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[Skynet 2.0]

Has anyone else tried this game? World of Goo is a puzzle game by 2D Boy, and independent game company. It has a Wii, PC, and Mac version, with a Linux version currently in beta (official website). The objective of the game is to use the balls of goo to build constructions up to a pipe, after which your remaining goo balls will be sucked inside. The goo balls that are currently not being used float randomly on your construction, and tend to cluster nearer the pipe. There are various types of goo balls, including the standard black goo, the ivy goo, which can be removed and reattached, and the balloon goo, which floats up when attached. The game starts out relatively simple, with just simple towers being built, but quickly scales up in difficulty, requiring clever and often unusual solutions. PC and Mac demos can be found here, and the Steam demo can be found here.

[EchoP]

 
I have the game, and love every minute of it. Second best game I have played all year (behind dwarf fortress). Epic in every way, especially the soundtrack. The level design, the sound effects, the look and feel, all brilliant.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/09/29/world-exclusive-world-of-goo-review/

[Akroma]

it's a very very nice game

but once I heard the piracy rate was above 90%, I felt kinda guilty for downloading it off rapidshare

[Nilocy]

Yeah, the piracy rate was lowered to about 82% after some crazy calculations that 2DBoy made. But Hasn't piracy always been super high and stuff? Yet companies still make millions from PC sales?

[umiman]

Piracy rate.

What is that supposed to represent anyway? People who would have bought the game if there wasn't piracy? How the heck do you calculate that? Sure there's piracy, but people need to learn to identify market segments. I.e: People who weren't going to buy in the first place wouldn't have bought in the first place.

Anyway, I have World of Goo on the Wii. CAn't for the life of me beat the last 3 levels. Yes, I bought it. With real money. Not the monopoly money. Not that I'd ever buy virtual items with monopoly money. Just saying. It happens. I don't do it. Really.

[qwertyuiopas]

I only have the demo, but if I ever play the full game, I will have fully purchased it.

Also, I really enjoyed finding that:
a) the music in is .ogg files...
b) I somehow have an .ogg codec...
c) that means I can play both DF and WoG's background music any time.

[Skynet 2.0]

The game has a tower of goo mode, where you use extra balls of goo that you collected from the levels to build as large a tower as you can. You can see other people's tower heights as clouds labeled with their name and the amount of goo balls they used if you are connected to the internet. The people at 2D Boy took the number of unique IP addresses of users who played the tower of goo mode, and compared it with the total amount of sales from all sources. Even factoring in dynamic IPs and multiple installations, the numbers they came up with were still ridiculous. More detail, and the math they did can be found on their blog, 1 post down.

[umiman]

And? How does that differentiate between people who wouldn't have bought the game anyway and people who would but didn't? The only thing that tells you is that there are people using your game and the system doesn't account for them. It doesn't tell you anything else.

There's only one way you can ever get an accurate account of that figure.
1) Release the game in some alternate dimension where there's no piracy and everyone is good and pure and rich beyond all measure.
2) After a few decades, when the patent expires, jot down the total number of users over this period and time travel back to the past into this dimension.
3) Release the game with no DRM, no copyright software, nothing in this dimension.
4) Wait a few decades again, then jot down the total number of users over that period.

Then you compare the total number of towers of goos from those two sessions.

My point is that while piracy is still bad, I wish people would stop taking it out of perspective. It's like those raving lunatics running around screaming about peak oil. Or those kinds of people you can trick by telling them di-hydrogen monoxide is a toxic substance. So yes. Piracy is rampant. Yes, piracy probably affects sales. But how many of those pirates would have bought the game anyway? It's kinda like a blacksmith complaining that fishermen aren't buying from him or birds complaining that earthworms eat all their food.

[Skynet 2.0]

It shows that there are many times more people playing the game than the amount of copies sold. The 90% rate just an estimate, but the actual rate is still way up there. Most of the people playing the game are using a pirated version, even if they wouldn't have bought the game normally.

[umiman]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

<sub>Explain to me how you can rationalize selling something without any attempt to protect your sales?

For example, even Stardock, the milestone champion of no-DRM, has cd-keys.

You don't go out into Times Square, set up a little table, and announce that you're selling diamonds. Lay out the diamonds on the table, and then go grab a coffee without a guard, leaving all your diamonds sitting there in plain sight. Then come back later and complain that people stole your diamonds without leaving you a cent in return.

Here's my big beef with his problem with pirates. He put his merchandise out there knowing full well the current market situation and the proliferation of piracy without any form of protection and then comes running to mommy, crying that people stole his stuff. How is that rational? It's childish and naive.

You don't need to have DRM to protect your digital investments. But complaining that your investments were pirated when you don't HAVE ANY PROTECTION WHATSOEVER is not a right you are entitled to. It symbolizes that you didn't care about piracy or just closed your eyes and repeated "everyone is nice and good" when you released it, just like it's your fault when you don't wear condoms and get AIDS or when a bank gets robbed and it doesn't have insurance.

Sure, it's sad. But I emphasize again, they were asking for it. It's a shitty world we live in where people rather steal than reward, but that's reality. But it should be a nice wake up call for other future entrepreneurs that your "indie cred" won't stop the forces of evil from breaking you down and tearing you up.</sub>

CODA: I may have been a bit harsh in the above statements (so I minimized it, because it's not really relevant) as I read the full report in the blog here which would, ironically, justify my position:

in our case, we might have even converted more than 1 in a 1000 pirates into legit purchases.  either way, ricochet shipped with DRM, world of goo shipped without it, and there seems to be no difference in the outcomes.  we can’t draw any conclusions based on two data points, but i’m hoping that others will release information about piracy rates so that everyone could see if DRM is the waste of time and money that we think it is.

Which would be funny because the purpose of that blog article wasn't to lamblast the piracy they were experiencing, but to justify their position for no DRM. It would also mean that the average reading, meaning Skynet 2.0, Kotaku, IGN, and the like were reading the message wrongly.

The real message as I see it should be:

"Piracy is big, but it wouldn't have mattered to our sales figures anyway."