World Of Goo Tries A Donation Model, Publishes Results

from the people-don't-pay-based-on-value dept

We've mentioned the video game World of Goo a couple times in the past. First, when its creators got upset about silly regional restrictions that were put on the sale of the game, and later when they noted that releasing a game without DRM showed no change in the piracy rate. Yes, the game was widely shared, but at no different a rate than when they'd offered games with DRM. Recently, they decided to try a name your own price experiment to see what would happen. While I'm still not enamored by such pure "give it away and pray" type models, we do keep hearing success stories of people who have used them, combined with a strong and loyal fanbase.

Now they've released some preliminary data, showing that they got about 57,000 new sales, with an average price of about $2 (so, over $100,000 sales in a week -- though, that's the gross number, the net is less, due to Paypal transaction fees). They also added a survey, and found a key point:

Few people chose their price based on the perceived value of the game. How much the person feels they can afford seems to play a much larger role in the decision than how much the game is worth.

This is another good point that highlights the separation between price and value -- which too many falsely assume are the same thing. There were also a significant number of people who said they paid because they liked the "pay what you want model, and wanted to support it." So they were paying to support the model, rather than the game itself, which is interesting. I wonder if that component would fade over time as these sorts of models become more popular.

Either way, another case study in business model experimentation.

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Video Game Without DRM Has Piracy Rates About The Same As DRM'd Games

from the so-why-bother? dept

Reader SteveD sent in this story a week ago, but I just got around to looking at the details. Apparently the makers of the video game World of Goo, which (as mentioned) was released without DRM, have roughly calculated the rate of piracy on the game to be about 90%. The calculation is certainly a rough one, and people can quibble with the number, but the basic reasoning seems sound. A lot of folks focused on that 90% number, but didn't pay as much attention to the more important comparison: how this compared to a DRM'd game. The game makers noted that it had almost no difference compared to another game released with DRM, showing that adding the DRM did absolutely nothing to prevent piracy. So why do video game companies keep insisting they need DRM?

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