Doom 3: Interesting piracy statistics

Games
1

I was curious this morning about how many copies of Doom 3 were being pirated. I have no idea how to do anything with IRC, Kazaa or emule/donkey/goat/weasel or whatever its called. I just limited myself to Bittorrent.

I went to Suprnova which I believe is the most popular Bittorrent site. Here is the information on the torrents for Doom 3 which were uploaded on August 3 & 4. There may be (probably are) torrents from August 2 and before. I’m not even including those.

There are currently 7 torrents that allow downloading of the full game. First the seeders - which are people who have already downloaded a complete copy and are seeding it for others. There are 886 total seeders active right now.

Next the leechers. These are people who are currently downloading a copy of the program. There are a total of 10,932 leechers downloading Doom 3 right now.

That’s incredible. That means there are 11,818 copies of Doom 3 that are either completely downloaded or are being downloaded as we speak. I’m not sure what it means other than that PC piracy incredibly prolific and I can see why the big companies are heading more toward consoles. Not that they can’t be cracked/pirated etc but still… almost 12,000 copies speaks for itself.

And 11,818 multiplied by $50 = $590,900.00. Being downloaded just today.

2

I think someone posted that there were around 20k downloaders just a few days ago.

3

That’s incredible. That means there are 11,818 copies of Doom 3 that are either completely downloaded or are being downloaded as we speak. I’m not sure what it means other than that PC piracy incredibly prolific and I can see why the big companies are heading more toward consoles. Not that they can’t be cracked/pirated etc but still… almost 12,000 copies speaks for itself.

And 11,818 multiplied by $50 = $590,900.00. Being downloaded just today.

How many of those 11,818 downloaders would actually pay for the game, though? While I purchase all my games now, back when I was in university, I pirated a lot of software because I simply couldn’t afford to buy games. My choice was to either not play the game at all or to download it – either way the publisher wasn’t getting my money. I think it’s impossible to draw a one-to-one correspondence between the number of times a game was illegally downloaded and the number of lost sales due to piracy.

4

Yeah, on Sunday, (the day the pirate release hit newsgroups/BT/other P2P stuff), there were something like five or six different torrents, all legit, just different seedings since the trackers were getting overloaded. Some were different in that they included the manual, crack, keygen, and cheats too.

IIRC, when I went to bed on Sunday suprnova’s final numbers for the day were as follows:

~28,000 on the original (150+ seeds)
~22,000 on the bells and whistles release (ie, manual, etc) (~100 seeds)
~4000 on the next newest reseed (~20 seeds)
~1000 " " (~5 seeds)
~1000 " " (~5 seeds)
~100 " " (1 seed)
~30 on the newest reseed. (1 seed)

So off suprnova alone, there were probably just under 60,000 unique IPs attempting to download the torrent at that instant, and close to 300 seeders. (suprnova’s stats are not total downloads, but rather tracker info updated on a regular basis–the stats are dynamic and reflect how many people are actually connected).

This was around midnight EST on Sunday night/Monday morning.

If I had to throw a ballpark guess at how many copies of Doom3 have been successfully pirated (legit pirate release fully downloaded) so far, (not just off suprnova) I’d say 100,000. I’d say 50,000-60,000 of those downloads have been through Bittorrent, the remaining 40-50k through eMule, private FTPs, IRC, and less common means.

5

Yeup. You can’t just multiply the number pirated by the (overpriced) tag of $55 and say that’s the loss. A solid chunk, probably the majority, of those who downloaded copies wouldn’t have bought it anyway. Thus no money is lost.

6

I don’t think the download numbers by themselves mean a lot. With a hyped, high profile game like Doom 3, there are tons of people downloading it just out of curiosity or out of impatience (while waiting for their (pre-)order to arrive). Hell, I’d probably be downloading it myself just to see how it looks if I had a newer computer and I wasn’t so completely burned out on the FPS genre.

7

Good grief. How many separate threads are we going to use to discuss this and say the same things over and over again?

8

[size=7]MANY![/size]

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I’m not saying that the $590,000 figure represents lost sales. But it is true that there is $590,000 worth of software being downloaded. I see a difference between the two. But then again my glasses are probably in need of updating.

10

On a weird but related note: this one was mentioned by someone in the GWJ forums.

This is a pic from my friend- firsthand and unedited. He was checking out Amazon last night for Doom 3 info, and check out what he found: First link under “Sponsored Links”.

11

At least one for the master, and one for the dame. And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

Although one can discount some of the numbers as being people being impatient, it does point out that there is significant piracy happening. As for those who would never have bought the game, considering that DOOM3 is a much anticipated title, those who have only some money to spend on games would likel have chosen this title over others if there were no way for them to pirate the games.

12

You’re just jealous of me because I’m the cool, preemptive, repeat thread starter.

13

Oh, I see. Is someone trying to say that if you wouldn’t have paid for it anyway, it’s okay to steal it?

Btw, it’s legally NOT okay to download a pirated copy even if you pre-order. The payment is a contract with the distributor to reserve a copy for you. The licence to use isn’t granted until you get your grubby hands on it.

Of course, not everyone is so legally or morally inclined, so we should all have no compunction to associate ourselves with pirate sites if we pre-order. If we don’t like the game, we can always cancel our pre-order or transfer it to another game, right? What about if I didn’t have to pay full price for the pre-order?

The slippery slope, the slippery slope.

14

Unfortunately suprnova.com and suprnova.net are both scam sites which ask you to pay for a BT account (??) and then just steal your credit card number.

It’s sorta like that Kazaa Platinum thing which entices you to pay a monthly fee to use a program easily found for free elsewhere.

15

So who do you work for, Destarius?

No one’s said it’s OK to download pirate releases for any reason. We’re just rationally and correctly arguing that some degree of piracy is done by individuals who weren’t potential customers in the first place, and thus cannot be counted in lost revenue.

The rest of your post isn’t worth commenting on.

16

Wow, I just did a search on Amazon for “Doom 3” and it’s still there. It looks like the link is being sponsored by Suprnova–so they’re advertising on Amazon?

ian

Edit: Ah, just read cthulhu’s post. Still pretty fishy that sites like that can advertise on Amazon.

17

LE, I infer from your statement that you agree that it’s not all right to download pirated copies for any reason?

Funny, I thought I heard you say:

I’ve got a birthday party to go to today and am leaving the download on, hopefully to be able to play Doom 3 by tonite or tomorrow. I’ve already paid my ~$50 on a preorder that’ll be in later this week. I don’t feel the least bit guilty downloading a game I’ve already paid for.

Wrong but not guilty? Sure, mmm-kay. I’m sure you have a witty and humourous excuse for this one.

18

Well, you’ve found me out. Also, I’m allowed only so many mouse clicks per day and having separate threads just burns through them!

19

Wow, I just did a search on Amazon for “Doom 3” and it’s still there. It looks like the link is being sponsored by Suprnova–so they’re advertising on Amazon?[/quote]
Well, they are advertising on Google AdWords. Which means they have a good chance of showing up on any site that runs Google Ads and has “Doom 3” in their page. Like if you go to the Doom 3 page on GameTab you’ll see their ad too, I just noticed this last night: 1UP.com: Video Game Reviews, Cheats, and More

20

Unfortunately suprnova.com and suprnova.net are both scam sites which ask you to pay for a BT account (??) and then just steal your credit card number.

Wow, really? I’ll be very disappointed if the ads aren’t yanked off GoogleAds, etc. if that’s the case. Advertising for downloading from a phishing site is about the only thing worse than advertising for downloading from a “legit” bitorrent site.