World of Goo’s 90% Piracy Rate

By: Derek Yu

On: December 23rd, 2008

World of Goo

This came up waaay back when, during our site outage, and it was reposted all over the place, but it’s important enough that I thought it was worth bringing up again here: 2DBoy reported that, by dividing the number of unique IPs in their highscore boards by their total number of sales, they estimated the number of pirated copies of games out there as anywhere between 82-90%. This created a lot of hubbub over the high percentage, but I think the most interesting part of the discussion is this:

either way, ricochet shipped with DRM, world of goo shipped without it, and there seems to be no difference in the outcomes. we can’t draw any conclusions based on two data points, but i’m hoping that others will release information about piracy rates so that everyone could see if DRM is the waste of time and money that we think it is.

It’s interesting to note that this is also the year that EA released Spore with some insanely crippling DRM, and it won top honors as the most pirated game of 2008. On the other hand, indies had the opportunity to experiment by trying out DRM-free solutions, posting numbers, and even talking directly to pirates themselves. Another nice little freedom that independence enjoys.

Speaking of 2DBoy, they’ve also been kept busy winning like every award on IGN, and also Indie Game of the Year at the Spike Video Game Awards, an honor that was bestowed to them by NPH (Neil Patrick Harris) of all people! You can watch an interview with them on SpikeTV here.

  • TakaM

    Also feel I should mention I pirate a lot of stuff, but I always spend the money on stuff I want to support.

    I’ll never pirate from indies. *salute*

  • Foppy

    I never pirate anything. About the statistics, I don’t think 90% is a very high number. It means 1 out of 10 is a valid sale. Isn’t that quite good? Considering the massive amounts of children and teens downloading stuff non-stop from torrents and other vague places.

  • boohoo

    wahh-wahh! $20 is too much to spend on an awesome game like this. My $3000 computer deserves something cheaper. WAAAAHHH

  • MikeK

    Steam has a 10% and > deal going on until the 2nd for everything!

    I picked up Aquaria and World of Goo among many other games.

  • damo

    I guess they don’t take into consideration that a lot of countries/people have dynamic ips which can change on a daily basis… their stats are wrong, yes there is a lot of piracy but I doubt its 90%