I was just thinking, if all the coolest user-submitted custom levels are locked in a members-only section for legit customers - might motivate some pirates to cough up a twenty?

I can see Sony/Little Big Planet shutting down their servers if it had 90% pirated copies.

If everyone bought 9 copies of the game over its lifespan (a good few years), that could also help alleviate the problem. I can see this game becoming the GLQuake of the future, where EVERY machine you ever own has to have it installed, and played through. (I will be buying one more copy - no really I will).

Need...boxed...copy...for...Australian...PAL...Wii...

...must...stay...in...control...

PS. I play offline, and others may do as well, skewing the piracy figures a little. Even when I get my Wii version - I will play it offline.

many pirates don't care about addons.  :/

Stop me if I'm wrong but the purpose is not to have less pirates but to sell more. So exclusive contents for people with a CD key or something like that is a way to increase sales.

The thing who seems hard to understand for many no P2P or warez users is most pirates are potential clients if they play the game not if they don't play it. If they can't get crack of a game (which is very unlikely) they'll get another cracked game and if they play a game and really like it they will buy it. As they don't care about the morality of the act, the attachment to the game is the key for selling.

I gonna give a simple example, I got by a friend Heroes of Might and Magic V and then I bought it. I finished Painkiller on a cracked version 3 times before I found and bought one. And this was vastly conditionned by the pleasure to have the box on my shelter, it's part of the attachment to the games I really enjoyed. At the contrary I got a cracked Mass Effect and I deleted it after 2 hours of play cause I didn't enjoyed at all the game and obviously I didn't bought it.

So a pirate will almost never buy a game on steam he can have for free on P2P but if he enjoyed the game he will buy the box. When World of Goo will be released in box version with the additional chapter you can be sure many people who will buy it already have finished it.

It's probably hard to heard for "honest" people but it's how it works and being judgemental won't help at all. You can't convince somebody who hasn't the same way of reasoning as you cause what you think is awful is probably harmless in his opinion and vice versa.

Edit: oh and I forgot, people expect too much safety from nextgen consoles. Already a third of my friends have cracked DS/PSP/XBOX360 games and the release of cracked console games is in constant augmentation. It's just a matter of times...

unfortunately you're never going to get rid of pirates, but you will sell more. I think exclusive content is a good way to go, it's just rewarding someone who choses to buy your game. People WILL shell out cash for exclusivity.

Pirates will just steal the content and post that too.

But I agree 100% that trying to reduce the number of pirated games is stupid.  It doesn't make you money.  Selling more copies, THAT makes you money.

The #1 thing that will boost indy sales is advertising.  If people don't know about a game, they obviously won't buy it.  Piracy is good advertising.

The way I see it, only a very small number of pirates would have bought the game if there was no pirated copy.  The extra sales due to more people seeing the game (Hey, check out this game I got from warez...) more than makes up for it.

I must admit that in these days of "shovelware", when you can polish a turd and sell it for $100AUS, trialing software off spurious torrent sites is a valid method of seeing if the game is truly up to scratch, and runs smoothly on your hardware.

PS. I have purchased all games I trialled and liked - Peggle, Bejeweled 2, Psychonauts for example. I pre-ordered WoG, so that is different - because I so wanted it to be a SMASH HIT. I think it is a hit, but well short of a SMASH. If 1 in 5 of those pirates actually bought a copy originally, Kyle & Ron would be well on their way.

I would love a humorous anti-piracy message by the Sign Painter, about midway through the game :) (like Futurama:Benders Game DVD anti-piracy message).

i would like to suggest an idea here the second time:

i think piracy could be reduced and more versions would be bought if every registered customer
gets a personal avatar flag in his tower of goo cloud. all te others will have just skulls...

[quote author=peterpaul link=topic=791.msg5974#msg5974 date=1226922195]i would like to suggest an idea here the second time:

i think piracy could be reduced and more versions would be bought if every registered customer
gets a personal avatar flag in his tower of goo cloud. all te others will have just skulls...I don't think this would work, and I would find it offensive if the creators assumed everyone to be a pirate until proven otherwise.



What I would be curious at, is the stats for everyone playing the game for more than a week. Does this change the figures? Are there a lot of 1-time players in the pirates?

flag the free download crap of the game on youtube, im sure atleast 50% of the users are getting it free there.