[QUOTE=Destroyox;49634722]Say what you want, but I felt really bad when I read this;
[media]https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/693202734703472640[/media]
[media]https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/693202768136253442[/media][/QUOTE]
I'd be curious to know how they can tell the difference, or if he's just making shit up.
No matter what your opinions are on pirating games, I think most of us can agree profiting off a pirated copy is wrong.
[QUOTE=Fat White Lump;49633963]Why should I have to set aside $40 that takes up to a week to get back just to try a game? There should be a demo.[/QUOTE]
It's a game made by like a five man team that took them forever and went way over budget. It's a wonder they finished the game itself let alone pour even more resources into a demo.
[QUOTE=Levelog;49635042]No matter what your opinions are on pirating games, I think most of us can agree profiting off a pirated copy is wrong.[/QUOTE]
Its one thing to pirate a game. But there's a special place in hell on people who are massively profiting on piracy.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49635027]I'd be curious to know how they can tell the difference, or if he's just making shit up.[/QUOTE]
he probably worked something into the game that checks if a steam account is logged onto that pc, and from there he can check if the account owns the game. pretty simple really
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49635027]I'd be curious to know how they can tell the difference, or if he's just making shit up.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/world-of-warcraft/world-of-warcraft-general/375573-looking-inside-your-screenshots.html[/url]
Something like this I imagine.
[QUOTE=hunter_killah;49633635]I think it's more an example of how much more a game is pirated when launched with a ridiculous price than if it was cheaper
This fucking game is like, $40, like hell I'm going to pay that much for something like this lmfao[/QUOTE]
40 dollars for an 80 hour game is ridiculous now?
Game looks great but $40 is way too much for a game like this. I would take the pirating as a compliment on the game and a criticism of the pricetag attached.
[QUOTE=l337k1ll4;49635746]40 dollars for an 80 hour game is ridiculous now?[/QUOTE]
What bothers me more than the length is the fact the dev is asking 40 bucks for a really niche puzzle game that clearly not everyone will be into and doesn't even give a demo.
Why do I have a feeling this is a case of the game just selling poorly, but rather than admit it, they opted to blame piracy? All that was mentioned was that it was very popular on a torrent site. I am not trying to justify piracy, just that in this day and age its really easy to have a game sell poorly and just say "damn those pirates!" rather than ponder how you messed up.
[QUOTE=l337k1ll4;49635746]40 dollars for an 80 hour game is ridiculous now?[/QUOTE]
40 dollars for a 20 hourish game. estimate for has been 40 hours by blow, but 20 feels like a better assessment. There's more content supposedly hidden, there's hope in the IOS release.
[QUOTE=Ithon;49635968]40 dollars for a 20 hourish game. estimate for has been 40 hours by blow, but 20 feels like a better assessment. There's more content supposedly hidden, there's hope in the IOS release.[/QUOTE]
Yeah my friend made it through in 24 hours. Honestly it's not just a strict hour/$ thing for me for a game to be worth it, there's certainly different levels of entertainment. If I really enjoy a 20 hour game for $40 that's easily equal to a game that just keeps my interest for 40 hours for $40.
[QUOTE=SteakStyles;49635860]Why do I have a feeling this is a case of the game just selling poorly, but rather than admit it, they opted to blame piracy? All that was mentioned was that it was very popular on a torrent site. I am not trying to justify piracy, just that in this day and age its really easy to have a game sell poorly and just say "damn those pirates!" rather than ponder how you messed up.[/QUOTE]
Same shit Epic Games did with Bulletstorm. Make a weird niche game, advertise it poorly, be surprised it doesn't sell like larger franchises, blame piracy.
[QUOTE=Ithon;49635968]40 dollars for a 20 hourish game. estimate for has been 40 hours by blow, but 20 feels like a better assessment. There's more content supposedly hidden, there's hope in the IOS release.[/QUOTE]
The devs hyped it up before release, going as far as to claim the game would take [url=http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/26/10828070/the-witness-jonathan-blow-thekla-interview-ps4-pc]100 hours to beat[/url]. Can't wait until [url=http://howlongtobeat.com/]HowLongToBeat[/url] has enough data gathered.
Talos Principle is a very similar game to Witness and is priced the same, and I remember, according to SteamSpy, it took few months until that game went over 200 000. Now it is around 500 000 after few sales.
It is a niche genre and, let's not forget, it's not 2008 anymore. If big titles from back then like Braid, Limbo or Super Meat Boy were released today they would be in a very difficult situation.
[QUOTE=Levelog;49635042]No matter what your opinions are on pirating games, I think most of us can agree profiting off a pirated copy is wrong.[/QUOTE]
Pretty much. There have been times where there was no demo for a game and i wanted to try it. Ended up not only buying a few games after trying them, but i threw in a few extra bucks for the deluxe/special edition.
[QUOTE=Destroyox;49634722]Say what you want, but I felt really bad when I read this;
[media]https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/693202734703472640[/media]
[media]https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/693202768136253442[/media][/QUOTE]
how the fuck? if there's some kind of a watermark with the user's steamid, it will be absolutely killed by stream's compression/bitrate/resolution
[QUOTE=damnatus;49639507]how the fuck? if there's some kind of a watermark with the user's steamid, it will be absolutely killed by stream's compression/bitrate/resolution[/QUOTE]
In Serious Sam 3 they would send an invincible enemy at you if Steam check fails, but Witness devs could have done something subtle like changing the colors of trees, or movement of clouds, or something that doesn't affect the gameplay and would go unnoticed by pirates, but they would know the difference.
[QUOTE=AntonioR;49639572]In Serious Sam 3 they would send an invincible enemy at you if Steam check fails, but Witness devs could have done something subtle like changing the colors of trees, or movement of clouds, or something that doesn't affect the gameplay and would go unnoticed by pirates, but they would know the difference.[/QUOTE]
Or even just a piece of UI being two pixels offset to one side or something that isn't noticeable if you don't know it's there. Something that is out of alignment with what it "should" be but looks fine if you don't know the difference.
The game is DRM-free on Humble though, you can play it without Steam.
They must've put the game on torrent sites themselves, but with some slight alterations.
[QUOTE=Kljunas;49639716]The game is DRM-free on Humble though, you can play it without Steam.
They must've put the game on torrent sites themselves, but with some slight alterations.[/QUOTE]
[URL="http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/"]Game Dev Tycoon did that,[/URL] with hilarious (if depressing) results. If you had a pirated copy of GDT, it'd run fine for a while, but after a certain point game piracy would destroy your studio and there was nothing you could do to stop it.
[t]http://www.greenheartgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/itruinsme.png[/t]
[t]http://www.greenheartgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/steam.png[/t]
"Can I research DRM to stop the piracy in my pirated game?" :v:
[QUOTE]I do think it’s important to try to communicate what piracy means to game developers to our consumers. I also tried to appeal to a particular forum a day earlier after someone who I gave early-access to the Store seemed to have passed on the copy to others:
[IMG]http://www.greenheartgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/appeal.png[/IMG][/QUOTE]
[URL="https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1231888&p=40449517&viewfull=1#post40449517"]That post is real, too.[/URL]
Every time you complete a puzzle in a pirated copy of The Witness, the game plays a recording of Jonathan Blow sighing.
He's saying that he might put DRM in his next game because of this but adding DRM won't stop pirates and so will just be a waste of time and money.
[QUOTE=Swiket;49640305]Every time you complete a puzzle in a pirated copy of The Witness, the game plays a recording of Jonathan Blow sighing.[/QUOTE]
for real?
I can't tell if you're joking
pretty funny
[QUOTE=Scratch.;49640400]for real?
I can't tell if you're joking
pretty funny[/QUOTE]
I am joking.
That would be a pretty good idea though.
Similar happened with [URL="http://store.steampowered.com/app/251110"]INFRA[/URL], I can find a lot more pirate sites with "free download"/torrent of INFRA than legit news about the game.
But the major problem we're having is lack of general knowledge and visibility of the game (and some launch day issues we had)...
I have a game project I want to make that's still in the early stages (it'd definitely qualify as "Ideas Guy" territory if I made a thread now, which is why only one person on FP knows anything about it), and if I ever manage to do it, I'd probably release a pirated copy to TPB myself. With Spyro-level fuck-with-you copy protection.
Game save deletes itself at the 75% mark, after a few minutes of playing the volume levels randomly jam to maximum and the options no longer work, and the game loads in minimum graphics settings and can't be changed. And maybe introduce a few intentional hardcoded bugs that'll cause CTDs more or less at random.
More devs should do that; release a pirated version with an intentional memory leak. :v:
[QUOTE=oskutin;49640438]Similar happened with [URL="http://store.steampowered.com/app/251110"]INFRA[/URL], I can find a lot more pirate sites with "free download"/torrent of INFRA than legit news about the game.
But the major problem we're having is [B]lack of general knowledge and visibility of the game[/B] (and some launch day issues we had)...[/QUOTE]
Speaking of that... this's the first time I've ever heard about this game. But it looks cool!
It actually fucks up the lighting in the game:
[t]http://novaember.com/s/8f9453/xUh1JU.png[/t] [t]http://novaember.com/s/8f9453/IOOcs2.png[/t]
Pretty clever, it also subtly prevents you from finishing the game, as [sp]you need proper lighting for some puzzles. As bonus it will lead to frustration because you just can't find the answer without.[/sp] Really well done I think because this still allows you to somewhat play the game to try it out.
[QUOTE=Darkwater124;49640446]It actually fucks up the lighting in the game:
[t]http://novaember.com/s/8f9453/xUh1JU.png[/t] [t]http://novaember.com/s/8f9453/IOOcs2.png[/t]
Pretty clever, it also subtly prevents you from finishing the game, as [sp]you need proper lighting for some puzzles. As bonus it will lead to frustration because you just can't find the answer without.[/sp] Really well done I think because this still allows you to somewhat play the game to try it out.[/QUOTE]
Fucking genius.
[QUOTE=Swiket;49640453]That was actually a lighting issue with AMD GPUs which has since been patched.[/QUOTE]
Or maybe not, but it's a great idea anyway for someone else to do.
[QUOTE=Darkwater124;49640446]It actually fucks up the lighting in the game:
[t]http://novaember.com/s/8f9453/xUh1JU.png[/t] [t]http://novaember.com/s/8f9453/IOOcs2.png[/t]
Pretty clever, it also subtly prevents you from finishing the game, as [sp]you need proper lighting for some puzzles. As bonus it will lead to frustration because you just can't find the answer without.[/sp] Really well done I think because this still allows you to somewhat play the game to try it out.[/QUOTE]
That was actually a lighting issue with AMD GPUs which has since been patched.
Also I think some people underestimate the amount of work gone into this game. I 'finished' it today in about 15-20 hours total, but there's tons of other stuff to do, a proper completion, if you will. Also:
[quote=Jonathan Blow]There’s at least one puzzle in the game right now that almost nobody — like 1% of players — will ever be able to figure out.[/quote]
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