Game Piracy Linked To Critic’s Review Scores

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Researchers have finally figured out what makes people to illegally download games...positive video game reviews. All we have to do is give all games bad reviews and piracy will end!

A new study by researchers from Copenhagen Business School and the University of Waterloo explores the magnitude of game piracy on public BitTorrent trackers. The researchers tracked 173 new game releases over a three-month period and found that these were downloaded by 12.7 million unique peers. They further show that the number of downloads on BitTorrent can be predicted by the scores of game reviewers.
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People pirate games that are supposed to be good more than they pirate bad ones? NO REALLY!?
 
Causation, correlation, Lolwtfbbq

3 terms that are lost to those researchers
 
Where can sign up to get grant money for making stupid studies like these?
 
People want to pirate good games and don't want to pirate bad ones?

What a shocker!!!!!!!
 
Guess Crysis 2 and DNF had ZERO illegal downloads?
 
Not that I've ever pirated a game.............
but if I WERE to pirate a game, it would be one that is reviewed LOWLY for the PC........
 
TheGrape said:
Where can sign up to get grant money for making stupid studies like these?
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I want $100,000 to study if there is any correlation between number of units sold and number of units pirated. My hypothesis is that they are directly related. :p
 
I bet more people buy games that get good reviews too.

Could it possibly just be that things that are perceived as being a good value just generate more interest in general... nah.. it couldn't be that.
 
Causation/correlation FAIL!

At least i'm now more educated on schools to avoid if i ever find myself in Denmark.
 
Another retarded study, you shouldn't report on these type of stories Steve. It's almost encouraging it.
 
Every time I read one of these it makes me want to punch the person who wasted the time to type it up. I want to punch myself for even posting in this thread.

:D
 
There goes the argument that I hear pirates constantly use to justify illegally stealing a copy of the game. I hear too often that people say they download a game because it sucked and isn't worth paying for. The BIG shocker here is that people just want to steal shit for free.
 
Sigh...


How about they take the grant money next time and just fucking burn it.
 
amdgamer said:
There goes the argument that I hear pirates constantly use to justify illegally stealing a copy of the game. I hear too often that people say they download a game because it sucked and isn't worth paying for. The BIG shocker here is that people just want to steal shit for free.
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How is that a shocker? People have been stealing things since the beginning of time, difference here is there is no personal interaction, and chances for personal injury or capture are lowered. Doesn't justify it, but certainly illustrates a mentality that makes it a more reasonable and attractive solution for would be thieves.

If they on the other hand said they wanted to demo it since the developers/publishers didn't provide one, and then kept it because they felt it sucked does that make it different? It is justifiable to sample the product for 24hours?

I wish more publishers/developers would allow timed/limited samples or demos. Seems they are too worried about the bottom line and developments costs and that time and money is better spent taking legal action on people.

I honestly believe piracy would be drastically reduced if demos were released. But this mentality of publishers to rely on media blitz to sell a game and screw consumers out of 60bucks if they don't like it is criminal. You can test drive a car if you want to buy it. Why not a game?
 
Ualdayan said:
I want $100,000 to study if there is any correlation between number of units sold and number of units pirated. My hypothesis is that they are directly related. :p
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You messed up. First get the $100,000 and then give your hypothesis as the findings. Then use the money to build a killer rig and for getting more grants for useless studies that have obvious end results.:D
 
I honestly believe piracy would be drastically reduced if demos were released. But this mentality of publishers to rely on media blitz to sell a game and screw consumers out of 60bucks if they don't like it is criminal. You can test drive a car if you want to buy it. Why not a game?[/QUOTE]

Your right, there was a time that publishers released demos BEFORE a game came out. That's how they got a lot of their feedback. You could play multi-player demo online months before the real game hit the shelves and they could work all the kinks out. Now they just release bug ridden games and your forced to wait until they sort things out.
 
wasteomind said:
How is that a shocker? People have been stealing things since the beginning of time, difference here is there is no personal interaction, and chances for personal injury or capture are lowered. Doesn't justify it, but certainly illustrates a mentality that makes it a more reasonable and attractive solution for would be thieves.

If they on the other hand said they wanted to demo it since the developers/publishers didn't provide one, and then kept it because they felt it sucked does that make it different? It is justifiable to sample the product for 24hours?

I wish more publishers/developers would allow timed/limited samples or demos. Seems they are too worried about the bottom line and developments costs and that time and money is better spent taking legal action on people.

I honestly believe piracy would be drastically reduced if demos were released. But this mentality of publishers to rely on media blitz to sell a game and screw consumers out of 60bucks if they don't like it is criminal. You can test drive a car if you want to buy it. Why not a game?
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You test drive a car because a car costs many orders of magnitude more than the $50-60 for a game. However I agree with you 100% about more demos being released. Somehow I can't help but think that we don't see many demos these days because a bad demo can hurt a good game like how Forza 2's demo was horrible when the actual game was literally 10/10. The other thing is that some games are bad and the lazy ass developers want to hide behind creative marketing. This is why I am no longer buying games on day one that don't have Forza in the title.
 
So if we give every game horrible reviews except Call of Duty titles, will the franchise finally go away from extremely excessive pirating, thus killing any sales profits it could possibly make?

Because if so, sign me up to be a game reviewer. I'll do it for that cause.
 
tubular said:
Not that I've ever pirated a game.............
but if I WERE to pirate a game, it would be one that is reviewed LOWLY for the PC........
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and here at [H], Always look to see what games are being used to test the video cards.
 
Tinmann said:
I honestly believe piracy would be drastically reduced if demos were released. But this mentality of publishers to rely on media blitz to sell a game and screw consumers out of 60bucks if they don't like it is criminal. You can test drive a car if you want to buy it. Why not a game?
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Your right, there was a time that publishers released demos BEFORE a game came out. That's how they got a lot of their feedback. You could play multi-player demo online months before the real game hit the shelves and they could work all the kinks out. Now they just release bug ridden games and your forced to wait until they sort things out.[/QUOTE]
Some marketing guru realized that you could hype up a crappy game, do enough presales and recover you costs before the word got out it was a crappy game.
 
Is it just me or do we always get a load of these questionable 'studies' around this time of year? Just after the accademic year ends?
They're probably written by students (now presumably graduates) as their final year dissertation.

This study may well have been the authors first time writing such a study, but they're treated by the media as if they were 'seasoned professionals'.
 
amdgamer said:
There goes the argument that I hear pirates constantly use to justify illegally stealing a copy of the game. I hear too often that people say they download a game because it sucked and isn't worth paying for. The BIG shocker here is that people just want to steal shit for free.
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"It sucked" and "isn't worth paying for" are two separate things in my mind. I pirated a lot of stuff when I was younger because, though I enjoyed it, I was not willing(or sometimes able) to pay the money for it.
 
Sorry what......... the only reason I and many of my friends stared to download games was the constant high scores being given by game reviwers for games that turned into complete rubbish rip offs.

(Have to ask how much do EA etc give to some gamer magazines)

Once we were able to judge if the game was worth it then it would be purchased.
 
wasteomind said:
I honestly believe piracy would be drastically reduced if demos were released. But this mentality of publishers to rely on media blitz to sell a game and screw consumers out of 60bucks if they don't like it is criminal. You can test drive a car if you want to buy it. Why not a game?
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What was that old ad to discourage downloading? "You wouldn't download a car?"
 
There'd be less piracy if game prices weren't such a ripoff.

My Steam Library is filled with games that I bought on a whim because it was under 30 dollars. Some of which I probably won't play for years but the notion that I snagged a 'good' deal makes me buy it.

Games that cost $60 bucks then the developer releases DLC's are the reason for game piracy.
 
How about stop releasing half assed games, there is always going to be the 10% douche bags who always steal just for the sake of it.
 
What this study fails utterly to address is the correlation to the number of copies sold to the number of copies pirated. The more popular a game is in sales, the more popular it is going to be in piracy circles as well. However this article also makes the same mistake of assuming that a pirated copy = a lost sale which is utterly false. I have a number of single player games myself that I bought and never opened as I didn't want to deal with drm bs. I will also download a pirated copy as a form of a demo if a decent demo is not released. That said, it has been years since I had to do that as most games I have had interest in lately has had a demo.

The other thing the study fails to address is the simple fact that people are losing or have lost faith in reviews. Given the sheer number of retarded overhyped, and overrated games. It is hardly surprising that people are wanting to "play" the game first before deciding if it is worth $60. Oh for certain some people are stealing just because they can and nothing is going to change that. While $60 may seem like nothing to some of us, to some that is a huge expense and blowing their once every 6 months game budget on a game that they find out is pure crap can be infuriating.

While piracy is certainly not justified in all cases, there are cases where I can certainly understand it. I know this year alone I can account for at least $300 or more in games I bought and they turned out to be utterly terrible. Those however are largely MMO's and to be fair..I probably deserved it for trying to get into a genre I really don't have the time for anymore. Outside those, there are very very few games out that I will buy without a demo, even if I have to get that demo through torrents.

As for the argument of a demo can harm a game, I counter with this. Make a demo that actually "Reflects" the experience the user is going to get. If your demo was poorly thought out and sales bomb due to it, then it is the developers own damn fault. Don't want to put out a demo because the game is terrible? Well honestly I feel sales deserve to suffer to piracy in that case. The developer set out to screw people out of $60 with an inferior product by using hype and misinformation to pre-sale as many copies as they could. Frankly they deserve any losses they incur for trying to be modern snake oil salesmen.

Sort of a harsh way to look at things but hey, if you produce a quality product you shouldn't be afraid to let people try before they buy. That or allow me to return games to the store that prove to be a complete waste of money.
 
I would also like to point out that their "Data" failed to prove a damn thing.

The highest rated and lowest rated games in their data had nearly the same number of downloads. Everything else is a scattered rollercoaster of data. I can see why they didn't put it in a mean average chart, because there isn't one. Actually I am annoyed I didn't notice this before because per their raw data there is zero trend shown.

Starcraft 2 420,138 89.5
Star Wars the Force Unleashed 2 415,021 61

YABS
Yet Another Bullshit Study.

Worthless....
 
I generally avoid buying anything that was ported from the console, I also avoid buying the games that have taken over 5 years to hit the shelves, unless it's a flight/racing simulator.

And I don't even look at the games that fail to have a free demo available, as you know it will be a steaming turd.

20 years of PC gaming has taught me that.
 
So much for the "This game sucks, doesn't deserve my money, so I'm going to pirate it" mentality.
 
Parmenides said:
So much for the "This game sucks, doesn't deserve my money, so I'm going to pirate it" mentality.
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It's more of a 'this game doesn't have a demo, so I'll pirate the game to see how it plays" mentality, I just tend to ignore the game all together if it doesn't have a demo, I almost passed up Dragon Age due to this factor, that and EA published it.
 
All they have to do is lower the price to $10 - $15 for a decent game. This would be entirely appropriate given the scale of sales and the typical price vs. volume adjustments that other consumer goods go through when the quantity of sales scale up massivly.

I could see charging $50 per copy if you were only selling in the thousands of copies...

Piracy is the competition - offer better value than the pirates and you will sell more.
 
I loved that commercial. If I could download a Ferrari for free, hell yes I would, screw morality.
 
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