OK, I know torrents and piracy is a touchy subject but my thinking is: since you cannot do anything about it and cannot realistically fight it, why not trying to use it to your advantage instead.
@Ixolite, sadly, the game has been all over torrent/warez sites since it got released. I doubt a stripped down version of the game, or a demo would get a lot of attention there.
Just checked couple sites and seriously - the game is close to non-existant there. 14 people on a torrent is hardly any attention at all.
Have to agree with Mlaskus on that one Ixolite. I know I had no problem finding the game on a torrent as of 5 mins ago. If there is already a cracked copy of the game out there, I sadly doubt a watered down version would do very well on torrent sites. I could be wrong, but if they downloaded the demo/stripped down version, and liked it, but didn't want to pay the 20 bucks for the game, they would find the cracked copy and play that instead. Your idea has some merit though I think. If there was a way to show people who torrent things that AI War is a great game, there is a chance that they would buy it. It really would depend on the community of the torrent site in question.
Yeah, you can find it if you are looking for it. My point was rather to make it really visible there, make it official. Tell people to look for it, make them see the name, make them see its a popular download. Also, from my experience, people tend to like artists who don't blame piracy for everything and try to work out new ways to reach the torrent users instead. Even if it means that the cracked full version gets more attention - again, usually people who get the cracked version wouldn't but the game anyway. But they have to know about it first, not to buy it consciously. I know I may seem rather controversial in my view of this matter but my point was to use torrent sites to gain attention and let more people actually know about the game.
As for pirates.. pirates are not customers, theres 0 point to focus on piracy to increase sales. And thats that. The only way to combat piracy is for arcengames to make online account registrations and 1 serial-per-user DRM. That would cut down on piracy, and net you exactly NILL extra sales.
You're wrong about that. Piracy, like it or not, is a fact and you can argue that some of the pirated copies are lost sales. But in the same time, it is also an advertising and test driving - sort of try before you buy, parallel to official demos (which in case of larger producers often drastically differ from the delivered product). Also, any copy protection can and will be broken as long as the game is running on the "client" computer - there is no 100% successful copy protection. On the other hand, a lot of people are willing to pay for quality product, even if they found out about it via said electronic-five-finger-discount.
I just think this is worth considering, especially if it doesn't require a lot of additional resources to carry out. Publicity is one of the things Arcen needs at the moment from what I understand, and making a lot of official, positive "noise" about torrents might be a way to gain some of it.
