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[10ebbor10]

Yeah. Dwarf Fortress, at this point, is kind of a big deal all things considered. It's downloaded approximately 100,000 times a month; factor out most of that because of people re-downloading, and it's still likely thousands of new people each month. Even with a $10 price, Toady could be making an annual income much closer to that of Notch. Instead, using a donation method, he currently makes a little less than an entry-level programmer could get; and that's only after years of making closer to the income of a burger flipper.

Do note however, that maybe than 1%-10% of the people who download donate. I don't think you can count on the others to pay, and you loose the donators money (Because they donate repetively).

[Cheringe]

The issue with that though is that games companies and developers would make less money.

Not neccesarily. The devs decide how much cash goes into the pot before they release. This will make it neccesary to set a reasonable price though. Shouldn't be an issue so long as they can live off of it / aren't purely in it for the money.

[Owlbread]

I think if people entered jobs so that they could get enough money to live off, it would be quite a different world. I think most people enter jobs so they can get enough money to live off comfortably. It's also quite unheard of for a company to decide exactly how much money they want to make from a product, though not impossible. It's just a very unusual thing.

[PanH]

What happens if the tip jar is half filled and slowly forgotten ? Devs get half paid and nobody gets the game, including those who donated ?
Honestly, this sounds like a kickstarter, except with a finished product instead of a concept. Considering the lots of turds we already get with Kickstarter ....

[alway]

aren't purely in it for the money.

As someone in/going into game development:
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

If you're in it for the money, you aren't in game development. You're in software development. Better pay, better hours, easier to get a job, easier to keep a job. As in nearly 6 figure starting pay, no godawful 100 hour work-week mega-crunch-time, no being laid off after 2 years when the project ends.

[DWC]

Eh, it seems to me that if the company produces the software it's use should be on their terms. If you don't like your single player video games or movies requiring an active internet connection, don't buy them. There are other games you can play by software companies that don't obsess over pirating so much. Intellectual property rights make sense to a certain point. Why spend millions of dollars producing a video game or movie or music album if everyone just downloads it for free and you only lose a massive amount of money for doing it?

Then again, I'm not a console player and don't really play mainstream PC games, so I don't care what they do. I can sympathize with living in a rural area and not having internet access thats how I got into retro/ cheap/ sandbox games in the first place.

[Scoops Novel]

Always on Kinect with facial recognition can burn. Microsoft are in for it now, if they actually go through with this.

[DWC]

Always on Kinect with facial recognition can burn. Microsoft are in for it now, if they actually go through with this.

But they need to implement those features to provide the best quality of entertainment!

[Scoops Novel]

Google glasses and now this? I don't want to be a hermit guys!

[Cheringe]

What happens if the tip jar is half filled and slowly forgotten ? Devs get half paid and nobody gets the game, including those who donated ?
Honestly, this sounds like a kickstarter, except with a finished product instead of a concept. Considering the lots of turds we already get with Kickstarter ....

Good point. I'm not too knowledgeable about the intricacies of kickstarter... Anyway, I think you could do it kinda like this: Your cash gets put somewhere for safekeeping until the the jar is filled completely or a preset time has passed, and you can take it back at any point until then. If the jar isn't full after a set amount of time the whole thing is cancelled and everyone gets their cash back.

The time and effort spent by the devs is lost forever though, but they take that risk with current systems too, don't they?

[NobodyPro]

What happens if the tip jar is half filled and slowly forgotten ? Devs get half paid and nobody gets the game, including those who donated ?
Honestly, this sounds like a kickstarter, except with a finished product instead of a concept. Considering the lots of turds we already get with Kickstarter ....

Good point. I'm not too knowledgeable about the intricacies of kickstarter... Anyway, I think you could do it kinda like this: Your cash gets put somewhere for safekeeping until the the jar is filled completely or a preset time has passed, and you can take it back at any point until then. If the jar isn't full after a set amount of time the whole thing is cancelled and everyone gets their cash back.

The time and effort spent by the devs is lost forever though, but they take that risk with current systems too, don't they?

You just described the intricacies of Kickstarter.

[Kansa]

What happens if the tip jar is half filled and slowly forgotten ? Devs get half paid and nobody gets the game, including those who donated ?
Honestly, this sounds like a kickstarter, except with a finished product instead of a concept. Considering the lots of turds we already get with Kickstarter ....

Good point. I'm not too knowledgeable about the intricacies of kickstarter... Anyway, I think you could do it kinda like this: Your cash gets put somewhere for safekeeping until the the jar is filled completely or a preset time has passed, and you can take it back at any point until then. If the jar isn't full after a set amount of time the whole thing is cancelled and everyone gets their cash back.

The time and effort spent by the devs is lost forever though, but they take that risk with current systems too, don't they?

This would be a bad idea because it would ensure that companies would not take any risks at all, at least with the current system you can still make some money back if the idea doesn't sell that well.With the amount of money spent on the production of AAA titles one bad game where they did not reach the tip goal could very well sink the company, so companies would just make games they knew were going to be popular out of fear that it would not reach the goal.

[Skyrunner]

* Skyrunner spins

(ptw)

[Aklyon]

* Skyrunner spins

(ptw)

Woo, spinning. Lots of stuff relative to this area involves spinning things one way or another.
(ptw)

[kaian-a-coel]

So, I just saw this thread and decided I could as well give my opinions.
I'll start with my records, since I pirated a couple games over the years. Six, to be precise.

Three of them were before I could actually buy things on the internet. And all the time I played them illegally, I felt very very guilty. But I had no choice (besides not playing the game, that is)
As a result, two of these three I bought near-instantly as soon as I got a shiny plastic card, and the bank account (and money) that goes with it. The third I stopped playing altogether. Although it is tempting me recently, if I play it again, it would be on a legit, paid for version, and not a crack.

More recently, I pirated two games that looked interesting, but that seemed a bit overpriced, and offered no free demo. They ended up not being worth a tenth of what they asked for, and are now slowly picking virtual dust in a remote corner of my hard drive. I will probably delete them at some point.

The last one is a famous game from a no-less famous company, and the only one downloaded with the intent of purposefully denying money to the company. But this company is a bunch of d*cks anyway, and I am protesting against their policy (especially the DRM one) by not buying the game. The game is still good, and I see no reason not to play it.


So, I think piracy is evil when you are denying money to the good guys (indie game devs etc...). If you can't possibly afford the games, fine (nobody loses money that way). But buy them as soon as you can, otherwise it's bad.
If it's game from companies deserving boycott, go ahead, robin hood.
DRM is not by itself evil. Some are truly hilarious and actually useful (they work and are educational). Examples are linked in this thread. But some are just a**holery. Always online DRM falls in that category. I regularly have long train trips, and I typically play video games during these long hours. Some of my games don't work because I don't have internet, and this truly piss me off.