Grimrock

Back in the day, Baen Books released a hardcover book that had a CD containing ebooks in multiple formats of a bunch of their books -- including that one. With explicit permission to copy it, but not to sell it.

So an hour after buying the hardcover book, I emailed the complete text of the book in a useful format to a guy who wanted to read the book but couldn't get it yet. (He ordered a hardcover, too, it just took a while to get to him.)

Baen is smarter than the MPAA.

MASKOAA wrote:End result is the same though both people got to watch the movie and play the full game.

The end result is not the same and the distinction is quite clear: In one scenario both can play the game or watch the movie at the same time and in the other scenario they cannot. This becomes even more clear when you extend your example out to a network of 20 friends. If they are all swapping and sharing the same copy of a game or movie there is a large amount of time during which they have no access to the product. Extend this out to a network of hundreds of thousands of friends and you really should be able to see the difference.

It seems as if it is being assumed I am anti-piracy (which I am not). I am neither anti-piracy nor am I pro-piracy, I am however accepting of the fact that it is a natural and expected result that is pointless to attempt to dissuade. Battling against piracy is as much of a lost cause as battling to avoid breathing. It will occur, it is outside a developer's control, and trying to kid yourself into believing otherwise is an exercise in futility.

nuclear7 wrote:I have to agree with the OP. I never heard of this game before I saw it on a torrent site and I might not have purchased it if I was not able to check it out first. The DRM schemes are useless. Most are already cracked prior to a games release. Also, they are a hassle for paying customers.

This game is really refreshing and brings back alot of memories for me. I am happy to support indy developers that produce a quality product. A demo would help because many gamers are a bit jaded. Games promise this or that but rarely deliver.

So be honest and entertain me. Did you buy it?

For me I wouldn't see it on torrent sites, because well I don't look at them, but I will agree that is me.

Lacking in re playability? are you serious? I'm replaying it right now, my other 6 friends are also doing the same, everyone i have ever spoke to has said "Yes i will replay it" and the only exception to pirate is if there is no way to get it in your country, a demo? are you serious? it's £12, and right now it has a -10% discount on steam, you're just a cheap skate.

Mr.Monopoly wrote:Lacking in re playability? are you serious? I'm replaying it right now, my other 6 friends are also doing the same, everyone i have ever spoke to has said "Yes i will replay it" and the only exception to pirate is if there is no way to get it in your country, a demo? are you serious? it's £12, and right now it has a -10% discount on steam, you're just a cheap skate.

A lot of people find these games reduced in replay value by knowing the puzzles, although I'm personally curious about stuff like trying to do it with only one active character.

Mr.Monopoly wrote:Lacking in re playability? are you serious? I'm replaying it right now, my other 6 friends are also doing the same, everyone i have ever spoke to has said "Yes i will replay it" and the only exception to pirate is if there is no way to get it in your country, a demo? are you serious? it's £12, and right now it has a -10% discount on steam, you're just a cheap skate.

Before one of the reasons "I pirate because it's $50+ dollars!", now it's $12 and we still hear the same thing. It would have to be like a $1 for some I suppose.

Horrorscope wrote:Before one of the reasons "I pirate because it's $50+ dollars!", now it's $12 and we still hear the same thing. It would have to be like a $1 for some I suppose.

If it was $1, it should be free.
If it was free, it should be open source.
If it was open source, it would use the wrong license.
=)

This game cost about the same as eating 1 meal at a high end fast food joint. Contemplating such a purchase usually doesn't require sneaking into the back of the restaurant, dressing up as an employee, making yourself a meal, taking a couple bites, then proceed to do the honest thing if you are indeed satisfied with it. That being, to go line up and buy the meal.

Or maybe people do that, and really know how to be sneaky about it. Anyone?

When I demo games, I'm not often looking from the perspective of "is this the right price?". If I like a game, I'll probably get it irrespective of the cost. I usually demo games from the perspective of "is this worth my time?". For people with even stricter time requirements than I, I can kind of see their opinion.

I mean, LoG was a complete blind purchase for me and so far I've got 30 hours out of it.

I don't think anyone here (or anyone with any shred of sanity) is arguing that "not having a demo" is in some way superior to "having a demo" (assuming a quality product, of course, there are plenty of reasons to not want a demo if your product is garbage)...

The issue at hand is whether or not the additional time and effort required to produce a demo is deemed a valuable (or even feasible) effort on the part of the developers and whether or not said time and effort is actually a better decision in the eyes of the developer (for overall sales, the quality of their product offering, or any number of other reasons).

In this case, Almost Human decided the time and effort to create the demo did not outweigh whatever other factors were in play. We're not really in much of a position to decide whether that decision was right or wrong (that's up to them, and they have all the sales figures they need to determine whether or not they feel that was a wise decision or not -- my gut reaction is that they are doing just fine despite a lack of an actual functioning demo).

The claims by the OP (that he or she somehow felt required to pirate the game to try it before purchasing) are dubious at best. Even if true, it's entirely anecdotal and largely irrelevant. As I alluded to above, it goes without saying that having a demo will very possibly lead to additional sales that might have otherwise been missed (the number of which would be hard to predict), but what is less obvious is whether or not those additional sales numbers would possibly outweigh the additional loss of effort and, probably more importantly, time on the part of the developers and what impact this lack of attention to other features or pushback on a release date would affect the quality or integrity of the product or the developer's ability to get it into their customer's hands in the timeline necessary to meet whatever requirements/goals/constraints they may have been working within.

TL;DR - This sort of armchair quarterbacking is largely a waste of time. No one providing any speculation here has any understanding or appreciation for whatever factors motivated the developer's decision on this matter. I'm fairly confident they were aware of the concept of a demo and I'm sure they made the decision that made the most sense for them.