Kenshi on a torrent site?

[Hatsune_Neko]

Snip

thanks but can you edit that please. its one long running sentence making it difacult to read.
Thanks

[bk3000]

This may be counter-intuitive, but honestly I don't think Kenshi being available on the pirate sites is really a bad thing. It might actually be a good thing.

1. You haven't really "made it" if people aren't even pirating your stuff. That people are now pirating it means Kenshi is being recognized as being worth pirating.
2. It increases exposure to Kenshi. This is something Kenshi seriously needs in a big way. Get more word-of-mouth however you can get it.
3. Despite what many assume, you don't actually tend to loose much from piracy. I'll explain further.

I'll say that I used to be big into pirating. I have never gotten a virus from doing so, but then again I actually know what I'm doing. Nor have I been caught. Still despite never facing a penalty for piracy I don't tend to do so anymore. Aside from old emulated genesis ROMS etc - I probably now own every game I once pirated. In fact I have about 500 games on Steam alone. Plenty more on Desura, and some on Origin etc. Then I have who knows how many old CDs/DVD game disks(which I never even use anymore).

People often assume that every pirated download is a lost sale. That isn't the case at all. That assumption is based off an even more flawed assumption... that every download is from what would otherwise be a paying customer. Nothing could be further from reality. You have to more closely understand the various factors that might influence someone to pirate games.

1. Convenience. You can't really beat the convenience although I suppose Steam has largely nullified that excuse.

2. DRM. Some people are REALLY against DRM of any sort - and honestly companies like Sony have given them really good reasons in the past for this. Some of the DRM software out there causes serious problems with people's computers much like many nasty viruses might. Also some DRM software have actually been USED by viruses to hide themselves better.

3. Sometimes people are downloading things they HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT. Sometimes the disk doesn't read anymore. Sometimes people want to do away with disks entirely. One could use Steam but that may require you to repurchase a game you already bought - if the original purchase wasn't though Steam - such as would be the case if you bought it on disk.

4. Sometimes people want to try a game out before buying, even demos might be insufficient. They may buy the game if it is worthy. I've never seen stats on this, and I don't expect many AAA studios would be interested in admitting they may get sales because of piracy.

5. Sometimes people actively hate the company that released the game (cough EA cough) and so actively refuse to give that company money. I wouldn't say that is a legitimate excuse, but it does happen so plan accordingly. Don't become one of these companies.

6. Some cheap people don't want to pay even though they easily could. Yep I'm sure this happens, but I don't think these people represent a serious slice of the piracy bees. They are hands down the most exaggerated type of pirate. Also keep in mind... just because they COULD buy it doesn't necessarily mean they WOULD even if all pirate options where gone. Also you can often get these sorts to buy anyhow with game bundles etc even with pirate options available.

7. Some people can't buy games - or at least not many. This once described me. Of course now my situation has changed (and I WANT to support those who make games I like) so I buy games now. For some it might be a lack of funds (in my case), but for others it might be a lack of payment options. 17 year old kids can't get credit cards, PayPal accounts, etc... even if they have the money. So buying things on Steam is out.

When you look at piracy you have to realize that it is both inevitable and really not actually that harmful. Many of these people are those that you will NEVER sell your game to no matter if you could eliminate the piracy! It can actually be beneficial if you play your cards right. The key is reaching those who conditionally will buy your software. It isn't worth fighting piracy and the attempts to do so could cause more harm to you by alienating potential future customers (both current pirates and their friends who might not be pirates).

There are a few ways to mitigate piracy that won't backfire on you so much. Take the game Planet Explorers. It is a game I've watched the development of since the first playable version (0.2). They allowed free download of the game by putting the torrents up themselves on their website - basically cutting ahead of the pirates. They continued to do this up to a certain version(don't remember of the top of my head). I believe that version is still available on their website even now. It might not be current, but it will give customers a pretty good idea of what the game is like and yes it is the full game.

Playing the game and watching it develop - I fell in love. I also fell in love with a dev that was cool enough to throw their game up for free all that time. You better believe I bought the game once they put it up for sale!

I'm considering getting into the game dev business myself. The biggest thing stopping me is to find the free time - of which I would need much. Should I do so, I fully intend to personally upload my works onto pirate sites. I'm not crazy. I want the exposure. I want more people to enjoy my works and spread the word. I want to be known as that guy cool enough to do so. In the torrent descriptions (and maybe in game) I will ask people to purchase the game if they like it, and to encourage their friends to do so as well.

You might think that is crazy and that no one would buy my games. I don't think this is so. Piracy is going to happen anyhow if my games are any good. People who prefer to buy games will buy games. People who pirate are going to pirate. If my games are going to end up on those pirate sites anyhow, then I might as well get ahead of it and turn it into good PR. Also everything being equal, If people are going to pirate from me, I'd rather they get a clean copy from me without the potential for malware that some other uploader might inject. One other advantage... I might save on bandwidth expenses!

[Tolwrath]

Not to mention, some companies try non-drm methods of stopping piracy which just come off as assinine. Tor example, take a look at rockstar games' Grand Theft Auto 5 pc release. The game fits on a 7 hd-dvds for it's physical release. It takes a whopping 65gb to install. Yet the game fits on a single bluray for ps4 (a double layer bd, which I dont know if ps4 can even use, holds 50gb). The reason the pc install is so large, is because Rockstar fills its pc releases with uncompressed junk data to inflate install sizes, to discourage piracy. A large file size will not discourage anyone from pirating a game, all it does is inconvenience players, and make them uninstall it as soon as they're done with it. Not only that but it screwed over legitimate pre-purchasers on steam who preloaded the game, as to decrypt the game you need to double the storage space needed. A lot of people didnt have an extra 60gb free on top of the 60gb used to preload. I'm also fairly certain that pirates of the game will eventually mod the game to run using compressed files, or to run with some of the fluff removed. So it not only is ineffective at stopping pirates, but actualy hindered legitimate purchasers.

If you really want to do something about people pirating a game, then strategies like that of Greenheart Games should be followed. It not only identified pirates, kept statistics about the percentage of people pirating compared to the percent that purchased, AND put the pirates in a position where they were forced to understand the plight of the indie game company to the point that they were going to forums and asking "How can I prevent piracy?".

Also: I'm on a new phone and still getting used to the new keyboard. God I hate software keyboards.

[w30wnz]

I feel like people pirate games for one of two reasons;

1) They cannot afford to buy it.

2) They want to try it before they buy it.

One reason ends up bringing profit to the companies, both are free advertising, and option one will provide no money to the company regardless of DRM status. What DRM does 100% do is piss paying customers off (When it is overly invasive to prevent piracy) [Looks at SimCity] and eventually become cracked even Steam reliant DRM games are crackable through individual CPUs until universal cracks are eventually released.

TDRL - Piracy is unavoidable, DRM is a waste and negative feature, and losses are overly exaggerated

[Arrakesh]

Honestly I do not know the current statistics about game piracy nowadays, but I agree with some comments about the reasons behind piracy. I will be honest about it, there are a couple of good reasons behind piracy, but just a couple.

I remember when the company's name actually meant something. For instance I knew if I bought a Bioware title I would get a good game, or if I bought a EA game even. But those days are long gone. I unfortunately made a couple of judgement errors based of previous experiences, but those were the last. The first of those was Mass Effect 3. I had loved the first one (still consider it one of the best RPGs ever) and the other was Dragon Age Inquisition. ME3 was a good game, but had an ending I lack words to describe. Dragon Age Inquisition is just a bland game with a grand title. No different than plenty of other games around. It's so common that I haven't even bothered to complete it yet. On the other hand I remember the outcry about ME3 ending, and how EA replied to the customer's demands, even though they lied over and over about the many "different" endings we would have and how everything we did in the previous 2 games would affect that ending. In the end, they dumbed it down so the game would fit the console market.

Truth is the major publishers are no longer trust worthy and it is perfectly understandable why someone would want to try the game before actually purchasing it. I had pre-ordered The Sims 4 on Origin, but cancelled it after playing DA:I. At least I learned from my mistakes. I will still pre-ordered games from the few publishers and developers I trust such as CDProjekt (Witcher 3 so far is better than I hoped), but I doubt I will even bother to buy another title from EA ever again.

Now regarding Kenshi on torrent, I am actually glad it is there, otherwise I wouldn't have learned about the game. I had seen it on Steam for sale, but the presentation is a bit lacking, and I have had some disappointments with alpha sales. So I decided to give it a try and downloaded it. Played for a couple of hours and then bought it. It is worthy every penny, and I am glad to support a good game and a good developer.

It is sad to say that most of the major companies in the gaming industry forgot one maxim they never should: "the customer is always right". Most of the time their PR department is trying to blame the customers (gamers actually) for the company's failures (Ie. ME3) or trying to force us to buy the products they offer by telling what we must and must not like. In a way they try to mold our buying patterns to fit their interest instead of trying to find what the gamers actually like to play. WE just see to many games that changes little from title 1 to tittle 2 with no real improvement save the price. And people buy the new titles just because they are told they are better. GTA 5 is a good case study for that. I matters of content and gameplay GTA 4 was much superior. we followed the events of one character (Niko Bellic) for over 80 main missions and many side missions, as in GTA 5 there are only 60 main missions for 3 different playable characters. Also the story line seems lacking and forced, showing how unpolished the game is in those regards.

On the other hand we have new developers coming around (most if not all indie developers) who actually care about what gamers want because first and foremost they are gamers themselves. Thanks to that we get titles such as Kenshi, Kerbal Space Program, Mad game Developer, Prison Simulator, Star Citizen, Repopulation, and the list goes on and on. And all I have to say to such developers is "thank you for your hard work", and by pirating their games I would be cheating myself, because it eventually would prevent them from developing the games that I really enjoy playing.

[philthymcnasty]

The video game business model has changed quite a bit.

In the past, the only way to sell a game, was by physical copy in a store. This made the barrier of entry impossible for people like capin deathbeard.

When piracy first came online, it was nasty for the people who sold their games in the stores, because of all the money involved with getting the game in the store: physical costs of putting the game on the disk, shipping the game, contracts with retailers, etc etc.

Digital distribution, cut all these costs out. This means, that the dev/publisher only has the fees involved with putting the game on the digital client, in addition to the dev costs.

This is a game changer. This not only means that the gross margin is bigger, but it also means that the sale life is longer too. So a game that was once only good for one season, is now good for a few years.

This means piracy is not as heavy hitting as it used to be.

Now, ironically enough, the best DRM so far, is this early access concept. I highly doubt that the this torrent gets the most up to date version. and heaven help them if its the version with the supercrash bugs on it.

[Purry]

This may be counter-intuitive, but honestly I don't think Kenshi being available on the pirate sites is really a bad thing. It might actually be a good thing.

I wouldn't of bought this game if I didn't torrent it first. When I was younger I was very cheap and had little money, but after playing it illegitimately and freely I really wanted to purchase it when I had the money.

(I didn't know about the Demo, is it limited?)

[Hatsune_Neko]

demo is limited.

[Purry]

demo is limited.

How limited? A certain level or a time cap?

[Hatsune_Neko]

level capped at 20.
believe you can hire upto 5 people i think.
after that not sure. i never played the Demo. so dont know all its limits.

[Tolwrath]

Last time I checked, in the demo, players are limited to 2 characters. Granted, I haven't checked since build 0.29ish, so it may have changed.

[fidias]

it's tough to say why exactly piracy abounds in the numbers it does for some titles. World of Goo experienced something like a 95% piracy rate, as in 95% of the people playing the game hadn't bought it. The numbers on titles that go up as part of a Humble Bundle typically see a substantial uptick in piracy rates when they go up in the Humble Bundle. And, yes, this includes the titles you can get half a dozen of for 30 cents etc.

While the financial motivation isn't always the driving force behind it, it's often the reason given by people pirating software. Regardless of your reasons, it sucks when you resort to piracy of indie games. I know that some people espouse the concept that I should find it all equally offensive, but I can empathize with people who don't want to pay 60 bucks for a AAA title that has already sold over a million copies rather than buying groceries. When you don't want to buy a 5 dollar indie game because you could get a cheeseburger combo instead, that's when I start to feel like it's a pretty dick move.

Ars Technica has a new crowdsourced discussion of the idea of trying to protect software from piracy. A number of hardware vendors have kicked around the idea of slowing down every process and creating false positives and the joy of making all software less reliable with hardware piracy checks. Of course, since they can't really do that sort of thing unilaterally other companies would be happy to sell hardware that wasn't broken, meaning that it would be a foolish move.

The bottom line is, time is money, if you can invest a thousand hours into making your software impossible to pirate and it brings in an extra thousand sales it may be worth your time. Of course, harder to quantify is how many people don't purchase your product because they feel like your onerous restrictions are treating them like thieves. I've seen a ton of people say they would go out of their way to pirate various titles, specifically because they had onerous DRM. On the other side of that equation is that I myself have purchased Far Cry 3 as Ubisoft's first title in a long time that didn't require always-on DRM, and South Park - The Stick of Truth as their first title that hasn't required Uplay in a long time.

The financial incentive for trying to stamp out piracy is, in all honesty, not even really an issue. The reason AAA companies are so quick to show that they're willing to inconvenience their customers for the sake of trying to punish pirates (which is honestly ludicrous, the only people who will be inconvenienced are your legitimate customers, pirates will strip out that code entirely) is because it's a show for their stockholders. Stockholders who don't play games, and just want to see that something is being done about this "lost profit" perception that comes along with piracy.

For years companies refused to localize their games into Russian, laboring under the false impression that there was no market because everyone in Russia was a pirate. This was self fulfilling prophecy, when you release a localized version years after the community has done that work and want to charge full price for a game that has been available elsewhere for years, of course you're not going to sell as many copies as you'd like.

While it may not be as applicable in the software industry, I imagine it is relevant that a recent study suggests that a lot of the people who pirate music are also the same people who buy the most music legitimately.

The music industry is an interesting case study on the concept of piracy in general, at least in my opinion. Games executives fall into the same trap that Recording Industry executives fell into for years. The projections failed to meet the actual sales data, so the record industry blamed piracy, instead of acknowledging that the slow attrition of inflation and stagnant pay had begun to adversely affect their bottom line. It certainly didn't help their cause when Metallica took it upon themselves to become the face of anti-piracy advocacy, given that people who had been fans of their early work felt that the quality of their music explained their failure to meet sales expectations. And now we're seeing a similar situation where bloated AAA budgets results in design-by-committee styles of games that don't always live up to their fans expectations. Moreover, games that are successful and sell 5 million copies in their first few months on store shelves are being billed as failures, because the idiots who do their projections said they would sell more copies than any other game in history.

It's certainly not easy to say what the true underlying cause of indie game piracy is, even if the financial reason is one of the most often given by those who are happy to expect others to work for free. Whether that is the case or not doesn't really matter though, the only people you can really bludgeon with your anti-piracy measures are your customers, pirates will nullify those software license checks and phone-home bits in the code. In the game of piracy the only winning move is not to play.

it has been a while since i have been in this forum.... and i love this comment. guys like this one should run AAA companies. for one thing, GTA V piracy protection, seems to me like a company playing it fair. i actually loved it.

[Silivren]

I did pirate the game at first. Yes I bought it now.

I won't make excuses for others but the reason why I resort to piracy is very simple. I don't want to invest into some piss shit games. And I did find alot of them. The good ones I generally end up buying, even if I finished them in their pirated version, that is obviously for financial reasons.

Pirating indie games ? Yep not cool. But listen here, I ended up paying 25€ a stick game for a director cut or some crap. Stupid huh ? My wife liked it... And guess what ? You pay that shit crap ton of money, and you can only download it ONCE even with an account.

So yeah, not cool to pirate some indie games, but others... If I knew I could only get the software once I wouldnt have bought it. And there are some worse cases on the dark side of the net.

Kenshi deserves support, and I did give my cash for that. But I honestly wouldn't have bought it if I didn't crack it first. I would have really missed a pearl here ! So yeah, piracy can kill a game, but it can also help it.

Why don't you see piracy as what it is ? A tool. Just like a gun, depending on the user you get different results. Unfortunately we get alot of retards with guns... And piracy.

Derp is a derp. He pirates and shoots without thinking or aiming. Don't be derp.

[sumo0]

Honestly.
The biggest reason to pirate today is to not get tricked into buying a steaming pile of poo.

I hate real money shops in games that i payed money to get. As in p2p games with f2p features to squeeze abit of extra money out of their customers.
I hate ad campaigns that bloat a game up to something that it is not.
I hate console limitations.
I hate payed reviews:D

Suffice to say that i have pirated in the past and will continue to do so.

That being said i bought Kenshi on a whim (after i tried my pirated version).

Piracy offer protection against all the BS of today.
And i actually see piracy as beneficial.

I own 90 games on steam right now. Something i don't think most people who don't pirate here and there have.

And do people honestly think that culture should only be available to those who can pay? I know i don't.

[Hatsune_Neko]

Piracy offer protection against all the BS of today.
And i actually see piracy as beneficial.

everyone is allowed thier view on Piracy but.
Its still illegal and people can very much be thrown into jail and or sued by the company hurt by it.

Its still stealing.

but Kenshi's pirated version was just the Demo so it wasn't stealing. it still required a keycode to unlock it so people basically pirated the Demo version.
which in a way is kinda funny.

[sumo0]

I know i didn't pirate the demo. Maybe you did. Idk.

I stay away from demos like they are the plague.
They almost never tell the truth about games, imo.

They are tailor-made experiences that most often doesn't actually let me try the game.
That's how i see it anyway.

https://kat.cr/kenshi-v0-91-9-e-pc-vers ... 86368.html
Here is another link for a torrent file.
'But what's the point?
If it's taken down it will be right back up a day or two later.

If people download it and play it some might think "this is awesome" and buy it.
Or they might tell their friends about it who will think "it's awesome" and buy it.

[Drag00ne]

I know i didn't pirate the demo. Maybe you did. Idk.

I stay away from demos like they are the plague.
They almost never tell the truth about games, imo.

They are tailor-made experiences that most often doesn't actually let me try the game.
That's how i see it anyway.

https://kat.cr/kenshi-v0-91-9-e-pc-vers ... 86368.html
Here is another link for a torrent file.
'But what's the point?
If it's taken down it will be right back up a day or two later.

If people download it and play it some might think "this is awesome" and buy it.
Or they might tell their friends about it who will think "it's awesome" and buy it.

I also don't play demo since ages. They show you exactly as much as you need to buy the game.
I got this game first from torrent and I like it, I said the developers deserve a chance and got it from steam. The only way to win against piracy is to convince the players who like the game and can afford it to buy it. Even then will be some who will continue to not buy it cause some peoples want everything for free even if they can afford to pay.

[nuget102]

Going to throw in my two cents, that's likely to get most of you to dislike me.

I don't disagree with pirating. Which is to say, I don't think people pirating a game is BAD per say. I came from a poor family, like had to go to the food closet to get by poor. We didn't have money to spare on things like video games growing up, for the most part anyway. And when we did it was awesome.

Pirating, for me, is a way to not.miss out on the awesome.content developers (like lofigames) make. I'm not as poor as I use to be, so I can afford to buy one game every couple months, as long as it isn't any outrageous price like $40 or whatever. So basically no triple a titles. But when I pirate it's only ever to try a game. If I don't like it, I delete it. If I like it, I buy it. Like Project Zomboid, I pirated and I bought.

My point is not everyone has $20 to spare to buy a game that they may never touch again. Some people feel they need to try the game before wasting their time and money on it. Because at 7.25 an hour and 30 hours a week at a job that won't let you get a second job, $20 is a nice chunk of change. Especially when you only make $800 a month and your rent alone is 700. So yea, don't be so quick to say that everyone who pirates is a bad person and has disposable income. I know I have virtually zero disposable income.

[Sol Lignum]

(...) that's likely to get most of you to dislike me. (...)

I don't get why would you say that

I didn't pirated Kenshi at all, because there were an awesome demo, which really should be used as a template for others to go with their demos.

Triple A has discredited themselves, Demos has discredited themselves to a degree, not to mention large publishers.

It's slightly diffirent picture with indie devs. They -might- lose considerable cut from piracy, then again, only due to their game being not good enough, and thus not deserving much support.

I believe there're very few principled pirates, and most piracy is from not willing to buy pig in a poke.

Yarr