Elden Ring figured out the anti-piracy SEO game

https://twitter.com/ctwtn/status/1499740546264444930

by tosh • 4 years ago

86 51 4 years ago

I have to believe it's an incident of convenient language overlap

This as an anti piracy measure falls apart when you recall pirates will already have/know a tracker (or other means) not susceptible to this due to limited scope

Or said another way: this only really works against first timers

LeSaucy• 4 years ago

Looks like this will encourage newcomer pirates to "git gud".

lesuorac• 4 years ago

Or just to use hyphens.

`torrent elden ring -horse -steed`

cruano• 4 years ago

Sounds like first timers would be the most likely to say "Ok, I'll buy it then"

bravetraveler5• 4 years ago

More so than the seasoned ones for sure, but they'd actually find more success omitting any game details so I question how many.

rhino3692• 4 years ago

You shouldn't look at anti-piracy measures as all-or-nothing. Skilled pirates don't pay. They are a lost cause. Most anti-piracy is just making sure the average person--who could probably figure out torrents, but hasn't done so--isn't able to easily pirate.

The tracker wack-a-mole game works against old semi-reformed pirates like--um, my fiend--who was able to figure out usenet piracy and private trackers back in college. But would rather plunk down 60 bucks than spend time sucking up to children for invites.

That said, its either a coincidence or a joke/homage. Hard to believe its a purposeful tactic.

bravetraveler5• 4 years ago

True, I apologize for making it seem as such - as an unintended side effect I could see it meeting this goal.

Totally agree that those predisposed to piracy are going to do it.

Money is an interesting thing to mention. Those invites don't necessarily need to be begged for/networked - they can also be purchased.

skilled2• 4 years ago

Clever (if on purpose) but circumvented by appending “download”.

Actually, it would have been far more clever to make people download the Torrent steed as a DLC or something like that.

kache_• 4 years ago

I see you haven't come across "Download The Crestfallen" boss yet?

srfvtgb• 4 years ago

Why is that tweet is just a screenshot of another tweet?

Humdeee• 4 years ago

It's showing an in-game mountable horse that is called "Torrent", which when searched upon, is also what someone who wants to torrent the game in the context of piracy.

groby_b• 4 years ago

Because the person tweeting it doesn't want to invest in creating content, and doesn't want to give traffic to the original poster.

NetOpWibby2• 4 years ago

I hate that shit so I tracked down the original (live) tweet and responded to him with it.

Why quote tweet a screenshot of a tweet instead of the live tweet? https://twitter.com/envinyon/status/1499446300428881925

NetOpWibby2• 4 years ago

Found the live tweet, I never give tweet thieves vanity metrics.

https://twitter.com/envinyon/status/1499446300428881925

nottorp3• 4 years ago

That's pretty funny. Even though normal people would just open their favorite tracker instead of doing that search.

Didn't even think of it because I had it preordered for the PS5. And with steam sales i don't really pirate pc games any more either.

vagab0nd• 4 years ago

I thought trackers are used to find peers? How do you find a torrent using trackers?

wheybags• 4 years ago

Most trackers have an associated website, the term "tracker" is often used to refer to both the actual torrent tracker and the listing site together.

Veuxdo• 4 years ago

Unrelated topic: what is to be done about these terrible "wiki" sites that dominate search results about games?

yolo69420• 4 years ago

why terrible? those wikis are super helpful

_dain_• 4 years ago

infested with huge video ads and are terrible on mobile. slow and bloated even with ublock.

skilled2• 4 years ago

Nothing. It is for now the best way to display information about games that involve lore, character customization, etc,.

What alternative do you propose? A blog styled as a Wiki? Ultimately, it's the same thing.

dack• 4 years ago

The wikis for the souls games are extremely useful and accurate - I've used them when I got stuck and it made the game even more fun!

Are you actually talking about those wiki sites or different ones?

mysterydip• 4 years ago

I assume it's about the wikis that are just ad-filled copies of other wikis.

Zababa2• 4 years ago

No, they're not. Fextralife especially is filled with information that's often wrong or misleading.

Matsta• 4 years ago

Fun fact, Jimmy Wales (Co-founder of Wikipedia) also is the co-founder of Fandom which is a for profit company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fandom_(website)

cbm-vic-20• 4 years ago

And it turns my computer into a nice little space heater.

Algent• 4 years ago

Sadly probably nothing it's just the natural cycle of things.

fextralife became popular as the go to wiki for soul-type game by copy pasting data from the original wikis and using aggressive marketing oriented tricks to get put above on google while using various autoplay to get views on twitch. Now they are here to stay and look like they made lot on effort on Elden including a nice map.

But now the cycle continue, extremely efficient scrapper are copying their data and putting them on oddly similar website, all saying the exact same thing. The most impressive whoever made these also make it auto translate into many localized websites. And the most annoying is if any of the original pages have mistakes then in a less than a week the web is covered with this false data.

egypturnash• 4 years ago

Fextralife is great, they are a crowdsourced guide site that’s immaculately arranged and styled. There’s none of the sluggish javascript bullshit that newer game wiki sites have, just fast loading text with the occasional image. A few ads but no constant barrage of autoplay videos in the corners and pop ups.

The thing to be done about Fextralife is “wonder if I should give them money after once again using them to make my trip through a mysterious game easier”.

IGN’s sluggish, messy wikis, on the other hand...

nottorp3• 4 years ago

IGN displays the cookie popup on every page load so they're useless.

I preferred wikidot for soulsborne games but they don't seem to have elden ring. Most other sites give you a few "how to become overpowered" guides and maybe locations of a few items. So sadly fextralife it is.

seanw444• 4 years ago

Their formatting is cluttered, sure, but they can be quite useful.

sharken2• 4 years ago

It's fine as it is, a game wiki is often the go-to resource for tips and tricks for that specific game.

If you are really annoyed, you can always add -wiki to the search query.

Willson50• 4 years ago

For those who don't understand, "Torrent" is the name of an important character in the game.

closeneough• 4 years ago

It's the name of the players horse.

kobalsky• 4 years ago

I'm guessing that the poster avoided clarifying that because it's a spoiler.

I went into this game blind (while being a from soft games fan) and I was gladly surprised by this feature since it's something new in their games.

tyingq• 4 years ago

I guess, though:

  torrent elden ring -steed -horse

Seems to work fine.

Octoth0rpe• 4 years ago

There was band in the 90s named "Live" that managed the same thing, entirely unintentionally I assume. On the downside, they're probably also pretty hard to find through legitimate searches.

sharken2• 4 years ago

Not sure how Torrent fits in, but nonetheless good example of a hard to find topic.

You can add Band to the query and find them easily, so not a big problem.

On a slightly related note, their album Throwing Copper is definitely worth listening to.

Elden Ring figured out the anti-piracy SEO game

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