Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

[goduranus]

Judging from all the links posted here, I suspect that the prevalence of piracy is greater among hentai game than among normal games. There are several reasons I could think for this, though the major reason is really that for a given price, hentai games offer very little gameplay.

What is the problem

A typical hentai game selling for $10-15 usually has under 3 hours of gameplay, while for the same price, mainstream games in this price range usually offer at least 30 hours. You could even pick up occasionally really good ones like Space Engineers that's can keep the player engaged for a thousand hours.

This leads to a situations where anyone who's bought the typical hentai game will finish it in one sitting (fap to it once) then get bored of it on the same day. This leads to a psychological negative reinforcement, and makes people less likely to dish out money the next time around.

There are obviously other factors, such as a the lack of a distributor that's well trusted by a North American audience. DMM and DLsite may be the Steam of Japan, but I get the feeling that most Americans feel an unease when giving their credit card information to a Japanese site.

Analysis

The common argument for the lack of content is that hentai games are developed by small teams. This isn't a right argument, since plenty of non-hentai games developed by small teams have great content, it rather seems that most hentai developers are less capable or have put less effort into their products.

For example, Starsector developed by a team of two, a programmer and an artist, and has good art, good gameplay, and a good progression system, sells for $15 and is good for ~15 hours.

Or Factorio, developed by a team of 5?, has last-gen art but gameplay is very good, sells for $18 and is good for 100 hours.

What most hentai games out there, really seems to be in their alpha stage. They make their final release with about the same quality and quantity of content as non-hentai games in their early access. I feel that if they advertised it as alpha early access, then put in some extra work on game after the initial release to improve game balancing and better graphics, they would probably be more appealing, and pick up come-back customers on their subsequent games as well.

What could be done?

I am no expert on this, but I just had a thought. What if hentai games do early-access model? After generating initial content, release it as early access and continue to work on it to improve breadth as quality.

By selling early access, the developer could gain a initial capital could be reinvested on artists to improve graphics, add new sex positions, as well as additional programmers to develop new game mechanics.

I think the aforementioned Starsector and Factorio are great examples of how many problems with small developments could be approached, and both game's main pages have development blogs recording each game's development process.

These two games also offer good examples of a payment system that does a decent(though not overtly strong) job of deterring piracy. I am not totally sure on this, but I think the early-access versions of these games use BMT micro web-authentication system based on with passcodes. So, while the game files could be downloaded freely, they need to be activated and authenticated everytime they run on a new computer. The possibility of the authentication being cracked the further mitigated by the games' frequent updates, making it so that searching for a crack is needed for every update, which is not really worth the effort for most people than just dishing out a couple of bucks.

 

[Humlebien]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

Trust will be hard to garner on anything but a individual basis. Too many dead Projects. Too many patreon riders. Hard to sift through to find the good ones. I'm not saying supporting the dev isn't a glorious thing, but dev's should also know, that it can quickly end up with AAA or more Price, before even seeing a beta.
As for foreign sites. To me at least, it's not so much the place of the place, as it's so..... "unfriendly" to foreign buyers. I've tried to find heads or tails on the DL site thingy, so many link to... nope.

And as Gaben said: It's a matter of service. The pritaed Places, offer the product, fast, easy and free. Even Origin have started to get the idea, just need our friendly fetish peddlers to find a way too. (And yes, might be a red numbers book for a while)

 

[HentaiWriter]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

Judging from all the links posted here, I suspect that the prevalence of piracy is greater among hentai game than among normal games. There are several reasons I could think for this, though the major reason is really that for a given price, hentai games offer very little gameplay.

The other reason is a mentality of "porn should be free" in the West, which is nearly non-existent in the East. This is why piracy rates for hentai and porn in general there are much, much lower than in the West, this is the main factor it boils down to.

 

[goduranus]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

Though, if there was 10-15 hours of gameplay, like in NightmareSphere or that new Succubus Heaven game, I wouldn't mind paying $10-15 for it. Especially if it's backed up by an activation system that's a pain to get around.

 

[hentai_heitai]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

You are ignoring scale of economy.

Cheap steam games are economically viable because they sell in the thousands. (whether this is actually economically sustainable is a different discussion)

You will find even the most popular Hentai games on DLsite will rarely be above a thousand. More then that are major hits.

This is likewise true with the commercial Hentai industry where even popular titles will very rarely exceed hundred thousand sales. Heck, this is even the case for much of the anime industry.

Hence for any market that does not have mass market appeal, they need high prices to justify the costs associated.

Because they are competing in a market that is centred on niche appeal, they do not need to compete with regular games, allowing them to have inferior gameplay, as the customer is likely purchasing the game for the purpose of pornography, with gameplay being of secondary importance.

However there are advantages to this, because the market is already based on niche appeal the games can likewise be focused around unusual and rare fetishes. Whereas a mass market game will nearly exclusively be vanilla.

Now early access games or donation/patreon financed games are all well and good suggestions. But have the weakness of requiring support, which will inevitably lead to the game pandering to its donating audience in order to maintain its lifeline. I personally dont like it since this generally leads to the game expanding its scope to a level where completion is no longer a possibility, and also because the donating audience can strongly shift the focus of the game itself.

 

[HentaiWriter]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

I agreed with all of your post except for these bits;

Because they are competing in a market that is centred on niche appeal, they do not need to compete with regular games, allowing them to have inferior gameplay, as the customer is likely purchasing the game for the purpose of pornography, with gameplay being of secondary importance.

This is true currently, but if people actually made solid hentai games with solid gameplay/storyline (and some people have and have reaped the benefits), people would much more likely flock to said games than the poor quality ones.

Pornography may be what "hooks" people to try the game, but if it's done well, the gameplay/storyline would (and should, IMO) be what keeps them engrossed and coming back for more, ESPECIALLY if the pornography is woven into the game's gameplay/storyline in a logical, consistent, entertaining way.

But have the weakness of requiring support, which will inevitably lead to the game pandering to its donating audience in order to maintain its lifeline.

Disagree on this; not denying it happens, but you can definitely make a Patreon-funded game while sticking to your guns about what you want in the game.

The best way to do Patreon stuff, and have the Patrons get to influence the game in POSITIVE ways IMO (i.e. ones that don't kill or shift your original vision for the game) are;

1) to be able to poll the people supporting your game on things you're on the fence about; for example, if you could go either way on a given feature, then having the Patrons decide is definitely useful when it doesn't matter to you personally either way, as now everyone wins.

2) to be able to poll said people's reactions to a new feature you've put into the game; sometimes, things that creators think is a great idea can come off horribly to the players, whether it was poorly presented, poorly implemented, or some other reason. In this case, if it's only a few people that were upset, then it's advisable to stick to your guns, but if it's a LOT of people heavily upset, then it's likely you, the creator, are designing your game in a way that is not entertaining/fun for the average person, and that's a problem that luckily, with Patreon, you can get insight on and fix before it spirals out of control.

 

[Haro]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

If i could just use my Gift Card i would be okay with buying games. It's a bit depressing when you shell out money and find out it can't be used.

 

[deem]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

As far as i know everything is pirated, regardless of what it is games, music etc, of all genres, most is because of currency exchange and the blocks on the countries from where the sales are from that stop the purchase or inflate the price to a ridiculous amount in some countries, that for big games or even for dlsite games, or even steam games, due to them being in euro or dollar.
If they were in the same exchange like 40 euros= 40 dollars = 4000 yen = 40 pesos or whatever currency it would be so much easier to acquiere most things globally.
As for funding that is refered above, patreon does that, there is also kickstarter, but as i understand you use patreon to make the game and then released it for free when its complete in a 1.0 version of sorts, maybe earlier for supporters, but using patreon and once finished you sell the game, is also a posibility, some will buy the game, but others will not, and trying to make it complicated to those that pay or your "supporters", seems like going and extra mile that will likely come back to hurt you, or will delay the inevitable for a month or 2

 

[nty_creations]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

The whole stigma around sex in the west is probably a bigger problem than the actual content of the games at this point. The only big distributer is dlsite which imposes a horrendous markup on games and a lot of people just can't use it for whatever reason. Paypal is no go, I doubt most people are fine with cryptocurrencies, and even Nutaku has self censored to avoid problems. The only workaround I've seen is selling unlock files through paypal, but I'm not sure that's ok so much as the developer just getting lucky and sneaking by. No distribution, no sales. It's crippling for new devs.

At this point we can jump on the patreon/crowdfunding campaign bandwagon, but as others have pointed out those methods are based on trust. It's hard to trust anyone to finish a game without a history of completed projects, community membership, and content to back them up. Even more crowdfunding means backer rewards, less development time, and possibly compromising their creative vision. It's not uncommon to see projects fall apart under the bloat of stretch goals or catering to backers, even for the experienced teams. The people who can handle crowdfunding don't need to be told about it. Everyone else should avoid it.

If getting hentai games were as convenient and trustworthy as buying normal games on steam or amazon a lot more people would be doing it. Once we cross that hurdle where developers have options or even a reliable promise of getting paid and consumers won't get ripped off/annoyed we'll be able to push into better content/early access/whatever. Until then it's just a risky market.

 

[BlueBurn]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

There are a number of reasons why Japanese games get pirated.

Many Japanese devs purposefully push away non-Japanese customers. Illusion in particular has done this for a while. They don't seem to be very good at it but they sometimes block IP addresses from viewing the sites for their games and things like that. They have a statement on their website saying they do not sell their games outside of Japan. When Teatime was still around (Illusion owned them btw) they blocked many non-Japanese IP addresses on their website as well. There are also a lot of visual novel devs who do this, some going as far as making it so the game won't launch unless all of your regional settings are set to Japan.

The vast majority of hentai games on DLsite aren't worth purchasing. You touched on this when you said they don't offer enough gameplay, but this issue goes deeper. Most of these games are generic RPGs or action games that follow a common formula of gameplay, characters, and story. If you've played one, you've played 'em all. There's also a huge surplus of female protagonist games for some reason. That particular gimmick is by far the most common, and those games are most likely to follow a typical formula. Basically, most of the devs are copying a formula and trying to sell it. It doesn't make people want to invest in the dev.

High quality games are actually very expensive. Illusion games IIRC cost like 80+ USD, and some visual novels do as well.

As somebody who has been playing H games for a while, I do buy some games but only when the dev has proven they release quality games because there are so many games that just aren't worth buying and buyer's remorse is one of the most shameful feelings to me. However, I don't buy games when the dev has taken a stance against me being their customer, like Illusion for example. If they go out of their way to avoid my money, I pirate their stuff.

 

[SkeletalKia]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

Honestly things like patreon and such are great ways to make and receive porn games, you get amazing quality games when you encourage the dev and the dev encourages you, like with fenoxo's works or new life, or breeding season. Games that are always progressing with a free version and a paid version, the paid version being the best latest update, and the free being a previous, but close update, are good ways of getting people to support you, but on that same end you also have to continually pump out some form of content. Or another option is to make at least one game, finished or at least mostly done, without any sort of finance, then go and get people to back you, cause you have shown you can be relied on to make content, heck even non porn game makers are doing this, look at yandere sim for example

 

[Froggus]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

Many Japanese devs purposefully push away non-Japanese customers. Illusion in particular has done this for a while. They don't seem to be very good at it but they sometimes block IP addresses from viewing the sites for their games and things like that. They have a statement on their website saying they do not sell their games outside of Japan.

You do know WHY they do this, right? Or did you miss the Rapelay controversy when western feminists basically said japan should be nuked a third time for producing rape simulators?

Western fans are unable to defend them against the shit-slinging western media so they'd rather isolate and be left alone, even if it costs them some sales.

 

[Balmunk Fezarion]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

The reason why some Japanese developers refuse to sell games in other country is because there are no laws to protect them from piracy. They don't usually have the power or resources to sue someone oversea(usually involves in the FBI, but porn piracy won't be on top of their priority). Therefore, they chose to only sell games in their homeland where they can keep track of the piracy source, and are protected by laws.
edit: As Froggus mentioned, cultural differences and law on censorship/pornography standards are also different in every countries, it is difficult to make games that doesn't offend anyone in the whole earth, but it is much easier to just satisfy the Japanese law.

H games are not the only victim of piracy. According to an experiment done by the developers of Game Dev Tycoon, 97% of the players would choose to pirate instead of purchasing the game when given the option. Link:

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The reason is very simple, you would almost always choose to obtain a product for free rather than paying for it. There might be people who just don't trust indie games or want to try the game before buying it, but even then, the piracy to purchase rate is 97:3. I can't say it applies to all games but we can at least expect a 70% piracy rate for most of the games.

And then there is also this stupid vengeance mechanism in our brains. Some people think Japanese are selfish for keep the games for themselves but in fact they are just doing that to protect themselves. Then they choose to pirate them for "revenge". They justify their wrongful actions with human emotions. We sometimes choose our actions based on emotions over logic. Some people might get angry at someone else and choose to hurt that person even though it is illegal. They will argue "he started it!" or something like that.

It really comes down to where you draw the line. Piracy might get you into quite a lot of trouble when caught but it is very unlikely to get caught so people don't treat it as a major criminal offense. Sort of like jaywalking and slightly speeding, it is a minor thing that saves you some personal resources and very unlikely to hurt others so most people aren't against it. It is emotionally understandable to think piracy is okay, but it is logically wrong. However we humans mostly have yet to develop a large enough sense of justice to not ignore small, common crimes like these, therefore piracy will continue unless you get caught.

 

[Drix]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

You have no idea how lucky hentai developers are to have Patreon or Kickstarter. It's basically the only way to get some money, if you release at least one good game and keep at it you can work something out.

There is no central store for hentai games and even if you try to go independent there is very little payment processors available and it can be a mess to sort out taxes, accounts and other complexity. One reason that people in the west don't pay for porn is because its very hard to pay in the first place.

Japanese stuff is the same. If they could go on Steam and have mod to unlock the h-scences then they are in luck but that only works for vanilla stuff that is in addendum to the story or gameplay.

 

[goduranus]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

How about using BMT Micro to process payments? Many of the non-h indie games I bought used it in their early days, Cortex Command, Interstellar Void, Star Sector, Factorio, they all succeeded in moving to steam now.

I read that BMT Micro only takes 20% commission, much lower than DLsite's 45%, and it also appears that BMT Micro has an activation system that's not very easy to pirate.

 

[Lord Arioch]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

Disagree on this; not denying it happens, but you can definitely make a Patreon-funded game while sticking to your guns about what you want in the game.

The best way to do Patreon stuff, and have the Patrons get to influence the game in POSITIVE ways IMO (i.e. ones that don't kill or shift your original vision for the game) are;

1) to be able to poll the people supporting your game on things you're on the fence about; for example, if you could go either way on a given feature, then having the Patrons decide is definitely useful when it doesn't matter to you personally either way, as now everyone wins.

2) to be able to poll said people's reactions to a new feature you've put into the game; sometimes, things that creators think is a great idea can come off horribly to the players, whether it was poorly presented, poorly implemented, or some other reason. In this case, if it's only a few people that were upset, then it's advisable to stick to your guns, but if it's a LOT of people heavily upset, then it's likely you, the creator, are designing your game in a way that is not entertaining/fun for the average person, and that's a problem that luckily, with Patreon, you can get insight on and fix before it spirals out of control.

I think a lot of time, as well, creators don't spend enough time in the design stage. They go straight to making a demo, and when they have to choose direction later, they don't have a roadmap in place, and end up doing what their supporters want. The desire to actually have a game to show people is strong, but I'm a big proponent of spending a lot of time thinking about functions and goals before you even write one line of code.

As for piracy, it is difficult to judge because the majority of people who steal a game wouldn't pay for it in the first place. I made mine free on the basis that if people want it to be made they will support it (and also because I didn't want to waste hours of my life on encryption). Some people pledge, download the early release and then delete their pledge, but I can live with that. Patreon has given us a platform that works a bit like a meritocracy. Sure, there's always going to be projects getting a lot of money that someone might argue don't deserve it, but for the most part, players can vote with their wallets. Hopefully in the future it will be better, but for now at least a lot of games are being made that wouldn't have otherwise.

 

[Xil]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

It doesn't really help that many people don't want interesting gameplay or gameplay that makes you think or work towards a goal. Many just want easy gameplay and to get as quickly as possible to the hentai part.

 

[censuur]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

To me one of the most important factors is payment options. If the only way to buy your game is use of a credit card then it's simply not happening, if pirating your game saves me hours of hassle dealing with payment options then pirating it is.

Then there's issues like expensive games being shite, like the recent Seinarukana which was roughly 60$ and the game is just rubbish, and my understanding is that there's no way to refund it either. Compare a VN to a book, not only do you not need expensive printing+distribution options because it's all digital downloads but a VN can often be three times the price, not very appealing.

 

[azurezero]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

It doesn't really help that many people don't want interesting gameplay or gameplay that makes you think or work towards a goal. Many just want easy gameplay and to get as quickly as possible to the hentai part.

I feel like the opposite is what happens to me... I like coming up with interesting ideas but since the content can be anything i get stuck on that...
you can go so many different ways with you fucked up and character gets made into a sex slave, my patrons don't bother telling me what they like though... so it's hard...

still, haven't made a ror rpgmaker game in a while so thats what im doing now

i dont think we can stop piracy and there's not much point in making it hard for them...

 

[censuur]

Re: Discussion - why I think hentai games often get pirated and potential solution

Given the choice, it'd probably be a more worthwhile endeavor to encourage paying customers than discourage pirates. Especially since anti-piracy methods tend to be a burden on your paying customers.

I wouldn't get too hung up on any debate between the importance of gameplay, art or writing, it's nice to manage all three (I'd personally add sound to the list as well) but it's not a deal-breaker either way, many people for example dislike the art and even gameplay in MGQ but the writing and sound design more than compensate for it. One of my recent favorites "the last sovereign" doesn't even really use artwork at all but the gameplay and writing are more than enough to carry it.

Honestly if I had to say which is most important it'd be writing (theme/setting etc.) followed by gameplay, if I wanted art I'd just look up some CG galleries on sadpanda or something, it's the narrative and interaction that make the difference between a game and a collection of pictures.