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Pessimism on VN community


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18 hours ago, TexasDice said:

My argument is that the number is 100%. The people who pirated because there was no other way in the past are already paying now that they can. 

Someone who never intended to pay will not do so simply because it's not possible. They will still not pay. Net gain 0.

Unprovable either way, but sounds like horseshit to me.

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7 minutes ago, Fred the Barber said:

Unprovable either way, but sounds like horseshit to me.

Of course you can never prove that one who pirated will actually buy it. I'm sure that people read and discard more than anything else, i know i do. But there is no issue for those who actually pirate and buy afterwards. In fact, they should be the customers you respect the most as they could have simply not bought it, but they chose to support you even though they didn't have to.

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To be clear about this: Piracy is not an advantage or great in any way. And I can see the thought process of "well great, 200.000 people just STOLE our product". I get it, it sucks.

However, you can't make the mistake of seeing these, lets say, 200.000 downloads as "lost sales". Because they are not lost sales. They aren't lost because nothing was ever sold. They are nothing. If you sold, lets say 500.000 copies of your product and 200.000 also pirated your shit, getting rid of piracy would still mean you only sold 500.000. 

The only way to actually turn the pirate numbers into customer numbers, is to make pirating more of a hassle than purchasing. And no, that is not accomplished by 23,7 different accounts and 4 spy programs connected to the software,  like game developers seem to think. Put it on steam for 10, 20, what have you, bucks. Slap a discount on during release week. Don't break their balls, tickle them. (which also why the "make VNs more expensive" idea is up there with the dumbest plans I've ever read).

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51 minutes ago, TexasDice said:

To be clear about this: Piracy is not an advantage or great in any way. And I can see the thought process of "well great, 200.000 people just STOLE our product". I get it, it sucks.

However, you can't make the mistake of seeing these, lets say, 200.000 downloads as "lost sales". Because they are not lost sales. They aren't lost because nothing was ever sold. They are nothing. If you sold, lets say 500.000 copies of your product and 200.000 also pirated your shit, getting rid of piracy would still mean you only sold 500.000. 

The only way to actually turn the pirate numbers into customer numbers, is to make pirating more of a hassle than purchasing. And no, that is not accomplished by 23,7 different accounts and 4 spy programs connected to the software,  like game developers seem to think. Put it on steam for 10, 20, what have you, bucks. Slap a discount on during release week. Don't break their balls, tickle them. (which also why the "make VNs more expensive" idea is up there with the dumbest plans I've ever read).

This. Super this.

Damn, I used to pirate a lot of games back in the PS2 era, because while you could buy the console with ease around where I lived, good luck finding games that weren't sport sims and shooters for sale. I always was a RPG fan, but it was always a pain to get more after I played all the Final Fantasys available in the local shop. Then years go by and now we have the PSN store and holy shit it's so much easier and convenient to get what I want now. Sure, Konami and Ubisoft are hardly in the list of developers that deserves my money but still, buying their games for dirty cheap is still a much better alternative than find a random working torrent in the seven seas.

Back to VNs. Now that Steam changed their polices and we have other sites like GOG (that's really good, imho) selling them, we're going towards a direction when it's easier and easier to get VNs. Of course, that'll never kill piracy for good, but like Texas said, it'll at least convert the ones that are willing to pay to get it legally.

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3 hours ago, TexasDice said:

However, you can't make the mistake of seeing these, lets say, 200.000 downloads as "lost sales". Because they are not lost sales. They aren't lost because nothing was ever sold. They are nothing. If you sold, lets say 500.000 copies of your product and 200.000 also pirated your shit, getting rid of piracy would still mean you only sold 500.000. 

While there is no way to determine precise numbers, some of them would have paid for the product if it is unpiratable and there are no piratable smilar products floating around on the net.

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