By Alec Meer on October 1st, 2008 at 12:36 pm.
Here’s Cliffy B being a nincompoop about Gears of War 2, the PC and piracy:
The PC right now is a fair amount different to what it was back in the day, with all the badly integrated video chips. Here’s the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC. Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.
But when the dust has settled, is there any possibility of Gears 2 on PC?
No.
He’s right, you know – no-one ever buys a PC with a videocard already in it. PC Gamers are all highly-monied tech-savants, each and every single one of them constantly installing new hardware and innately understanding what RAR files are, how to mount ISOs and how to open ports on their router. Also, upgrading a videocard is technical accomplishment up there with programming Big Blue, and nothing at all like removing three screws and plugging something into a slot. And making a high-budget FPS that scales down to lower-end graphics cards is an absolute impossibility. God! Angry.
Thanks to the many people who mailed about this – took us a while to get around to it cos we were all knee-deep in long-form pieces.
01/10/2008 at 12:38 Larington says:
Thats fine, I thought Gears of War was tedious (Being one of the few shooter games I haven’t bothered to get even close to completing) and I expect the sequel to be exactly the same, so I don’t feel I’ve lost anything on this one.
01/10/2008 at 12:40 Ragnar says:
And we are savvy enough to realise those ports from their console originals almost always suck.
01/10/2008 at 12:41 AbyssUK says:
Great news! Gears is rubbish on the PC and Cliffy B only makes games for Teenage American boys who like burning ants with chainsaw lasers. Gears can stay on the xbox.
01/10/2008 at 12:44 Gap Gen says:
Well, he may have a point – after all, you can’t see the average Wii player getting out the screwdriver and modding their machine.
01/10/2008 at 12:46 Thiefsie says:
ppl… it’s dude huge, though maybe cliffyB is more twattish?
the less said about this douche and epics epic fail of PC gaming the better.
01/10/2008 at 12:48 Dude says:
Do we need Gear of war 2 on PC? I think not…
01/10/2008 at 12:49 Cigol says:
So okay, there are problems with piracy on the PC (which can’t be news to them as I remember distributing games, for free, on floppies)… but why then focus development on the 360 which is equally rife with piracy?
Go to pirate communities… look for PS3 threads. You’ll be hard pushed to get a discussion going. Why are Epic so focused on a pirate haven like the 360 as opposed to say the PS3 which has ZERO piracy.
Surely that’s where the gold is right? I mean, piracy being such a linchpin an all.
01/10/2008 at 12:50 Guido says:
It’s easy: Don’t make sucky games, and they’ll sell on the PC. Gears of War was horrible, UT3 was too console-y. I bought both, actually liked UT3, but certainly wouldn’t buy GoW2.
And do I have to mention that my opinion of Epic games went from “whoa, awesome” back in their shareware days to “console firm that sells trash to gullibles” meanwhile? Their “we don’t want smart customers” approach certainly doesn’t stop that progression.
01/10/2008 at 12:51 Duke says:
In short: “We only want to make games for people who are too stupid to own a PC”
There are fewer pirated copies for consoles because it takes more effort to chip/hack/whatever the system. Not because the users are more or less savvy/smart. You can teach a monkey to download pirated copies. (And judging from most comments on those sites I have a feeling some have tried…)
But yeah. Another crappy game we wont see on the PC :P
01/10/2008 at 12:54 Thiefsie says:
I always thought it was spelt nincumpoop
01/10/2008 at 12:57 Larington says:
Game companies have blamed failure on piracy as far back as the days of the Spectrum 128k, so I epically fail to see what merit the idea that PC gaming is different now has today in terms of piracy than it did back in the days of 486 intel PCs where I’d pop around to one of my school chums and we’d swap games rather than buy every single one released (Otherwise I would never have discovered the joys of Dune & Dune 2, btw).
01/10/2008 at 13:02 araczynski says:
doesn’t the average pc pirate also have a 360 as well? i mean the stats seem to indicate that pc gamers also have consoles. and if he’s so uber smart to change his pc hardware and pirate there, guess what, he’s smart enough to pirate for the 360 he/she has as well.
get your head out of the sand cliffy, or at least stop spewing your retarded half truths.
01/10/2008 at 13:03 NegativeZero says:
“No”? More like “not until our agreement with Microsoft expires 6 months later.”
01/10/2008 at 13:09 Chris Evans says:
Yarr my ranting thoughts!
In short he should stop giving us this bull crap about pirates being why it isn’t coming on the PC and tell us the truth. Consoles = more money via DLC and higher priced games.
01/10/2008 at 13:09 Meat Circus says:
Epic Games and their house-trained pet monkey Clifford will definitely be first against the wall when the revolution against Complete and Utter Tools comes.
01/10/2008 at 13:10 phuzz says:
oh noes!, we don’t get some shoddy console port of the videogame equivalent of the fast and the furious.
Although I have been known to build my computer, and I can indeed find a torrent, open a spilt rar and open ports on a router. I still don’t want to play GoW tho.
01/10/2008 at 13:10 Monkfish says:
I’m beginning to wonder why the hell Epic even bothered to sign-up to the PC Gaming Alliance if all they’re going to do is insult PC gamers’ intelligence with this nonsense.
01/10/2008 at 13:11 Mogs says:
He calls himself Cliffy B and Dude Huge & his philosophy is ‘Bigger better, more badass’
Need I say anymore?
01/10/2008 at 13:11 Lollerskater says:
Agreeing with Guido here. I probably liked UT3 a bit more most likely and thought Gears would provide a similar experience. Needless to say I was extremely disappointed.
Personally I am now looking forward to the UT3 Linux port more than anything related to GoW 2.
01/10/2008 at 13:12 Nick says:
Cigol said – “…but why then focus development on the 360 which is equally rife with piracy?”
Are you seriously trying to suggest that a significant proportion of 360 owners have the means to pirate 360 games?
Not that I agree with Cliffy B or anything, but suggesting that the 360 has a piracy problem even a fraction the size of the PC is nuts. I’m sure it’s true that almost every 360 game is floating about the internet somewhere. That’s a very different kettle of fish from anything more than a minuscule minority being able to run unsigned code on a 360. And chipping a 360 is a far bigger deal than the original Xbox.
I’m pretty confident it’s out of the reach of 99% of 360 owners.
01/10/2008 at 13:16 karthik says:
“Here’s the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software.”
So everyone who knows their way around torrents is a pirate? Or is there a layer to the argument I’m missing?
01/10/2008 at 13:17 teo says:
He’s not that damn wrong
If I were in charge of game with a budget like that I would be hesitant about putting it on the PC
You can disagree with him but be reasonable instead of pretending like he’s talking like he’s from Mars or something
I want PC games but too many fucking people pirate them… they really do
01/10/2008 at 13:20 Okami says:
Here’s the problem right now; the person who is stupid enough to run on stage with a plastic toy chansaw and who’s every second word seems to be “badass” shouldn’t be allowed to have any opinions, let alone speak them out in public.
01/10/2008 at 13:21 Horatius says:
Too right!
Large developers can all bail out of the PC market and it will be great for gamers. Indie developers would love to have the market space opened up.
Also, if I’m not mistaken Gears of War broke several of the RPS ’10 Rules’…
01/10/2008 at 13:21 vander says:
Wow, because I am savvy enough to want my games to look good on my PC…I must be a pirate.
I buy each and every game I play, because I want to support developers in making more games.
I will NOT be supporting anything associated with CliffyB in the future.
01/10/2008 at 13:21 Alec Meer says:
Teo – the thing is he’ll make his money on 360 anyway. A PC release would only mean extra cash, regardless of how many do or don’t pirate it, but their attitude seems to be smash hit or bust. And it’s Epic’s refusal to do anything other than put-it-in-a-box-and-stick-it-on-a-shelf that grates: they’ve just thrown toys out of the pram rather than tried to address the problem.
01/10/2008 at 13:24 Larington says:
Also, I think the Steam Hardware Survey should include a set of tick-boxes for consoles owned in additon to the PC.
Just to point out the fact that people might not have bought a game on PC because they’d already bought the 360/PS3 version and don’t feel the need to replay the game (Even with a few extra levels thrown in).
01/10/2008 at 13:24 Radiant says:
I’m just surprised he didn’t slip in the word ‘badass’ in there.
Epic as a company still thinks its 2001.
01/10/2008 at 13:25 spd from Russia says:
I think UT3 pretty much failed on every platform?
and PC sales in USA are shit, no matter what
01/10/2008 at 13:31 Nick says:
@Alec “A PC release would only mean extra cash, regardless of how many do or don’t pirate it”
That’s not taking into account any of the negatives of doing the port, namely financial and opportunity cost. Clearly they ARE making a business decision, not an emotional one, and they’re in the position of having actual sales and cost figures to work with.
From their point of view it just doesn’t seem worth it – they can spend the time (and money) elsewhere and get a better return.
01/10/2008 at 13:31 Robin says:
The PC already has hundreds of crappy action games from the early 1990s, we don’t need ridiculously over-produced spoofs of them like Gears of War if we want to wallow in nostalgia for that era.
If this kind of whining was coming from a non-creatively bankrupt studio there might be a problem.
Edit: Oh, and they’re not doing a PC version because Microsoft have said so, btw. The porting costs are utterly negligible, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the game mysteriously does turn up on PC exactly 6 or 12 months from the Xbox 360 release date.
01/10/2008 at 13:31 spd from Russia says:
Alec Meer : no that easy. there are additional costs of shipping a game on another platform, even if the tech is multiplatform. It might const more than it actually makes in sales. Actully I dont think it wouldnt cover the costs of porting, but whatever.
Gears is xbex-exclusive that`s supposed to push platform sales. I guess thats the main reason for denying PC. But he would never tell the whole truth. Typical PR bullshit.
01/10/2008 at 13:32 skillian says:
That’s what I don’t get – surely if they’ve already built the game (on a PC) for 360, then no matter what the level of piracy, they would make some money by releasing it on PC, especially if it was distributed digitally.
edit: OK, a lot of people addressed my point since I started typing it. I do find it difficult to believe that the cost of releasing it on the platform would outweigh the potential revenue from games sales though. I guess exclusivity is more of a factor than straight up sales.
01/10/2008 at 13:33 Alec Meer says:
As I say, they’re probably thinking smash hit or bust for a PC port. I just can’t imagine a game of this profile wouldn’t make /some/ money – especially if they were prepared to stick it on Steam, Impulse etc and thus reduce distribution costs. Which they didn’t for GOW1, instead stuffing it with that Windows Live rubbish.
He’s also not blaming GOW1 PC’s (presumably) low sales on anything other than piracy (e.g. perceived high system requirements, people owning it on 360 already, its reputation for being a bit meatheaded, the bad rep of GFWL) – which frankly is as near-sighted as any of us saying piracy did it no harm whatsoever.
01/10/2008 at 13:36 Radiant says:
In any case he’s not wrong. He’s not lying.
Gears is erm geared for a two player co-op experience; for it to do well on the PC it would need to significantly increase that number and be less a directed story and more of a battlefield/COD4 clone.
Also i would imagine the QA hoops microsoft would make Epic jump through for a PC release would cost a hell of a lot of money.
01/10/2008 at 13:39 skillian says:
Epic aren’t exactly a poor company. Maybe the extra cash isn’t worth the hit they take to their reputation when their biggest release debuts at no. 15 in the PC charts?
01/10/2008 at 13:43 multi purpose eskimo says:
Cliff: pc gamers are smart enough to pirate games.
pc gamers: [sob] well ur game sux!
01/10/2008 at 13:43 cHeal says:
The lad from Stardock said the exact same thing, he just wasn’t a complete twat about it. The fact is that the demographics for games like UT3 and Gears correlates closely with the demographic of people who know how to pirate media, some of whom, do pirate media.
He’s still a twat though, and if they had actually released PC games on the PC instead of console rehashes ala UT3 and Gears then they probably would have sold better.
01/10/2008 at 13:43 spd from Russia says:
Alec Meer: Im 100% sure they have a contract with MS that would never allow them to use Steam. MS has Epic by the balls
Radiant: and they pretty much killed the mp/coop in gears by force-tying with the crappy WindowsLive (which wasnts free for PCs back then too)
01/10/2008 at 13:44 Diogo Ribeiro says:
No one bought their slightly above average shooter which squandered millions on visual technology just to make people think they weren’t playing Contra all over again? Boo hoo. Poor Cliffy.
01/10/2008 at 13:45 Jochen Scheisse says:
The first thing they could do would be to scale down GOW2 to 256 colors, all brown. Saves a lot of capacity and no one would notice. Also I played GOW1 on a friend’s console and my bottom line is that it’s not my game anyway, I woudn’t have bought or pirated it so I don’t care.
01/10/2008 at 13:46 mandrill says:
Its Romero all over again.
A game developer who thinks that he shits gold and money spouts from his carnage addled brain who has gotten too big for his boots.
The PC is better off without him, the consoles can have him.
01/10/2008 at 13:49 Cigol says:
Nick, my post was mostly tongue in cheek.
They aren’t exclusively focusing development on the PS3 (a console with absolutely zero piracy) because Microsoft aren’t paying them to do so. There may be other considerations such as install base and so forth, but my point is that Piracy (the linchpin for his argument against the PC) isn’t the deciding factor elsewhere. Ergo; hypocrite.
As for piracy on the 360, considering it’s a highly specialised platform (exclusively for gaming) it’s fair to say there’s a significant (if not majority) proportion of users downloading and playing these games illegally. The PC is an open platform, it’s used by everyone for everything and its install base is staggering. My sister might illegally download the Sims tomorrow, but what, is she going to illegally download Gears of War next week? Hell, maybe she’ll never download another game illegally in all her life.
It’s not the same market. You can’t compare it. You own a games system you are going to play games on it. For the PS3 you have two options, rent/borrow or buy. The 360 has three options.
I mean, I don’t really care. I hope to god EPIC become a Microsoft entity and never make games outside of the XBOX console environment. I just wish Microsoft employed employees would shut up about piracy on the PC.
01/10/2008 at 13:57 Dante says:
Alec is definitely right about this, the reason that they’re throwing their toys out the pram is that the PC release of the first game didn’t reach their totally unreasonable expectations. And they’ve taken the blinkered view that this must be because of piracy rather than the fact that it had been out on the 360 for six months already.
Anyone who wanted to play it, played it and anyone who bought it once didn’t need to buy it again. Not to mention that the ridiculous hype that accounted for so much of it’s strong sales had faded away by then.
Interestingly, I neither paid for nor pirated Gears, I picked it up as a freebie on a net rental site. Seems the perfect place for a short co-op game that you’re going to finish in under a week, while laughing your ass off at the unintentional homo-eroticism of it all.
01/10/2008 at 13:58 rei says:
In before Mark Rein’s damage control.
Mr. Professional Troll felt that people weren’t talking about him enough anymore, so he’s trying to say something inflammatory. I’m fairly certain he’s not even the guy who decides what gets ported where.
01/10/2008 at 13:58 Katsumoto (jvgp100) says:
Have any of you guys tried getting an interview with him? I’d love to see his responses to some of your probing questions. Oo er.
01/10/2008 at 14:00 fishmitten says:
Roughly translates to: “We don’t need the extra money, so why bother?”
I’m sure most PC gamers don’t care anyway.
01/10/2008 at 14:01 Bobsy says:
Sigh. Well I’d have liked to have had GOW2 on PC. Not my particular cup of gaming tea but it’s a big name title and given a quality port it would do a lot for the system’s reputation. Especially if it was given a simultaneous cross-platform release. Of course it wasn’t and wouldn’t, so that’s that out the window for starters.
It’s a shame, and Cliff Bleszinski (remember that Cliff? Your actual name!) is utterly misguided over the whole issue. I don’t want to have to put on a tinfoil hat over this but it smells to me like he’s had Microsoft employees whispering in his ears over this for a while.
01/10/2008 at 14:02 Maximum Fish says:
“Here’s the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC. Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.”
Translation:
Smart people are all software pirates. We have trouble selling our stupid people games to smart people. This is because they are all pirates. I really like money, a whole lot. We make a lot of that selling stupid people games to stupid people. Plus, piracy, multiple configurations, upgrade expenses, and other cliched bullet point excuses. You see?”
GOW (which i bought the pc port of) was lowest-common-denominator fratboy field-tested stupidity, even though it was fun stupidity. I’m not pretentious enough that i can’t enjoy willfully stupid entertainment now and then, and i’m not trying to equate consoles with stupid people, vice versa, or anything so dismissive, but when looking at Epic’s lineup of games, i can’t help but feel like ol’ Cliffy has found a good home.
01/10/2008 at 14:03 Paul Moloney says:
I gave it a go and it was an astonishly boring game. It reminded me of ID’s latter games; great production values and technology, but little in the way of gameplay. Maybe I didn’t play it enough, but GoW seems to consist of:
1. Hide behind wall
2. Jump up
3. Shoot at creature with peashooter weapon
4. Duck
5. Go to line 1.
The standard response is “yeah, but it’s fun in co-op”. But most games are more fun in co-op, in that it’s always better to play something with a few bantering mates. It’s no excuse for the game being too dull for single-player play.
P.
01/10/2008 at 14:06 Radiant says:
Cigol “I hope to god EPIC become a Microsoft entity and never make games outside of the XBOX console environment. I just wish Microsoft employed employees would shut up about piracy on the PC.”
Well said.
And don’t get me wrong Gears of War is an average single player experience but a blindingly good game in online co-op [at a time when co-op console games were non existent].
01/10/2008 at 14:10 spd from Russia says:
Hey why not blame second-hand market for a change?
Here is the proof:
1) Those who pirate games often dont have money to buy them hence you dont lose a real consumers. Unlike those who buy used games. And you dont see a penny from their money – it all goes into retailers` pocket.
2) Those who pirate games actually might buy a legit version (if they like a game or want to play multi). Unlike those who got it second-hand – or would they buy a brand-new package if the cd-key appeared invalid? doubt it.
And it all means very real LOST REVENUE that flows into the retail chains who market used games and make a huge money there without investing a penny into the gamedevelopment or owning any ip rights.
So guess what, your real enemy who steals your profit in real bucks is Gamestop, not Piratebay (where nothing is being sold for money)
01/10/2008 at 14:18 Ergates says:
“you can’t see the average Wii player getting out the screwdriver and modding their machine.”
The average PC owner can’t/wouldn’t either.
01/10/2008 at 14:20 roryok says:
To be a little less eloquent about it, Fuck Cliffy B
Gears of War was a pile of cock, and every month that man not only says stupid things, but also contradicts his own company’s stance on things.
He spends far more time talking and stroking his ego than doing any real work.
01/10/2008 at 14:22 Alec Meer says:
Let’s keep a lid on the abusive stuff, please. It’s perfectly easy to say the man’s a silly-head without hollering expletives.
01/10/2008 at 14:23 EyeMessiah says:
Lol @ crazy troll burning bridges no one wanted to cross in the first place.
01/10/2008 at 14:30 Whiskey Jack says:
“1) Those who pirate games often dont have money to buy them hence you dont lose a real consumers. Unlike those who buy used games. And you dont see a penny from their money – it all goes into retailers` pocket.
2) Those who pirate games actually might buy a legit version (if they like a game or want to play multi).”
Hum, just to point out that this is just a supposition and you have actually no proof of that (concerning the pirates, I guess your point on used games makes a lot of sense). When you make an argument, please make sure you have authentic, verifiable and (statistically in this case) valid facts to support them, not just what is clearly an opinion stated as a fact.
Not that I’m saying that something is true or not, but I just hate it when people take their own little opinion and/or perception for facts.
And again, used games and piracy are two different problem for developers and publishers, one doesn’t (in any way) justify the other. Stealing a car isn’t OK because it costs less than buying a used car from someone (and yes, there’s is no difference between stealing a car, or a game or a freaking candy).
Now here’s an opinion piece on PC piracy that I like to point out to people (thanks PA for this one btw), because I just think (see, opinion) that it makes a lot of sense.
http://chrisremo.com/bloggin/2008/08/02/an-ill-advised-raving-rant-on-pc-%20piracy/
And what’s hilarious about it is that people in the comments just re-use the arguments that Remo just so easily invalidated in his text in numerous ways, I guess some people never learn.
01/10/2008 at 14:46 edward_blake says:
The man’s an arse plus GoW was a terrible, shallow dirge of a game anyway.
I wouldn’t be interested in a sequel.
01/10/2008 at 14:47 Steve says:
Honestly, back in the 90′s I used to have nothing but respect for Epic. How far they’ve fallen. Clifford is as stupid as that Oblivion With Guns 3 developer that stated there’s “absolutely zero” piracy on the 360 recently.
If I want to play Gears of War 2 I’ll just go and dig out my copy of kill.switch and install it.
01/10/2008 at 14:48 Tei says:
Consoles are not god for FPS, RTS and MMORPG games. Everybody and my dog know this… inside.
Also, most console games are mediocres, because are dumbed down games.
I don’t want GW2 in the PC, because there are much better games here.
01/10/2008 at 14:52 Nallen says:
So the stupid games go to the stupid people. Fine.
01/10/2008 at 14:54 TooNu says:
Heh, GOW still sucks no mater how many sequels it has and who cares what an idiot has to say? Whoever said he is a “Meathead” was spot on.
01/10/2008 at 14:55 Gap Gen says:
One argument against smart people pirating is that Stardock deliberately decided to make cerebral strategy games, rather than meat-headed shooters, because they are pirated less. But then it may not apply here, since Epic isn’t going to make Unreal Tournament: The TBS any time soon.
01/10/2008 at 14:56 martin says:
come one people, cliffy b loves his latest games, they are like his children. he thinks they are beautiful and gifted and he is just not able to perceive them as the bland, ugly and short-lifed bastards that they are.
01/10/2008 at 14:58 grumpy says:
“I want PC games but too many fucking people pirate them… they really do”
Doesn’t matter. It seems that of all the games industry, only the Stardock guy has realized this so far.
it doesn’t matter how many people pirate your game.
What matters is how many buy it.
Selling 1000 copies and getting pirated 500,000 times is still better than selling 500 copies and not getting pirated at all.
The only thing that matters is how many sales are made. And there are multiple ways to get better sales. One is to try to get hold of the pirates and force them to pay. That’s tricky to do on PC.
Another is to make a game that more people can play. If you’re making a game that only the top 1% PC’s can run, then you’ve limited your potential sales to 1% of what they could be. Sure, it will still get pirated, but you’ll also sell more games.
Simple. I’ve done it several times. I originally downloaded MTW just to see what the fuss was about. Played it nonstop for 3 months, then I bought it. And played for another 3 months. :)
I bought Dawn of War at release, but I’ve played it with half a dozen friends who pirated it. Today? They’ve all bought it plus the expansions.
Proof enough for you?
Yes there are. They’re all wrong and illegal, but they’re not the same There’s a huge difference between stealing a car and pirating a game. Pirating a game is not stealing. You are not taking anything away from the owner. If I were to pirate GoW, Epic would *still* have the game. If I steal your car, you no longer have a car.
If you want to compare it to other crimes, pirating games is more like sneaking in to watch a movie without buying a ticket. Would you call that theft too? Theft of what, exactly?
This doesn’t justify piracy in any way, of course, I’m merely pointing out that it’s not the *same* crime as stealing a car.
01/10/2008 at 15:01 Paul Moloney says:
It is hard to take anyone seriously who needs to make an official announcement that they are killing off a nickname. Especially when the nickname is their first name appended to the first letter of their surname. I mean, ker-raz-ZEE or what?
P.
01/10/2008 at 15:05 cyrenic says:
I thought his quotes here were much more amusing: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54974
He’s probably adhering to the “Say inflammatory things so video game blogs will post about them shortly before my big game release” train of thought.
01/10/2008 at 15:09 Maximum Fish says:
I don’t have the numbers in front of me, so i don’t know this either way, but it seems to me that the combined forces of Blockbuster and Gamestop must surely inflict the same percent damage to console games that piracy does to PC games.
I mean, when someone torrents a pc game, it takes like 3 weeks or something to download, involves all sorts of cracking-related effort and saves you $50 US. When someone wants a console game, they go buy it used from Gamestop for $20, get it immediately with no extra effort, guaranteed to work, save $40, and the exact same amount of money goes back to Epic, namely $0.
Or they just rent the damn thing for $5 from blockbuster, save $55 and beat it in two weeks with no late fee. Because let’s face it Cliff, Gears was slight, stupid, short and easy. It was prime rental material. I had my fill of it for $50 in less than two weeks, and would have rented it instead if PC gamers had that luxury.
The honest truth is, as Gap Gen said, cerebral games with longevity don’t tend to work or sell as well on consoles. WoW, Sins, the Total War games, etc. are not the sort of games you’d ever see on the 360. Conversely, games like GOW, Halo 2, and most other console fare, are games that are far and away more cost effective to rent. You can beat them in a few days, and get tired of the multiplayer in a few more.
What, if i’m right about this, would be the conclusion? It’s not piracy that keeps the likes of CliffyB on console, it’s the size of the user base. He left this party for the more hoppin’ one, and blaming piracy and technical scapegoats is much easier and less damning that just following the smell of money.
01/10/2008 at 15:10 Greg Wild says:
To be quite honest, fuck Cliff and any developer “leaving” the platform. We don’t need them when other developers/publishers – Stardock, Valve, Blizzard, Relic, Creative Assembly to name but a few who exclusively or mostly work with PC licenses that have financially secure and innovative models. If anything, consoles are as far behind the PC in innovation as ever.
If all Cliff is concerned with is the number of 0s on his pay cheque, fuck him. Epic’s only capable of producing machismo ridden explosion-fests these days anyway- like basically every other console FPS developer. We’ve got better things going for us.
01/10/2008 at 15:12 Alec Meer says:
I’ve already asked nicely to no avail, so all further “fuck Cliff”-type comments will be wiped. Object to him by all means, but do so like grown-ups. It’s not because we give a monkey’s about offending the man, but because we like RPS threads to be fun’n'smart.
01/10/2008 at 15:15 propanol says:
Normally I’d feel sort of sad seeing a big name developer publicly calling off the PC, especially given how important Epic’s tech is these days, but in this case I remain strangely indifferent. GoW was an okay techdemo bundled with a mediocre game and seeing as the number two is more like 1.5 I can’t bring myself to care.
It’s also interesting to note how Epic is becoming more and more interdependent on Microsoft Game Studios, given that the only game they’ve put out during the last four years that hasn’t tanked was published through them, on their platform.
01/10/2008 at 15:23 FuKuy says:
I don’t believe him… I hope to see Gears of War 2 on PC.
Gears of War 1 was way better on PC than 360. And Cliffy B. is an idiot.
01/10/2008 at 15:29 Morph says:
Boy am I glad that I was tech savvy enough recently to undo some screws on my PC and put in a graphics card so I could play my legally bought version of Bioshock.
Oh wait, CliffyB thinks I have no morals. Boo-hoo.
01/10/2008 at 15:36 RichPowers says:
And nothing of value was lost.
When people say PC gaming is “dying,” and then point to games like GoW2 to support their claim, I only say: so what? Is it really a tragedy that derivative tech-demos masquerading as games (supposedly) won’t be released on the PC?
01/10/2008 at 15:40 Nimic says:
Bla bla bla bla.
We hear this whining about pirating etc, and yet we’ve had a great PC gaming autumn, and it’s just going to get better (can’t wait for L4D). Last year wasn’t exactly bad either, to put it mildly.
I would have been worried if we’d actually have seen some tangible effect, but if all we’re going to miss is MGS4 (which we would’ve missed anyway) and Gears of War 2 (which I really couldn’t care less about), then it seems like it’s just a convenient excuse.
01/10/2008 at 15:43 Maximum Fish says:
Grumpy is entirely correct when he says that game piracy is not stealing. That sounds like a bold claim, but it’s true. Videogames (and movies and music) are public goods, which means the consumption of one unit of the good does not exclude another consumer from it. In other words, once it is created it exists in infinite supply, which gives it a value of $0 in standard price theory.
Piracy is what’s called “free-riding”, enjoying the benefits of a public good without paying for it. The problem with this is that though the supply is infinite once the good is created, payment is required to justify the costs of creating it to begin with (and enough payment to make it a worthwhile investment when compared to any other investment, selling a car for instance or throwing it in the stock market). Before the digital age, nearly every public good were societal goods, stuff like the maintenance of highways, national parks, national defense, etc..
In nearly all cases, the solution to the free-rider problem is not to attempt to restrict consumption or artificially limit supply (DRM et al), this has never worked. The most successful solution usually is a shift to a service based industry; you pay for the service of using the good (inland waterway navigation in the US, and the cost of locks and dams that facilitate it, is funded by trust fund of waterway users), or everyone is made to pay, regardless of use -which in most cases means taxes, but that doesn’t work here either.
In this case too, the industry is being led by fear instead of innovation. Steam has proven the viablity of digital distribution, Sins and Warhead for lower price-points, Sins, WoW, Spore, The Sims, Teamfortress 2, etc. for compatibility and forgiving hardware requirements. The solution from the developers side, on both PC and consoles (a solution to revenues lost to rentals), is to always ensure the customer feels they are getting their money’s worth. (And release demos!) Brand loyalty and honesty are still important factors.
The solution for the players is to understand that were these goods not “public goods”, ie were they made once to be consumed only once, they’d be literally worth millions of dollars. And when you think about the effort that goes into these games, it hard not to see it in those terms (even if they suck). Realize then that pirating them will literally kill the industry (in the long term).
01/10/2008 at 15:48 OldmanTick says:
I bought GOW as soon as gogamer offered it on sale for $30. I then waited over a month for a patch so I could play it. Then I bought a new video card (8800GT) so I could play it. Then I played it for a little while and never finished it. The stuttering in the heavy action scenes was annoying and there were other games I would rather play, even tho I thought it was good it wasn’t good enough.
I won’t miss GOW2
01/10/2008 at 15:52 Bema says:
I never intended to get it on PC, but his attitude and their crappy reasoning almost wants to make me skip GOW2 entirely.
Actually I won’t skip Gears 2. I’m looking forward to it. No…Instead i’ll just go out a pirate every other Epic game I can find, and give free copies away at my local GAME or something.
01/10/2008 at 15:52 teo says:
@Alec Well how much money would they make? GoW has sold close to 5 million units on 360. If I were a developer I would be mad as hell about piracy (even though they need to adapt) and maybe they just don’t want tons of people to ever have the opportunity to pirate it, even if they turn down a small profit on the PC.
The port of the first game wasn’t very good anyway, it didn’t work for a lot of people, and its gameplay is designed for a controller and not a PC so it’s not that big of a loss if it doesn’t end up here (which it still might have a large chance of doing).
I think that everything Epic puts out now feels so pubescent. To whom do their character designs appeal? Square faced space marines aren’t cool, and all their weapon designs are so bloated. It’s like a kid ducktaped lots of parts together and called it a gun
01/10/2008 at 15:53 Maximum Fish says:
@OldmanTick
I got 75% of the way through, and freaking Games for Windows Live! deleted all of my saves. Then i started over, got about 80% of the way through, and Games for Windows Live! deleted all of my saves. If i wanted the GOW2 experience, i’d just pay someone to break everything in my house, replace it all, and then call him back over. This, for example, is how not to engender brand loyalty.
01/10/2008 at 15:55 Bobsy says:
@Maximum Fish
No no!
Piracy!
Is!
Stealing!
Don’t you remember those trails stuck all over DVDs? YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A HANDBAG! It’s exactly the same! And it funds the terrorists, too! Also the devil is involved somewhere? I’ll be honest, my memories are a bit fuzzy, since I fly into a blind apoplectic rage whenever I see them.
PIRACY!
IS!
STEALING!
01/10/2008 at 15:57 Ian says:
I often wondered with those ads on DVDs, if you confess to being a handbag-stealer does it bother them less when you pirate their DVDs?
01/10/2008 at 15:58 Maximum Fish says:
@Bobsy
Hehe, yeah those were great. With the crappy “intense!!” editing and music that some hopeless suit thought was “hard-driving”. I couldn’t tell if they were trying to make piracy look cool, or condemn it.
And sort of like DARE, all it does is make doing the right thing look boring, square and retarded. Great success!
01/10/2008 at 16:01 Bema says:
If we stole handbags, we’d have the cash to be buy the games in the first place. No piracy needed. Is that a suitable comprimise for society?
01/10/2008 at 16:02 Optimaximal says:
This conclusion was reached on Blues as well… They guy just can’t bring himself to admit that he likes the taste of money, as it makes him sound like a formalised corporate type who cares about dollar down more than the output.
Epic stopped being a factor PC gamers should care about when engine sales became their primary goal – Gears of War was just a lucky move into consoles when Halo 3 didn’t emerge as the 360 killer app and they haven’t looked back.
01/10/2008 at 16:03 Maximum Fish says:
@Berma
But stealing handbags is so Ninja Turtles. I’m in favor of elaborate bank heists instead, like the one in Heat. That was completely badass…
01/10/2008 at 16:05 James says:
While I agree that this guy is a man to whom logic is apparently a foreign concept, and that I’m not particularly fussed on the idea of GoW 2 either on the PC or a console, I’m always vaguely bewildered when a stupid, uninformed response from a video game company negatively aimed at the PC market makes some folk grumble about how stupid, tasteless and childish console gamers are. Did I miss a link here?
01/10/2008 at 16:05 Turin Turambar says:
GOW wasn’t a bad game. It was… an average action game. Jus enough decent to play it, but not even one hair above that.
Action itself was cool but also repetitive thanks to the “stop & shoot” style. There was a mediocre plot typical for action games, a level with a vehicle as the average action game, but the worst was the poor variety of enemies and also weapons. You have the standard enemy grunt, the little ‘imp’ and sometimes the big bulkier-than-average enemies with rocket launchers. Three enemies, wohoo! (excluding big bosses). Pathetic, play Doom ][ to see a good enemy roost in an action game, small enemies, big enemies, flying enemies, invisible enemies, enemies with real weapons, enemies with avoidable fire, etc.
And two scenarios ‘themes’, destroyed cities and caverns. So much variety. Weapons, the average rifle, the average pistol, the average shotgun, the average sniper rifle, the average rocket launcher and nades. Ah yeah, and the only cool weapons: the bow.
In the end, a very average action title. Perhaps this shit can fly in consoles thanks to marketing, but here on pc we need a bit more. And the references to piracy and low sales are stupid. Do you want to know why? Because their other title also bombed, and it couldn’t be pirated. I am speaking of UT3, even having a big pedigree in computers, and being an online game (yes you can play a few games with bots, but it’s not the point) where you can’t crack the central server and you need a cdkey, it bombed as hard as GOW.
01/10/2008 at 16:06 Warbler says:
I really like Gears, it’s one of the best co-op games ever and the mechanics are interestingly different – it really does feel like a puzzle game sometimes. I bought it on PC and will buy the sequel on PC, because we all know it’s coming out. The only way that’s not happening is if MS are now actually paying people /not/ to port their games to Windows.
I wonder where Cliffy is going with his “savvy people are pirates” thing. Are people with a Computing A-level not going to be allowed to buy Gears 2? Are people who are savvy enough not to buy it and just play it co-op on a mate’s machine (which is by far the best bit) going to be locked out? Is UT4 going to start with a question about the difference between RAM and VRAM and wipe your HD if you get it right?
01/10/2008 at 16:19 Nahual says:
I got GoW for the PC, because it was just impossible to ignore all the hype around it. Bleh.
It was pretty solidly built, i’ll give them that, but one, it had that god awful GFW interface for MP, two, the game just wasn’t that good, it was just like playing UT3 while knee deep in molasses and you need to press a button to take cover rather than just doing it like you would in CS or every other FPS.
I really don’t understand the button to take cover mechanic, it’s basically a graphic gimmick that triggers an animation.
01/10/2008 at 16:21 Maximum Fish says:
@Optimaximal
And the funny thing is, i was never really impressed by the Unreal 3 engine (from the players vantage point), at least when compared with PC engines. Shadow maps (terribly old school these days), blurry low-res textures disguised by overenthusiastic bloom and other post-processing gimmicks, with the added overuse of fancy glowing fire effects. Source, for one, blows it out of the water.
But you’re right, it’s hard to act like you’re “in it for the games” (or the players for that matter), when you’ve hocked your engine on 7 tenths of the console developers out there. Cliffy needs to shed his everyman T-shirt and Jeans, and don the suit, because he’s joined the fraternity. It’s all golf and conference calls from here on out.
01/10/2008 at 16:41 mashakos says:
I believe it’s also a case of beefing up the XBOX 360′s lineup of exclusives. Right now, Sony has the edge on title exclusives which has proven to boost their sales . Think what will happen to PS3 sales once Gran Turismo or the umpteenth iteration of Final Fantasy are released.
01/10/2008 at 16:45 Maximum Fish says:
@mashakos
Do they?? I mean, i’m not being sarcastic, I just didn’t realize that. My brother has a PS3, and back when he still had time to follow this sort of thing the horizon for exclusives looked pretty grim. I hope for Sony’s sake (and for the sake of healthy competition) that they can manage to secure some exclusives better than Haze and Lair.
01/10/2008 at 16:55 Bhlaab says:
Oh no we’re being punished
01/10/2008 at 16:58 mcw says:
I think Cliff Bleszinski is just using the piracy argument as an excuse for not releasing Gears of War 2 for the PC. My guess is that Epic no longer considers the PC as a financially viable platform for their products. They just don’t want to publicly announce that so they come up with excuses. They’re probably making enough money on engine licensing and developing games for their core United States teenage demographic a.k.a. Console Land.
01/10/2008 at 17:01 Ninjas says:
Okay, reality check time:
-The top 4 best selling PC games of all time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games#PC) have come out since the peak of PC game sales. (http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=15831). You may notice that the top selling PC games were/are exclusive to PC.
-”As of June 27, 2008, Crysis has beaten EA’s expectations and sold 1.5 million copies worldwide, according to a gamesradar article.”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crysis). 1.5 million? That is more than Quake 2 (note, Crytech also made a press release complaining about piracy)
So if you can sell into the PC market, and make more sales than ever, and you can exceed sales expectations even releasing a game like Crysis that can’t run on normal PC hardware and is buggy as hell, what exactly is the problem?
Cliffy B, if you happen to read this: we know you didn’t like the PC reviews your shitty Gears port got, and we know you can make more money making retreads of decade old games on the consoles, but we PC gamers are not as dumb as your new “fans” so please come up with better lies. K thx
01/10/2008 at 17:04 Paul Moloney says:
“Oh no we’re being punished”
Expect “CliffyB is not going to make you his bitch” adverts.
P.
01/10/2008 at 17:07 mashakos says:
EDIT: I just wanted to add that if a game like GOW2 comes out on the PC, there will be even less incentive for buyers to choose the XBOX 360 over the PS3. They could play it safe, get a $600 PC and a PS3.
“I hope for Sony’s sake (and for the sake of healthy competition) that they can manage to secure some exclusives better than Haze and Lair.”
well, that was when the PS3 was first launched. After MGS4, high profile exclusives for the PS3 will start showing up soon. GOW 3, as in God of War 3 – another game for meatheads – will be huge for Sony.
Shadow of the Colossus 2 maybe? I don’t know, the team behind Shadow of the Colossus are working on a title right now.
01/10/2008 at 17:09 Ian says:
This is all well and good, but RPS need to do less sparking of important, interesting debate and more linking me to work-day-consuming games like Robokill.
01/10/2008 at 17:11 cliffski says:
another reason for me to get annoyed when people confuse me with him.
I’d never make a game as blatantly about my suppressed homosexuality as gears of war :D.
01/10/2008 at 17:26 Psychopomp says:
Gears of War : The most fun i’ve ever had not thinking. It accomplished it’s goal of being a brainless action movie with flying colors.
It was fun, deal with it.
There is nothing wrong with that, we don’t demand every movie be Citizen Kane, so why must every shooter be Planescape:Torment ala Deus Ex?
I pray for the day that my fellow PC gamers realize they’re as pretentious as fanboys are stupid.
Also, anyone who didn’t think the chainsaw bayonet was cool needs their awesome gland inspected.
01/10/2008 at 17:28 Cigol says:
LittleBigPlanet, Heavy Rain, Team ICO’s next project, Killzone 2, Gran Turismo 5, EyePet, a new Singstar, Uncharted 2, SOCOM, God of War 3… That’s just off the top of my head and ignores all the stuff that has gone before and all the PSN/indie stuff like PixelJunk EDEN which is just pure awesome. There are also supposedly some unnannounced Japanese Sony titles for the PS3 to be revealed shortly, hopefully some RPG’s.
The whole ‘PS3 doesn’t have any games’ argument is null. If you aren’t enticed by what the PS3 has to offer now, or in the near future then you never will be. Having a top-end PC the stuff on the XBOX just doesn’t interest me but if that’s your bag, go for it.
Cliff on the otherhand wouldn’t like the PS3. There’s no piracy. Nothing to complain about. I wonder how well UT3 sold on the PS3? Was it a hit?
01/10/2008 at 17:44 Maximum Fish says:
@Psychopomp
The chainsaw bayonet was like half the reason i bought that game. Too bad it was weighed down by crappy GFWL nonsense and was fairly repetetive besides. It was fun, and i guess my memory is somewhat discolored by the fact that it deleted my saves, twice, but there’re better balls-out mindless shooters out there in my opinion.
I think Painkiller is the most fun i’ve ever had not thinking. Yeah, probably Painkiller. Chainsaw bayonet ain’t got nothing on the Shotgun with an underslung ice-beam.
And it’s not so much “good riddance Cliff, we can do without you, what with the upcoming 4-dimensional Go translation and an adventure game chronicling the early life of Friedrich Nietzsche”, but rather “good riddance Cliff, because there’s a ton of other better games out there in the “dying” PC space, many of which involve casually shooting space aliens, and frankly we didn’t even realize you’d made another Gears game yet.”
Sour grapes? Maybe a bit. But also true.
01/10/2008 at 17:44 Paul Moloney says:
“Gears of War : The most fun i’ve ever had not thinking. It accomplished it’s goal of being a brainless action movie with flying colors. It was fun, deal with it.”
Well, some people (like me) weren’t arguing that it wasn’t enjoyable because brainless. Hell, I loved Sin Episodes: Emergence; a more brainless action game it would be hard to find, and even pretty buggy, but the action was good fun with a nice satisfying chunking-feeling pistols. However, the weapons in GoW were mehtastic.
P.
01/10/2008 at 17:50 Erlam says:
I think he knows it’ll get bad reviews on the PC, again, because it won’t stack up to shooters on the PC. Again.
And I disagree that it was fun — it’s one of two shooters I own I never beat. It’s got an annoying camera angle, it takes 9813289213812 rounds to kill anything unless you do the following:
-Enter room.
-Get behind cover.
-Peak out, headshot guy.
-Peak out, headshot guy.
-Peak out, headshot guy.
-Enter room.
-Get behind cover…
01/10/2008 at 17:59 Warbler says:
mashakos – Final Fantasy 13 is coming to 360 as well, btw. Maybe even PC.
Erlam – you have to use the environment and your teammates to flank, rush to close emergence holes then get back to cover, etc. It’s also a bit like Bioshock in that it’s much more fun if you vary your tactics.
Although to be fair sniper rifle + mouse aiming does make it really easy to just sit and rack up headshots.
01/10/2008 at 18:00 The Shed says:
Nnng this is annoying. Everywhere I turn there are PC gamers mouthing off at games that work on console, but not necessarily on their native Personal Computer (be it because of poor porting, or the controls/ game design being better suited to a console game). GoW was a decent-good shooter on console; the rounded heftiness of the X360 suited it perfectly, and that was part of its appeal. It’s heaviness really doesn’t work on WASDMouse the same as a chunky analog stick does, and the same goes for a number of Console titles that are ripped in the PC forum. Course, this doesn’t change anything about good ole Crazy Cliff.
01/10/2008 at 18:11 Maximum Fish says:
You were probably supposed to close the emergence holes or whatever, but i just popped everybody who came out of one until they closed automatically.
I figured i’d bought the game so i could shoot evil aliens, not blow up holes in the ground.
01/10/2008 at 18:19 Robin says:
Ideally, Epic would have looked at how Gears of War did on the PC (and Unreal Tournament III, everywhere) and had a long hard think about whether they wanted to keep going down this road.
There’s something wrong with your business model if your games are viewed as so utterly disposable, insincere and unengaging that they can only legitimately sell to a captive audience (Gears of War’s sales could mostly be attributed to 360 owners impatient for Halo 3), and even then need to be extravagantly marketed by the hardware manufacturer.
01/10/2008 at 18:23 Kareem says:
This is quite alright. Unreal Tournament 3 was a piece of garbage.
01/10/2008 at 18:24 Shadowmancer says:
Piracy does happen on consoles even on the xbox 360 at the present moment t can be mod chiped to allow every regions games on it however because of xbox live its harder for the pirates as most online xbox 360 games have to be regisetered to a machine (live account also) much like a cd key registration this has had numerous problems as 2nd games cant be used online properly and some ppl ahve been banned from xbox live for getting games too early, the ps3 on the other had a better idea to piracy make it region free and so far it has worked, the problem with the pc however is that it cant be regulated as much as xbox live with xbox live microsoft controlls everything with the pc its up to the user to control everything, Cliffy does have a point that pc gaming is complicated as most machines that are sold come with intel gpus rather than nvidia ones and that they are branded as ultimate gaming machines that run crysis (belive me lots of places do this with £400 shelf computers) and other high performance programmes, he furthermore has a point that if one is tech savy then they know about the dark side of pc gamiing and will just pay a vist there to save money, i’m not defending cliffy (i think hes an idiot) but he does have points.
01/10/2008 at 19:11 jackflash says:
Step 1. Console developer ports game to PC months or years after it first came out on console
Step 2. Ported console game is garbage to play on PC, or target audience already played it on console
Step 3. Ported console game sells poorly on PC
Step 4. Console developer blames poor PC sales on piracy.
How are these people smart enough to program complex software, again?
01/10/2008 at 19:13 Ian Kiigan says:
Perhaps I’m alone here, but I thought Gears of War is a fantastic game overall (on Xbox 360 at least), and I loved UTIII also. So let’s not get all silly and start trashing great games just because GoW2 isn’t coming to PC.
It is a shame that it won’t be coming to PC, but there’s really no need to get so worked up over it. The last thing the PC needs is more ropey console ports. Ultimately if the PC as a platform doesn’t make commercial sense for Epic to port GoW2 due to piracy or whatever, surely that’s fair enough isn’t it? If it was worth their while doing it, they’d be doing it. No point moaning about it – there’s plenty of great stuff coming to PC, just as there are great things coming to consoles.
01/10/2008 at 19:15 subedii says:
I’m another of those people who enjoyed playing Gears a fair amount. Even played a couple of custom levels that people made (pretty good actually), if they had fixed the editor and supported the levelmakers a little more there might have been a nice (if small) community brewing there.
Sidestepping the piracy argument for the moment (I will say that it’s pretty true that piracy’s a big issue here), I have to wonder…
Just what is Mark Rein’s role on the PCGA now? His company has nothing to do with PC games anymore, and the PCGA has achieved precisely as much as I expected them to: not a lot.
It’s not like he can claim to want to support the platform when he’s not releasing anything on it.
01/10/2008 at 19:19 Bhlaab says:
It’s a sad attempt to punish people is all it is. They’ve been bitching a considerable amount about sales and review scores for gears 1 on the pc, and now they’re taking their ball and going home.
I can’t imagine the piracy demands for gears are anywhere even approaching Crysis or Spore and both of those sold rather well regardless.
01/10/2008 at 19:21 Monkfish says:
Epic really need to decide on their official stance on PC gaming as Messrs Rein and Bleszinski just keep contradicting each other (case in point, this interview at Eurogamer).
I mean, Epic are supposed to be helping the PC gaming cause as (rather vocal) members of the PC gaming alliance – Bleszinski’s solo outbursts only ever seem to bring confusion to the mix.
01/10/2008 at 19:35 jbrandt says:
Wait, so, he just said that people who know how to update video cards are pirates.
Just because we know how to run bittorrent doesn’t mean we’re pirating games. I mean, hell, I know how to take a pistol and shoot somebody in the head, but I don’t do it.
01/10/2008 at 19:46 Optimaximal says:
Except in a few unusual circumstances, it’s not the people doing the actual development who are making the ‘Piracy’ quotes – It’s either loud-mouth marketeers like CliffyB or clueless CEOs like Cevat Yerli (aka. people that don’t like losing money but also aren’t likely to lose their job when the development company has to make cuts because Meathead Blaster VII tanked).
At least Molyneux had the balls in a recent interview to admit he has next too no contact with any form of coding anymore, existing only to hype the game to infinity and back before collecting his paycheck. I suppose he is British, after all. We rejected arrogance for humblism years ago.
01/10/2008 at 19:57 Dr_demento says:
Well… I know enough to pirate a game, easily. On the other hand, keeping a gaming PC in working order and up-to-date enough to play new games for more than a few months, and debugging said games when they haven’t been alpha-tested enough to run on a computer well within the minimum specs… that’s beyond me.
Also, there’s a hell of a lot of childish name-calling going on here. Cliff would not say something like this if it wasn’t true (why?), and he’s never denied that he’s doing it for the money. Oh – and he’s already tried to get people to stop using “CliffyB”, so it’s now pretty much exclusively used by immature AIM trying to make him look childish.
01/10/2008 at 20:02 mashakos says:
Gears Of War PC was by no means a bad port. It was ported by the developers of Painkiller guys, they did it right.
The problem with the port was the PC gamer, who approached it as a PC title. I had trouble with the style till I realized that this the game wasn’t a regular FPS where aiming was important. Case in point: shooting the enemies’ legs dealt more damage than shooting their heads. Didn’t try shooting them in the ass, maybe that’s a head shot in GOW!
Anyway, if you play the game as if you’re in a Quake 3 deathmatch you’ll waste time and ammo. Just run towards the enemies and shoot low.
The game was repetitive but it had it’s moments (the banshee!), and if you bought it you had to know that you were getting a brainless arcade shooter. It’s pace was a change from the more ‘serious’ shooters. It was a fun diversion in between long sessions of Crysis and COD4.
01/10/2008 at 20:13 Tony says:
Remember when Mr. Bleszinski was cool?
Anyone?
01/10/2008 at 20:25 Pidesco says:
8 years ago, I thought he was cool.
Gears of War was an incompetently designed game so I don’t see how anyone with half a brain would want to play its sequel.
01/10/2008 at 20:42 Maj.Havok says:
What a load of c***. I like UT3 and the whole Unreal universe. I actually had respect for mister “Cliffy B” at one time. Please Epic sell the Unreal(game not engine) license to a developer who cares…like Valve, or almost anyone else. Can you imagine UT3 with updates every 3-4 months like Valve does with TF2 and is promising with L4D…
01/10/2008 at 21:02 Kadayi says:
I’m pretty sure Cliffy B is just at Epic for comedy effect. He is as Mandrill pointed out akin to Romero. He makes headlines whenever he opens his mouth, but no one really cares about his actual opinion in critical terms any more. He’s not someone people run to for critical opinion, he’s just someone in the position to soap box.
That he’s happy to basically accuse pretty much all serious gamers of being wanton pirates without a second thought is just par for the course. The man has a very limited perception of what makes a good game and what gaming is. Unless it’s full of alpha males with big guns running around being macho, Cliffy just doesn’t see it (are there any women in GoW at all?).
01/10/2008 at 21:13 Nick says:
Oh dear, the quality Epic releases will be sorely missed by .. er.. not many people?
I only got GoW because I won it in a PCG competition (thanks Craig!) and it was alright, not going to cry about no sequel as I could care less about the rubbish story being continued or whatever.
01/10/2008 at 21:19 Tei says:
Could console developpers stop migratting console games to to PC, please? these games looks outdated, boring, repetitive and dumbedown on the dynamic and rich PC world. I don’t want more stinky consolecrapware …
01/10/2008 at 21:49 Andrew Wills says:
Way to insult your customers, CliffyB. I’m really getting tired of being treated like this by stroppy developers, who release sub par games, expecting millions within days, only to blame piracy when they don’t go platinum within a week. I liken it to a popstar throwing a tantrum.
Oh, and I do like how you guys are continuing to refer to him as CliffyB, despite his lame attempt to ditch the nickname!
I was upset when I heard that Epic were planning to ditch PC… Now I’m not, as it just gives other, BETTER, independent developers a chance to create excellent games on a more open market, with lower expectations in terms of revenue.
01/10/2008 at 21:59 DosFreak says:
Chalk me up as another PC only gamer who was disappointed with Gears of War. Having hearing all of the hype (never played it before) about how great it was I loaded it up and played it for an hour an a half and that’s all I needed to see to turn me off of it.
(I only play single-player no multi-player).
01/10/2008 at 22:03 RichPowers says:
@Andrew: I agree that piracy is often used as a scapegoat for games that either sell poorly or have unreasonable sales expectations. If you’re trying to explain poor sales to investors or the media, why blame yourself when you can blame the evil pirates?
For example, expect to move 3 million units of a niche game like Sins of a Solar Empire is unreasonable. By all accounts, however, Stardock is pleased with the money it’s earned, probably because developments costs were fairly low.
01/10/2008 at 22:07 Radiant says:
What ever happened to Catscan.com anyway?
01/10/2008 at 22:17 bitkari says:
Oh Clifford, you ignorant [fool - ed]
01/10/2008 at 22:48 sinister agent says:
Honestly, I think you lads are doing it on purpose now.
01/10/2008 at 22:48 Erlam says:
“For example, expect to move 3 million units of a niche game like Sins of a Solar Empire is unreasonable. By all accounts, however, Stardock is pleased with the money it’s earned, probably because developments costs were fairly low.”
This industry confuses the hell outta me. Spending 30 million on a game that sells 5 million copies is somehow better than spending 1 million and selling 750k. /shrug.
01/10/2008 at 22:48 Cyberpope says:
thats quite a long rambling comment from Mr B there. I think we can safely assume what hes trying to say is “all pc gamers are theives”. Makes me want to get an Xbox just so i can pirate that cruddy brown muscular game
01/10/2008 at 23:24 Valentin Galea says:
GoW is FUN when it all boils down, but
they’re just lazy bastards – hard coding everything to the xbox:(
It’s funny how EPIC started it all on the PC… even with software renderers!
02/10/2008 at 00:03 The Shed says:
@mashakos: Agreed. The PC lot tend to start up something like GoW and expect something like Crysis. Like starting up Mario and expecting Braid.
02/10/2008 at 00:07 Flubb says:
Cliffy B gave up on programming decent games after UT99, and now is just in the business to support his loud shirts and metro hairstyle.
02/10/2008 at 00:26 El_MUERkO says:
i don’t think many {any} PC gamers give a rats ass
02/10/2008 at 00:48 MetalCircus says:
I would be bothered if Cliffy B wasn’t such a prick
oh and gears of war… fun for 3 hours.
02/10/2008 at 00:51 Bhlaab says:
@Erlam:
Why did Gamecube “lose” the last generation of consoles even though Nintendo was the only one of the three not losing a ton of money on each unit produced?
I’ll tell you why: Because the games industry is based on a “my [total units sold] is bigger than yours” mentality that manages to shun any form of reason.
Of COURSE we need to blow 30 million on a poor imitation of Halo, how else are we going to compete with a juggernaut like Halo?
02/10/2008 at 02:45 Nahual says:
I don’t think anyone is arguing that the game was bad because it’s brainless, like quite a few have mentioned, it wasn’t even bad, it was just kinda repetitive and boring.
Towards the last 1/3 i just wanted it to end.
It’s also not because it was slow, you can make great slow games (STALKER, the original Ghost Recon), it’s just that it’s slow, simplistic, gimmicky and oh so easy with m&k as controllers, it’s quickly reduced to headshot 3 guys over and over again.
02/10/2008 at 05:57 Lewis says:
I always like it when paying customers are lumped together with thieves. Good PR, that.
02/10/2008 at 07:41 Mr. President says:
Well they can keep their GoW2 for all I care.
02/10/2008 at 07:44 MultiVaC says:
I think I read “CliffyB”‘s blog once. It was kind of embarrassing because he seems to have the sense of humor of an 8 year old. I don’t think he’s ever made a statement that didn’t make him sound completely out of touch. Isn’t Epic supposed to be a prominent member of the “PC Gaming Alliance”? (I’m still not even sure what the fuck that group does, btw) I don’t see them really making an effort with their PC games, so I’m not surprised that nobody wants to buy their half-assed ports. I bought UT3 and I really regret it, the game sucked big time. I didn’t like the first Gears of War on the 360 either; I think “meathead” is a pretty apt word that game’s target audience. It wasn’t so much the brainlessness that bothered me, it was more the obnoxious, macho frat boy attitude that put me off, plus the gimmicky cover system that kicked off the idiotic trend of copycat third-person shooters and reduced the gunfights to a glorified game of whack-a-mole. Sure co-op was fun, but who can name a game that isn’t fun in co-op? Hell, even farming TF2 achievements on a LAN is fun when you’re doing it with friends. So good riddance to Epic and their loudmouthed manchild game designer, I wouldn’t buy another one their games anyway.
02/10/2008 at 08:56 Muzman says:
It’s fairly typical for third parties to do the ports these days isn’t it? So some small start-up-n-comers who want EA friends might offer to do it for a song and a cut six months down the road. Surely, if the game is successful, the only way this wouldn’t happen is if Mr Shout-out-to-the-mosh-pit, but-don’t-touch-the-hair up there actively opposes it out of spite and/or a desire for blog hits.
02/10/2008 at 09:55 mashakos says:
EPIC PHAIL
02/10/2008 at 10:28 Optimaximal says:
Former (assuming £30 a game) = £150 million profit
Latter (again, assuming £30 a game) = 22.5 million profit
Obviously this is a general figure, but you can see how investing more on marketing and the graphics/engine (where most of the money really goes) looks good on paper.
02/10/2008 at 10:39 TheApologist says:
Agree with Alec – there are a bunch of reasons this didn’t work on PC, and piracy is just one of them. The rest are all about Epic.
My particular beef is a game that could only really appeal to someone who thought the new Rambo was a serious film.
02/10/2008 at 10:54 subedii says:
You’re kidding right? Look the plot was sheer pap and practically made no sense, the setting was an inconsistent mess pumped with three NFL seasons worth of testosterone, and the dude with the helmet was the only one to get shot in the head (and he’s coming back in the sequel! ).
Who cares. The game was ridiculous, there’s no way any sane person could take that crap seriously for more than 5 minutes. You don’t really expect more from it anymore than from a summer lockbuster. I’m as guilty as anyone of ragging on Jerry Bruckheimer, but I can’t fault the fact that sometimes he makes a good action set piece and that’s all he set out to do with his films (still think most of his films are crap though). Gears is a game where you remove your brain before entering, and if you can’t really do that that’s fine. But you definitely don’t need to treat the loopy subject matter seriously.
And if you can? Well, you might be able to enjoy a decent shooter that’s completely OTT and laugh at how ridiculously Macho Macho MAN! everything is.
02/10/2008 at 11:03 Gryff says:
@ Optimaximal
Yeah, but follow that along,
30 million spent gets you £150 million profit, versus
30 million spent gets you £675 million.
Ignoring such things as increased costs for having 30 teams working over the same period and saturating the market with 30 games coming our near the same time.
02/10/2008 at 12:00 thesombrerokid says:
Gears 2 on PC announced 2 weeks after 360 release guaranteed!
basically just now they make most of their money from releasing a 360 exclusive but after they’ve sold all the copies on the 360 and the pc port is ext to free they’d be daft not to get the 100,000 guaranteed pc sales even despite all the supposed piracy.
and i know this is obvious but what he says about piracy on the pc is actually more relevant to piracy on the 360 as you don’t need any tech sav whatsoever to pirate games on the pc whereas the kind of people who play the ‘hardcore’ games on the 360 are almost guaranteed to be smart young and ruthless enough to flash there drive and get all there games for free.
02/10/2008 at 13:13 Tichinde says:
Personally, I bought GoW on the PC for 1 reason only.
To have a relaxed, story driven multiplayer experience with one of my mates.
I have never played it on my own.
It’s fantastic. I will never forget a section where my partner in crime and I were on one side of a dark (and instant bat related death) corridor with a small path round the side leading to a hell of a lot of enemies.
I sat there and kept their attention, my colleague zipped off round the side and when they all turned to the new flanking threat I popped most of them with the sniper rifle.
Forget Gears if you’re going to play it alone with Retard McSpacker Pants (otherwise known as AI) controlling your sidekick.
Play it with a friend and voice comms and make the most of it.
Gief GoW2 PC :(
02/10/2008 at 13:55 roryok says:
=/ Sorry Alec, Won’t happen again!
Flip that flippin cliffy b in the bottom with a lead-pipe. grasshole. gears is a big pile of willy. I’m flipping sick of listening to that whiny, good for nothing vagina. he can go flip himself for all I care.
I always love those piracy ads.
YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A CAR
No, I wouldn’t. I can see their thinking on that. However, if I could COPY a car, hell I don’t think I’d have to be clandestine about it. My friends would probably let me copy theirs. I’d certainly let them copy mine.
YOU WOULDNT STEAL A HANDBAG
Ehm… that would be a bit fruity.
DOWNLOADING MOVIES IS STEALING
No, not really. Neither is copying DVDs, the legality of the whole situation is really all up in the air. Even governments can’t agree with each other on what the law should be. We ban people from the internet. We don’t. we let people back up their own DVDs. No we don’t do that. Well we want to turn a blind eye to the whole thing and just tax everyone for downloading everything, then give the tax away to the record companies. Oh canada – you so crazy!
The best thing about the piracy ad is that it comes on DVDs, and is unskippable. Thus, the ad itself, is a reason to download movies instead of renting them.
PIRACY FUNDS TERRORISM
This is insulting. as if al-queda are sitting in a cave copying movies and selling them. On the other hand…
NON-PIRACY FUNDS MARTIN LAWRENCE MOVIES
YOU WOULDNT PAY SOMEONE TO MAKE BIG MOMMAS HOUSE 2
DONT RENT DVDS
02/10/2008 at 15:24 iainl says:
Porting Gears 2 to PC is easy, because the tech is all multi-platform.
The reason Gears 1 sucked was all the GFWL integration. They should put it on Steam instead.
Pick one of the two above. Gears on 360 is so tightly entwined with Live that we’ve had to suffer downtime before each game for upgrades to the service. Reworking all that to use something else would be a seriously large amount of work.
02/10/2008 at 16:25 mellowF says:
mashakos says:
Gears Of War PC was by no means a bad port. It was ported by the developers of Painkiller guys, they did it right.
The problem with the port was the PC gamer, who approached it as a PC title. I had trouble with the style till I realized that this the game wasn’t a regular FPS where aiming was important.
———————————————————————-
Which is exactly the point. See Valve and how they fine-tune their games.
You think something like that would happen to them? I think not.
And that’s the kind of quality problem Epic seems to have.
02/10/2008 at 17:10 Paul Moloney says:
“The problem with the port was the PC gamer, who approached it as a PC title”
Is this some kind of high-level sarcasm that goes right over out PC heads? Or just a euphenism for “set your expectations low and you’ll be happy”?
Personally, I approached it as a game.
P.
02/10/2008 at 17:43 The Shed says:
The fact is that it’s not an FPS, and not one geared around accurate aiming. Almost every PC gamer I can see here seemed to expect something grand like Crysis or HL2, simply because it was renowned on 360. Like trying to fit a square in a round hole.
02/10/2008 at 17:43 iainl says:
I hated Gears. Really, really hated it. With so many people raving about the thing I gruellingly slogged my way through the whole first two levels (and dear LORD do they go on once you’re past the intial one) over the course of a couple of hours.
But I don’t think it’s a question of LOWERING expectations, but looking for a different type of game than the one you got. Your standard PC FPS asks primarily for accuracy skills. Gears, between being aimed at dual-sticks and going for an over-the-shoulder third-person view, decided it was going to concentrate on the more tactical aspects of being in the right place and using cover, and as long as you’re pointing roughly in the right direction that’s fine.
Except that by doing so, they walked right into the firing line of Rainbow 6 and GRAW, where Ubisoft very effectively used a seperate development path to ensure the PC release was a ‘proper’ PC game that demanded both skills.
02/10/2008 at 17:53 The Shed says:
True, and generally your post got it spot on. It’s halfway between mindless shooter and tactical action, where GRAW and RSV tuned the shooter part down a bit. Whilst also making sure their game appealed to PC gamers, where Epic just left it the same as what the consolefolk wanted/expected.
02/10/2008 at 18:20 Psychopomp says:
@Whoever it was.
Helmet-Guy isn’t coming back. That’s the uniform for generic footsoldiers.
Also, I shall forever have a soft spot in my heart for the hilariously macho (even for Gears) Cole.
“AW, YEAH BABY! THIS IS MY KINDA !”
02/10/2008 at 18:34 Dreamhacker says:
Good riddance, Cliffski-B!
02/10/2008 at 18:39 Frye says:
There’s yet another side to it. I was introduced to the downloading of cracks thing because:
1) i wanted to play BF 2 without having to insert a CD all the time, so i was told to mount an image. (2 clicks as opposed to opening my cupboard, opening a cd case, opening my cd drive, and then waiting 90(!!!!) seconds for the cd check to finish and vice versa when im done playing)
2) I wanted to play Clear Sky AT ALL but it insisted i did not have the proper cd in the drive.
I bought both of them. I do not condone piracy and i don’t really need to financially, but had my life not been made this hard, i would never have discovered how easy it actually is to pirate stuff.
02/10/2008 at 18:40 Funky Badger says:
For all this “Well, Gears was less sophisticated than a normal PC game” line of thought, aren’t the 10 most popular PC titles The Sims and World of Warcraft?
The thread reeks somewhat of “she didn’t dump me, I dumped her. And I never liked her anyway!”
02/10/2008 at 18:54 The Shed says:
As iainl said, it’s not “Gears was less sophisticated” it’s “Gears was a totally different kind of game”. I.e. Not your typical PC FPS.
06/10/2008 at 22:32 cassus says:
Cliffy, as someone stated before, just blames shit sales on piracy. I got Gears on 360 second hand from Gamestop. It’s a piece of shit. Seriously. I’ve been playing games for way more than 20 years, and there’s nothing new or special about Gears of War. Take a super linear game without any inovation and polish it forever and you get Gears. Reason PC gamers don’t buy it is either because they already have it on 360, or because they are above the age of 18. It’s a game made for people who were too young to play FPS’es from the beginning.
Seen all this crap before. Nothing new in this series.
Go back to making Pinball games, epic. Those were actually pretty good for their time. In the FPS market, you are oooold neeeews.
07/10/2008 at 12:51 Dexton says:
Didn’t Gears on the PC come out at about the same time as Call of Duty 4, Half Life EP2 and Crysis?
Who knows, maybe it didn’t do that well on the PC because PC gamers had other, much better, games to play with. Anbd yes I thought Gears was rubbish.
07/10/2008 at 13:03 roryok says:
and while we’re on a bout of epic bashing, did anyone else think the last unreal tournament game was nothing but a more polished version of the same old (admittedly fun) game?
How about sinking some of that dosh into something a little more intelligent? Replace those CHAINsaws with BRAINsaws man…
17/10/2008 at 22:32 Paul Emil says:
GOW had two colours: Shit brown and gunmetal grey. The two most boring colours in existence. Compare that to Serious Sam 2.
29/07/2011 at 17:20 UncleLou says:
I’ve been building my own PCs longer than I care to remember, but I don’t have the foggiest idea how to pirate a game. I’ll admit I might be in a minority there. Last time I pirated a game, 5,25” floppy discs were exchanged on the schoolyard, in the 1980s.