I love CoD4. How come you’ve never written an article on it, and how awesome it is? One of those Wot I Think ones. Bit late now.

I like the way you get to call a helicopter after killing a bunch of people.

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You want your game to sell strong and get minimal piracy? Release a demo that makes the worst aspects of the game seem like it could conquer Halo 3 at the worst. Get your best and brightest, model, model model, Hell, a ten year release is nothing as long as it gives the gamers what the fuck they want : Good graphics, Good Story, Good Compatibility, few fucking bugs.

Arr, mateys.

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Now…to add something to discussion (I would probably like to add it to Stalker thread ;P…but even reading it would be a bad idea; didn’t play Stalker yet (PC too slow…))

So…yes, technically I do pirate (harrr), and I never tried to whitewash myself when it comes to it. Actually…I was usually irritated by people trying to attach moral virtues to their habit. Especially if it was simply habit – those people could afford the games easily. Me…not always (heck, my PC still waits for AGP dx9 card…), BUT…if I like the game, if I actually play it/play it passionatelly, I’ll try to buy it. In the last ~1,5 year that would mean for example HL2, HoMM3 and Diablo2…all played by me in single player mode anyway. As for few other titles…well, I either can’t even buy them now/here or don’t even remember trying them (don’t consider them worthy of beeing remembered?). Yes, there are demos…but here’s another issue, of publishers not respecting me/my low-end PC and stuffing invasive copy protection even into free downloads (DVD-burning capabilities of my PC were castrated by Starforce attached to Trackania Nations…). Which brings me to thing that’s perhaps shocking to those who would paint me as a bad, bad pirate…I actually bought GalCiv and GalCiv2, even though I don’t really like 4X games. I guess it was simply nice enough of Stardock not to mess in my PC/castrate performance (which is similar to how cracked “scene” copies work…), for which I’ll probablt buy Sins of Solar Empire (once it’ll be available here/my PC will be able to run it) – and this time I think I might really love their game.
Still, on _moral_, not technicall grounds it’s hard to justify what I do…and I don’t, I’m rather comfortable with the way I deal with those issues now, so I giess I’m actually bad pirate after all ;) (yeah, as a badge of accomplishment (plus for actually reading the damn thread) you can send me a pirates-themed game in which I’ll feel right at home ;) (seriously…the only franchise dealing with that would be, afaik, “Pirates” by Sid Mayer, and as you can see from themes present in my selection of “big” games and my dislike of 4X I probably wouldn’t like it, so I might as well just pirate it ;P ))

And there’s also other thing…resell value. My Playstation wasn’t chipped (ironically…it’s broken for a few years now)…what for if there was no problem reselling my games/buying used ones.

BTW, did we generally settled in this thread on the idea that Steam model of antipiracy is the “most ok” one?

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You know what also is inexcusable bollocks? Comparing piracy to any manner of theft.
Theft -> Item Lost -> Gather underpa…items -> ???? -> PROFIT

Piracy -> Item Duplicated, No loss. -> Item used, no deteroriation to item -> Item not sold for profit -> Item dumped/ Item bought.

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Example:
I am open to 4x strategy games but they end up boring the hell out of me after 30 min. So when Sins of a Solar Empire came out I was skeptical (and I have said previously, I don’t take reviews seriously anymore since the Bioshock disaster). I was thinking: “this game might actually be good, but what if it’s boring like the rest of them?” That is usually enough for me not to buy a game until it is in the discount bin, period.

But thanks to the internet, I downloaded the full version and played it (the demo was not out yet so lets just pretend this was one of the many games that do not have demos, and there are a great many). No DRM, super easy to install and play. After ONE game agains the AI, I thought: “HOLY SHIT! this game is awesome! I want to play online!”

Next thing I did was go to the store and bought it. It would have never had a chance if it wasn’t for ‘piracy’ (more like borrowing IMO).

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It is also interesting that you have failed to address the fact that the music industry, which is famously grumpy about piracy, has failed to demonstrate that any loss in sales it experiences are actually proportional to piracy (indeed, as Mr John Walker noted, from his own research, it appears that, in the music industry, piracy is correlated with increased sales). I would expect that piracy in the computer games industry would not be so wildly different to piracy in the music industry as to make them incomparable.

I realise that you are angry about the possibility of people using a product that you have spent time on without renumerating you financially. I can understand this. However, as numerous people have commented to you previously, “I should have been paid for this” is not identical to “I would have been paid for this, if it was impossible not to pay for it”, since it ignores the possibility that the value assigned by a pirate to your work is anywhere near the value that you assign to it. It also ignores the possibility that piracy increases sales, as it may possibly do in the music industry (and, indeed, as the example of Baen Books’ “Baen Free Library” shows that, in this case legally distributed, free copies of a book can increase sales of the same product).

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Holy fuck. don’t ever try to pretend you are logical if you are going to draw that conclusion kid.
What next? you prove that increased consumption of cornflakes causes global warming?
The fact that sales have risen and piracy has risen does NOT mean that piracy isn’t reducing sales. it just means they haven’t reduced them enough to send the figure heading downwards.
Children of 9 understand this.

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To nutshell it up. Multiplatform is just fine, as long as it’s PC version is tailored to work with PC in mind, and not a console. (Assassin’s creed PC flop, anyone? I couldn’t even get myself to play to Jerusalem. I do not enjoy exhibit_generic_console_game on my PC. If i wanted to play them, i’d buy an X360 or PS3.)

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Please don’t insult the intelligence of everyone here. It’s blindingly obvious that if a developer has to factor porting to consoles into their design to get their game green lit, that’s going to significantly influence the kind of games that they can make. Needs cursor control to play? Uses an online business model incompatible with Xbox Live (i.e. virtually all of them)? Tough luck. Format zealotry has nothing to do with it. But you know this. It’s just another pointless, baiting diversion.

“Show me evidence that the number of PC releases is declining overall, please.”

I can’t, easily. But the fact that the developers and publishers I’ve mentioned as well as several others who typically release their games cross platform are cutting back their support for the PC suggests that the trend is continuing. It has been evident for years though. Why do you think the print PC games mags have spread their coverage of new games ever thinner, and resorted to using mods and expansion packs as cover stories?

Of course you will cite the proliferation of casual and indie games as counter-evidence, but we’ve always had those. And they don’t encompass the kind of big, risky and progressive projects like shiznit is talking about above, and that RPS is primarily engaged in discussing.

But then, you don’t play those games, so why are you even bothered?

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It’s not about how many total PC releases we get (which might be very well increasing as you say), it’s about now many non-consolized PC-centric games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R are getting more and more rare. It’s not just fanboyism to care which platform is the lead for a specific game, console games ported to PC inevitably have dumbed down gameplay, shitty UI, fucked up FOV and controls. Just look at Bioshock vs Deus Ex or SS2, the former isn’t even close to the predecessors. Making a game for consoles first means catering to the lowest common denominator, and for you Europeans, that denominator in the US is as about as smart as a box of rocks, and this pussification of games trickles over to PC. Developers are finding it easier to make a game for consoles where the bulk of the money is (and always has been), and they use piracy as the excuse for not leading on PC. I don’t mind getting ports of 360 games as they generally run very well on my PC and I get to play at much higher resolutions with AA and AF, but I don’t want complex PC games like STALKER to go away.

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