This is some sad news. 2D Boy, the guys that created World of Goo, are estimating the piracy rate of that game is around 82%. This originally came up over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun in the comments of an article about WoG’s European release. One of the creators estimated that the piracy rate was about 90%. That’s a big number.
Later, they made a post about it on their own site. They had done more digging and reestimated the rate at around 82%. The most interesting part of all of this came up in their later post. Their game, which has no DRM, had around the same piracy rate as Ricochet Infinity, an independent game that does have DRM. They are strong believers that DRM is a waste of money and effort, and this seems to prove them right. While it’s not good that 82% of the people playing their game have stolen it, it has shown that DRM doesn’t seem to matter. “This supports our intuitive assessment that people who pirate our game aren’t people who would have purchased it had they not been able to get it without paying.”
Please support these guys and pick up World of Goo. It’s a great game, even though I have been stuck on one level for a while now. It’s available through Steam, their own website and on WiiWare.
2 Comments on “Pirates invade World of Goo, Prove that DRM is Worthless”
[...] to be a pirate, you can download Buccaneer. If you don’t like being a pirate, you can be like 18% of the population and actually pay for World of Goo. All the details after the [...]
[...] DRM has been a daily battle for the denizens of the internet. We here in the trenches have seen many games die because of badly-implemented DRM. Now, the American government might be stepping in to [...]
[...] knew they made a great game. You knew they weren’t fans of DRM. But did you know they also like to give out their amazing soundtrack for free? That’s right. [...]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.