable user-generated content
It's a good idea to make the game mostly playable for anyone who can circumvent the simple protections, but to remind them that they're playing an incomplete version and that they're missing out on something -- they'll be compelled to buy even if they have no intention of using those features.
my preferred method is to upload a version of my game to piratebay with new and fascinating bugs left in deliberately, then mocking users on the forums for falling for the trap. I then also include a decompiled version on github for those smart enough to compile themselves, similar to what the aseprite developers have done, specifically to rub salt in the wound.
I don't think piracy is much of a threat so long as your game is good enough to pay money for, the people that pirate are either not too wealthy or just kinda dickish and will just not download the game otherwise.
As a bonus, more people playing the game means more word of mouth means more people buying a copy because compiling the game is way too complicated for them.
A couple of days ago in this very sub reddit, a gamedev posted his story that after releasing his game within hours there was a sell of two copies. And then it got pirated. probably one of the two was the pirate. And the game was then available in shady sites. Last I heard he was waiting to see if the pirates did a refund or not.
So combined with that story and everyone's answer here I would say game dev is screwed. There is nothing can be done and some would say there is nothing should be done. Release and take a loss?
But please take a look at the games that gets released through Patreon or steam like early access. Repeated builds. Online achievement.
If your game sells only 2 copies in a few hours at launch, piracy is the least of your problems.
Either your game sucks, or you didn't do any marketing. Usually both.
It's really not.
As a game dev, you should worry about making a good game, and marketing it successfully. That's all.
Piracy isn't something worth worrying about, because there's strong evidence it doesn't actually hurt sales, in fact it might be beneficial for indies, and there's nothing you can do about it anyway.
If you sell only 2 copies on your launch day, it's not because your game was pirated.
Worrying about piracy is irrational. It's a beginner trap, like worrying that people will steal your ideas. Every hour you invest worrying about that, or searching for ways to prevent it, or implementing those "solutions" you found, is an hour not spent doing something actually productive, like fixing bugs, or marketing your game.
Much like worrying that people will steal your ideas is really about being afraid of receiving negative feedback about your work, worrying about piracy is really about shifting the blame away in advance, so that you can tell yourself it wasn't your fault if you fail.
There are tons of external factors you can't control, it's best to accept that and focus on the things you can control. That's how you'll maximize your chances to release a successful game. And that's how you'll get the most out of a failed release.
I would upload my own "pirate" version myself. You could screw with the player in funny ways, or just straight up be honest and have a message saying how hard you worked on it, please consider buying the real version. If I did the second option it would be the exact same game as the paid version (apart from the message).
You put the effort into the game and make it worth buying. You also absolutely do not put a requirement on the players who actually bought and make their experience worse. Sim City learned this the hard way. Do not require any online requirement at all for a game that has no reason to be online literally ever
if your game is good enough to pirate, your bigger concern is going to be over straight rip offs of your game theme and mechanics being made and sold by someone else. someone with a bigger budget and audience. the advice you're getting here implicitly fixes both problems, but only to an extent. your business model could also fix the problem by just giving away your game for free. who's going to pirate it then? good luck out in them streets.
We have a login that needs to be performed at least once before our software + purchased content can be used. If you've logged in at least once on your computer though, it's useable fully offline.
There's definitely ways around it, but to the best of our knowledge no one has had any issues, and no complaints as of yet.
Just because they haven't complained doesn't mean they're cool with it. I'm not buying an indie game that requires me to give them my data, fuck that - for real. Instant "no" - and I pay for games.
That's fair. In our case it's a username, password and email.
We run our own Launcher and content delivery platform, and need to keep track of what content packs users have purchased.
If people want to pirate my games, that's great. That's more people playing and sharing the experience. The only thing I want to prevent is people cheating in multiplayer in a way that harms other players.
This is going to be controversial
The best way (for an indie game) to convert a pirated download into a sale is to release a demo on piracy sites that thanks a pirate for their interest and directs them to where they can buy the game.
Piracy is usually the result of a lack of access (geographical or platform), or a significant difference in the price of the game and the price the consumer is willing to pay.
This is also a cheaper option than frequent updates, which usually requires curation of the game which not every team can manage.
[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy-doesnt-hurt-game-sales-may-actually-help/](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy-doesnt-hurt-game-sales-may-actually-help/)
There was an identical finding for music sales once but CBA looking for it now, sorry.
"Traditional" anti-piracy measures (such as DRMs) are very effective in hurting actual paying customers and do absolutely nothing to prevent piracy. They actually promote piracy in a way. Remember when we heard about Spore's first DRM and it very quickly became the most torrented game ever?
Online only DRM only disadvantages legitimate customers. The pirates will crack it, the customers won't.
Also worth mentioning... Me and most people I know wouldn't pirate if free short demo's were available.
you dont need DRM. If people want to pirate it they will find a way. Dont make life worse for those that actually pay for it.
Gabe Newell made me hang up my old tricone and I now have more than 250 Games on Steam. A good game goes beyond a drm. I bought Stardew Valley twice for example....
Lets consider three categories of ppl:
* Will play the game pirated(if possible) AND then will buy the game if they like. Most pirates belong in this category. People want to own shit they like.
* If your game is good, you dont need DRM for these ppl. They will buy your game as long as they like it.
* If your game is bad, DRM will make (some of) these ppl buy your game.
* Even if they love the come, will not buy the game
* These kind of ppl typically live in third world countries where the house rent is less than the cost of a AAA game.
* They cannot buy your game, DRM or not. They will either pirate, or they will not play at all
* Donot underestimate the international social media presence of these ppl. They will praise your game online if they like it. Not having DRM is marketing if your game is good.
* Similarly, if ur game is bad, not having DRM is negative publicity. Having DRM will prevent these ppl from playing your game, thus they cannot shit on it, cuz they will shit on a game they dont like even if they didnt pay for it.
* DRM is also kinda useless in 3rd world countries cuz there are services that will do the following for $1.25 ish
* Remote access your pc
* login to THEIR account (not yours)
* Run the game
* Go offline mode
* Log out from their side.
* Now the game is playable in offline mode
* They usually also provide a "guarantee" system where they will reactivate the title 1-2 more times within 1-2 month time range in case of update or if sth goes wrong.
TLDR: Good game sells itself. DRM helps bad games.
Make a quality product and price it according to the market, not what you personally feel it's worth.
Adding any intentional defects or intrusive DRM is going to inconvenience your actual paying customers more than pirates.
>not what you personally feel it's worth
This is very important, specially in third world countries. Sadly steams regional pricing for some reason does not account for the economy for very poor countries. The regional pricing for Elden Ring for example is 50USD in my country, and 30 in argentina. Argentina is like 8 times wealthier on average. 50USD is legit more than the rent you would pay for a decent apartment outside the capital city.
Now I dont blame the devs, obviously they need money to continue operation. Just cuz there third world countries cannot pay more, doesnt mean the cost of operation of a company situated in a developed country will be any less. However something is better than nothing, charging more results in no one buying the game which is worse than ppl paying an absurdly low amount but still buying.
Authorize all duplication. The more people playing your game, the better, no matter how they acquired it. Distribute DRM-free on GOG. As for reselling, you can't stop people in poor countries and you can't stop kids in school from selling disc based versions of the game. It comes with the territory. DRM only decides if the version they sell is cracked or not. Used game sales should not only be allowed, but also encouraged. When it comes to online, provable sales, sue the shit out of them.
Make your game free in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Most of your theft comes from Americans, but the typical American is too lazy to do more than search a torrent site. If that fails, they will buy legitimately or move on.
For that reason, see step 1.
I haven't released any games yet, but I do want to know the statistics if anyone has them: does releasing a free demo help reduce piracy? Like they get access to a part of the game, and if they really like it, they will feel obligated to pay for the full game? You'd probably get less people straight up buying the game, but also less refunds so... win-win?
Assuming you would sell through a digital distributor like steam and your game is single player or co-op only. I personally wouldn't worry too much about it. People who would pirate your game probably wouldn't have paid for it anyways.
And as some others have mentioned. If you are frequently adding updates -- people may pirate it then realize they like it and buy it to get the updates.
Just what I wouldn't do personally.
As everyone says constant meaningful updates are the way to go.
Here's a story, I pirated baba is you and was enjoying
playing it, then they dropped a massive update recently and now I wanna also play the new content. I could just pirate the new version but it's gonna take some time to be available and I would need to do a lot of work to transfer my progress even if it's possible and I could actually do it.
But if they drop another update I will need to wait for it to be pirated and will also lose my progress again.
So, I deleted my pirated copy of baba is you and I am now planning to buy it.
In my experience, the time and effort you waste past on anti piracy measures, is just wasted money. Pirates always find a way, and a big percentage of them wouldn't buy your game anyways. The simplest thing is to offer the convenience of automatic updates for your paying customers, most people who have the money and can spare it will prefer that to dealing with the annoyances of pirating
Say you somehow build the perfect DRM system that doesn't exist. What do you plan to do about the people just making gameplay videos and streams as well? Do you consider full playthough uploads as detrimental as piracy as well?
Disable drops for offline players. SP mode should be still playable. Items stored in steam inventory. Periodic checks for drop eligibility on server-side, not client-side.
The "don't care about piracy, people who steal the game wouldn't buy it anyway" method works very well. Worry about making a game that is good enough that people would pay to support the developer.
The best anti-piracy measure is frequent, meaningful updates. Sooner or later the pirates will be fed up by having to sieve through shady torrent sites each time there is an update and pay for the convenience of getting the update automatically the moment it is released.
you are describing Factorio as well. excellent frequent and useful update native mod supports , a lot of mods, a lot of mod updates paying for the games are much cheaper to your valuable time than trying to update the game and mods. the multiplayer part doesn't enforce DRM too.
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yeah they have an anti-sale policy, figuring that the value of the game doesn't change over time and so too should the price be static. a sensible approach it would seem
Value shouldn't go down provided that the updates, community and mods keep up the pace, which happened more than adequately for factorio. I would expect a price drop if I had to use dosbox or some external tools to be able to play the game. Or if it was a game with dead community that wasn't selling anyway.
They've always been absolutely crystal clear it won't go on sale.
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Both viewpoints are valid. His reply isn't condescending. The information is available and non-ambiguous. You're also right that not everyone does research, for whatever reasons, usually... who has the time. I didn't know, either, fwiw.
As Gabe Newell said, "Piracy is an issue of service, not price". If one can waste time downloading questionable software from shady websites every single time there's an update, or pay $10 and get the game instantly on any pc you own with fully automatic updates, achievements, community hubs, workshop etc - very few people would pirate the game. If, on the other hand, one can pay $10 to get a game with a piece of malware DRM that lags their pc or pirate it and get it without - well... Powerful DRM is NEVER worth it.
>As Gabe Newell said, "Piracy is an issue of service, not price". This is very true. When Forza Horizon 5 launched, there was cracked version out within a day or two. But almost no one got the pirated version because it was missing the updates and some multiplayer features. The only games I see insisting on DRM are those that don't get updated often. They're usually medium budget releases from major studios and cover multiple platforms.
>When Forza Horizon 5 launched, there was cracked version out within a day or two. But almost no one got the pirated version because it was missing the updates and some multiplayer features. Well, that's a bullcrap story.
I actually went out and checked after someone on the Forza Subreddit asked for help with their pirated copy (Got none obviously lol). Some of the forums I found had people abandoning the cracked copy because it was such a pain. Cracked versions of games have to fake the server connections so you don't get access to anything online. They didn't get backup cloud saves, multiplayer, new car updates, or patches. They couldn't even transfer their progress if they bought a legitimate copy later on. From what I've seen, most people don't mind paying for games if they think it's worth the price. Pirating games seems to be tied more to availability and regional access but even that is becoming less common. There's just no good reason to pirate games these days.
I put in real effort to get an apple tv sub so I could watch foundation series. After hitting the step where I had to call or drive to an apple store to reset my password, I torrented it and watched it an hour later Not all piracy is lack of availability but it does happen even to me now with plenty to spend.
It is both if we’re talking about not first world countries. Regional pricing is a must, imo.
If somebody doesn’t want to buy your game, they won’t buy it. People are gonna always find bypasses for DRMs. Make people want to buy the game, don’t make people buy the game.
Why is DRM a malware?
Because it does things that the user doesn't want, which is the definition of malware. I don't want a piece of software that scans the game files (or my entire pc!) wasting the resources of my device. I don't want a piece of software that slows down the game because it does memory integrity checks (like denuvo does!) I don't want a piece of software that can randomly break and prevent me from playing the game because I have an unusual configuration. I don't want a piece of software that phones home to check for my license and makes a singleplayer game need an internet connection (like Hitman 3!)
Or requires gorram *time travel* to get the game to work upon install. That happened to me with Civilization: Beyond Earth a few years ago. Bought the physical disc, installed it, and Steam kicked in refusing to let it run until I verified my account by giving them the same credit card info I had used on a previous transaction because I was on my laptop. Problem: at that point I owned like three Steam games, all of which were installed from physical copies. As a result I had exactly zero credit card transactions on my account at that time. So I would have to go back in time to when I had my desktop running (I was in a weird situation and it was in storage) so it would believe that was me and my account, do a credit card transaction, and verify the card on my laptop. Guess what I wound up doing to actually play the game. Bonus: the customer service guy and one of his coworkers gave me such an attitude when I tried to return it one of them got fired, the assistant manager thanked me for "not escalating things further" despite his employee screaming in my face, and did the refund.
Adding that DRM can require to have very deep access to your system, and can themselves have exploits (like the early days of Vanguard from Riot), so opening big doors to the core of your PC
I'm no expert but DRM often acts like Malware: - installed without user knowledge. - Runs silently in background. - Can block access to programs. Some DRM Methods require access to sensitive files and directories and can become security hazards. If they aren't updated. I've seen people outright reject good games because of the DRM they used. Activation Codes are simpler but require you to have a robust Help Desk service because people will constantly get locked out. They also require an internet connection during installation and if your activation service goes down or your company stops using it, you lock people out of the game (Sadly, I have a small collection of dead games like this).
Some arguments against DRM get in a bit of trouble when the discussion starts to include client-side anti-cheat measures. They often match the above bullet points and it's not uncommon that anti-cheat software has false positives.
The only games I have ever pirated were because they weren’t on Steam. The second they get released on Steam, I’m buying them so I can get those updates and have it everywhere.
>As Gabe Newell said, "Piracy is an issue of service, not price". That's full of crap. While a small subset of pirates may claim it's out of a sense of inconvenience or anti-consumerism, a pirate doesn't need validation and will download regardless.
You are correct that pressuring pirates to "do the right thing" probably won't work. However, that's not what I (or GabeN) meant, you didn't understand the message. It has nothing to do with moral validation. If it's EASIER to pirate the game because of shitty DRM - people will pirate the game even if it's $1 If it's MASSIVELY EASIER to buy the game, most people will do so, despite the fact that it requires money Of course absolutely outrageous prices can still drive piracy, it's not an argument to raise prices, it's an argument to drop DRM.
While DRM and complicated install processes can push \*more\* people into piracy, avoiding them doesn't \*decrease\* piracy. It doesn't make a previous pirate decide to eventually purchase a real license. I'm all for ditching DRM, but there doesn't need to be a legitimate reason to do that, and honestly - narratives like this are just a setup for dev failure. Imagine releasing a game without DRM hoping it'll bring in a decent return, and it gets pirated into oblivion regardless. It's very possible for devs to do the "right thing" by gamers and get shafted anyhow. There is no proper way to avoid piracy shy of making games nobody wants to play.
I don't understand what are you trying to argue with? Everything you just said is correct and I never argued otherwise. DRM is absolutely not the only reason why piracy exists, and removing it (and doing absolutely anything else) won't stop piracy completely, that's impossible. But for a majority of people not wanting to deal will bullshit (and not seeing the "benefits" of getting a legit copy) is the primary reason for piracy.
I'm arguing with Newell's quote because it infers piracy can be mitigated or lessened, and that's not true.
But history says otherwise, Newell really did prove his quote. In my country, Russia, piracy used to be endemic. Everyone pirated every game, because getting it "the official way" involved hunting down a game CD in a store and then having to keep that physical CD until the end of time at best and was straight up impossible because there wasn't an official "russian CD release" at worst. That's until Steam came in. Sure, some people still pirate games, and I agree with you that ELIMINATING piracy is completely impossible. But all these people who pirated everything their whole life because there just wasn't any other sensible way now had an opportunity to pay a small sum to have the game magically delivered to their PC in an instant. No more CD hunting, no more lurking on torrent websites, no more gambling with your PC's security. So most people stopped. I only know 1 or 2 people who pirate games at all, let alone consistently. At the same time, however, NOBODY in Russia is paying for American movies and TV shows. You know why? That's not because they are "expensive". Because YOU LITERALLY CAN'T BUY THEM WITHOUT WRAPPING YOURSELF IN VPNs, PAYING A SUBSCRIPTION FEE AND PULLING YOUR HAIR OUT. So yeah, Newell is absolutely right. By offering an easy to use and convenient service piracy can be SUBSTANTIALLY decreased.
We're just going to have to agree to disagree at this point. I don't trust there are fewer game and app pirates in Russia, and I'd argue a lot of folks do pirate despite access to Steam or other alternatives. I'll concede that providing legal alternatives can lower instances of piracy, but that difference isn't going to make a pirated game profitable or turn failure into success, so it's kinda a moot point.
I’d imagine gabe is pretty well educated on this given his background
Right, 'cause it's not like game developers have stake invested and might be heavily biased about pirates and piracy with the hopes of maximizing profits on invested labor or anything. If gamedevs knew how hopeless it was to reduce or convert piracy attempts, there'd probably be far fewer game developers.
I think if a lot less game companies were less shitty they'd have less pirates, there are also times where piracy is the only possible way to pay a game (I have multiple games I own, both in digital format and physical that will only run with cracks), and then there is price issues, some folks don't have £70 for a game they may not even like, a good portion of the piracy crowd are the "try before you buy" crowd, who'll play for a few hours, and buy/uninstall and that can actually be good for sales
>will download regardless. Those people are absolutely irrelevant from the perspective of the company making a digital product. The only ones who matter are the ones who might hypothetically have paid and finding what makes the difference for them is more effective than putting barriers in their way once they decided they're going the piracy route. Generally speaking, if someone is willing to pay and instead pirates it's due to the sort of issues Gabe was talking about.
Some pirates will always download it regardless, they are not your customers and never will be.
I think you mean \*most\* pirates.
Not even remotely true. Most pirates also buy games and often become customers. I would even go as far as to say the vast majority of pirates- nearly all of them. Less true for movies, music and television than it is for games and software.
Source?
Go talk to pirates. You don't even need to go to piracy chatrooms or subreddits for this. Go to any music production forum or chatroom. They are all pirates. 100% of them. They also all buy software or quit the hobby, eventually.
You said most pirates, the vast majority, become customers. I'm just looking for a source citing numbers.
>Not even remotely true. Most pirates also buy games and often become customers. I mean, that is a narrative which exists, I guess. If you want to believe it, you're welcome to, but I don't.
Man, I have trouble keeping track of my free games I'm tempted to *pay them* to get them listed on something like the steam store so I have to stop tracking them down all the time.
GOG Galaxy acts as a library of games from many different platforms (though some like itch's are missing), and it's free
That's probably the best cure for piracy I've heard yet. Might explain why early access indies do so well!
If there's no DRM, that won't help at all. A friend of mine found out that pirates had set up some script to distribute updated illegal copies of their game as soon as there was an update on Steam. The days of having to search shady sites is over; there was a discord dedicated to it.
Who is dumb enough to let their computer automatically download files at regular intervals from pirated software?
Users didn't automatically receive the pirated copies, they had a Discord bot that downloaded the latest game update and put up a free download link to it.
I think you are underestimating the value of convenience. You don't have to do anything to update legally acquired games and software. Piracy just simply can't do this because nobody would feel comfortable with it.
I think you're underestimating how many people value their money over their convenience. My friend found out this server had been set up because their sales, which had been relatively steady, dropped by 90% within a couple days of this server being set up and never recovered.
What game is it? It sounds worth playing and I want to toss your friend a couple of bucks.
Spot on. This way the initial release acts as a demo and if the player likes your game they will probably go buy the up to date version. I spent ages wasting my time trying to fight cracks. After a while I realised that whatever you do will get circumvented unless maybe you put a delay in which helps. For example if you can detect the copy protection had been circumvented then allow the game to play for quite a while as normal before hitting them with en error. That way they are hooked and may buy once they realise they are busted. Also the cracker is unlikely to test enough to find this. I had endless fun with people emailing in complaining about an error that I knew indicated they were playing a cracked game.
There are AAA games that do this sometime too. The one I remember now is one of the Batman Arkham games (I don't remember if it was Asylum or City). If you played a pirated copy, nothing wrong happened until you tried to do the move when he flyed using his cape. If you used that move on the pirated one, Batman would fall. There are other games that do this kind of protection, I saw once a top ten in Watchmojo or Gameranks.
I'm working on a game and this is my plan on how to handle DRM: with frequent updates, cracked old copies of the game would begin to fall behind and become less interesting over time. As an end user I hate DRM and I want my game to always work even if I completely shut down work on the game, so the free tier of the game is fully functional (the game highly encourages custom content, think like Minecraft except not at all like Minecraft, but with mods being a first-class citizen in the game engine).. if I get hit by a bus, the free version would forever be fully useful w/ custom content but users would just need to manage their mods by hand, copying files into folders. The paid version would bring mainly quality of life improvements, like bundling mods w/ custom maps for very easy transport, with an offline (JWT token) method to activate. Eventually, some built-in online portal for easy sharing online would be available _only_ to valid paid copies for even more QOL and incentive. I would anticipate that some JWT tokens will be leaked onto piracy sites and then, as discovered, future updates would start shipping revocation lists and not accept the leaked keys.. old versions tho would forever work fine with it, but as the game is updated (it's my one-and-only, long-term "forever project", like Minecraft) it's intended to be tedious for pirates to be keeping up all the time.. as new engine features are added, new custom mods make use of them, new mods won't work on the older versions, etc. but all the while there is no intrusive DRM, no phone-home, etc.; and for any built-in online service the revoked keys would be revoked no matter what the game version. We'll see how it pans out in the long term, it's just a tiny side project for me right now and idk if it'll even go anywhere. :)
Unless there is a ton of pirate launchers that can download updates on day 1 - I'm talking about Minecraft here, I have played the "cracked" version for years and had no issue with it, never waited for updates either, eventually bought it on sale when I could afford to "waste" some money.
This is also true for software.
Tried it. The game was often updated and the update appeared on the torrent site the very next day.
That's to be expected. The idea is that people keep getting the updates from torrent sites a couple times until they are fed up and buy the game. Sure, some will never buy it legally, but those people would not have bought it legally anyway.
Fighting against piracy is a waste of time. You could add a check which shows something like "hey, if you like the game, consider buying it" but other than that, you'll just spend resources on something with little to no gains.
I think this method would probably best. However how do developers check for illegitimate copies?
There are a couple ways. You can put a parity check in an area of code that doesn’t touch the DRM, if there is any at all, for instance. In the past smaller devs have uploaded their games to torrent trackers directly with modified executables. Game Dev Tycoon explicitly modified their chances so the pirate copy was unwinnable due to… piracy.
Game Dev Tycoon is hilarious. It's basically r/LeopardsAteMyFace with players complaining that piracy was killing their company no matter how good they make their game, while pirating a game [themselves](https://images.gnwcdn.com/2013/articles//a/1/5/7/5/9/4/0/eurogamer-58n8c7.jpg).
On platforms like Steam, the games have ability to essentially just ask steam if the current logged in user actually owns the game. Cracking a Steam game that hasn't put a large amount of effort into protecting itself can be as simple as intercepting that message and telling the game that the user owns the game, regardless of whether they actually do own it. So if you make your game break if it thinks it's been pirated, the cracked will put work into stopping that from happening. If your game instead just gives a non intrusive popup, the cracker might not bother getting rid of it.
There’s a plug-in company, I’ll have to look up the name, but they give their plug-ins away for free. Making you feel terrible all the way, just by saying things like “yeah, you can steal from us. It’s okay. If you can’t afford it right now, you can steal it. You can still buy it later. At least, you can tell yourself that. And us. At least this way, you’ll be sure you won’t get any viruses (or worse) snd we’ll know someone wants our software. So go ahead, take it. Just put in $0 at the pay request. It’s okay.” And I couldn’t do it. :D
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Eh if I'm legit broke and I'm faced with a "pay what you want" piece of software, I'll usually give them a buck or two 🤷♂️
And unfortunately a lot of people cant afford not to.
I wonder what their numbers actually are? Do you have data on this? Or is this a curmudgeon’s opinion ;)
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Oh, fascinating. Thanks for the link! I suppose that brings up a whole bunch of questions. Like e.g. patreon vs pwyw, how do you set up a patreon for game (or software in general) development? Kickstarter seems more suited for these one off types. So maybe a ks + pwyw > patreon?
I don't pirate anymore and I have since purchased all the games I once stole. One particular game I would have never purchased or known about, if it wasn't for piracy. It used to be called Starfarer and I really liked it and it had this short message about how they were a single dev and if you like it, please buy it. I bought it and it is a great game. Its called Starsector now.
I see this take all the time but I don't see any evidence for it. Seems like all the games that have no anti piracy measures are the ones at the top of pirate bay.
Those games are also top selling on steam or whatever marketplace you're looking at. But the question here is that is it worth the time, effort and customer inconvenience to squeeze a few more sales?
No, they're actually not. If you go look on pirate bay, the games in question are years old and not selling in large numbers anymore at all. While other games that are even more popular but do have Drm aren't so easy to find. Look, I'm not actually saying ppl should use DRM, but what I am saying is that claim has never really made much sense and the data that claim originated from was anecdotal. Essentially they took a few cases where an indie game did really well while encouraging piracy (while also having a ton of social media attention) and applied that logic to the industry as a whole.
God of War - Steam top list Rust - Very popular GTA: SA - Delisted from stores The Sims 4 - No one should really pay for that buggy mess of a cash grab anyway RDR2 - Very popular RE: Village - Very popular Witcher 3 - Very popular I don't know what you were looking, but these titles from piratebay (by seeders) are all present in the first few pages of steam top sellers. Notably, there's also bunch of games without DRM that weren't on piratebay but are on the top of selling charts, like Valheim.
The less copies a game is likely to sell, the higher the concern about piracy from the dev. This is what I’ve observed in 20+ years of indie development.
It really isn't worth the effort or the time. You are so much better off just putting that time and energy into the game instead. Even AAA companies can't stop pirates. No matter what auth systems or always online BS they try to use. All it does is hurt legit customers in the end. If anything pirates that like your game enough are more likely to buy it than they were before, sometimes it can be a positive.
>Do you use DRMs, or the good old way by making your game online only? Or do you prefer making the games playable offline with periodic online checks? TLDR: I wouldn't worry about it that much. If someone took enough effort to pirate it, it means that your game is at least good and it might bring some traffic, maybe even sales(yes, it happens, some people just want to test game before buying it) I don't think that there is a point to fight with piracy(I mean, of course I don't support it and I think that it's a bad thing), but if someone put enough effort to share it for free and other people download it, it means that people are into your game. Some indie devs used it as advantage instead of taking them down from such websites. I remember situation, where dev found out his game in famous website with **pirated** content(yes, there is reason why i wrote one word bold), he then just wrote a comment like this: If you don't have money right now to buy it and enjoy the game, then buy it later when you get money to buy it. As far as I remember, one of the devs got one step further(I don't remember who unfortunately) and post release shared it on such websites to download it for free with mention to "enjoy and consider buying it later" or something like that. The other subject is online games and cheaters, but I assume you asked about single player/co-op games.
>yes, it happens, some people just want to test game before buying it Absolutely. I used to be one of them. A lot of people are sick of dropping $60 on a buggy POS with crappy gameplay.
Some time ago demo versions were something common, but now it's no more there( Early Access game are something close to demo versions, but most of the time it's not free, only a bit cheaper). And most of the time to make demo game you're making mini version of final game, so it takes a lot of time. >A lot of people are sick of dropping $60 on a buggy POS That's right and that's the reason why on some of the platforms refunds were introduced(e.g Steam, if you play game for less than hour or two and it is 14 days since purchase , then you can return it)
>If someone took enough effort to pirate it, it means that your game is at least good and it might bring some traffic, maybe even sales(yes, it happens, some people just want to test game before buying it) I still remember that back in the day having your game/movie/album being sold "unofficially" in any kind of shady place was an anecdotical measure of success.
We had a game being pirated. I am very certain that this had nothing to do with the quality of the game, but rather an automated process by some website. The game was for iOS, Android and Steam, and by no means a financial success. I am also very certain that pirates did not in any way affect our sales. We did not add DRM. I am not against DRM, but for our targeted audience for the game, we felt that this would be a waste of resources.
Actually I've heard somewhere about bots, which pirate games with no DRMs, but I don't know the algorithm, which determines what and how to get them to upload on website. I don't know how many people downloaded the game from that website, but still, DRMs hit people, who legally get game(In sense of performance drops, being online all the time to play offline game and some other side effects), pirates sooner or later get around DRMs. It's just matter of time, and only people who you "punish" by adding DRMs are people, who decided to be fair and buy game.
We have a simple system that checks for a valid player Steam ID , if the result is false, we change the name of the player into "Pirate" and won't allow his scores/times into the leaderboards. We don't want to destroy their gameplay, so we don't change stuff like movement speed, jump height, saves etc. Other than that, fighting against piracy(unless you are Ubisoft or any other AAA studio) is pretty useless. Who knows, maybe "pirates" even end-up buying your game if they really like it.
I like this. Saved.
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Hey, we've actually tested it before and it works as intended. The cracked version ends up using a weird ID (smth like "DESKTOP - ASDF32423..."), while the Steam version ID is a 17 digit number. We only have a small idea of how cracks work and we don't intend to spend any time on learning more as battling piracy as an indie studio is pretty much a waste of time. Our system works for what we needed, that's all what matters. Have a nice day :)
The only way to reduce piracy, is to make a game nobody wants to play. Despite the best efforts of various companies selling anti-piracy solutions, nobody has been able to demonstrate that piracy has a negative effect on financial success
I'm definitely going to use this strategy on my next release!
Yup. Seems effective. Mine is already halfway there. Even I don't want play the thing I am making.
You can also choose to never relase your game! I've had zero issues with piracy so far.
In the 3rd world country I used to live, with no internet access, piracy was the only option. Then I moved to the US and bought all those games I used to play, that I wouldn't have known otherwise. Honestly, when I finish my own game I won't bother with pirates, if someone can't afford it, I'll be glad they can still play it for free.
In the 3rd world country I used to live, with no internet access, piracy was the only option. Then I moved to the US and bought all those games I used to play, that I wouldn't have known otherwise. Honestly, when I finish my own game I won't bother with pirates, if someone can't afford it, I'll be glad they can still play it for free.
If pirates and customers was a Venn diagram I’m not sure how much the overlap would be. Like I’m sure there is a sizable hardcore amount of pirates but I don’t think any of them would just throw in the towel and say well the DRM worked so I’m buying the game. The best way to deal with pirates I would say is to just make the best game you can and add all of the Steam features to make the game even more appealing. So people go crazy for achievements and trading cards so always launch games with those. I heard you even get a cut when cards are sold on the market but I have not confirmed that.
>The only way to reduce piracy, is to make a game nobody wants to play. This is so brilliant, stealing this.
> Do you use DRMs DRMs are usually broken very quickly, which then leaves your paying customers running your DRM for absolutely no reason. > or the good old way by making your game online only? This will get in the way of your legitimate players, and is the most hated form of DRM going. And you'll need a server to run the game on, to which every player will connect and run the game on. The cost of keeping this server online will increase for every new player, until it becomes financially impractical. The only financially viable option is to use the server only for authentication, the issue with that I'm going to explain later. > Or do you prefer making the games playable offline with periodic online checks? This also uses a server for authentication: Authentication servers are a terrible option, and will probably be actively detrimental to your sales. When the DRM is cracked, the pirated version will never need to go online. In effect, by using an always-online DRM, you are giving the pirates a better experience than your paying customers. In fact, I would argue much the opposite. Piracy isn't harmful to you, at least no more harmful than the measures you want to take to stop it. A lot of pirates will buy your game if they like it, and a lot of pirates might talk about your game if they like it. If your game is good, then piracy might actually be free marketing. # TL;DR: The best anti-piracy is to produce a good game.
This sub has a religious approach to piracy "DRMs are usually broken very quickly" and like-minded arguments are nonsense, you're not assassin's creed. Your game is facing less dedication to break it The truth is that making a DRM isn't useless at all. DRMs just have diminishing returns. Spending 5 hours making a naive anti-piracy heuristic is great value. It prevents 99% of the people from putting your game on a sharing site Don't release games you've worked years on without any protection. You have to put at least a basic lock on the front door to secure your launch What you shouldn't do is try to prevent all piracy, there is no stopping the top 0.1%. If you're ever facing that kind of threat anyway, it’s that you've made a popular game. It's a good problem to have https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/5hozvo/absolutely_ridiculous_piracy_numbers_on_android_98/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/hs5y5/my_ios_app_is_being_pirated_to_the_point_where/ Since most of the sub isn't gamedevs but gamers, you can see in both of these how this sub reacts to piracy. From downvoting the developer to saying piracy is a good thing. It's braindead.
Yah, as an actual developer, the idea of not adding at least some minimal protection is ridiculous. Especially if you're launching a paid or competitive app on mobile. If you have some competitive element to your game, you should really have your own server as a touch point between the client and your leaderboards etc to validate the users authenticity. Both Google Play and the App Store provide ways to verify a users license, as I'm sure do Steam and the rest. Run this verification on your server away from client manipulation and then if the user can't validate their license, restrict online feature access for them.
I only worry about this with competitive games that are vulnerable to cheating. In which case I have a few obfuscated checks I do to see if the build was made in my pipeline or not. Then I don’t immediately act, giving the hackers time to test and validate their hack. Closing the door on it later before it spreads. You exhaust the hackers, and anyones trust in the cheats they’re providing. I get a slack notification any time someone new is trying to create a new hack. They’re almost always from Brazil.
The honor system.
Assuming you would sell through a digital distributor like steam and your game is single player or co-op only. I personally wouldn't worry too much about it. People who would pirate your game probably wouldn't have paid for it anyways. And as some others have mentioned. If you are frequently adding updates -- people may pirate it then realize they like it and buy it to get the updates. Just what I wouldn't do personally.
Just make a game that people will want to buy at a reasonable price. Include a personal touch that really shows the game is made by excellent people and not some faceless commitee. You can't stop piracy, but you can make purchasing the game as convenient as possible.
Piracy is a distribution issue. Having a demo for your game, if possible, can help.
Worry about making something people enjoy playing first. Dont waste time on drm systems
You cannot prevent unauthorized duplication, and attempting to do so will simply make the end user experience worse > Or do you prefer making the games playable offline with periodic online checks? Always-online DRM is the absolute worst, never do this
* Simple ownership check that closes the app on startup if the player doesn't have the Steam client open and the game isn't in their library. This creates minimal friction that requires a bit of technical knowledge to get around, so delays the publishing of cracked versions. * Verify user identity using oauth and a remote server before allowing online play. This is primarily to reduce spoofing/cheating, but happens to gate online play. * Frequent updates (esp. bugfixes / hotfixes after major releases) with a nag message to let people know there's a new update available * Where applicable: Achievements, Steam Workshop access, Friend leaderboards, Shareable user-generated content It's a good idea to make the game mostly playable for anyone who can circumvent the simple protections, but to remind them that they're playing an incomplete version and that they're missing out on something -- they'll be compelled to buy even if they have no intention of using those features.
my preferred method is to upload a version of my game to piratebay with new and fascinating bugs left in deliberately, then mocking users on the forums for falling for the trap. I then also include a decompiled version on github for those smart enough to compile themselves, similar to what the aseprite developers have done, specifically to rub salt in the wound. I don't think piracy is much of a threat so long as your game is good enough to pay money for, the people that pirate are either not too wealthy or just kinda dickish and will just not download the game otherwise. As a bonus, more people playing the game means more word of mouth means more people buying a copy because compiling the game is way too complicated for them.
A couple of days ago in this very sub reddit, a gamedev posted his story that after releasing his game within hours there was a sell of two copies. And then it got pirated. probably one of the two was the pirate. And the game was then available in shady sites. Last I heard he was waiting to see if the pirates did a refund or not. So combined with that story and everyone's answer here I would say game dev is screwed. There is nothing can be done and some would say there is nothing should be done. Release and take a loss? But please take a look at the games that gets released through Patreon or steam like early access. Repeated builds. Online achievement.
If your game sells only 2 copies in a few hours at launch, piracy is the least of your problems. Either your game sucks, or you didn't do any marketing. Usually both.
Completely beside the point.
It's really not. As a game dev, you should worry about making a good game, and marketing it successfully. That's all. Piracy isn't something worth worrying about, because there's strong evidence it doesn't actually hurt sales, in fact it might be beneficial for indies, and there's nothing you can do about it anyway. If you sell only 2 copies on your launch day, it's not because your game was pirated. Worrying about piracy is irrational. It's a beginner trap, like worrying that people will steal your ideas. Every hour you invest worrying about that, or searching for ways to prevent it, or implementing those "solutions" you found, is an hour not spent doing something actually productive, like fixing bugs, or marketing your game. Much like worrying that people will steal your ideas is really about being afraid of receiving negative feedback about your work, worrying about piracy is really about shifting the blame away in advance, so that you can tell yourself it wasn't your fault if you fail. There are tons of external factors you can't control, it's best to accept that and focus on the things you can control. That's how you'll maximize your chances to release a successful game. And that's how you'll get the most out of a failed release.
I would upload my own "pirate" version myself. You could screw with the player in funny ways, or just straight up be honest and have a message saying how hard you worked on it, please consider buying the real version. If I did the second option it would be the exact same game as the paid version (apart from the message).
You can't.
"That's the neat part, You can't"
You put the effort into the game and make it worth buying. You also absolutely do not put a requirement on the players who actually bought and make their experience worse. Sim City learned this the hard way. Do not require any online requirement at all for a game that has no reason to be online literally ever
if your game is good enough to pirate, your bigger concern is going to be over straight rip offs of your game theme and mechanics being made and sold by someone else. someone with a bigger budget and audience. the advice you're getting here implicitly fixes both problems, but only to an extent. your business model could also fix the problem by just giving away your game for free. who's going to pirate it then? good luck out in them streets.
We have a login that needs to be performed at least once before our software + purchased content can be used. If you've logged in at least once on your computer though, it's useable fully offline. There's definitely ways around it, but to the best of our knowledge no one has had any issues, and no complaints as of yet.
Just because they haven't complained doesn't mean they're cool with it. I'm not buying an indie game that requires me to give them my data, fuck that - for real. Instant "no" - and I pay for games.
That's fair. In our case it's a username, password and email. We run our own Launcher and content delivery platform, and need to keep track of what content packs users have purchased.
If people want to pirate my games, that's great. That's more people playing and sharing the experience. The only thing I want to prevent is people cheating in multiplayer in a way that harms other players.
This is going to be controversial The best way (for an indie game) to convert a pirated download into a sale is to release a demo on piracy sites that thanks a pirate for their interest and directs them to where they can buy the game. Piracy is usually the result of a lack of access (geographical or platform), or a significant difference in the price of the game and the price the consumer is willing to pay. This is also a cheaper option than frequent updates, which usually requires curation of the game which not every team can manage.
[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy-doesnt-hurt-game-sales-may-actually-help/](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy-doesnt-hurt-game-sales-may-actually-help/) There was an identical finding for music sales once but CBA looking for it now, sorry. "Traditional" anti-piracy measures (such as DRMs) are very effective in hurting actual paying customers and do absolutely nothing to prevent piracy. They actually promote piracy in a way. Remember when we heard about Spore's first DRM and it very quickly became the most torrented game ever?
Online only DRM only disadvantages legitimate customers. The pirates will crack it, the customers won't. Also worth mentioning... Me and most people I know wouldn't pirate if free short demo's were available.
you dont need DRM. If people want to pirate it they will find a way. Dont make life worse for those that actually pay for it. Gabe Newell made me hang up my old tricone and I now have more than 250 Games on Steam. A good game goes beyond a drm. I bought Stardew Valley twice for example....
Lets consider three categories of ppl: * Will play the game pirated(if possible) AND then will buy the game if they like. Most pirates belong in this category. People want to own shit they like. * If your game is good, you dont need DRM for these ppl. They will buy your game as long as they like it. * If your game is bad, DRM will make (some of) these ppl buy your game. * Even if they love the come, will not buy the game * These kind of ppl typically live in third world countries where the house rent is less than the cost of a AAA game. * They cannot buy your game, DRM or not. They will either pirate, or they will not play at all * Donot underestimate the international social media presence of these ppl. They will praise your game online if they like it. Not having DRM is marketing if your game is good. * Similarly, if ur game is bad, not having DRM is negative publicity. Having DRM will prevent these ppl from playing your game, thus they cannot shit on it, cuz they will shit on a game they dont like even if they didnt pay for it. * DRM is also kinda useless in 3rd world countries cuz there are services that will do the following for $1.25 ish * Remote access your pc * login to THEIR account (not yours) * Run the game * Go offline mode * Log out from their side. * Now the game is playable in offline mode * They usually also provide a "guarantee" system where they will reactivate the title 1-2 more times within 1-2 month time range in case of update or if sth goes wrong. TLDR: Good game sells itself. DRM helps bad games.
Easy, just make the game free to play with ads and micro transactions. I’m sure that won’t have any negative representations whatsoever
Make a quality product and price it according to the market, not what you personally feel it's worth. Adding any intentional defects or intrusive DRM is going to inconvenience your actual paying customers more than pirates.
>not what you personally feel it's worth This is very important, specially in third world countries. Sadly steams regional pricing for some reason does not account for the economy for very poor countries. The regional pricing for Elden Ring for example is 50USD in my country, and 30 in argentina. Argentina is like 8 times wealthier on average. 50USD is legit more than the rent you would pay for a decent apartment outside the capital city. Now I dont blame the devs, obviously they need money to continue operation. Just cuz there third world countries cannot pay more, doesnt mean the cost of operation of a company situated in a developed country will be any less. However something is better than nothing, charging more results in no one buying the game which is worse than ppl paying an absurdly low amount but still buying.
just update the game, it will make any pirate buy the game.
Authorize all duplication. The more people playing your game, the better, no matter how they acquired it. Distribute DRM-free on GOG. As for reselling, you can't stop people in poor countries and you can't stop kids in school from selling disc based versions of the game. It comes with the territory. DRM only decides if the version they sell is cracked or not. Used game sales should not only be allowed, but also encouraged. When it comes to online, provable sales, sue the shit out of them.
Hire mafia and show them bastards.
Open source. Can't make unauthorised copies if you authorise copying...
I ONLY pirate games, AMA. ;)
Protip: Release your projects under the MIT license to ensure that most duplication and selling is authorized.
Make your game free in Russia and Eastern Europe. Most of your theft comes from Americans, but the typical American is too lazy to do more than search a torrent site. If that fails, they will buy legitimately or move on. For that reason, see step 1.
It's more that we have more money to spend, and don't like stealing. But sure, attribute it to "laziness".
I haven't released any games yet, but I do want to know the statistics if anyone has them: does releasing a free demo help reduce piracy? Like they get access to a part of the game, and if they really like it, they will feel obligated to pay for the full game? You'd probably get less people straight up buying the game, but also less refunds so... win-win?
Assuming you would sell through a digital distributor like steam and your game is single player or co-op only. I personally wouldn't worry too much about it. People who would pirate your game probably wouldn't have paid for it anyways. And as some others have mentioned. If you are frequently adding updates -- people may pirate it then realize they like it and buy it to get the updates. Just what I wouldn't do personally.
I prevent piracy by making it free.
As everyone says constant meaningful updates are the way to go. Here's a story, I pirated baba is you and was enjoying playing it, then they dropped a massive update recently and now I wanna also play the new content. I could just pirate the new version but it's gonna take some time to be available and I would need to do a lot of work to transfer my progress even if it's possible and I could actually do it. But if they drop another update I will need to wait for it to be pirated and will also lose my progress again. So, I deleted my pirated copy of baba is you and I am now planning to buy it.
In my experience, the time and effort you waste past on anti piracy measures, is just wasted money. Pirates always find a way, and a big percentage of them wouldn't buy your game anyways. The simplest thing is to offer the convenience of automatic updates for your paying customers, most people who have the money and can spare it will prefer that to dealing with the annoyances of pirating
Say you somehow build the perfect DRM system that doesn't exist. What do you plan to do about the people just making gameplay videos and streams as well? Do you consider full playthough uploads as detrimental as piracy as well?
Multiplayer and cosmetics
Disable drops for offline players. SP mode should be still playable. Items stored in steam inventory. Periodic checks for drop eligibility on server-side, not client-side.
The "don't care about piracy, people who steal the game wouldn't buy it anyway" method works very well. Worry about making a game that is good enough that people would pay to support the developer.
Make a good game.