On August 5th, Amanita Design made the pretty awesome decision to deeply discount their equally awesome adventure game, Machinarium, in order to guilt the dirty, dirty pirates into purchasing it. This was a response to the fact that Amanita believes only 5% to 15% of the entire player base for their game actually paid for it legally. This is because they took the brave decision to release Machinarium with nary an ounce of intrusive DRM protection, which in itself should be enough for us to build a stone monument in their honor.

Still, it obviously lead to a huge amount of eye-patch wearing, peg legged computer users downloading the game illegally through the vast ocean that is the internets. Instead of getting all angry and stomping their feet or wringing their hands about it, Amanita took a much better route- guilt. And discounts. But mostly guilt. Unlike many of the large, soulless, major corporations that run our industry, Amanita probably realizes that just because somebody pirated the game doesn’t mean they lost a sale. I’m not going to sit here and be one of those game commentators that climbs up onto my enormous white steed and waves my finger of judgment upon you all as if I’ve never illegally downloaded anything in my life, because that would just make me a hypocritical jackass with very little journalistic integrity. The RIAA and MPAA probably want my head stuck to a pike on top of London Bridge by now, after all. In fact, I’ll even hazard that I come down on the side of the pirates in most arguments of that nature, but that is because I view money as an evil societal control mechanism and most major corporations akin to the Galactic Empire. The way these companies spin piracy numbers in order to make it seem like they are this poor victim, huddled in their showers and trying to scrub the last remnants of the pirates violations off their flesh, just always bothers me. They see these awful numbers and immediately start clamoring that they lost 20 billion double dollars due to piracy, when any rational thinker realizes that probably isn’t the case.

Amanita Design seems to be a company made out of rational thinkers. Instead of seeing the vast array of swashbuckling brigands who play their product through nefarious means as lost sales and treating them like thieves, they are viewing them as potential customers and offering them a deal. A plea bargain, if you will. In exchange for $5, nearly 75% off the normal price, a pirate can be absolved of all their guilt over taking advantage of an independent developer who, unlike the huge developers that like to complain about piracy until their jaws fall off, could feasibly be affected by their illegal actions. I can’t wait to see the numbers here, but I’m sure it will be a positive thing for the company. Most pirates aren’t evil people, they are just people that want to play more games than their budget allows.

Of course, some of the honest people who paid full price for this title might be put off, but they also might be crazy. Amanita Design most likely realized that, by calling this a Pirate Amnesty Sale, it would get more word of mouth than if they just discounted the game in order to lure in a new group of gamers. Considering Machinarium rose to its level of popularity with less than a grand in marketing, Amanita realizes the importance of word of mouth and the intertubes in marketing a game. Just because they are framing it that they are trying to get the pirates to play honesty doesn’t make this any different than any deep discount on Steam. Beyond that, I would like to explain how I view making money on artistic creations and use Machinarium as an example.

Anybody that has ever read my articles here, or talked to me about my views on things, probably realizes I skew a little bit extreme in my ideals. Whether it comes to the fact I think the government should pay our student loans or that we should remove the tax exempt status of all religious institutions and use the money made to invest into scientific pursuits such as stem cell research or the space program, I can’t really be called a traditional thinker. This extends to my opinions on art. I think all art should be, at its base, free. Regardless of monetary or social standing, art should be accessible to everybody who wants to view it, or digest it, or play it. Video games, to me and most of the people reading this, should obviously be considered an artform. So using that logic, you see why I don’t view piracy as a great evil. Now, I’m also pragmatic in this belief- I realize we don’t live in the moneyless hippie socialist utopia that I wish we did, so these companies need to make money in order to continue making art. How do I balance my knowledge that developers and designers need cold hard cash with my belief that their creations should be made freely available to everybody?

Simple. To me, any money I spend on video games, movies, or music, I consider a donation towards my appreciation of the artists who created it. When I have the money to ‘donate’ to the people that made it, I shell it out without issue. It is only fair. If a game comes out and I value the experience at the full price I have no issues paying it, nor do I get bothered when the game drops in price. Left 4 Dead 2, for example. I purchased that game full price, and a scant time later it was about $15 cheaper. I wasn’t bothered by that, because at the time of purchase I easily had the cash to ‘donate’ to the creators. When I don’t have the income, I either wait until the game or artistic expression is at the level that I’m willing to or can pay for it, or I obtain it through other means until I can give the creators whatever I can in some other way. I’m not a wealthy person, but if I were, I’d be throwing money at these companies. I like to think that out there for every broke writer like me, there is a rich business dude shelling out full price for every game that comes his way. It balances out.

To explain it further and in a perfect scenario- Machinarium was released at $20. That first tier of people who bought the game, or donated if you want to continue using that example, were the people who could either who had no problems paying the price. Everybody else went out and downloaded it illegally. Some of those people probably ended up buying it anyway, most probably didn’t. So after a year or so, Amanita drops the price severely. Now the people who didn’t want to pay/donate the full price for the product and the people who downloaded the game illegally, whether because they were never going to honestly purchase it or because they think like I outlined above, can much easier justify a purchase of the game. The pirates especially would be “donating” the five dollars to Amanita Design’s since they already viewed the said artistic expression. This is no different than waiting for a games price to drop, except with the an added layer of my particular brand of artistic pretension. I can only speak for myself, but I’ve definitely purchased games I’ve pirated when they hit a price point I was more comfortable with. It is a shame that the “Radiohead” method of paying-what-you-want hasn’t been applied to the video game industry in a large way yet, since I think that is the perfect representation of how I think art should be sold. If a game was released for $60 that I did not view to be worth it, but I was given the opportunity to pay anywhere between $15 and full price for it, I would have no issue with that. The company would then make money off of me when, without that method, it would not have.

The problem with this is, obviously, that the people who CAN pay full price won’t always pay full price. In my perfect scenario that is necessary. Consumers need to be honest and pay what they deem fit, instead of just trying to come out on top. So perhaps the balance would be offset and everybody would go out of business in my perfect world. But this is my perfect world, god damn it, so shut up and go pick up your hot android sexbots from the Android Sexbot District in Chiba City and shut up. This might be the only subject in the entire world I’m optimistic on, the free-art thing not the perfect-world-android-sexbot thing, so I like to think that people would do the right thing and these companies would actually do better in a donation based system. Either way, that is a long way off, and by a long way off I mean will probably never happen. What is happening though, is that you can purchase Machinarium until August 12th for only $5 and warm the cockles of your heart by supporting a talented independent developer that you may not have supported the first time around.

Wow, even I’m impressed with how I segued that one back on subject.

[Source: Amanita Design Blog]

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• Thieves Steal a Truckload of Games… Twice

In a story that I’m sure is incredibly embarrassing for the police forces of England, a semi carrying approximately $1 million in PlayStation 3 videogames (including GTA and Brothers in Arms) was stolen by a merry band of thieves.  The truck and its cargo were then recovered by police, who failed to capture the men responsible, which led to the same merry band of thieves stealing the same truck full of games from the custody of the police themselves!

The story began in Northampton, UK, when a truck carrying 16,000 PS3 games was reported stolen.  The bobbies were fast on the scene and tracked down the car the thieves used to transport the stolen goods.  The games and the truck originally carrying them were then taken to a police depot where they could be examined for clues leading to the identities of the thieves.  The police apparently didn’t keep a close enough eye on that truck…

The looters returned for their ill-gotten merchandise within hours and re-stole both the truck and the pallets of PS3 games right out of the police depot.  The truck itself was found yesterday, but the modern pirates seemed to have made off with a plentiful booty.  A police spokesman had the following to say:

“We are pursuing a number of lines of enquiry, including eBay transactions where a number of the games have been potentially identified as being advertised for sale. Arrests have already been made in respect of this.”

Yes, I’m sure the people clever enough to steal directly from the police are stupid enough to get caught selling stuff on eBay.  Nice try, though.  If these thieves were going to use eBay to unload their goods, why not just send empty boxes to people and not have to steal the games in the first place?  What would be great is if the thieves did sell the games on eBay and then went to the winning bidders’ houses and re-stole the games back a third time.

Source: Unigamesity

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