By Alec Meer on August 7th, 2008 at 4:42 pm.
I know I’ve used that headline before, but hell, it works. I really do need to find a way to recharge my pun batteries, however.
Assassin’s Creed was one of the most Angry Internet Men-angering games last year, and, like Bioshock, it refuses to go away. This time, there’s a piracy problem. Aaargh. I’m terrified that Assassin’s Creed + Piracy is the secret formula that will cause RPS readers to rise up and destroy the entire planet, but here we go….
1) Ubisoft is suing a disc replication company for leaking AssCreed PC code to the internet six weeks before release. To the tune of $20m. Ouchy.
2) Apparently only 40,000 copies of the PC version sold in the US through June, compared to 700,000 pirated copies. Americans: does “through June” mean “during June” or “up to and including June?”
3) Eyebrow-raisingly, Ubisoft claims it stuck a crash-bug in the leaked code as a security measure. And that the leaked, buggy version thus created word that the port was in poor shape, further harming sales and causing ‘irreparable damage’ to Ubi’s reputation.
Which all adds up to quite the tale, and one I almost dare not comment upon. I’m sure you lot will.
07/08/2008 at 16:48 RiptoR says:
Ubi should make up their mind. First they use a “stolen” nocd from a known warezgroup, then they claim they don’t like warez… :p
07/08/2008 at 16:50 Aldaris says:
So, yeah, big company pissed off, they sould look at how smaller people like introversion do this stuff.
07/08/2008 at 16:52 LoTekK says:
While suing the company makes perfect sense to me, shouldn’t the Titan Quest debacle have provided some forewarning that sticking crash code into a game leads to poor publicity?
07/08/2008 at 16:54 Springy says:
How do companies find reliable figures pertaining to the amount of pirated copies downloaded?
07/08/2008 at 16:55 RichPowers says:
I figured AssCreed’s sales were doomed once it was revealed that at least two CPU cores are needed to play it. The Steam hardware survey reveals that 59% of respondents still have single-core CPUs.
07/08/2008 at 16:57 Skjef says:
Screwing over potential customers is a great idea, especially when there’s no demo available.
07/08/2008 at 16:58 windlab says:
Here’s a relatively happy internet man, not an angry one.
As has been pointed out by bit-tech’s commentators, it’s infinitely better for the consumers that the source/seeder is sued, than Ubisoft suing torrent sites, ISPs, and downloaders.
07/08/2008 at 16:59 iainl says:
Surely everyone who wanted to play it had already picked up the 360 or PS3 version back when the game first came out?
This is just like the DMC4 debacle all over again; company releases PC version months late, then is shocked when all the multi-platform people won’t pay twice.
07/08/2008 at 17:00 Shadowmancer says:
Ubisoft are idiots, they sell their games on steam only to the usa dont they realise they could make more money by selling their games to the world, i would happily buy assassins creed on steam and some of their other games such as beyond good and evil.
07/08/2008 at 17:05 James says:
The other Assassin’s Greed article – stumbled across it while searching for something else.
07/08/2008 at 17:10 NikRichards says:
I’d say the lack of gameplay might of had something to do with it.
I bought this turkey and haven’t finshed it, allowing it to join a very small and poo list of games.
07/08/2008 at 17:12 brandonnn says:
Up to and including!
07/08/2008 at 17:27 Optimaximal says:
As I quipped on Blues News, they must try and sneak buggy code out to catch the disc stampers out all the time. How else could Double Agent have been released for the PC in such a shambles?
07/08/2008 at 17:28 heliocentric says:
ac sounded okay, but once i got warning of the rinse lather repeat flow of the game my attention was back to splinter cell conviction. I’d have taken full price map packs for chaos theorys coop why did they have to bloody ‘innovate’?
07/08/2008 at 17:31 Andrew Wills says:
So… Let me get this straight:
- Prevented European Customers from buying Ubisoft Games on Steam.
- No demo to sample the game.
- Almost impossible to find in shops.
- Released on Consoles first with a delay for PCs.
- Half baked concept, hard to relate to.
- Basically Hitman: The Jerusalum Years.
- Not great reviews.
- Not a great console port.
Yep, can’t see annny reason why bad sales would be down to anything other than piracy there.
My personal experience with Assassins Greed was like this… Got excited about the game, found the idea to be interesting at first, but started to wonder if they could carry the whole concept all the way through… Liked the screenshots and videos, decided to buy it on Steam. Saved up cash. Wasn’t allowed to buy it on Steam, have to live in North America. Not willling to relocate. Waited for retail release. Went looking… Searched all local shops, not a single copy. Gave up, went and played it round a friends house. Found it fiddly, frustrating and worse than Tomb Raider… with a more boring story to boot. No intention to purchase now. Wouldn’t even waste my bandwidth pirating it.
If you’re going to blame piracy, you HAVE to make the game available to as many people as possible first, before anyone will give a rats arse.
07/08/2008 at 17:40 Cooper says:
I find it difficult to care. At all. Surely the replication company have insurance for this kind of misconduct, if they can’t trace the individual. Corporations have a habit of throwing tantrums when things don’t go their way, under the misunderstanding that endless, targeted, lawsuits change the actions of a mass. Assassin’s Creed was shit, piracy or no.
Also:
Hah. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Hah.
That’s lightened up my afternoon.
07/08/2008 at 17:43 Kareem says:
Oh cool, it didn’t take long in the comments thread to trash the quality of the game simply because Ubi delayed the PC version and said the P word.
07/08/2008 at 17:46 Frosty840 says:
Yeah.
That thing that marketers love, the day-one-sales thing?
That doesn’t happen if “day one” is several months after the release of the game.
I’d go through the list, but Andrew Willis did it for me.
07/08/2008 at 17:56 ascagnel says:
@Kareem: I played this, and it did run like crap. Also, it was a blatant port, with almost no concession made to PC gamers. Look on YouTube for “Quitting Assassin’s Creed” to see what I mean.
07/08/2008 at 17:57 Tikey says:
I’m amazed at how easily companies throw numbers away.
I’m going to “recycle” one of my comments from Kotaku regarding the subject:
“I’m not trying to justify piracy but when you have no local support, no translations to regional language (for god’s sake, Spain’s accent isn’t neutral and almost every other Spanish speaking country can’t stand it), no economical conversions (having a game cost three times PLUS shipping while earning less money than the countries for which the games are targeted isn’t logical, different prices for different economies is the norm) and I’m not forgetting about companies actually making harder for people to buy games here (for example I wanted to buy a retail copy of the Witcher through Atari’s site, but I just can’t because they don’t ship to my country. I know that games aren’t made with these countries in mind because most companies doesn’t profit from there, but you shouldn’t be surprised when people in those countries pirate games.”
I’m in no way trying to justify piracy but Companies are as much responsible for that number as the pirates.
07/08/2008 at 18:01 John P (Katsumoto) says:
“Surely everyone who wanted to play it had already picked up the 360 or PS3 version back when the game first came out? ”
It’s worth pointing out that a lot of pc gamers don’t own a 360 or ps3! I certainly don’t, and I only know one of my immediate circle of friends who does. Okay, pretty anecdotal, but I refuse to believe “everyone” has a console these days. CONSOLOL LOL etc. :) Anyway, I have nothing of any interest to add. Bye.
07/08/2008 at 18:05 DSX says:
I wanted to play this game, but it’s the first title this year, and probably next year too, that I can’t run on my PC. Dual core wtf? Even Crysis could be dumbed down for the mass market. Ubisoft can stick it.
Requires:
Processor: Dual core processor 2.6 GHz Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800
RAM: 2 GB
Video Card: 256 MB DirectX 10.0–compliant video card or DirectX 9.0–compliant card with Shader Model 3.0 or higher
07/08/2008 at 18:07 Kareem says:
@ascagnel: I’ve played the game too, and know of the ridiculous quitting system (it helps if you just alt+F4 since the game saves everything) but the fact that they didn’t make specific improvements to the PC version (they did with draw distances I think) doesn’t make the game itself bad.
07/08/2008 at 18:07 UncleLou says:
Basically Hitman: The Jerusalum Years.
If it would have been anything like this, I would have noticed. I really can’t imagine a game being much less than Hitman than AC, unfortunately.
07/08/2008 at 18:07 02sheslop says:
Piracy may be a real problem, but nobody is going to take it seriously if companies keep doing daft shit like this.
07/08/2008 at 18:09 Buemba says:
When companies like Ubisoft and 2K Games start letting me buy their games on Steam I’ll stop pirating them.
07/08/2008 at 18:17 ascagnel says:
@Kareem: My point was trying to extrapolate on their shoddy UI. Redesigning a game’s UI is easier than rewriting or optimizing rendering code. If they can’t be bothered to add a “Quit” button into the pause menu, then my brain says they probably haven’t bothered to update the renderer either.
Also, UBI ports to PC have been shoddy for quite some time. I had to give up on Rainbow Six: Vegas a while back when the game simply refused to run at more than 5fps in some of the casinos, even with everything bumped to its lowest on a system that should be able to handle it. Rainbow Six: Lockdown’s demo refused to connect to the UBI.COM service for online play, and it’s 1280×800 resolution wouldn’t run on my widescreen monitor (which specifically supports 1280×800), and downgrade to 1024×768 automatically. Also, it ran with a barely acceptable (~20fps) framerate at 1024×768 with everything at low on a pretty high end system.
Minor note for those in the US: I was shopping in a Staples last night and came accross some older UBI titles, some of which were pretty good. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (not GRAW 2), Rainbow Six: Lockdown, and the first two Splinter Cells (SC & SC:PT) bundled together, each for $10. I might go back tonight and get GRAW or the SC pack for that rediculously low price.
07/08/2008 at 18:18 MA6200 says:
I have to agree with UncleLou. If it was closer to that I would have loved the game, and Cooper pretty much nailed what I was thinking – if Ubisoft wants to make more money they should go back to making good games.
07/08/2008 at 18:19 Coleman says:
I think the lesson here is “if you don’t want your game pirated, first make a good game worth the price.”
AC is complete poop. I played it on my 360 for about an hour and was immensely disappointed. Ubi would have been better off ripping off Hitman, putting 47 in a tunic and throwing him into medieval Jerusalem.
I agree with @Andrew Wills. If you want to claim it’s piracy, you have to give your customers the ability to even pay for it in the first place.
And finally, no one should play it anyways. The End.
07/08/2008 at 18:20 Springy says:
@Tikey:
You find localisation unacceptable because Spanish-speaking countries have to put up with Raúl from Madrid doing the voice-acting? It’s the same in any language: English-speaking countries all get Jason from Venice Beach. As for your efforts to find The Witcher, looking on Atari’s official site hardly counts for an extensive search.
@Buemba:
That is not a good reason to pirate games.
People, you need to stop justifying piracy and just accept it as an illegal activity that is not beneficial to anything but your slightly thicker wallet.
07/08/2008 at 18:25 Larington says:
What would be really really nice is if there was a way to find out what the share of torrent downloads is based on geographical location.
I’m beginning to suspect that the real cause of piracy is that countries which don’t have a strong pound/dollar/euro/one-or-two-others feel forced to download because they have no choice. Not everyone can afford a £30-£40 game, for certain I know that I’m debating cutting my release day purchases down to 3 a year and buying the rest when the price is down a bit.
Quite a few gamers are students, do you think they can afford all these games?
Then there are the countries, such as Australia and certain middle eastern nations where games that garner higher age ratings may not be released or be released with content absent from the release, in which case even I’d be tempted to start torrenting games.
So, again I fall back on my previous comments – We need research into piracy before we can understand it and respond to it in a mature way that has a chance of actually succeeding.
07/08/2008 at 18:26 United States of Generica says:
I’m still open to buying this game on my PC, albeit once I’ve go through the pile I am currently playing.
The single caveat is that I want to be able to buy it through Steam, as our American friends can.
07/08/2008 at 18:26 cyrenic says:
They just didn’t put much effort into the port. The high system requirements and the “Quitting Assassin’s Creed” video were examples of this. It shouldn’t surprise them that it came back to bite them in the ass.
07/08/2008 at 18:32 Taxman says:
700,000 I assume in the USA alone downloaded it so claims that it was a poor port or crap game are irrelevant as there was indeed demand for the game it’s just those PC gamers decided to not buy it.
Are some suggesting that because they thought it was a poor port that it deserved to be pirated ??
The simple course of action for Ubisoft it to stop releasing PC games, problem solved which I imagine is what they are contemplating at this very moment.
07/08/2008 at 18:46 Buemba says:
@Springy:
I never claimed it’s a good reason, I just said it’s my reason.
Sure I could import the game and pay an outrageous price for the international shipping plus taxes that are equal to 60% of the total price of the product and then wait 3 to 6 weeks for it to arrive, but I won’t.
Does that mean piracy is suddenly legal in my case? Of course not.
But would I pirate games if I could purchase them digitally? No, and I doubt I’m alone here.
07/08/2008 at 18:50 Radiant says:
Attention people about to admit that they pirate games.
DON’T DO IT.
IT’S NOT WORTH MENTIONING.
Think of the children
Also this:
“Hitman: The Jerusalum Years.”
Isn’t getting the love it deserves.
07/08/2008 at 18:52 RichPowers says:
@Taxman: Numerous legitimate complaints with the game and Ubi’s marketing and distribution were brought up and you’re ignoring them all. If Ubi eliminates PC releases, I’ll just have to say: “and nothing of value was lost.”
@Larington: As a student with a shoestring budget, I buy one new game per year; everything else is used or bargain bin. This year’s must-have new game is Left4Dead. Steam’s weekend sales are slowly sapping my budget, though :)
07/08/2008 at 18:54 Erlam says:
Another game that bombed, and piracy instantly blamed.
Maybe making a poor game had something to do with it.
07/08/2008 at 18:54 Citizen Parker says:
I think that’s the truest thing in the history of true. Also, hilarious.
07/08/2008 at 18:55 Domicius says:
Good games get pirated. Bad games get pirated. Good games make money. Bad games don’t make money.
Four completely unrelated sentences.
07/08/2008 at 19:02 rocketman71 says:
Typical Ubi then, releasing games with crippling bugs and refusing to support afterwards. The only difference is this time they are admitting it.
Totally agree with Domicius, BTW (except for BG&E and Doom 3).
07/08/2008 at 19:02 UncleLou says:
You forgot a few:
Some good games don’t make money. Some bad games make a lot of money. Some games, good or bad, would make more money without piracy.
07/08/2008 at 19:03 Fede says:
I believe the low sales are also caused by the absurd requirements… but maybe I think so only because most of my pc’s specs are half of what’s required. :D
This also means that likely a little percentage of the people who torrented it wanted just to see if it actually run decently on their systems.
07/08/2008 at 19:07 Nero says:
Don’t know what more to say than has already been said. I know when I saw the first trailer for this game I was pumped, but as reviews came out I wasn’t that excited anymore. I might have bought it earlier if there was a demo out so I could see how it would run on my computer (release demos ffs Ubisoft!). Like most Ubi games I will most likely pick it up when it’s dirt cheap.
07/08/2008 at 19:14 Tikey says:
@Springy: It’s not localization. For Latin America you have the neutral spanish which is often translated in mexico, to which most of us are used to.
Spain’s translations are localized for Spain only. It’s understandable being that most of LA have poor economies.
Also, The Witcher and Atari’s store was an example of the complications that one has to go through here just to buy a game. If you have to go through half the internet just to buy one game (because there is no local distribution, so you can’t buy it in a store) you might get dissuaded (also remember that a lot of people here doesn’t have credit cards). And don’t forget the economical difficulties and the almost complete lack of local support. It’s obvious that most of LA and a lot of other third world countries aren’t simply a market for game companies, they just don’t care, and that’s a simple truth.
I’m in no way justifying piracy, I’m just giving it context.
07/08/2008 at 19:16 Deuteronomy says:
In my mind I know for a fact that the ease of pirating PC games decreases sales. I’ve asked several friends who make quite a bit more money then me why they pirate PC games. It’s because they can. Why do they buy the console games? Because it’s a bitch to pirate them. Would they buy console games if it was easy to pirate them? No.
Anecdotal true. I no longer pirate games, as I have a decent job, and it feels wrong to not pay when you can, but back in high school and university well . . . it was a different story.
As far as the tripwires go, it’s probably the only effective way to delay the pirates for a week or two. I’ve heard Mass Effect *still* isn’t completely cracked, and sales for that good were pretty good. It might just be a necessary evil.
Really what they should be doing to stamp out piracy is aggressively shutting down torrent sites. Or at least seeding copies of the game that make the system unbootable a random amount of time after being installed.
07/08/2008 at 19:20 Dr_demento says:
I quite liked Assassin’s Creed… but then, I played it on the XB360, which had zero slowdown, an “off” button you could use instead of needing to quit, and no hardware issues. I also paid full retail price for it.
I also think that Valve are the only people who know (or care?) what PC gamers like at the minute: games with low system requirements, thoroughly playtested to remove all possible bugs and straighten out any gameplay kinks, with an interesting plot and fun puzzles rather than just straight combat, and sold via digital distribution for a lower price. AC fails every single one of those points.
07/08/2008 at 19:26 Ragnar says:
@UncleLou
And you forgot: Some games, good or bad, make more money *because* of piracy.
07/08/2008 at 19:30 Bhlaab says:
“Hitman: The Jerusalum Years” is what i was hoping the game would be. Instead it was “Find 25 flags in 3 minutes: The Jerusalem Years”.
And even once you get past the filler bits, the assassinations themselves leave no room for creativity or STEALTH. Run up to the guy and hit him with a sword THANKS I HAVEN’T DONE THAT 800 EFFING TIMES ALREADY DURING THE “HIT 25 GUYS WITH A SWORD IN 3 MINUTES MISSION”
07/08/2008 at 19:32 UncleLou says:
“I quite liked Assassin’s Creed… but then, I played it on the XB360, which had zero slowdown, an “off” button you could use instead of needing to quit, and no hardware issues. I also paid full retail price for it.”
Well, I also paid the full retail price, had absolutely no slowdown issues, and used ALT-F4 to instaquit. I still thought it was a really terrible game, unfortunately. ;-)
No excuse to pirate it, of course.
07/08/2008 at 19:32 Tikey says:
@Deuteronomy: I think that the best way to fight piracy isn’t by punishing the pirates is by rewarding the people who buys originals. Even though it shouldn’t be that way.
Lately DRM has proven that the ones harmed are people who buys originals as they have to cope with a lot of stupid rules that pirates just avoid by simple replacing a file.
Companies have to offer something that pirates just can’t. In any other case I’d go with something related with packaging but with the increase of digital downloads that’s becoming harder to achieve.
I’d post an article I wrote about it (focused for small local companies where the packaging thingy is applicable) but it’s in spanish.
But anyway, I’m more inclined to agree with Stardock’s philosophy about piracy.
07/08/2008 at 19:54 EyeMessiah says:
@Deuteronomy: I believe mass effect is fully cracked, but I hear its something of a fiddle to get up and running. And by “something of a fiddle” I mean moderately harder than just downloading a fixed executable.
IMHO that is probably enough to discourage a ton of people from bothering trying to pirate it. As ever the persistant & marginally technically savvy will get a free game, but Joe Schmo will probably give up after a few failed attempts. Isn’t this what the aim of copy-protection is?
Will Joe bother to buy a mediocre game like AC if they can’t get a free copy? Probably not. One interesting effect of sucessful strong copy protection might be that people forced to spend more have less disposable income left over, and as a result will probably be more careful with their cash and in the end not be inclined to purchase games of dubious pedigree. Also people forced to buy all those crazy new video games have less money to spend on takeout and beer, which is bad for everybody.
Also they should take heart that AC was at least good enough to warrant cracking. Some poor games never even get cracked. Now that would be hard to swallow.
Also I think they forgot to remove some of those “”crash-bugs”" from the release version. Ooops!
07/08/2008 at 20:01 kadayi says:
I think Ubi are under the misconception that reasonable sales on the 360 & PS3 automatically equate to good sales on the PC, where as as someone earlier rightly pointed out the system requirements were staggeringly high compared to other ports, which instantly cut the potential audience for the game. Personally I’m waiting till the game hits the bargain buckets before I buy it as I’m only really interested in seeing the environments which I’ve heard so much about. A steam release outside of the USA might tempt me as well, but Ubi seem reluctant to open up to TRoTW atm which is highly annoying as I’ve love to add Beyond good and evil to my back catalog. So if your reading this Ubisoft suit, yes you there twiddling your thumbs, me a European would like to give you money in exchange for goods through Steam, make it happen. :|
07/08/2008 at 20:36 Pidesco says:
Seeing as those 40,000 units sold are only in the US and in retail, I fail to see how that’s a relevant number regarding sold copies. Also, the PC version was released after the console versions, which, as far as I can recall got fairly poor reviews. With this in mind, blaming piracy seems like a huge cop out, especially as I’m sure there are tons of PC games that get pirated a lot more than that, and also have much better sales figures.
07/08/2008 at 21:11 Hypocee says:
Nah, you didn’t need crash bugs to think the port was poor – just read the reviews talking about the daunting system requirements, and watch someone try to exit the game through the directly ported user interface.
07/08/2008 at 21:22 born2expire says:
I can’t believe i’m the first to point this out but, good on Ubi, as much as I hated AC, at least Ubisoft is pointing the finger at the right place.
The battle against piracy starts with the people who create the warez (ie CD distro companies, ect) not the people who download them. I hope the CD pressers are black listed and have to close their doors because of this.
I admit I used to download games, but now that i see what its doing to our beloved PC gaming industry I’ve been buying everything I’m interested in playing, and encourage everyone to do the same. Fine sometimes I buy a stinker *cough*Bioshock*cough* and regret it, but i regret spending twice what i spent on bioshock on booze last night alone.
07/08/2008 at 21:30 Vollgassen says:
this game deserved to sell a lot better.
great production values, really new exciting fun way of exploring a city
to me it was well worth it at full retail value
of course, I bought it for the 360… but! had I not! I would have bought the PC version… if my pc could handle the steep system requirements.
ahaaaa….
stop pirating games!
07/08/2008 at 22:12 Azradesh says:
I was going to by the collectors edition for the PC even though I had a 360 because I heard they were going to improve it some what. So I acept the delayed release date and wait. Then I find out the system requirements, at first I thought it was some kinda joke, the min requirements were higher then Cysis ffs! But no, they were true, so I bought it on the 360 instead. If you port something then optimise it ffs! It’s like they just stuck the game in an emulator instead.
07/08/2008 at 22:27 Bhlaab says:
I beg everyone to pirate this crap game. No, better, everyone should go to their local shop and hide all of the copies so ubisoft goes “brilliant! they’ve all sold!” and spend a ton of money reprinting it and still nobody buys it because they deserve to lose money for making this crap.
07/08/2008 at 22:30 Dot says:
I actually feel bad for Ubisoft even while I regard them as a pretty bad publisher.
All in all, I actually hope they win this case because seriously, can you even defend people who deliberately leaked the game to pirates?
07/08/2008 at 22:50 Simon Jones says:
Late PC releases enable customers to see through the hype. The extended console reaction mean we know whether the game is actually any good. In the case of Ass, we’d heard that it wasn’t great.
Consolers didn’t have that knowledge on day one, they just had the massive hype. Hence bigger sales.
07/08/2008 at 22:58 The Shed says:
I know I’ve used that headline before, but hell, it works. I really do need to find a way to recharge my pun batteries, however.
Mmm GTA IV used the pun, too.
@Andrew: “Basically Hitman: The Jerusalum Years.”
Pffft.
07/08/2008 at 23:15 Wurzel says:
re: the minimum system requirements, I seem to recall discussion around release time about how Ubisoft had decided to be actually honest about the system requirements for running the game well, and so the requirements listed ended up being much higher than that listed on games of a similar technical level.
That said, the game did seem to be extremely demanding, for not much in the way of graphical return (the glorious cityscapes brought low by the clay-faced populace).
07/08/2008 at 23:24 Charlie says:
We’re on the verge of a revolution. I want these companies to get pirated to hell so they understand the system as it is now does not work.
I hope they go bankrupt to be honest. The publishers that is, not the developers. Games will still get made as there is a huge audience for it.
We should pay for the game itself and not for a peice of software. Say for example, I buy Assasin’s Creed and then I can download it for my PC, 360 or PS3. Instead of paying for distribution, which is not needed anymore as we can see from torrents, I pay the developers. I know my ideas are flawed but I think it would be fairer than now.
07/08/2008 at 23:30 a-scale says:
Surprise! The 49 step process needed to quit the game was really just a bug stuck in the release code to make it unplayable!
07/08/2008 at 23:56 Nick Halme says:
I’m going to jump off the bandwagon here and say that I like the game; fighting templars on bell towers and free running all day can be fun. It’s never crashed for me, and I enjoyed the end of the story, if not the whole thing.
That said, Ubisoft needs to grow the hell up.
08/08/2008 at 00:32 kadayi says:
@Charlie
Whose going to stump up the cash for said developers to spend 3 years working on their game? 99.9% of developers require outside funding in order to complete their projects. That’s half of what publishers provide, the other half is the advertising and PR. As a developer you don’t want an entire PR crew on your payroll for 3 years whilst your developing your game, it’s an unnecessary expenditure. Publishing is much more than just distribution, and even in the ever expanding age of DD, publishers still serve a purpose. Sure you could hire a PR firm prior to release, but it makes sense to have one that actually understands the nature of the product you sell.
08/08/2008 at 00:36 Ed says:
I’d buy it on Steam, here in the UK, if I could. Instead I downloaded it. If it comes on Steam within a few weeks and it’s under £20, I’ll get it.
08/08/2008 at 00:47 Radiant says:
Another sore point with consoles is that they also encourage publishers to look at short term sales.
A game on the PS3 or the Xbox is only there until the end of the console’s lifecycle.
A game on digital distribution for the pc is available forever. [I lost my cd key for q3 the other day and bought a digital copy of the game for peanuts]
08/08/2008 at 00:49 Marcus says:
I must say I still don’t understand why they develop games like Assassins Creed and Crysis that only run well on a small percentage of PC:s and still expect the game to sell bucketloads.
Heck with the system requirements of Assassins Creed you have like 40% of the gamer market as potential buyers and then only like 20% of those can actually run the game well?
Common sense should tell you that you won’t be selling oodles of that anytime soon if it’s not something truly revolutionary.
At least they released it on the consoles where that kind of problem doesn’t exist.
The developers of Crysis should have realised however that if you want your game to sell alot then alot of people have to be able to run it well on their machines, it’s that simple.
08/08/2008 at 01:22 Caiman says:
You know, points 1 and 3 don’t gel. Why would Ubisoft knowingly stick a crash bug into a version sent to the disc duplication company, which presumably is duplicating the game for retail? Sounds like a made up Internet rumour (shock!) or someone at Ubisoft isn’t thinking up their excuses properly.
08/08/2008 at 02:18 Charlie says:
I didn’t say my idea was particularly well thought through!
However, maybe if they lean towards to developers more, I remember being told that Free Radical made 1 pound out of every 30 (or somewhere round there) on every copy of Timesplitters sold. That is simply not fair and I don’t want that amount of my money going to the publisher.
I know my theory is pretty idealist but I think I have a point about distribution. Costs should be a LOT lower on games by now.
Look at EA Link or whatever name it is going by now, they charge RRP for games that you only get a 6 month licence to download. It’s like they are encouraging me to pirate! Valve sell their own games cheap on Steam but a lot of publishers are charging rediculous amounts for something that costs them next to nothing.
Maybe if some of the big name publishers do go bust then new ones with new thinking may rise up. Or maybe, just maybe, some of them may start changing their attitudes. It is begginning to happen with games like Battlefield Heroes and publishers moving to Steam but it just isn’t happening fast enough. Finally when their games flop they use stupid excuses to justify it.
08/08/2008 at 02:53 sigma83 says:
“I remember being told that Free Radical made 1 pound out of every 30 (or somewhere round there) on every copy of Timesplitters sold. That is simply not fair and I don’t want that amount of my money going to the publisher.”
Hence Valve.
08/08/2008 at 03:40 Muzman says:
Gang, we really don’t want to get too uptight about the numbers in this case. They’re going into court. Of course they’re going to make it look like a clear cut, simple situation of huge loss, complex truth be damned.
If you want the foul you gotta ride the stretcher.
08/08/2008 at 05:43 Deuteronomy says:
Marcus,
Honestly is your PC from 2001? I played and enjoyed Crysis on a two year old system I bought for less than 700 dollars. Sure it was on medium-low settings. But I get the feeling everyone would have been happier if the high settings were removed all together to eliminate the psychological pain of knowing you no longer have a top of the line rig.
Now I have no knowledge of AC’s performance, but I just want to set the record straight. Of course Crysis sold respectably for a PC game in 2007 so maybe using it as an example was just a mistake on your part.
08/08/2008 at 06:57 Mo says:
Also Charlie, while I agree with you in theory about “buying for one platform, owning it on all” it’s just not very economical. Writing cross-platform games is *very* hard work. It took me a month to get my game running on Mac, and that is infinitely easier than porting between two platform that share very little in terms of architecture. While I like the idea of “owning the game, not the software” it’s too expensive to give away for free.
08/08/2008 at 07:39 Abe says:
http://www.rumblo.com/cc/comics/cc-coolfrog.gif
08/08/2008 at 08:48 malkav11 says:
A couple of things – however you may feel about the actual game, it’s not a straight, no effort port. They added several new investigation types to the game, improved the graphics, and rigged up a mouse and keyboard control scheme that was entirely playable (it’s how I went through the whole game, despite having a 360 pad easily available), even enjoyable. Are there other things that should have been improved (notably, the lengthy quit sequence)? Quite possibly. (though you can alt-F4 out quite quickly, much like powering off the 360 version. That’s what I always did.)
Secondly, I suspect those minimum requirements of being inflated. In many respects my system *barely* meets those standards (I have the exact CPU mentioned, 2 gigs of RAM, and a pair of 7600GTs), and I was able to do 1024×768 with most graphical settings maxed out with little to no slowdown, all the way through the game. Ergo, a lesser system ought to be able to do likewise on lower settings. Though, honestly, the core ingredients of this system would run maybe $200-$300, tops. I’m not going to say that that’s entirely trivial, but it shouldn’t be wildly out of reach either. And they’re that cheap because they’re that out of date. If you’re significantly behind that curve, then yes, you’re going to have some trouble running the latest 3D-graphics-intensive games. It kinda comes with the territory.
08/08/2008 at 09:30 cliffski says:
Wahey! A piracy thread!
Firstly, Ubi are just simply dumbasses for not making a demo. I’d never pirate a game because there was no demo, but many people do, and even *I* can’t get too judgemental about that. Demos are essential these days.
Secondly, I am VERY PLEASED that they will sue the ass of the duplicators who distributed the code. When I was at LH, I was the one in charge of the internal copyright protection and dongle code. I basically had what we jokingly called ‘launch codes’ that were the key to undo the dongle protection, and was damned careful that nobody else in the entire company knew what they were.
Despite going to great lengths to keep the code safe, we all knew 100% that the day it got shipped off as a master to the duplicator, some scumbag would leak it. they *always* do, every single time, and it’s about time one of them lost his job, and the company in question went under as a result.
Potentially wrecking the work of 100 people for 3 years so you get 1 days bragging rights on some geek forum puts a new spin on selfishness.
So… piracy is bad, demos are good, and people at dupe factories are scum :D
08/08/2008 at 09:45 subedii says:
Unfortunately, publishers appear to be trying to phase demos out now, since it’s believed that far from helping a game sell, they actually hinder its chances, and that you’re better off with trailers.
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/04/14/study-publishers-shouldnt-release-demos-just-trailers/
Irrespective of whether that’s actually true, publishers appear to think so, and it’s becoming less likely to see demos, at least for titles that aren’t already almost guaranteed to sell (Like Halo 3). I can understand the theory, in that people will see a shiny trailer and be interested, but a gameplay sample from a mediocre game (or sometimes just a mediocre segment from a good game) can easily lose you consumers. The suggestion of the report was that devs should only provide demos after the game is released.
Shame really. I like my demos. I’m also guessing that for more indie titles that demo’s are a boost, but even leaving that aside, avoiding releasing a demo so your customers can buy in ignorance is outright deceptive.
08/08/2008 at 09:49 iainl says:
“A game on the PS3 or the Xbox is only there until the end of the console’s lifecycle.”
In theory, you’re right about short-termism. But (a) you try to go buy anything other than a stone-cold classic from the XBox 1 era for the PC, and (2) My Dreamcast games still play on my console when I hook it up to the telly. The same cannot be said for most of my 9-year-old PC games since I installed Vista.
08/08/2008 at 10:02 subedii says:
@iainl
Really? I’ve had no problems with backwards compatibility in Vista. I’ve played games that are around a decade old (the Fallouts, Planescape: Torment) just fine. For older games there’s DOSBox. Still, I’ll admit that backwards compatibility can be quirky for different people.
As for the first point, I don’t know. I see a long shelf of budget £5- £10 PC games from around the Xbox era every time I enter my local GAME. Whilst a lot of them were good, I wouldn’t call all of them “stone cold classics”.
Even this I feel ignores the point that Radiant as making, in that Digital Distribution makes the game available for a far longer, with no additional cost or sacrifice to keeping the modern games. You don’t need to worry about “shelf space” issues. As such the games (in particular classics) have a much longer tail than they currently do on the consoles, which don’t have much going in the way of DD just yet.
Or to put it another way. Everyone acknowledged Ico as a classic after-the-fact. People looking for a copy now… well… rare is an understatement, at least in stores. Anything you buy is going to be second hand and it’s probably not going to be budget priced for the age of the game. But what would happen if Sony had the following two things:
a) Backwards compatibility with the PS2 (long since removed from the current PS3)
b) Ico available for DD onto the PS3
Even if the numbers are small, Ico would still be selling even today. That’s a continuous profit well past its console generation, a good 6-7 years after its initial release. That’s nothing to be sneezed at. On top of that consumers wouldn’t have to get the title off of Ebay and may very well get it at a budget price to boot. This is a good thing for both the company and the consumer. At the moment however, yes there’s more pressure and emphasis on short term sales, which is a real shame when a real classic comes along
08/08/2008 at 10:35 Bobsy says:
@Marcus:
I must say I still don’t understand why they develop games like Assassins Creed and Crysis that only run well on a small percentage of PC:s and still expect the game to sell bucketloads.
Because optimising code takes time and money, and this would reduce the profits made from release. They’re not expecting bucketloads, they’re expecting a pleasant addendum to the initial mega-hyped console release.
08/08/2008 at 11:12 Irish Al says:
@Andrew Wills
> Basically Hitman: The Jerusalum Years
LOL, good one.
08/08/2008 at 11:30 Paul Moloney says:
“Unfortunately, publishers appear to be trying to phase demos out now, since it’s believed that far from helping a game sell, they actually hinder its chances, and that you’re better off with trailers.”
A bit silly, as that only encourages piracy. (When I was young and foolish, I got a fair few pirated games now feel bad about it.)
There’s also such a thing as good demos and bad demos. The Bioshock demo was great, and I bought it straight away online after finishing it (twice). The Crysis demo was poorly optimized rubbish, and put me off buying the game ’til I read reports that the release game was optimized for multi-core. In that case, I did download an “extended demo”, played it, found it indeed ran better, and in the end bought 2 copies (one for a friend).
One further reason I imagine that console games sell in bucketloads is that, at least at the start of the console’s life, there’s a limited supply of games. I mean, if it’s a slow month or two in PC gaming with only mediocre titles released, I can always go and play one of the countless A-list titles I haven’t yet played; I’ve never ever been stuck for something to play. It’s funny how people say PC gaming is dead, but when I look at the releae schedule for the new few months, my thought is “Oh no, too many good games, I’ll never get a chance to play Planescape Torment this year.”.
Compare this, say, to the Wii. There simply aren’t that many games of interest to me on it (joint purchase with my wife), so I’m tempted to buy games for it that I probably would not buy on the PC. One example is RE4 – I had no interest in this title on the PC (admittedly it was a not-very-good port) but picked it up simply because it was the highest-rated Wii game. And I do actually enjoy it.
P.
08/08/2008 at 11:41 kuddles says:
The sad truth is most PC games only sell about 40,000 these days when it comes to US retail.
Also, I really hate it when people mention Stardock’s no-DRM example as a way to go. First of all, you can’t do that as a public company, lest you be sued out of existence by your shareholders.
Secondly, people always gloss over the second part of Brad Wardell’s argument: Make the type of games least appealing to pirates. He’s saying the same thing iD, Crytek and Epic have said: If you want to make a AAA action title, make it for consoles. So unless the only PC games you want to play until the end of time are Maple Story clones or low budget 4X space strategy games, please stop bringing this up.
08/08/2008 at 13:31 EyeMessiah says:
@Deut
“I get the feeling everyone would have been happier if the high settings were removed all together to eliminate the psychological pain of knowing you no longer have a top of the line rig.”
QFT
Personally I think they should have renamed the crysis gfx settings. Very High should have been called “Insane”, high should have been “Very High”, Medium should have been called “High” and low should have been called “Low”. This way people with top spec rigs don’t feel so bad they can’t run settings called “Insane”.
It sounds stupid, but the kind of people that can afford the sort of PCs to play these games are touchy that way.
08/08/2008 at 14:56 KindredPhantom says:
So that how they explain poor sales..
08/08/2008 at 16:22 cliffski says:
well yes…. or was the game so crap hundreds of thousands of people wasted their bandwidth on torrents out of boredom?
08/08/2008 at 16:39 Paul Moloney says:
“well yes…. or was the game so crap hundreds of thousands of people wasted their bandwidth on torrents out of boredom?”
If you have high-speed broadband, downloading a torrent takes absolutely no effort – browse to a page on a torrent site, click on a link. I’d be interested to know how many of those who download a game actually install it. I have a friend who’s lived in the US for many years and had access to high-speed broadband for a long time. While moving from one city to another, him and his wife has left stuff at her parents, including a huge amount – hundreds upon hundreds – of burnt CDs. Not DVDs mind, CDs, containing poor quality VCDs of movies he had downloaded over the years. Few of which he’d actually watched. She was trying to convince him just to dump them, but his reaction was “Hmm, I might watch them _someday_”. I think it’s a hoarding/collecting instinct for many people more than anything else. (This same guy spent a huge amount of money shipping his book collection.)
P.
08/08/2008 at 16:39 El_MUERkO says:
[I love] UBISOFT!
08/08/2008 at 18:44 malkav11 says:
@cliffski – In my experience, people who have limited bandwidth don’t pirate. But for most people in the US, Canada – and I believe especially Europe – who have broadband, there’s no quota or limit, and so it’s trivial to have torrent downloads running while you do other stuff. As far as I can tell, many pirates just download anything they might someday want to do something with. Worst case scenario, they’re out a few cents on a blank disc or two.
This is one of the reasons that I’m skeptical of any report that lists pirate downloads (where *are* they getting those figures, anyhow?) as being equivalent to lost sales. I’d wager a significant proportion of those 700 thousand downloads never went on to install and play the game, much less decide for or against buying a copy.
08/08/2008 at 18:58 Eschatos says:
The game is bad enough that I don’t even want to pirate it.
08/08/2008 at 20:01 EyeMessiah says:
Re: Pirating 999 games because its trivially easy but never actually playing them.
In my experience of pirates this happens A LOT.
This is evidence imho that one of the major motivating factors in games piracy is simple lazyness. This also explains why lots of pirates actually pay for steam games. Because steam is EVEN LAZIER than messing about with torrents (no bad downloads, no unraring, no cracking, very fast reliable download servers).
In many cases I think pirates are just following the path of least resistance and the fact that it is free is just the icing on the cake.
Why download free games that you don’t even really want to play? Presumably some kind of Pokemon effect is at work here.
10/08/2008 at 00:34 Leelad says:
Isn’t this the game that takes more time to quit that it dies to complete?
11/08/2008 at 19:21 Someday.... says:
Now what to say first ?? well here it goes>>
>first about piracy: in my case (i am in school) pirating games its very commun. Why ?? well because of the money!! if i could pay for the game and buy it i would, but money gets in the way every time
>second still about piracy: in my case (again) i dont have a fast connection and i’m downloading games at about 130-max 200 kb/sec so its very boring to wait for the game to get downloaded and i would buy them but again the money problem
>third about AC : well the ideea of the game was fantastic and the first time i heard of this game i was like WOOW!! but then again after its release i went to youtube and i have found out the entire story and gameplay and i was dissapointed :(and the thing with the quit system is shit . Overall in five days im getting a new pc that will run AC maxed and i will finnaly play itand take a final conclusion. Still first thing im going to do its having fun like building climbing and other shit like this and then the story…
>fourth and this is about UBI: Ubisoft really does great games with great ideeas like the Prince of persia triology ( which i fully enjoyed and i still playing it because its very good!!) but in order to play the game you will need a NASA or a PENTAGON computer!! AND when i first heard of AC i knew that it would not be like 512 mb ram, a single core processor and a 64 or 128 video card!! HELL NO!!! and i still think and fear lol SP conviction is going to be something like 2Gb min ram , and 256 video min not to tell you of the processor !! but then again this could be just my imagination because my pc sux right now but in 5 days… :):D so yes UBI is exageraiting with the system requirements and it will always do. and i mean look at EA>> they are producing mediocre games but the system requirments even a 2001-2002 computer could play FIFA 2008 an maybe 2009 sooo you all geting my point.
Well time to end it…
11/08/2008 at 20:41 Fumarole says:
“first about piracy: in my case (i am in school) pirating games its very commun. Why ?? well because of the money!! if i could pay for the game and buy it i would, but money gets in the way every time”
So why not spend your time doing something you can afford, like checking out a book for free from your local library?
12/08/2008 at 09:12 Someday... says:
“So why not spend your time doing something you can afford, like checking out a book for free from your local library?”
This is about games not books, and dont you care about my books cause i have tons :) as i said its boring to wait for a game to be downloaded and i would go buy it but i don have 40 or 50 bucks ( and beleve me 1 game i could afford but what will i do with just a game ?? it gets boring after sometime and you will need a new one
14/08/2008 at 00:11 Fumarole says:
Sigh.
25/11/2010 at 22:33 stephan naylon says:
Learn the Basics of Affiliate Marketing .This is an Excellent Wealth System: http://www.wealthsystem.eu
30/11/2010 at 16:55 stephan naylon says:
Latest and Most Watched Oldest Movies Archive Here for FREE and LEGAL:http://www.proxychina.org/movies/