By John Walker on October 8th, 2008 at 11:50 am.
Sorry to get into this again, but as much as I want to ignore it, this one’s significant. Ubisoft have stated that they’re artificially delaying the launch of EndWar on PC because of, you guessed it, piracy.
Talking to VideoGaming247, Ubisoft Shanghai director and former Total War “Evangelist”, Michael de Plater said,
“To be honest, if PC wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the same day as the other two.”
He continues,
“But at the moment, if you release the PC version, essentially what you’re doing is letting people have a free version that they rip off instead of a purchased version. Piracy’s basically killing PC.”
This hardly seems worth saying, but of course we in no way endorse piracy. Illegally downloading games is, well, illegal. But what we want – what we want so much that our sides ache and our foreheads pulse – is for the truth to be at the centre of this discussion. We want people who make these decisions, who give comments like this, to present the facts and figures that back up their statements.
We want to see the demonstrable evidence for the harm piracy has on sales. Because if it’s true, then yes, action needs to be taken. But if it isn’t (and history suggests it very well might not be – the most successful formats in the last 30 years have always been the most pirated, with the DS currently proving this on a dramatic scale), then untold damage is being done to the PC platform by claims like this.
What’s fascinating here is to consider whether this is an isolated case, or whether this attitude is endemic amongst publishers. Is this why we’re not seeing Mirror’s Edge on PC until next year? Does this explain why GTA takes nine months to find its way onto our preferred platform? Are we missing out on Fable 2 because of a fear of the pirates? Halo 3? Has the reputation of the PC, so far entirely without corroborating evidence, hobbled it?
At the moment it feels like an out-of-control rumour is driving a steamroller over the PC. Increasing numbers of publishers, who frankly wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the PC, are jumping on board. And this is despite the continued huge sales on PC via the dramatic success of digital distribution. The perceived, received opinion is that, “If someone downloads a copy of a game, that’s a lost sale.” As much as this might immediately appear to make sense, a moment’s scrutiny reveals it to be, so far, entirely unfounded. (Stardock’s Brad Wardell wrote eloquently on this subject earlier this year). Surely the people publishing games should be desperately researching to find out why their PC games might not be selling in the volumes they might hope, rather than just assuming it’s piracy, and then declaring it as a fact. It might be piracy! It really might be. But without evidence, without facts and figures to back this claim up, it can only be considered hearsay, and deeply unproductive.
So come on publishers, put your mouth where your money is, and organise some research into this. Demonstrate that PC piracy damages console sales, and you’ll win our attention. From that point, we can start creating imaginative new methods of controlling the problem. Until then, actively hobbling the PC yourselves is quite the self-fulfilling tragedy. (Thanks to the GriddleOctopus for the tip).
08/10/2008 at 11:52 AndrewC says:
“Increasing numbers of publishers, who frankly would exist if it weren’t for the PC”
Ooooo, Freudian.
08/10/2008 at 11:54 John Walker says:
Yes, it’s because of my lust for my mother and hate for my father that I accidentally wrote a typo. Fixed.
08/10/2008 at 11:56 Grill / Griddleoctopus says:
Oedipus wrecks everything!
08/10/2008 at 12:00 StalinsGhost says:
Piracy isn’t killing the PC. It’s the idiots who think it is who are. They’re fast becoming gaming dinosaurs, basically releasing the same old crap over and over on consoles anyway to be frank.
08/10/2008 at 12:01 grumpy says:
What’s ironic is that they could more or less solve the problem if they just put the game on Steam. But of course, that’s probably not prestigious enough for a big publisher. They need their game boxes…..
Still, when a solution exists, these claims end up sounding a bit silly.
08/10/2008 at 12:05 Cigol says:
If they released it on PC first, everybody would pirate it, true. Because it’s probably crap. Like the Force Unleashed – which was released on every single platform known to mankind EXCEPT the PC. All because it was pants.
Would you rather pay for someone to take a shit in your face or do it yourself. Exactly; I did neither – but I know that some people actually paid for the privilege.
Endwar is looking ace by the way. [/sarcasm]
08/10/2008 at 12:06 Rev. S Campbell says:
Hang on – if piracy is in the process of killing the PC, then surely the longer you delay release, the worse it’s going to be?
08/10/2008 at 12:07 John Walker says:
Ubisoft, especially, make the completely mad decision to release games on Steam in the US only. Not releasing your finished game for months, and then not making it easily available to willing customers. It’s hard not to think these might be factors when the game doesn’t sell!
08/10/2008 at 12:07 Cigol says:
~~~~ BUT IN ALL SERIOUSNESS ~~~~
Put ‘em to task RPS! Get your investigatory goggles on and start asking round and do a bloody feature on this self-fulfilling rumour.
08/10/2008 at 12:09 Calabi says:
Well if their so stupid that they they dont want the sales at all. Perhaps the indy scene and the real innovative games can rise up through the drudge.
I think the playstation was hugely pirated as well and look at how popular that became.
Surely their making it worse with these comments all the time. “FINE IF YOU WANT ME TO PIRATE I’LL PIRATE” I wont but I’m getting tempted.
08/10/2008 at 12:09 Whiskey Jack says:
You know what? If they don’t want to risk it being pirated (fuck, how I hate Pirates! And no I’m not a Ninja.) well let them be. As far as I’m concerned it is within their right.
I would be pretty pissed too to see thousands of people playing my game for free if 200 of my colleagues and I had spent two or three years of our lives and the company tens of millions of dollars to make it. And the fact that the game’s sales are profitable or not isn’t even part of the issue, and yes piracy IS theft, don’t start with that nonsensical attempt at an argument again.
I’m gonna play this one on my console with the microphone and I will simply play other games on my PC, as simple as that.
08/10/2008 at 12:10 Ragnar says:
The logic of big publishers looks a bit like this to me:
If it hadn’t been for PC game piracy I would have been very rich.
Evidence: I’m not very rich and there is a lot of piracy of PC games.
Anyway. I still have a lot more games to play (that I like to play) on the PC than I have time to play.
08/10/2008 at 12:10 Plinglebob says:
Considering Ubisoft were the biggest fans of Starforce when it was used, this latest action doesn’t surprise me. Sadly, it will likely mean the sales of the PC version will be lower than expected because people will buy it on a console instead. This will then lead Ubisoft (and possibly others) to say “LOW SALES CUZ OF DIRTY PIRATES!!!!!!!” and force more crap onto us.
08/10/2008 at 12:12 Tei says:
Geezers. Another dumbed down game, that seems will not release on the PC.
08/10/2008 at 12:13 Bobsy says:
@grumpy
I think publisher pride is worryingly endemic at the moment. There’s no reason why Lucasarts games aren’t on GOG.com, for example, and you can bet your life that GOG asked LA if they’d like to take part. LA aren’t selling their old games, but they’re hanging on to them on the possibility that they might.
Likewise Steam is one of the biggest, best and most accessible digital distribution platforms around, but many publishers aren’t keen because they think they can do it themselves and not have to give Valve a cut of the profit. Most publishers have proved they can’t get digital distribution right, but try telling them that.
08/10/2008 at 12:14 muscrat says:
Id rather play World in Conflict than another game raping the Clancy title.
08/10/2008 at 12:14 subedii says:
Oh what the heck? I thought we passed this kind of idiocy sometime ago but it keeps coming back.
It’s almost like they’re trying to sabotage their PC releases these days.
08/10/2008 at 12:15 Dizet Sma says:
“But at the moment, if you release the PC version, essentially what you’re doing is letting people have a free version that they rip off instead of a purchased version.”
Wha? Does that mean that ‘pirates’ who have a console and a PC will throw up their hand and say “Arr, I’ll buy this version now and get me free Pee Cee copy later. Shiver me timbers, those crafty developers have foxed me again!”
I somehow doubt that the level of hacked copies is related to how many days / months later a PC version is released after the console version(s). There’ll probably be a pirated version out before the official release date anyway.
08/10/2008 at 12:15 John Walker says:
Whiskey Jack, saying something boldly doesn’t make it true.
Piracy is illegal. Piracy isn’t theft. Theft requires someone to have lost the stolen item when it is taken. Duplication is not theft – it’s duplication. This comes back to my central point above – there is no point in this debate if people aren’t willing to engage with the truth. Shouting “PIRACY IS THEFT!” doesn’t make it true. It is illegal. It is against the law to do it. But it isn’t theft, and so let’s not use that word to describe it.
And I’ll put this one out there: If I’d spent three years working with my 200 colleagues, I’d have been paid for my time. Unless I was on residuals, and I’m not going to be am I?, then that people are sharing/copying/downloading my game is pretty irrelevant. I got paid the same either way. (Were this piracy then to cause the sales of the game to not support further development, and thus the loss of my job, we’d have a problem again – however, that’s what’s unproven, and what I’m calling for publishers to research).
08/10/2008 at 12:18 Bobsy says:
@John Walker:
I’ve struggled with Ubisoft’s desicion not to Steam-distribute in Europe, and I can’t think of a good reason why. It makes double nonsense when you remember that half of Ubisoft is still based in France, where they first formed.
Have you tried asking them what their reasons are? Have they tried explaining it? If there is logique behind it, I’d love to hear it. I certainly can’t work it out myself.
08/10/2008 at 12:18 DarthS says:
Piracy is becoming the excuse of the moment for lazy publishers. It seems a bit naive to think mass piracy won’t follow them to the consoles.
08/10/2008 at 12:20 cliffski says:
You can never get accurate stats on this because you can’t do an A/B test with exactly the same game. it can’t be done. But when one of the biggest sites on the internet by bandwidth is rapidshare, and another is thepiratebay, it stands to reason that there is a hell of a lot of pc piracy going on, and a lot of it is games.
I’m certain if there was no piracy I’d be playing Company Of Heroes 2 right now. Yes, there are still publishers making games for the PC, like Valve, Stardock and the total war guys, but they are the exception now.
This guy is just stating what many in the industry think to be a fact, which is that if you make a multi-format game, there is a net loss from porting it to the PC, because so many potential console buyers pirate it for the PC instead.
08/10/2008 at 12:22 Morberis says:
“the game’s sales are profitable or not isn’t even part of the issue”
Oh come off it they’re in the business to make money and that’s it. Ohhh it hurts me emotionally, you know deep down when unauthorized people play my games. You don’t see that excuse in any other industry, even music, and there’s a reason for that.
Until someone actually does a study on the ratio of pirated copies to lost sales is I’m not going to believe a word they say.
08/10/2008 at 12:24 cliffski says:
“If I’d spent three years working with my 200 colleagues, I’d have been paid for my time.”
errr…. that money is basically an investment based upon future sales. If piracy means no sales, then you wouldn’t invest. As someone who invests his own savings in making games, I can assure you that the attitude of “the coders get paid regardless” is irrelevant. The coders get fired the day a game isn’t profitable by a greater percentage than leaving the same money in a bank.
Games publishers aren’t idiots, they invest money to make a return on that investment. Piracy eats into that return.
08/10/2008 at 12:24 Shadowmancer says:
@ John Walker
The reason why Ubisoft doesn’t sell games was debated a lot on the steam forums, the answer was that Ubisoft make more money retail in Europe and the rest of the world rather than America, its down to currency rates average game in us is $30-40 (£15-20) but here in the Uk the average game is £30-40 ($15-20) they pull the old switchero with the currency, if ubisoft started selling steam games they would louse about £10 ($20) per game.
08/10/2008 at 12:25 cliffski says:
“Until someone actually does a study on the ratio of pirated copies to lost sales is I’m not going to believe a word they say.”
how?
And who do you believe then? The kids saying “I wouldn’t have bought it anyway” whilst furiously completing level 36?
08/10/2008 at 12:25 rei says:
They do things like this, and when the game inevitably fails to sell well on the PC due to their own active discouragement of PC sales, they’re going to figure it’s because everyone pirated it and the PC is dying.
It’s almost as if they’re more interested in playing the martyr than actually selling their crap.
08/10/2008 at 12:28 subedii says:
Cliffski, I suspect the reason that you haven’t seen Company of Heroes 2 is because Relic are currently focussing on making Dawn of War 2. I know, I never heard of it either, but apparently it’s the sequel to their incredibly successful other RTS franchise? Just a possibility there.
You can’t just make blank statements of “oh if there were no piracy all game devs would make sequels to the games that I love.” You already know it’s not that simple.
08/10/2008 at 12:28 Morberis says:
“This guy is just stating what many in the industry think to be a fact, which is that if you make a multi-format game, there is a net loss from porting it to the PC, because so many potential console buyers pirate it for the PC instead.”
That I buy, and I’m not opposed to that. I can’t help but think though that if digital download services like Steam and Impulse received as much products and attention as retail that we might not have this problem – or as much as a problem. It still needs to come with some tough, but reasonable DRM though (steam) if its intended for a market that does a large amount of pirating.
08/10/2008 at 12:28 rei says:
Is the editing feature gone? In hindsight I was going to change the “crap” into a less aggressive term, since my mom brought me up right :\
08/10/2008 at 12:29 John Walker says:
Bobsy – I’ve asked Ubisoft why, and have never received an answer.
Cliffski – yes, I was speaking specifically about Whiskey’s example, of a multi-million dollar company with hundreds of employees. And indeed, I added that if piracy prevented profits, it would still be an issue. Hence wanting evidence for that. Obviously a small indie team relies on sales. An employee at Giant-o-Game Corp does not.
Shadowmancer – Steam offers regional pricing. The only way that logic applies is if Ubi (along with everyone else) don’t want to make it quite so obvious how much they hike prices in Europe. Which isn’t a particularly great reason.
08/10/2008 at 12:30 cliffski says:
or we could… you know… actually DO something about the torrent sites?
08/10/2008 at 12:33 Shadowmancer says:
If piracy is killing the retail sales then why dont they go down the digital distribution way exclusively, pros game doesn’t get pirated (steam games are all encrypted as well as back ups), also you save money by not having to pay for boxes and discs, cons who to deal with?, exclusivity, how much does the digital distributer want (this has caused many steam games that were to come but didnt, e.g. Pnumbra: overture and black plague) what software does the developer need to configure the game properly with (steamworks) to play the game propery, theres more but i can’t think of them.
08/10/2008 at 12:33 Flappybat says:
I really scratch my head at the idea of doing things like this. There’s some kind of crazed fever that it’s ok to lose a paying customer if you also lose ten pirates with them, which is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Gears Of War got released six months late for PC, had a subscription requiring multiplayer and fairly beefy system requirements and then they blamed it on piracy.
Also an interesting related story, 360/PS3 game Saints Row 2 which has a delayed PC release got leaked and is being heavily pirated for the 360.
08/10/2008 at 12:34 Sol Invictus says:
PC gaming is d0med! So piracy’s basically killing the PC, but Ubisoft won’t sell their Steam games outside of the United States.
Good one, Ubisoft.
08/10/2008 at 12:34 Cope says:
Agree with rei. Their doomsaying is doing more damage to the PC platform than piracy and the more they take steps like this the more they alienate their customers.
Here’s a thought. Maybe the PC version of new games doesn’t sell as well because not everyone has the hardware to play them. Every Xbox 360 can play every Xbox 360 game, but not every PC can play every PC game. But oh no, it can’t be anything but piracy.
08/10/2008 at 12:36 The Sombrero Kid says:
“i was going to steal this game on PC but then they decided to make it a console exclusive for a month, god darn it now i have to pay for it cause i’m physically incapable of waiting a month to steal it! then again i could steal it on the 360.”
not a statement you hear often.
08/10/2008 at 12:36 Grill / Griddleoctopus says:
cliffski; that’s what I understood by the article as well. It does make a kind of sense, as there’s such a crossover of hardcore gamers; if they’ve got stats to back this up, then it would make sense. For PC-only releases, yes, delay of the announcement is stupid; but for the (surprisingly-piracy-proof) modern consoles, it does make sense to delay a cross-platform game’s PC announcement until the higher-profit consoles have had their bite.
08/10/2008 at 12:37 El_MUERkO says:
A game that’s console exclusive for a period of time screams ‘dumbed down for the kids’ to me.
When it eventually does make it’s way to the shops i have little interest in it, the only way i might consider purchasing it is after trying it so they best release a decent demo :)
Gears of War is a perfect example of this, huge on the 360, ignored on the PC, two different markets and if people don’t cater to them equally they can expect to see their product ignored on the system they treat as second class.
08/10/2008 at 12:38 Shadowmancer says:
@ cliffski
There are plenty of legal torrents out there mate but what about non-game stuff in torrents, I occasionally use torrents to update my tv shows to watch the latest ones cos here in the UK you need to pay at least £50 to sky per month to watch tv eps that are a month old in the US while with torrents I can watch it the next day.
08/10/2008 at 12:39 Switchbreak says:
I have no idea how they would even start to statistically prove something like that. BioShock launched simultaneously and sold 1.5 million copies. With greater critical acclaim and a similar marketing presence, should it have sold 4 million copies like Gears of War did, but for piracy? Or did Gears of War sell more because of its multiplayer and the more mass-market friendly big angry man with a chainsaw as a protaganist? There’s no possible way to control for all the variables when comparing games that launched multiplatform and games that didn’t.
08/10/2008 at 12:39 Nallen says:
“Until someone actually does a study on the ratio of pirated copies to lost sales is I’m not going to believe a word they say.”
Which is impossible as cliffski said. Ergo, they’ll just keep pumping the line out.
The truth, I suspect, is that PC development offers a poor ROI vs consoles (I can’t believe what console games cost, fucking incredible) so they’d like to drop the platform. Piracy probably contributes to some lost revenue and is illegal so you just say that’s the reason.
For instance, I own a PS3 and PC. If Mirrors Edge is out on PS3 6 months before PC then the chances are I’ll buy it for £49.99 rather than £34.99. If it was same day I’d buy the PC version. So you can set aside all this Piracy nonsence and there is a perfectly clear economic reason for the move to delay PC releases.
They’d just rather call us a bunch of c*nts (pirates) than admit they are (greedy) themselves.
08/10/2008 at 12:41 Dizet Sma says:
It’s an interesting take on business that a company would rather not sell a game on PC and make £0 back on their development rather than getting their cut of £40 x n copies, even if n is reduced by p.
Make buying a game the better option – add extras for registered users, not just patches. Allow the mod community to release stuff via your own digital streams that require a non-hacked CD key, etc., etc. Then the kids completing level 36 might have an incentive to shell out for a copy to take them to level 236.
08/10/2008 at 12:41 cliffski says:
fine. set up a site called legaltorrents which doesn’t allow anonymous uploading. If it’s all legal, why do you need to be anonymous exactly? Set up a lifetime account using a credit card and charge them $1.
problem solved.
I don’t see ‘legaltorrents.com’ as up there in the web traffic top 10 though.
08/10/2008 at 12:42 John Walker says:
It’s not impossible to do *research*. It may be impossible to get absolute proof, but you can do something at all. You can do large-scale anonymous surveys, which are one of the most common, and most effective, methods of data sampling. You can do experiments. You can ask your customers. You won’t get definitive proof, but you will get close to an understanding of the reality. The point is, no one’s even trying. People are just assuming piracy, and then drilling holes in the bottom of the boat to try and let the water out.
08/10/2008 at 12:43 GLOWi says:
Please, explain this:
1) PC gaming is dying or not ? If it is not dying, why number of pc exclusives (or developed primarily for) in pc genres like RPG or FPS is going downhill ? Why most multiplatform titles has weakest sales on pc?
2) If it’s dying and piracy is not a cause what is a cause then?
3) If t’s not dying why developers and publishers are abandoning the biggest market? There must be reason behind that and please don’t feed me with theories about “lazy and stupid” developers. I would understand if for example IDsoft would go multiplatform because of the increasing development costs, but PC is not their primary platform anymore.
08/10/2008 at 12:43 Shadowmancer says:
@ Grill / Griddleoctopus
Yes consoles can be pirated too but it costs money and can get your console banned, I remember that some kid hacked xbox live and got into the halo 3 multplayer beta (before the crackdown one) and several of the employees who were playing were baffled at the kid, a week later microsoft banned his console and xbox live account forever this would mean that he would have to buy another one and register another account but microsoft contacted all the game shops in the state and told them not to sell to him or his family, the ps3 on the other hand is regional free meaning one can buya game in any country but its too early to be hacked yet same for the wii.
08/10/2008 at 12:44 cliffski says:
Although it distresses me to argue with anyone called Dizet Sma (even if spelt wrong :D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diziet_Sma), their business sense is sound. You are ignoring ‘Y’ the amount that console sales are reduced by when people with PC & console pirate the PC copy and thus do not buy the console one.
THAT is their reasoning. You can argue that they have their numbers wrong, but I suspect most big publishers have a stack of data on what sells to who when how and why.
08/10/2008 at 12:44 Real Horrorshow says:
All publishers need to do to sell PC games is make PC games for the PC. People own PC’s because they want to play PC games, not because they like spending $1000 extra on their unit to play console games on a monitor.
When I buy a Wii I want to play games where I flail my arms around like an idiot.
When I buy a 360 I want to play overdramatized FPS’ oozing adolescent macho fantasy.
When I buy a PS3 I want…to watch Blu-Rays.
When I buy a PC I want to play very pretty, complex, deep, long games made with 18+ gamers in mind (not just in vulgar content, but in maturity).
You can’t tell me piracy is ruining PC games because Gears of War or some other generic console port sold like shit, not when there are other games like The Witcher, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., The Orange Box, Crysis and World in Conflict that are so successful commercially (in spite of what the developer of one of those games would have you believe).
08/10/2008 at 12:45 Shadowmancer says:
@ cliffski
Most uploaders arent anonymous! its the downloaders.
08/10/2008 at 12:45 John Walker says:
cliffski – no one is claiming that piracy isn’t massive, or that piracy doesn’t affect sales. You’re arguing against a position that no one’s making. The question being asked is: does piracy make a significant difference to sales? And: does delaying the release of a game make any sense in the face of possible piracy?
08/10/2008 at 12:47 Nick says:
To be fair, Ubisoft is no great loss. Their track record to releasing quality (even finished..) games and PC Ports is mostly pretty damned awful over the past few years, not to mention post release support.
Check out the awesome bugs they even managed to release onto the PS3 version of R6 Vegas 2 for example (thank god you can patch PS3 and 360 now! No more extra expensive QA required for console releases!)
08/10/2008 at 12:47 cliffski says:
Hey I did a large scale anonymous survey!
No publisher ever contacted me asking for any data though. You are right, that they don’t seem to care what the PC gamers have to say :(
It helped me anyway, I think.
08/10/2008 at 12:49 Nallen says:
@John Walker
The crux of my point was that I’m sure they know it’s not piracy and they know they can’t empirically prove it is, so why take the risk of indicating something via research that might remove a mechanism for making more money.
If this research is done, and I really think it should be, it wont come from the Publishers because they have nothing to gain.
It would be expense to research and the net result would weaken their position or not improve it. Because even if they prove they are right, what happens then? We all say oh, okay, sorry. Thanks for finding that out.
And everything carries on as it is because they assume they’re right already.
08/10/2008 at 12:49 John Walker says:
Exactly cliffski. Which is why you’re my developer hero! It’s so devastating that not one publisher has approached you.
08/10/2008 at 12:50 Ignatius J. Smiley says:
GLOWi – PC gaming is not dying, but there is more money to be made on consoles (because of higher game prices, less need for technical knowledge and, dare I say it, lower standards).
That in itself can explain many publishers’ preference to console developing.
08/10/2008 at 12:52 The Sombrero Kid says:
@cliffski
you forget that buying the cheaper PC one instead of the expensive & inferior console one is also motivation for the publisher and doesn’t criminalise the pc games playing public.
08/10/2008 at 12:54 Grill / Griddleoctopus says:
@ Hitler’s gay dad
Pirate less games then!
08/10/2008 at 12:54 GLOWi says:
@John Walker
Yes, in my opinion piracy makes significant difference in sales. Often at PRS laughed at Crytek said, that there was 20:1 pirated to sold Crysis ratio. If only every 20 th pirated copy was bougtht there were doubled Crysis sales.
08/10/2008 at 12:55 John Walker says:
Glowi:
1) Where are your figures to suggest that the numbers of RPG/RTS games on the PC have gone down?
2) It doesn’t appear to be dying. However, it’s not as profitable as the consoles, now the consoles are competitive with the PC.
3) The PC is now far less likely to receive exclusives because it’s financially imprudent for a publisher to do that. Until the latest generation of consoles, the PC was always significantly advanced, and thus the top-end games could only exist on PC. Now the playing field is more level, it makes sense to develop your game for the largest audience possible, which is cross-platform.
Again, I’d need to see figures to demonstrate that the PC is selling poorly before I could try to figure out why.
08/10/2008 at 12:56 Shadow Aspect says:
You can try, as has been tried with Pirate Bay, I recall their server centre (or whatever) was actually raided. Obviously they’re still running though.
I would say that saying these sites have large bandwidth use due to PC games is a bit misleading, not that I’ve researched it, but there are also an awful lot of films/etc available via torrent.
08/10/2008 at 12:57 The Sombrero Kid says:
@ GLOWi
yeah but is the figure every 20th or every 200th or every 2000th or every single one we just don’t know the extent of it and no ones interested in finding out, because publishers relies that most people will shift platforms with the game as long it’s not across the 360 ps3 battle line.
08/10/2008 at 12:59 Orberi says:
@cliffski
That would only make sense if the torrent sites were doing anything illegal. Something which has yet to be tested in the courts.
I think my problem here is that the industry is crying foul but with no evidence (as JW says). It’s very easy to come up with an argument for either side based on assumptions and anecdotal evidence what annoys me is that these arguments are used to treat gamers badly with late releases, dreadful DRM etc. (I wont buy Spore for instance.. that’ll show ‘em) If the industry did as JW suggests and actually proves their point then may be there would be far less animosity between them and the gaming community. If piracy is such a huge issue then I would have thought some proper research into it would be in the interest of all sides.
The more paranoid among you may think that the fact that the industry has never done this research before is an indication of how they feel it might go. I couldn’t possible comment.
08/10/2008 at 13:00 Nick says:
I think the only real answer to this is more restrictive DRM and Oblivion with guns.
08/10/2008 at 13:00 GLOWi says:
@ Ignatius J. Smiley
You contradict yourself. if there is more money on consoles and developers are leaving to them then PC gaming is dying/declining, at least in AAA games area.
higher game prices are not the reason definitely, there are platform holder fees.
08/10/2008 at 13:01 The Sombrero Kid says:
as a result of multiplatform development it makes sense to shift the majority of people onto the most expensive platform, the publishers realise it’s fairly easy to shift sales from PC to 360 or PS3 but certainly not between the two back to the PC and since the PC is only cheaper to develop for if it’s the only platform and the returns are lowere due to a lower installed base of games capable machines and lower sale price, it doesn’t make sense for them to do that.
08/10/2008 at 13:01 Lollerskater says:
2DBoy took some chances by putting no DRM whatsoever on World of Goo. I’m curious as to how this will impact sales and piracy for them, seeing as so far I haven’t found any pirated copies of it floating around.
Of course I pre-ordered it months ago; I was just looking out of curiosity. As a game designer myself I follow all the debate about DRM and software piracy closely. We released a game not too long ago. Our game had some form of copy-protection on it. And wouldn’t you know it: it popped up on all the large torrent sites a day before release…
08/10/2008 at 13:01 Hypocee says:
I have no interest in EndWar or in half-arsed Ubi PC ports, so in this case thanks for keeping your stink off the shelves for a while guys.
Nallen, the extra 10/20 pounds mostly goes to the console manufacturer. They charge beaucoup wampum for the privilege of putting discs in their machines. It’s you getting the PC version for 10 pounds two months later for basically no reason, or of course P-wording it, that brings a twitch to the publisher’s cheekbone.
08/10/2008 at 13:01 Radiant says:
What are the torrent/piracy numbers [hereon known as Gillens] for Trials 2 or Team Fortress 2?
You know if people do not value your game enough to buy it months after it’s console release why not package it with 3 or 4 other games late to release?
There are so many revenue streams to be utilised with the connectivity of a PC to willfully ignore them and rely solely on the two weeks your game is ‘hot’ and on shelves to recoup the years invested in it is pretty prehistoric thinking and speaks volumes about the publisher.
08/10/2008 at 13:02 Tom says:
Excellent article. I think the whole things tragically amusing really. A bit of a viscous circle. There’s little doubt in my mind that at one point piracy was small, and the dent it made on wallets was minuscule. However, money grabbing tossers who didn’t really understand what they were looking at kicked up a big fuss and now it is general knowledge that these options exist. I’m not saying it wouldn’t have increased in time and more PC users become savvy, but I reckon the put it in to fast forward.
08/10/2008 at 13:03 The Sombrero Kid says:
@Nick
i’ve lloled (literally laughed out Loud, instead of the common figurative one) twice at what you have to say today, good job.
08/10/2008 at 13:04 Radiant says:
Also End War along with Hawx are guaranteed to be shit. If I just wasted 2 years of my life on them I’d be bitter too.
[I'm not sure any such thing is "guaranteed". Careful now - Ed]
08/10/2008 at 13:05 Dan Lawrence says:
I think this is a PR mistake for Ubisoft if they want to make money from PC users. They’ve essentially added ‘J’ number of PC gamers to the list of people who will look less favourably on this game and spread bad word of mouth about it among their less game-internet-o-sphere aware friends. The resulting lost sales that that amounts to has to be added to ‘S’, the amount of lost sales due to people no longer wanting to buy the game due to its percieved ‘oldness’ in the ever faster which game is hot news cycles. Then added to that is the amount of lost sales ‘V’ on future games by ubisoft created by damage to the ubisoft brand through PR mistakes and lost sales.
If those numbers added togather are greater than the number of sales added by pirates rejecting piracy for playing a game sooner then I guess they are =1in the money stakes.
Personally I think his words sound a bit mean and as a primarily PC-centric user I feel I’m being punished for crimes that I may or may not have commited. Also he sounds a bit out of date. In light of the fate of the music industriy (note last weeks establishment of a musicion’s ‘union’ as a partial replacement of the record labels) when trying to combat piracy with fire I expect publishers are going to have much more success with the itunes model. Consoles seem safer at the minute but how long will that safety last if the same problems exist in the buisness model?
08/10/2008 at 13:07 GLOWi says:
@The Sombrero Kid
Yes, every 20 th copy is a guess, but in my opinion a reasonable guess. There’s no way to find out the real percentage of potential buyers.
If a developer/publisher says every pirated copy is a lost profit I say crap. If they say every 20th pirated copy is a lost profit I say fair enough.
08/10/2008 at 13:07 Optimaximal says:
How much does Microsoft/Sony/etc take as a license cut on a game sale? That way we can work out true value of a license-free PC game vs. a console game.
08/10/2008 at 13:08 Dizet Sma says:
“Although it distresses me to argue with anyone called Dizet Sma (even if spelt wrong)”
Yeah, I know it’s missing an I, but Diziet is a girls name :)
Cliffski, if Y is the amount of sales lost due to piracy and negates any amount of actual PC sales, then why bother putting money into development of a PC title at all?
I could understand the decision to not develop on that basis, but this “release it later” thing sounds like a “have cake, eat cake, have more cake” scenario.
08/10/2008 at 13:08 The Sombrero Kid says:
why is there a picture of mirror’s edge up there? i swear they’d shove in any old graphics if they thought they could get away with it, how lazy! just as well i pirate RPS on the PC instead of paying for it on the consoles like all you losers!
08/10/2008 at 13:10 Ignatius J. Smiley says:
@ GLOWi
I was just pointing out that consoles are more profitable than they have ever been, and therefore are more attractive to publishers. This doesn’t mean PC gaming is dying, it just means it has stronger competition.
Are PC games selling significantly less than they used to? Wikipedia’s list of best-selling PC games doesn’t seem to indicate that, seeing as it has a good mix of old and new titles.
08/10/2008 at 13:11 Mogs says:
I am deliberately NOT going to buy this now just because they’ve insulted my intelligence with such absolute BULLSHIT!
They’re trying to maximise console sales because the margins are lower for consoles and they don’t want any prospective console buyer to be tempted into getting the cheaper PC version.
[Bother to] you Ubisoft.
08/10/2008 at 13:11 John Walker says:
Mirror’s Edge is there because I mention it in the following paragraph, and it just looks so pretty!
08/10/2008 at 13:12 Kieron Gillen says:
I quite like EndWar, from what I’ve played.
KG
08/10/2008 at 13:13 futage says:
About time someone said this stuff. Refreshing to see someone approaching piracy intelligently and honestly.
08/10/2008 at 13:14 John Walker says:
Let’s not lose track, AIM. The post above is not about having a go at Ubi – it’s about asking why. As I’ve said above, they could be right. Piracy might be destroying their console sales, and they might be quite legitimate in their fears. Or they might be completely wrong. What we need is for someone to step up and do some serious research into this. We don’t need people shouting at people and calling them names, which I’ll delete from now on.
08/10/2008 at 13:16 ILR says:
Is this EndWar an FPS or an RTS? If so, then yes, it will lose a certain nontrivial amount of sales due to PC piracy if released on that platform.
The core of Ubisoft’s argument seems to be that releasing a PC version concurrently with console versions is not only a minor profitmaker compared to consoles, but actually eats into the amount of copies sold on consoles as well. A position that sounds plausible.
There might be some guys who hold their Xbox360/PS3 as their primary console but also have a relatively well-equipped PC for obvious reasons. They also might consider EndWar a game that’s not on top of their most anticipated releases, but somewhat on the radar nevertheless. Faced with a choice between getting the game for $70 on their primary gaming platform vs. torrenting it for their secondary platform, a sizable lot might choose the latter. If Ubisoft has a reasonable fear of that happening, then they’ve just made a sound business decision. The problem, as always, is the dearth of reliable data, and the difficulties in compiling it.
On the hypothetical scenario that I might pirate a game, my personal threshold for torrenting a PC game would be significantly higher than torrenting it for my trusty old Xbox (not that there’s too many of them coming up any longer). My affection for all things PC runs much deeper and would be a major factor in that decision. I don’t find it too hard to imagine that a lot of people might feel the opposite.
08/10/2008 at 13:17 dan23e says:
By delaying the PC release of a game for three to six months surely the publishers must understand that that on it’s own will hurt sales.
The games industry isn’t split along clear pc/xbox/ps/nintendo lines. The majority of people I know who play games on a PC also have at least one other console. Now to me it stands to reason if you delay for six months the release of a game on PC which is esentially a straight port of the console game unoptimised for keyboard and mouse input gamers are going to get savvy quickly. They will buy the console version and not the PC version. why would anyone want two copies of the game?
So by delaying of course you are going to sell less copies on PC that stands to reason as a percantage of your target audience will already have bought the game on another format. Maybe they would then pirate the game to see any differences but it still doesn’t equate to a lost sale.
Even if 20% of your target audience owns the game on another format that equates to a likely 20% lost sales on the PC..
08/10/2008 at 13:19 mpk says:
Surely there should be some sort of outcry in the specialist press. If Gamer or Edge or another high circulation PC mag called these companies out repeatedly, surely they’d be obliged to reply with a little bit of substance instead of sensationalism? Surely?
08/10/2008 at 13:23 futage says:
@Ignatius J. Smiley
I don’t think it’s all about sales. Different parties say PC gaming is dying for different reasons. And it’s true in some ways. The PC (in terms of gaming) isn’t what it was for various reasons, some of which JW has mentioned (what it was is dying).
And PC gaming is dying in that… there really is a lot of shit about at the moment. Lazy console ports and that. Even the unlazy console ports have a little too much of the console about them to really feel like PC games, let alone good PC games.
But alongside that there seems to be a new wave of ‘indie’ stuff happening. Partly thanks to new means of distribution and partly due to the above stuff. So there’s a little bit of death about it and a little bit of renaissance about it, which makes sense really.
08/10/2008 at 13:25 TooNu says:
So this game will be a slightly better looking BF2142? Can’t we as gamers just take a, “I couldn’t give a flying shite about this game” approach to things like this? Sure it sucks we didn’t get it first or even along side the consoles but does it REALLY matter?
Most people are too busy to play every game ever released on their favourite platform and even then they usually have a back catalogue of games to go through once more or continue playing.
Further more, clearly there are much needed answers to be had from company exec’s that shy away because either 1) They don’t like to admit anything or 2) Consider any publicity good or bad, good publicity because something like this always gets an internet buzz. It would be nice to get these answers but then what? Knowing the truth or not is more than likely not going to change the decision made to push back a release date. Perhaps they use this extra time to work on security features which is only needed for the PC release. Maybe that extra time is for research into piracy, maybe all they do is check, triple check and quadruple check their game can work on a number of PCs, or do even more testing.
I say again. It is BF2142, but shinier, who gives a toss?
08/10/2008 at 13:25 cliffski says:
that wouldn’t change their business decisions one bit. Such decisions are made by spreadsheets. Or in my case, staring at my inbox.
08/10/2008 at 13:26 GLOWi says:
John Walker:
1) Were there any other AAA PC exclusive FPS except Crysis (And Valve titles which are not exclusive, but at least they’re not ports, which is quite easy as Valve is not pushing thechnical limits)? Any RPG except Witcher? Will there be any in the near future?
2. Well it’s not dying, but in my eyes appears declining. publishers and developers are moving to consoles. I wonder then why there are more money on consoles when PC market is definitely bigger. You can say that problem is in wide variety in PC configurations. Ok, then behind declining of pc platform are technical issues.
3) Well, you contradict yourself. Now you’re reasoning the decline of PC exclusives/developer migrations when in 1) you refused to believe that there is such decline. I don’t mind multiplatform titles, but I want games developed primarily for PC, not ported back. If there are no such titles I say PC gaming is declining.
08/10/2008 at 13:26 dan23e says:
The cynic in me thinks ir is to maximize profit.
Generally console games are sold at a higher price premium than PC games so therefore by delaying PC release they are hoping that a percentage of multiplatform users will buy the console version.
08/10/2008 at 13:27 Lukasz says:
small contribution:
Local shopping center.
You can buy games in these shops
EB games (removed one shelf not long ago as well as one table where PC games where)
Game (removed one whole shelf. only one is left compared to 5-7 for PS2, 2 for PS3, 5 for Xbox360 )
Dick smith’s electronics (one huge shelf was removed just last week. one is left only)
Big W (shop which sells everything. from sweets, to movies ending on car tyres. PC game segment practically non-existing not counting sims)
JB-HF (nothing changed recently. one big shelf comparably in size to ps2 or xbox360. a bit smaller maybe)
Retailers are moving away from PC game market. at least here in australia. reason is cause they don’t sell as well as console games.
if piracy is the reason? or maybe digital distribution, distributors stupid decisions?
not sure. but it is harder to find a pc game to buy.
08/10/2008 at 13:28 Ignatius J. Smiley says:
@futage
I don’t really buy into that – to my mind there has been loads of good PC games recently, and a lot of stuff I’m looking forward to on the horizon, indie or otherwise.
08/10/2008 at 13:33 GLOWi says:
@ Ignatius J. Smiley
I agree that better console competion can be the reason for developer migrations -> less to none pc exclusives.
But still, developers leaving and almost no AAA games developed for pc in my eyes looks like declining. Definitely not thriving.
08/10/2008 at 13:39 futage says:
@Ignatius J. Smiley
Aye, I don’t fully buy it either. Though I do think there is truth in it. I do think the dross:gold ratio is particularly high, currently (ignoring the indie stuff). And I certainly think there are distinctly fewer true PC games currently (i.e. games which wouldn’t really work or would be a significantly different experience if played on another platform), which is perhaps important. I realise this is partly due to the consoles becoming more PC-like in some ways (having internets for example) but it’s also because developers design a game to be playable on both PCs and consoles which (for me, anyway) always seems to result on something which doesn’t feel quite right on PC – doesn’t take advantage of the stuff a PC can do which a console can’t (I’m talking mainly about UI/control stuff here, not graphics and that).
08/10/2008 at 13:40 GLOWi says:
@Ignatius J. Smiley
Depends on the genre. There are a lot o f indie games, strategies, MMOs and adventures.
But no AAA FPSes except for Valve and Crytek (so far) titles a and only a few AAA RPGs: Witcher and Diablo 3 on very distant horizon.
08/10/2008 at 13:42 Strelok says:
What the Ubi guy says makes perfect sense.
A lot of hardcore console users have a PC. Why tempt them with a day zero pirated PC version when you can easily delay the PC version, get your console sales, then release it and capitalize on any crumbs left.
It is so obvious, why even bother to discuss it?
08/10/2008 at 13:43 Dolphan says:
So simultaneously release it on Steam and just postpone the boxed version if they’re that worried.
08/10/2008 at 13:43 Shadowmancer says:
@ Lukasz
I agree buying pc games in retail is hard now even though I would prefer a steamed copy of the said game online, an example would be the witcher enchanced edition I can’t buy it anywhere new however CEX and gamestation sell it 2nd hand, other shops (which dont have 2nd hand departments) have virtually non existant range of pc games except the sims and anti-virus software, pc gaming is dying in retail sales but not on online distribution sales at the moment the pc gaming industry is moving towards complete online sales as for developers leaving the pc I predict that some russian companies which are emerging will save the day (cryostasis I’m looking at you) sure they may be buggy at first but they will be new ideas comapred to bog standard corridor shooters.
08/10/2008 at 13:46 Malagate says:
@Glowi, I would bring into question how many AAA FPS titles there are full stop, on any and every platform. I can think of a whole bunch that came out fairly recently but not many of them were that good, despite lots of expensive developement. Incidentally, it’s getting less financially sound to release exclusives on the PC, what with AAA game developement now costing as much as some blockbuster movies you will want to maximise returns and hence be on as many platforms as possible rather than limiting your market arbitrarily (and it is arbitrary to favour one platform over another if they can all run the game, aside from certain financial incentives).
08/10/2008 at 13:48 Strelok says:
@Dolphan: Steam protection was cracked ages ago. Releasing on Steam means getting a pirated version out there immediately.
08/10/2008 at 13:49 Cataclysm says:
@GLOWi
John didn’t say PC exclusives, etc were declining or not, he just mentioned a couple of possible factors to take into account that would effect the increase or decline of them.
08/10/2008 at 13:56 mrmud says:
There is absolutely nothing preventing research into the question if piracy hurts console sales. Its just that if you want to do something slightly more substantial than a survey then you probably need to invest a bit to make it happen.
And you would obviously not do an internet based survey either. It is possible to gather reasonable statistics from properly conducted surveys, you just need to add a little bit of professionalism.
08/10/2008 at 13:56 Number47 says:
I believe that in order to investigate priacy on the Pc you have to look at the demographic of those pirating. I think one would find that the typical pirate is a teenager or in the early twenties, and that they are pirating because they want to play every game out there but can’t afford to buy all of them. The addictive nature of games require that they try every game that is mildly interesting and it is just easier to pirate than getting a job and purchasing them. And they got the time to play them all. The older gamers probably have children and a job and don’t have the time to play that much anymore, and can afford to buy a few games here and there. (And they might have developed a moral that suggests that if they want better quality games the companies making them have to make money).
08/10/2008 at 13:57 Maximum Fish says:
I would be willing to bet this research has been done, by a number of publishers. It is in their interests to make informed decisions. And when was the last time you saw a press release -from anybody- full of scatter plots and regression anaylses?
The point is that the research may (I’m saying probably) doesn’t support the ‘piracy is to blame’ argument, and it is being used as an excuse for prudent development choices that would otherwise alienate and cause resentment among the PC fanbase.
If you say, “Consoles represent 85% of our revenues, so we’ve got everyone working on the console versions right now. When we’re done with that, we’ll shift gears and give you guys a hack-job port”, you piss off a lot of people. When you say “we’re desperately trying to stay afloat because of Piracy”, you hope maybe not to. In short, piracy is a convenient excuse, and the more publishers who through it around the more it’s got the social proof going for it.
The fact of the matter is, if i make a console game, I built it on a computer to begin with so the transistion process would be (comparatively) minimal, i’ve got all the conceptualization done, the design completed, assets made, all of the polishing and tuning done, most of the testing finished,etc..
So the marginal cost of putting this game on PC, unless i’m missing something, is very low, low enough that it could weather decreased sales and still be profitable. How many units would you have to sell to pay the guys who did the porting job and come out on top?
And if it wasn’t going to be profitable, i can’t see how waiting a couple of months and then releasing it anyways is going to change anything.
08/10/2008 at 14:01 Requiem says:
@Lukasz same here in the UK, well at least outside of the cities, you can buy console games in many high street stores, supermarkets even newsagents but to find a pc game you have to go to the biggest high street chains or specialist stores. Even then the gaming stores are mostly geared to console titles and barely have any pc games that aren’t in the top ten or budget re-releases. The last four years has seen a real decline in pc game availability on the high street, I wonder how much piracy and online sales have increased in that period?
Not everyone shops online and I don’t know about anyone else but at least half of my game collection were impulse buys of games I’d never followed pre-release.
08/10/2008 at 14:03 frymaster says:
“That would only make sense if the torrent sites were doing anything illegal. Something which has yet to be tested in the courts”
Yes, it very probably isn’t technically illegal. Games piracy technically isn’t theft. But torrent sites are most definately immoral and exploiting what they _know_ to be weaknesses in current law, and piracy is most definately the moral equivalent of theft*
How to find out how many sales are lost to piracy: Create an unbreakabe DRM system that does not in any way inconvenience the user at all and creates no controvery. Release the game. Then rewind the universe and release the game with no DRM. Compare the results.
That’s two impossibilities.
I don’t think any company seriously thinks each download is a lost sale. But I do think just about everyone thinks each download is a theft, and that if only a fraction of the illegal downloads was converted into sales it would be a big boost to the company’s balance sheet.
Is Ubisoft’s decision the correct one? Almost definately not; why not use steam pre-release-day-encryption or something similar then? (I maintain that a larger proportion of pre-release downloaders would be converted into pre-order customers, though obviously I have no proof)
Do I understand it? Hell yeah. From their point of view, “The PC gamers” are pissing on them from a great height, and if nothing else they need to be punished. That there is no such group as “The PC gamers”, and they are pissing on what would otherwise be valued customers as well, is escaping them, but pigeonholing people into groups against their will and then colouring them with that groups’ stereotypes is not exactly an uncommon thing to happen.
* “I’ve not taken anything away from them so it’s not theft” is, in my book, about the same as “they’re a big company and make lots of money so it doesn’t matter” in the feeble-self-serving-justifications category. As is “if you invest twice as much money and pour even more of your heart and soul into the game, I cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die promise that I won’t pirate your game, unlike every other time, honest.” (Otherwise known as “I only pirated it because it was crap” – but how did they know it was crap in advance, I wonder?)
08/10/2008 at 14:03 Deuteronomy says:
The answer is simple. Cut their hands off.
08/10/2008 at 14:07 Bobsy says:
1) Release a high-quality demo which capitalises on the full game’s appeal, has a substantial amount of content (preferably unique), is easily obtainable, and does not come with a prohibitively high download size.
2) Release full game in a way that is as or more easily obtainable than a torrent.
In that order.
On 2), this means:
a) Fast download servers with minimal queuing.
b) Support for as many payment methods as possible, including international payment standards.
c) Keep download managers to an absolute minimum. If it’s not greater than or equal to Steam, it’s an added hassle.
On 1), if you can’t manage this, you’re not marketing your game properly. If you can’t market your game properly, you have no goddamn right to blame anything else for your game failing.
08/10/2008 at 14:09 Strelok says:
@Maximum Fish: You are missing the main point: the intersection of PC gamers and console gamers is not an empty set.
Delaying the PC version increases the chance the console version to be fully exploited.
08/10/2008 at 14:09 GLOWi says:
@Malagate
As I wrote, the problem are not multiplatform titles, but that multiplatform titles are almost always designed to take advantage of consoles, not PC.
And there is a bunch of PC exlusive or primary AAA RPGs, FPSes or racings, please name them, I can’t really think of any.
08/10/2008 at 14:11 Paul Moloney says:
“or we could… you know… actually DO something about the torrent sites?”
Is there any reason they don’t?
Weirdly, you have to admit that at least the Evil Music Industry attempt to do something about the problem, even if they resort to suing dead grandmothers (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/05/riaa_sues_the_dead/). The PC industry just indulges either in whining or in DRM that only affects its customers, not its pirates.
True story: Went away to see some friends over the weekend, and brought my laptop so we could play some LAN games. We had about 4 games in common purchased on Steam, such as HL2, Day of Defeat, Counter-strike, and so on. However, we had no access to internet and, between us, had not actually started any game in common – onlu downloaded them. And you need to _start_ a Steam game at least once while online in order for it to later work offline.
So, in the end, we resorted to playing a pirated copy of Half-Life 1 deathmatch which one guy had had on his laptop for the last 8 years.
P.
08/10/2008 at 14:11 Paul Moloney says:
“or we could… you know… actually DO something about the torrent sites?”
Is there any reason they don’t?
Weirdly, you have to admit that at least the Evil Music Industry attempt to do something about the problem, even if they resort to suing dead grandmothers (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/05/riaa_sues_the_dead/). The PC industry just indulges either in whining or in DRM that only affects its customers, not its pirates.
True story: Went away to see some friends over the weekend, and brought my laptop so we could play some LAN games. We had about 4 games in common purchased on Steam, such as HL2, Day of Defeat, Counter-strike, and so on. However, we had no access to internet and, between us, had not actually started any game in common – onlu downloaded them. And you need to _start_ a Steam game at least once while online in order for it to later work offline.
So, in the end, we resorted to playing a pirated copy of Half-Life 1 deathmatch which one guy had had on his laptop for the last 8 years.
P.
08/10/2008 at 14:16 Maximum Fish says:
@Bobsy
Your first point is critical. A unique feature of PC gaming is that players want/need to know how the game will work (or if it will at all) with their system.
You can’t take PC games back, and if it’s buggy as hell, has DRM that doesn’t recognize your DVD-ROM, is horribly optimized or just requires a beefier machine than you’ve got, doesn’t like your operating system, doesn’t like your sound card, or any of a multitude of other issues, you are shit-out-of-luck, as well as shit out of $50.
PC Gamers are unwilling to take this risk, and if they can’t demo the game to check these issues, they’re are far less likely to buy it, and more likely to just download it, risking nothing.
Take note of the games and companies that do the best on PC: Stardock, Valve, Blizzard, Maxis. What common thread runs through these? They each have reputation, demos or no, for consistently releasing quality games that a) don’t require an ice-9 cooled supercomputer to operate, b) are stable, widely compatible, and bug free, and c) offer exceptional value for what you pay for them.
If you don’t have this sterling reputation, you either release demos or you don’t sell.
08/10/2008 at 14:16 Sam says:
@frymaster:
I think you’ve failed to understand that [i]theft[/i] is immoral (and illegal) [i]because[/i] it violates the right of the individual to personal property.
Copyright infringement, instead, violates the right of the creator of a (copyable) work to control the creation and distribution of copies of that work (and to profit by the control of such).
That doesn’t mean that copyright infringement isn’t immoral (of course, it is illegal), but it just makes you look stupid to argue that copyright infringement is theft – they’re defined differently, and are different legal and moral acts.
08/10/2008 at 14:23 frymaster says:
thank you for calling me stupid :)
I did not and am not arguing that piracy is theft; just that the difference is semantic and not actually relevant. If a developer points to the amount of invalid multiplayer keys in use and says “these people are stealing our work” I do not consider an argument along the lines of “ah, but if you look up the legal definition of stealing…” especially useful.
08/10/2008 at 14:25 Wolfoz says:
Oh why didn’t Ubi just lie and say they’re delaying it as they’re making it better for the PC, and make some token UI changes that would take 5 minutes? Its what they and other cross-platfrom publishers have been doing for years, and it would contain just as much truth as the assumption of known piracy effects at this stage.
08/10/2008 at 14:28 schizoslayer says:
I don’t believe the PC is dying as a format. I do however believe that the games industry has changed and is no longer making PC games.
They may be making PC ports of Console games but these aren’t PC games. And guess what? Console games that aren’t on a console won’t sell that well in the same way that PC Games on a Console don’t sell well.
08/10/2008 at 14:30 Maximum Fish says:
@Strelok
I guess you could make the argument that the consumers with both a gaming PC and a console who want to play your game will either buy it for one, or buy/pirate it for the other, and shoehorning them into buying the console version prevents the loss to piracy.
But that doesn’t consider the percentage of the market that just doesn’t like playing certain games on consoles (FPS’s with thumbsticks or C&C 3 on 360 for instance), the percent who would simply rent the console version, and the percentage of the would be pirates who aren’t interested at all unless they can pirate it.
If you sell this demograph only the PC version, sure a large percentage will just pirate it. But if you sell this demograph only the console version, another large percentage will simply not buy it, rent it, or not buy it (respectively).
08/10/2008 at 14:31 Gorgeras says:
No. No, no, no. U R RONG! All rong!
The Rong is strong in this one.
PC gaming is not dying, consoles are not generally more profitable(to who anyway?), but publishers really, really, REALLY, want us to think that.
The most profitable and successful consoles at the moment are the Nintendo Wii and DS(nowhere near as powerful as a mid-spec PC) with 360 kind of limping a bit behind and PS3 unable to crawl off the starting line. Most publishers are really wanting the 360 and PS3 to be popular so they can shift their shiny crap on them. Wii doesn’t have the same shiny pushing power but they can’t scream “Wii gaming is dead” because it is enjoying too much of a good reputation in the mainsteam media.
PCs on the other hand are misunderstood and therefore they can talk utter shite about them, expressing either breath-taking ignorance or outrageous dishonesty, such as the Force Unleashed dev spouting ignorant college-dropout level wisdom in claiming that it wasn’t released on PC because you would need something like a $4000(or £) rig to make it run like it does on the consoles(including the ‘almighty’ bastion of pixel-proccessing, Nintendo Wii).
They want PC players to start buying more consoles and console games because some clammy-handed analyst says they could make more money if they persuaded the most cynical, oldest and fiscally-conservative demograph of gamers to adopt the platforms of the most impressionable, younger and uninformed gamers. They basically don’t understand why PC gamers are PC gamers, so everyone is confused because whilst authorative heads are claiming one thing, experienced consumers are seeing evidence of the complete opposite.
They have also lost a vast amount of money due to typical console gamers discovering the addictive delights of World of Warcraft; it isn’t just the first MMO for a lot of people, it’s their first ever PC game, period(there’s the period—>).
So they’re in a panic and trying to get console gamers to come back, but they aren’t going to. They are never going to be buying console games again in the volumes they used to. Just about everyone I know with a console says World of Warcraft is nerd bollocks, except the ones who have played it. My best friend seriously can not understand why his sister, cousin, mum and their friends talk for hours about WoW stuff he doesn’t understand. But then, I tried explaining to him why Army of Two is a terrible game, why he should get Bioshock for his 360 and that PCs have had the high-definition picture quality he is so proud of having for some years before even the first Xbox came out. He completely believes the opposite and nothing will convince him unless he sees for himself like his family and friends did.
Publishers are trying to make more people my friend. They’re trying to get his family and friends to see their error, undo what was done when they actually got hold of half-decent PCs and played a high-quality PC game. But this can not be undone: they did not merely change their opinion and perspective. They learned. They grew. Their horizens expanded and their expectations got higher. This is irreversible.
Publishers should simply accept this and adapt to their consumers, rather than try and change their consumers.
08/10/2008 at 14:33 Berkut says:
Hey, I just had to reply, because I get quite upset if I see statements that piracy is killing the PC market or that piracy is stealing.
The majority of people I know that pirate games would never buy those games; they usually don’t have the money. I of course can’t prove that.
But lets compare it with another type of media. Have you ever been in a library? Do you know what this mother******* are doing? They lent you the books for FREE!!1! I helped publish two books and it’s a lot of work and expenses and those communists are giving my books away for free!
If you would totally suppress pirating, I think there would be such an outcry of the public, that we would soon get institutions that would be similar to public libraries – the poor want to participate in culture too, and games are becoming the most powerful expression of culture.
The publisher will have to give the paying customers a better deal then the freeloaders. Where are those great cloth maps and thick books of the old Ultimas. Where the heck are the manuals (oh yeah, in PDFs). Make the online experience more compelling (not just DM and CTF B.S.) – pirates can’t play there. Publish demos. Release old games or code to the public (like I.D. and Red Alert). Dont’t make those extra items “Collectors editions” and sell them for 80$+ – this “extras” should (and have been) be standard.
Sorry for my english.
08/10/2008 at 14:36 Teck Lee Tan says:
Y’know what’s killing PC? It’s not piracy, it’s the self-fulfilling prophesy about piracy killing PC. These idiotic publishers releasing games long after the hype’s died down and with completely unrealistic specs (Assassin’s Creed, anyone?) with ZERO publicity and then blaming shitty sales on piracy. Sorry, but piracy’s not killing PC. Publishers are.
08/10/2008 at 14:41 Trezoristo says:
I never looked into this, but I cannot imagine it being that hard to pirate console games. If anything, I would expect it to be easier because an internet connection is, as far as I know, not a must-have for most consoles.
Compared to a computer with console-like specifications it’s possible to buy a console and a cheap computer capable of running a torrent client with money to spare. Adding in the higher cost of console games and the usual absence of free dowloadable additions to the game makes pirating console games a far more lucrative business than pirating PC games.
08/10/2008 at 14:43 Strelok says:
@Maximum Fish:
I see your reasoning, in fact I only play FPS games on PC, even though I often have to wait for the PC version. But still, this is a digression.
The idea is, if you only have a PC it doesn’t really matter (from a publisher’s point of view) if the game will be delayed. The only difference for them is that they will (hopefully) get your money a bit later, if at all. The problematic consumers are those with PCs and consoles. Now, we can talk and make cases as much as we want, but the fact remains that PC versions are much more easily pirated. So there is a _potential_ money loss here. Why create temptation if you can afford not to?
Then there is also the price difference – PC games are cheaper than console games. If you will only buy one version, it is better for the publisher if you buy the console version.
08/10/2008 at 14:43 x25killa says:
At the moment, the feeling I got for Ubisoft is rage. Making really crap excuses to delay games for the pc but still release them on the consoles on date while refusing to sell thier own games for PC users of Steam in europe.
PC gaming is not dying, the common sense of developers and publishers is.
Dear Ubisoft, shut up, release game on date for us PC owners. Piracy? It happens on every console and PC, no matter how long you delay the game, it’s going to happen.
08/10/2008 at 14:45 Teck Lee Tan says:
What happened to the edit facility? :(
Forgot to mention the usual lack of a bloody demo, too. When you’ve got stupidly high system requirements (Assassin’s Creed again), and you don’t provide a demo for people to figure out if the game will actually WORK on their systems… You’re inviting torrent downloads.
08/10/2008 at 14:45 Maximum Fish says:
Piracy for the original xbox was apparently easy. I knew a guy with a modded xbox with 120 gigs worth of rented games installed on it. I knew a bunch of people who did similar on the PS2.
08/10/2008 at 14:50 seregrail7 says:
Maybe some of these publishers should have a look at where these torrents that go up a week before the release date are coming from in the first place. That might help as well.
08/10/2008 at 14:51 Gurrah says:
Who cares, End War looks shit anyways. “Squad one: Jump into the garbage bin and take the whole game with you, keep the lid shut and never come back. Commander out.” And seriously, wasn’t this supposed to be a RTS for consoles anyways?
08/10/2008 at 14:56 Muzman says:
This may have been covered further up, but a good start to combating the problem of factless reporting would be reporters actually asking the occasional hard question instead of just regurgitating talking points for hits and comments and/or just op-eding on their own blogs (present company excepted).
That may just create the problem of talking heads refusing to talk to anyone likely to ask tough questions. But at least games journalism would then be as mildly diverse as the rest of the media on that front.
08/10/2008 at 15:01 Paul Moloney says:
Does anyone know why Valve refuse to release Steam sales figures – and why the gaming press hasn’t managed to work out said figures? As perhaps the leading PC developer, it’s strange that they don’t trumpet such sales in order to reassure other developers and gamers that PC Gaming is Alive.
I have a horrible suspicion that the reason they don’t release such sales figures is because they aren’t actually stellar. Sufficient, but not Halo- or GTA4-esque.
P.
08/10/2008 at 15:01 Duoae says:
@ GLOWi
The problem is that not every download of a torrent (or even concurrent downloaders) can be seen as a complete pirated copy. Those downloads will comprise of:
- Incomplete downloads
- Downloaded but not burned: therefore not used
- Downloaded and burned: therefore used
Although you could say that every 20th copy was a lost sale… which total number do you take? Do you take into account that a large portion of those downloaded games might never be used or that even some people will not bother completing the download – in both cases people move on to the next new thing after finishing the last and ignore some of the content they acquired in between. I know i do that for actual purchases (i have a large pile of unplayed or partially played games :/)… so what stops them?
I may not be a pirate but i understand hoarding mentality – and that is the mentality of pirates. The ‘gotta have em all’ approach only goes so far and usually ends up with vast collections of unused items.
It’s impossible to tell without doing a very large multi-continent survey what kind of effect piracy has on gamers and gaming. But as far as i know there has been none…. i certainly haven’t been asked my opinion by any publishers/developers on games that i play or want to play (sorry Cliffski) – they simply don’t care and would instead like to extrapolate from even more unreliable data such as IP addresses and torrent stats.
We all know that certain controversial games (e.g. Spore) will have higher torrent stats purely because the pirates are ‘sticking it to the man’…. i’m sure there are people there downloading multiple copies etc. even though they don’t need to simply because they think they’re sending the message that ‘DRM doesn’t work and if you try to add more we’ll just pirate more’.
Finally @ John Walker. Asking for a survey is good but asking it to be undertaken or funded by developers/publishers/anyone linked to the games industry is naive for the same reasons we don’t believe research into the effects of alcohol and smoking from members of those industries.
A truly impartial survey would be an academic endeavour supported by the government that was not under the heel of the content providers… and i’m pretty sure many studies have been done on other sectors of the entertainment industry and those have found that there is minimal impact on sales of legitimate goods (there are positive and negative aspects to piracy on sales). I’m confident that such a study into games piracy would also produce a similar result but unfortunately these results are not generally free for the public to scrutinize.
If you want to do some journalism on the subject go and buy this (extortionately priced) paper on the issue.
08/10/2008 at 15:04 18Rabbit says:
Maybe the fact that I can buy the identical game earlier, that is also more likely to be stable and bug free and that it will already have a healthy online community when I buy the console version instead of worrying about upgrading some aspect of my PC and waiting for a patchy DRM infested version is what is really “killing” the PC market.
08/10/2008 at 15:08 cliffski says:
PC gamers need to stick up for their platform and support it more if they really want to keep PC gaming alive. People talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. People say that publishers and devs are idiots for not releasing PC games, but then openly admit they torrent them the day before they get released.
All the forum arguments in the world will not help until PC gamers accept that if they want more PC games, they have to buy games and stop pirating them. There are plenty of decent PC games out right now. Buy world of goo, for starters. Or peggle. Or GalCiv2.
And please don’t keep banging on about how beneficial steam is. Steam is just a way of placing a middleman between you and the PC developer. Buy games direct.
08/10/2008 at 15:08 Ignatius J. Smiley says:
I agree that this is a silly game to be having the piracy conversation about.
Endwar was a game whose whole premise and main USP was entirely designed for consoles alone.
08/10/2008 at 15:15 x25killa says:
@cliffski Or, you know, stop buying consoles to play cross-overs, that might help?
08/10/2008 at 15:25 Paul Moloney says:
” Or, you know, stop buying consoles to play cross-overs, that might help?”
I do find it odd that a PC gamer would bother buying an Xbox360, for example. Out of the top 20 (judged by Metacritic), only 5 are not available on PC – the infamous Halo 3, 3 rock-band styles games and, um, the ancient Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
So unless you absolutely must have an overpriced music game, or absolutely had to play Halo 3, I don’t get the attraction.
I bought a Wii, but part of that was because (a) my wife was willing to go halves on it, as opposed to any other console and (b) I figured there wouldn’t be much of an overlap between its games and those of the PC.
And as it, 99% of my gaming is currently on the PC – the Wii gets the very occasional outing.
P.
08/10/2008 at 15:31 jimbo says:
As far as the PC sales vs Console sales thing goes, why is everyone balking about piracy when a much clearer indicator for sales exist.
there are far more console gamers than PC gamers.
more gamers = more moneys
Now there are much more subtle factors at play, but it seems to be getting ignored the simple fact that there are more console gamers.
Also theres the factor that, if you shell out £300+ on a games system you’re likely to buy alot more games for it than if you just have a family PC that doesn’t get upgraded much and has like 2 games on it.
08/10/2008 at 15:31 Duoae says:
@ Paul Moloney:
I have a PC and 360. Primarily because i like playing games outside of FPS and RTS :)
The complex answer is that i prefer platformers and 3rd person adventures/shooters on a console – and FPS and RTS on PC….. though i also enjoy RPGs and tactical games on PC as well as having played a share of FPSs on consoles.
At the moment, many games are coming out on PC with limited installs – which i will not abide – and thus buying them on console is the alternative i choose (or not buying them at all).
08/10/2008 at 15:32 Paul Moloney says:
“PC gamers need to stick up for their platform and support it more if they really want to keep PC gaming alive. ”
Cliffski, serious question – what more do you think PC gamers should do? I buy a fair amount of PC games (think I spent around €150 in the last 3 months) but would always be interested on other forms of support or advocacy.
P.
08/10/2008 at 15:37 Ragnar says:
There is an interesting article over at ars technica about the interesting numbers the big content anti-piracy organisations come up with.
Read it here.
08/10/2008 at 15:37 RichPowers says:
Oh no, a world without shitty Ubisoft ports on the PC!?!
The horror!
08/10/2008 at 15:37 Turin Turambar says:
Cliffski: “I’m certain if there was no piracy I’d be playing Company Of Heroes 2 right now. ”
Uh… you wouldn’t. Relic made CoH OF instead of CoH2. And after that they are making DoW2 and surely they have a small team with Homeworld 3. They don’t have more people to make CoH2!.
So, give them more time, these games need more developing time than… Kudos :P. The first CoH was a four year project.
08/10/2008 at 15:44 Mara says:
I thought Ubisoft would have learned from Assassin’s Creed. Games don’t sell after hype has died. That’s what happens when you delay the PC version.
08/10/2008 at 15:44 soviet_ says:
Piracy, whilst it may not be killing PC gaming isn’t doing anyone any favours. Especially when you have 13,744 seeders & 48,465 leechers of Mercenaries 2 over @ mininova.org
http://www.mininova.org/sub/9/seeds
I can understand why publishers are making the comments they are and to be honest I don’t blame them. Then again, I haven’t really been bothered about any of the titles not coming to PC yet
08/10/2008 at 15:46 Turin Turambar says:
About EndWar on PC: Lol, and what fucking pc gamer is going to buy a game promoted like “a strategy game but it is not really a strategy game, ugh that’s nerdy, this is a console game! it’s like to plan tactics on american football, moving your players!”.
The design, the controls, the interface, the marketing, all was focused on consoles, they could release it on pc but it would be too late, it is already marked as a console game, a must-avoid in sectors like computer strategy fans.
About pc gaming in general:
It sucks but it is the reality. Pc games doesn’t sell like consoles and it isn’t because piracy. It is because there are more console gamers than pc gamers. I don’t know about you, but in my friends & known people circle, there are 4-5 times more console gamers than pc gamers.
08/10/2008 at 15:49 cliffski says:
The biggest thing you can do for PC gaming is to put money directly in the hands of the people who develop PC-specific games.
Buying galciv 2 from stardock is awesome because
1) it proves people will buy games that are totally pc-centric and
2) it makes those games profitable for developers who are committed to the PC.
One problem with PC gaming is that PC gamers are the harshest and most passionate critics of everything. If you were new to gaming and read a typical comments thread on ANY high-profile PC game you would think it was a bug-ridden disaster that is on a par with war crimes committed at Auschwitz.
It’s rare to hear people openly talking about all the benefits of PC vs Console gaming, which is weird because PC gaming kicks consoles ass :D
08/10/2008 at 16:04 Cataclysm says:
“One problem with PC gaming is that PC gamers are the harshest and most passionate critics of everything. If you were new to gaming and read a typical comments thread on ANY high-profile PC game you would think it was a bug-ridden disaster that is on a par with war crimes committed at Auschwitz.”
You visited the WoW forums lately I take it?
Thats mostly due to the 13-18 year olds whining about something. You occasionally get a decent thread there and then Trolls and Flamers ruin it, usually on the first reply to the thread. *Sigh*.
I think Gorgeras hit it pretty much on the head in his previous large post.
I also think the fact many gaming publishers/developers have recently merged making less actual companies making games and more larger companies focusing 1 main game each. Activision+Blizzard and the like. (Though thats a bad example with Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and “A next gen MMO not related to WoW”).
08/10/2008 at 16:07 DarthS says:
Hey John,
You’ve mentioned that no one has done any research, are you sure its not that they’ve done the research but not had a good reason to published it?
There was a much-linked rant posted by Michael Fitch of THQ a while back where he throws PC Piracy numbers around like “70-85% in the US, 90% in Europe”. He doesn’t quote a source, but presumably these figures had to come from somewhere?
But I suspect the thing that drives these decisions is the fact that consoles outsold the PC on games like CoD4 and Bioshock 10-to-1 (supposedly).
08/10/2008 at 16:12 Sam says:
@frymaster: Yes, but you stated that theft and copyright infringement were effectively morally equivalent. That’s certainly not been a consistently held belief historically, and it’s quite hard to justify, since theft harms people more directly than copyright infringement does (and, indeed, since people seem to have different responses to theft and copyright infringement – hence the need for all those “PIRACY IS THEFT” shouty things on DVDs, as the general public certainly doesn’t seem to regard them as morally equivalent at all). Morals being defined at least partly by your society, I would argue that theft is much worse, in Great Britain, than copyright infringement.
08/10/2008 at 16:13 Duoae says:
@ Cliffski:
I’m happy to buy Gal Civ 2 (and its expansions) direct from Stardock because:
1. I’m not tied to them (no DRM)
2. Their delivery system is also a platform for other developers as well – in the same vein as steam (though less restrictive).
If every developer had their own platform for delivering content it would be a nightmare! Unless i wasn’t beholden to them, their system and their vagaries.
Basically, with all the DRM and crap the system is too complicated and too easily destroyed by financial uncertainty – especially in the current and coming depression.
08/10/2008 at 16:14 Paul Moloney says:
I think one reason that console games sell much more than PC games is the greater amount of console gamers, but also the fact that they have less choice – at least, at the beginning of the console’s life cycle. It’s been a quiet few months for PC gaming releases, but I was fine with that as it meant I had time to play classics I hadn’t played before, such as Morrowind and Planeacape: Torment. One more benefit that the PC has over console is that you can often update old games with mods to make them look, while not as good as new, certainly improved, so PC games age more gracefully than console games. While this is a benefit to games wanting to play classics, it’s not of benefit to publishers who would rather gamers buy the latest full-priced game than waste their time replaying old cheap games.
On the other hand, with my Wii, I ended up buying some mediocre FPS simply out of frustration – the kind of game I wouldn’t touch on the PC with a bargepole.
P.
08/10/2008 at 16:18 schizoslayer says:
Ohnoes. Games designed for Consoles sell better on consoles! Games designed for PC sell better on PC!
Call the village elders we must get to the bottom of this mystery!
08/10/2008 at 16:26 Kieron Gillen says:
Sam: Let’s be honest. We can’t do historical comparisons, because the idea of copyright infringement is a far newer one. The word “theft” pushes buttons that go back to the bloody Bible and before. This is wired into us – hell, there’s some people who say that it’s wired into us in a genetic level. We all understand a repulsion to the word “theft”. Copyright infringer doesn’t sound nearly as bad, but I think that’s mainly mental nonsense.
If there was a way back in the ancient history for people to do a magic spell which copied someone’s efforts with no effort of your own*, I suspect the word “Copyright infringer” would carry a similar nastiness around it.
But we’re into magical hypotheticals now. I dislike these particular sorts of debate, because the subtext is making excuses. I don’t mind piracy so much *as long as people don’t make excuses*. While it hasn’t happened to me, I’ve had comic writer friends had pirates confess they bittorrented all their stuff to them, as they couldn’t afford them. Wearing fancy trainers and carrying a superhero statue or whatever they bought at the con.
Point being: No, you could afford to. You chose to spend your money on other stuff. *Don’t lie*.
KG
*”I don’t need you to build my house, builder – I’ve magicked up an identical house to the one you just built. Now starve.”
08/10/2008 at 16:27 Pidesco says:
I have a hard time believing that the number of torrented copies for any given game ever pass 100,000 mark. Which, of course means that if piracy is a threat to a game’s success then that game’s developers have a lot bigger things to worry about than piracy.
08/10/2008 at 16:32 Migit says:
I am not a pirate but i sometimes go to torrents sites just to see what the F is going around there and i found one that had really huge numbers of pc games being pirated, one in particular Brothers in Arms hells highway, 5277 people are downloading right as i write it down.
DON”T they care what F**K they are doing to the PC GAMING?
08/10/2008 at 16:40 Paul Moloney says:
“Which, of course means that if piracy is a threat to a game’s success then that game’s developers have a lot bigger things to worry about than piracy.”
That sentence doesn’t make any sense.
P.
08/10/2008 at 16:44 Paul Moloney says:
“The biggest thing you can do for PC gaming is to put money directly in the hands of the people who develop PC-specific games.”
Yeah, but apart from money? There’s only so much I can spend on games.
It’s strange that PC game companies don’t band together to, for example, launch ping/DOS attacks on well-known torrent sites.
P.
08/10/2008 at 16:48 Cataclysm says:
@Migit
I do not pirate games and definately do not support piracy but as people have pointed out, pirates tend to log in and set anything they find to download. Then once downloaded they will try the game and more often than not, not like the game and will never play it again or like the game but because they are constantly downloading games, they will move onto something else, play for a day, then move onto something else.
This therefore in most cases means this person would not of went out specifically to buy this game – if they could not pirate it, meaning it is not a lost sale.
They only downloaded the game as it was available to them for free.
From that point of view PC game piracy is not effecting PC gaming much, if at all.
I personally think PC game piracy is an excuse the developers like to use but have no evidence to back up their claim at all. There is many factors that effect how well PC games are selling and can not be merely summed up as “PC gaming is becoming less popular due to piracy”.
I also believe pirates use many silly excuses for why they pirate games – like “I can’t afford to buy them”. So you revert to doing something illegal because you cannot afford something? Is that not like me saying “I cannot afford a Lamborghini Gallardo” and then stealing one? (I am not saying stealing=copyright infringement by the way).
08/10/2008 at 16:51 Dante says:
Spotted something interesting about the piracy debate on gamasutra today:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20513
Number six.
It’s nice to know that there a few more sensible developers out there. I’d be interested to know who else operates the disc swap policy, I know Sports Interactive do, and Football Manager dominates the UK charts every year.
08/10/2008 at 16:53 Sam says:
Kieron: if we’re playing magical hypotheticals (which we’re not), then one might note that a magic spell that duplicated anyone else’s (physical) work would lead inherently to a post-scarcity society. Afterall, you’d not starve if you could duplicate food with the spell…
But this is, as you note, beside the point. However (however!), the idea of copying books, for example, being bad certainly doesn’t predate the concept of books – and the idea that you “own” your ideas is also not precisely new. We dislike the idea of plagiarism, but we allow people to copy (with citations) in particular contexts, for example.
What seems to be the case, more so, is that people find “doing harm to individuals” abhorrent, but “doing harm to anonymous concepts, like companies” much easier to cope with. And, the problem with copyright infringement is that there’s a lot more companies which own important copyrights than individuals (even in the case of books, the publisher is the one who has the lawyers to call on, I suspect).
I’m not saying “copyright infringement is okay” – I am saying “it does not logically follow that theft and copyright infringement are morally equivalent”, and I suspect most British people would agree with me.
And then, it all goes to where morals come from and what the importance of laws vs morality is, etc.
08/10/2008 at 16:54 schizoslayer says:
I have traditionally only pirated games that I wasn’t sure I’d like/were any good.
If I know I’m going to enjoy a game I will buy it without even playing the demo. recent examples: Spore, Civ 4, Crysis.
However if the game has gotten mixed reviews or I’m not convinced I’ll play it for more than a few hours then I’ll torrent it and see. Jedi Academy as an example. I only tend to play games I torrent for a few hours because; and this bits important, I didn’t enjoy them.
I’ve bought bad games and good games. I’ve bought some games on the basis of supporting that kind of game even though I ended up not playing it very much. But the only games I torrent are games I wouldn’t normally buy anyway on the slim off-chance that I might possibly like it.
If games cost less I’d buy more of them. I’d buy shit games more often to try them out. However if the PC had a rental or decent second hand market it would replace piracy for me. It still wouldn’t make the developers anymore money however.
08/10/2008 at 17:05 CitizenParker says:
Trying to look from UbiSoft’s perspective, I’m not sure that I see why any company that has made these pronouncements and that did this research would actually release it.
Either the numbers back what they’ve said and they’ve put on the public record “Yes, we’ve lost money” or the numbers don’t back what they’ve said and the public record now has “We don’t understand our target market.”
Broadcasting either doesn’t really seem too smart for these publicly traded mega-studios that we’ve discussed.
I’m not trying to be negative on the point – I guess I just don’t understand what would be in it for the developers / publishers. With the exception of a few holdouts like RPS trying to conduct even-handed conversations on the subject, much of gaming media seems already anti-pirate, so I can’t imagine that it would do that much to popular opinion.
So if not for public sentiment and if not for the fiscal bottom line, then what would be their interest? I know I’m missing something most likely due to my limited imagination – I just can’t see what.
-Parker
08/10/2008 at 17:08 schizoslayer says:
Why is there no Edit anymore?
To clarify on the price thing at the end of my previous comment:
I can afford to buy alot of games. I don’t spend money on much else really and buying 6 games in a month isn’t unheard of. However the price point becomes a problem as the shit games are not in impulse buy territory. I can happily shrug off a wasted fiver a week on a throwaway game but it’s alot harder to casually throw £35 in the bin on the off-chance I might like something.
I think PC Gaming is suffering from what I consider a lack of Shareware. I want to get a large chunk of game for nothing, try it out to see if I like it and then spend some money to unlock the rest. If I’m only going to play it for an hour and never return then I’ve not lost anything except an hour of my life. If it’s a game I like and want to play further then congratulations developer you’ve succeeded at your job and made a sale by making a fun product.
I do this ALL THE TIME on Xbox Live Arcade. I didn’t know if I’d like Castle Crashers and if I hadn’t been able to download it and try out a big chunk of the game before spending a few quid to unlock it I never would have bought the full thing.
I do the same thing with books, films and music. I won’t buy an album if I’ve never heard the band before. I will borrow a cd from a friend or listen to their myspace page or something to figure out if I want to spend money on them. I’ll borrow books before I commit to buying a copy for myself and I’ll wait for a movie to be shown on the TV for free if I’m not sure I want to see it at the cinema or buy the DVD.
My money is limited and I want to KNOW that I will not regret spending it on your product. This applies to everything and not just games. The problem is the simplest way to try out a PC game you aren’t sure about is to download it for free.
08/10/2008 at 17:10 Pahalial says:
Worth noting is that Sins of a Solar Empire patching – the game largely in question in Brad Wardell’s linked post – has since begun -as of 1.12 i think it was- requiring use of the stardock downloader or whatever it’s called (not at home to check) for which you need to have a legit game. So while piracy may have seemed insignificant enough at launch, they’ve since [apparently] decided too many people were giving the standalone patch installers to friends who’d pirated the game.
Now, mind you, this is only for patch distribution, so they’re still sticking rather true to their statements.
08/10/2008 at 17:31 Deano2099 says:
Just to throw something out there, what happens if piracy does kill the PC as a gaming platform.
The hackers and pirates all just give up and retire? Or do they all focus their efforts on consoles and increasingly simple ways to allow pirated games to run on them? Surely it’s the latter.
As for the torrent sites, you pretty much can’t do anything about them. Actually you probably could, much like with the old P2P stuff like Napster and Kazaa, just sue a few of them and try and force the rest into uselessness.
But you know that somewhere out there some genius is already working on an even more efficient, more decentralised P2P network. And exactly how do you track anything when we no longer need a torrent site? We just need an IP for ANYONE on the network, and can then access a distributed list of files…
Comics are an interesting one KG – I only ever read things once, and am not one that coos over the art, but sometimes if it’s a story by a writer I really like I’ll be interested in the comic. But £3 for something I’ll be done with in 5 minutes is far too steep. Unless they’re packed full of back-matter…
In an ideal world I’d borrow them from a library…
As for ‘piracy is theft’. Of course it isn’t. It has the same end result for the perpetrator and they’re both crimes but they’re different for a reason. It’s like saying “Raping a prostitute is theft” – sort of makes sense in a twisted fashion but not exactly what you’d be charged with. Worth noting in the UK ripping a CD to an iPod is also copyright infringement (Computer Misuse Act 1990). Now you know that I expect everyone that’s said “it’s a crime so it’s wrong, end of” to delete all their MP3s. And never do 71mph on the motorway.
As for the name ‘theft’ and the psychological effects, I can’t help but think ‘piracy’ was meant to be equally evocative when it was first dreamt up, but we’ve done a marvellous job of glamorising high-seas piracy these past decades. I’m not entirely convinced that’s co-incidence.
08/10/2008 at 17:34 DraconianOne says:
Wow – spend some time at work and then see several hours of comments fill up a page. So going back to something that was said quite a while ago:
@Shadowmancer:
Unless you’re paying and downloading from iTunes or another official site then this is no better. In fact, it’s probably worse. The people who make those shows you’re downloading do rely on residuals which they get from first time showings and re-runs on TV and, as a result of the US writer’s strike earlier this year, will be getting them for any shows that are viewed or downloaded online.
You’re downloading torrents for free means that these people are not going to get the money they would have done had you used iTunes or whatever. While JW makes a good point that the 200 people who work on a game get paid and don’t get residuals (although at the back of my mind I have a nagging thought that members of the UK writers guild who write on games may well do), the same is not true for actors/writers/directors etc on TV shows.
Downloading films and TV shows is still piracy.
08/10/2008 at 17:39 Pidesco says:
@Paul Moloney:
Yeah, if you take it out of context it sounds pretty dumb.
08/10/2008 at 17:45 roryok says:
I can’t believe I’m adding to yet another comments thread about piracy thats 100 bloody pages long (or destined to be)
There are certain truths we simply must accept:
1. Publishers are greedy money grabbers who, like the record industry and movie industry, will NEVER back down from the theory that one pirate copy = one lost sale. The rich are paranoid about losing money, even if its unproven. These accusations will always fly around.
2. Piracy will always exist in some form. More than likely, all of us on this thread have pirated at some stage. Maybe not a game, but certainly a music CD or a DVD. It will never be eliminated. And it certainly won’t be stopped by DRM.
3. PC Gaming will never, ever die. Ever. It doesnt matter what kind of consoles come out next year, or the year after, PCs are required to develop the games for these consoles. PCs will always be around and involved in the games industry, the same way that Macs are involved in the publishing industry. And PC games, played with a mouse and keyboard, fill a certain niche that Consoles cannot. There will always be a market for the smarter games. (Also, lets not forget that the PC back catalogue dwarfes the combined back-catalogues of all consoles ever created)
The best solution I’ve seen to the PC games ‘problem’ has been steam. Steam is an excellent solution because rather than screwing you over like DRM does, steam does the opposite. It provides a significant advantage in buying the game over copying it. Namely, a backed up online copy of every game you’ve bought, recoverable and installable as many times as you need. Once or Twice lately I’ve had to re-install windows on my machine and I actually ENJOYED installing steam and seeing a list of all the titles I own on it, with the option to install them, along with games I didn’t know I had. Add to this the fact that its also often significantly cheaper to buy games through it. Crysis Warhead is $29 dollars, which works out at €21, significantly better than the €39.99 Gamestop tried to bleed out of me.
In a nutshell, steam ENCOURAGES buying the game, instead of tryng discourage or stop piracy at the cost of non-pirates.
08/10/2008 at 17:47 Myros says:
I took a quick look over a torrent site, after reading this article, and noticed that more than half the game torrents listed are for consoles.
For me personaly I stopped buying most PC games a few years back for a number of reasons, here’s a few:
1. Got tired of buying buggy games with little or no post-launch support. Certain companies just got a bad rep for rush releasing games, they have nobody but themselves to blame that I dont buy games created by them anymore.
2. A lot of developers just started cloning titles and releasing the same old thing with minor changes. I just started getting the ‘been there, done that’ feeling about a LOT of games. RTS #34 or FPS #47 …bleh, I’ll pass thanks.
3. I havent purchased a game from a traditional walk-in retail store for about 3 years. If you dont have an easy download purchase option you missed out on my sales, oh well.
4. I recently moved back to Scotland from the US, suddenly Im not good enough to buy your games anymore? lol, your loss.
These companies can blame piracy all they want, for this customer it had NOTHING to do with it. But as was mentioned above I kinda suspect that it may be nothing more than a way of saying “we want to make console money but dont want to offend the PC crowd who supported our company when it started so lets blame piracy and try to milk some money from them later when we release a crappy port”.
Thankfully there are still dev houses making worthwhile games for the PC, they will get my support and my money. For the rest, blame what you want … I guess it’s easier than taking responability.
08/10/2008 at 17:55 Kieron Gillen says:
Myros: Numbers of torrents. Now look at the numbers downloading those torrents. Arguments of “there’s console piracy too!” are pretty spurious. When I actually counted number, it was about 10%. Of course, that may have changed.
KG
08/10/2008 at 17:58 grumpy says:
Thank you for that. This same thing drives me nuts. I certainly don’t believe that every pirated copy of a game is a “lost sale”, or anything like that, and on the whole, it doesn’t bother me much if someone tells me they pirated a game, even if it’s a really good game that I want to support in every way possible. The one thing I think is plain unacceptable is when people attempt to justify it. Saying “Yeah, but I couldn’t afford it anyway, so it’s not a lost sale”, or “Yeah, but it’s not that good a game, so I wouldn’t have bought it”.
You could have afforded it if you chose to spend your money on the game. You made a conscious choice not to pay for this game, and instead spend your money elsewhere. It was a choice, not some fundamental law of nature. Don’t try to dodge the responsibility for the choices you make. And if you claim “It wasn’t good enough to buy”, why the hell did you waste your time downloading and playing it then? Again, you *chose* this game over all the other ways in which you could spend your time, so it must be worth *something* to you.
We need to accept that piracy is wrong. Sometimes we all do things that are wrong, yes, but that doesn’t make them right. You can pirate a game if you like, just like you can steal from the local supermarket if you like, or jaywalk or any other illegal action, but be honest about it. Say “I could have paid for it, if I’d chosen to. I didn’t, and that’s unfair to the developers of the game, but I did it anyway.”
08/10/2008 at 18:03 Deano2099 says:
“When I actually counted number, it was about 10%. Of course, that may have changed.”
Don’t forget for the DS the files are around 5% of the size of the average PC game, hence get downloaded far quicker.
You’re right about the other consoles of course.
08/10/2008 at 18:09 Mark Stevens says:
I’m with Schizoslayer where shareware/demos are concerned. Back in the 90s — and even earlier this decade — it was unusual for there not to be a substantial demo of a game ahead of its release. The ability to “try before you buy” is vitally important to the video game industry — at least from a player’s point of view. But it seems as if, in recent years, that ability is being denied to gamers.
Would you slam down 15 bucks on an album full of tracks you’ve never heard before, simply because the record label told you they were all really good and groundbreaking, honest guv? Of course not, yet this is precisely what game publishers would like you to do.
Now, I’m not saying that all piracy is due to an inability to preview the source material, but it is a contributing factor that publishers have some control over.
What’s the publisher’s stance on demos or shareware episodes? I can’t say I’ve heard many saying anything significant on the subject for a while. Usually it’s something dismissive like, “Oh, it would be completely impossible for us to release a demo, because of the open-ended nature of our gameplay.”
Yeah, Ubisoft said that about Assassin’s Creed. Anyone who’s played the game knows it’s not THAT open-ended and a self-contained demo made from existing content would have been pretty easy to knock up. There are many gamers out there who like stealth-based games but aren’t willing to shell out 40 bucks for what could be either a poor man’s Thief: Deadly Shadows or something genuinely interesting.
But there’s no demo, so what’s a game with piqued curiosity to do? Risk spending that money and hope they fall in the with crowd who enjoyed the game, torrent the full game or just not bother whatsoever? Not really an enticing set of options, are they?
08/10/2008 at 18:12 Subject 706 says:
Why can’t publishers simply realize that multiformat titles often/mostly sell less on the pc simply because they are multiformat titles, and as such are primarily aimed at console players?
I think Stardock summed it up pretty well: Target the potential buyers who are least inclined to pirate, and make a game that is uniquely suited to the system.
Seriously, EA or Ubi could make an xcom or Dungeon keeper spinoff on the pc using a fraction of the budget of say, Gears Of War, or Rainbow Six 2.
It wouldn’t sell 5 milllion copies, but chances are rather good it would actually be profitable. After all, Stardock pulled it off with Sins.
08/10/2008 at 18:12 Erlam says:
I couldn’t read all of the comments, but I thought I’d chime in with something not mentioned in the first half or so of comments.
Games made for one console, paid for by the console companies themselves. I work for a company that makes games exclusively for Sony. There’s no PC equivalent.
I think piracy on the PC is a problem, but I think people are using that problem to cover larger ones — decreased quality of games, further reliance on sequels, and games budgets outweighing the improvements; I.E. game A has more bloom/bump-mapping/textures than game B. Game B has better story/more polished gameplay, costs 60% what game A did. They both sell the same amount of copies.
I think we need to move the fuck away from insanely ridiculous graphics, and start improving A.I. Stalker is the only game I can think of that actually went ahead and said “graphics are great, sure, but what we really need is a smarter environment.”
In response to schizoslayer’s comment, I agree. I think the problem with ‘demos’ on the PC is that they are often ridiculously huge, and the majority of the US is still on dial-up (why, America, why?) So while it’ll take me 30 minutes to download that demo, and maybe beat it in 30-45 minutes, it’ll take American Joe there an entire day. And they consider that wasted.
I haven’t even gone into the fact that games are rushed now, and that there’s this false belief you need to spend 30 million to make a good game.
PC developers have already realised it, but cross-platform devs are lagging behind: It’s better to spend 5 million to make 20, than 30 to make 50.
08/10/2008 at 18:14 Myros says:
You could be right Kieron, to be honest I just had a quick look over it.
I do suspect though that may be just a symptom of information saturation ie the amount of people who know how to use a cracked console game being low. I dont know how to do it, though I know my nephew does. That may change as more people learn how, though as I say it’s not something I know anything about so could be wrong.
The only reason I know how to ‘crack’ a PC game is because at one point I had about 30+ games on my PC and got tired of having to find CDs :) Another reason I download only now I guess, no need for cracks at all that way.
08/10/2008 at 18:19 Kieron Gillen says:
Myros: Absolutely. But then again, it’s just harder on the console. You don’t need to do *anything* to make most pirated games work on your PC. You just download them.
(What I’m trying to say is that while most of what you’re saying not on, arguing that Console piracy is comparable in a real way doesn’t hold water. At least, piracy on the next-gen consoles anyway. The DS situation, as walker puts it, is an interesting one)
KG
08/10/2008 at 18:19 onkellou says:
“Shouting “PIRACY IS THEFT!” doesn’t make it true. It is illegal. It is against the law to do it. But it isn’t theft, and so let’s not use that word to describe it.”
Downloading something and stealing a data carrier, with a material value that goes against zero, and which is near-infinitey reproducable, is comparable to the point where insisting on the “loss” of the stolen good as the distinguishing factor becomes absurd.
Stealing a game from a multimedia chain and downloading it is more closely related than stealing a handwritten manuscript and stealing a game, even if the latter two are called “theft”, and the first two aren’t.
It’s no coincidence that “theft of intellectually property” is such a widely used and accepted term between jurists, the kings of the pedants.
Shouting “PIRACY ISN’T THEFT” is just as helpful and irritating as shouting “PIRACY IS THEFT”.
08/10/2008 at 18:27 pepper says:
Apparently us PC users sail the mighty seven sea’s and raid cargo ships containing games?!
I havent read the whole discussion above, but i think they should try and scratch there own head first, 65/70 euro’s is not justified for any game in my opinion.
08/10/2008 at 18:31 Gorgeras says:
PCG and RPS shouldn’t let up on the bastards. Demand to know why they ignore the very powerful arguements against DRM and point out the very large gaping holes in the batshit-crazy ‘anti-piracy’ nonsense they keep spewing.
And if it comes to it, we as consumers should be prepared to punish.
08/10/2008 at 18:31 onkellou says:
On a completely different note, I had no idea there would even be a PC version for this. I blame a lack of marketing for bad sales. :)
And this: “At the moment it feels like an out-of-control rumour is driving a steamroller over the PC.” hits the nail on the head.
08/10/2008 at 18:32 Mark Stevens says:
It would be nice if publishers stopped their self-defeating whining and were a bit more proactive in getting gamers to buy their products instead of pirating them.
It seems to work for Valve. Granted, Steam is far from perfect as a content delivery system, and it won’t stop the most determined freeloader from acquiring Half-Life 2, but I suspect that Half-Life 2′s sales to piracy ratio is a lot healthier than that of most other PC games.
Plus Valve do other cool things, like give Half-Life 2 away for free with a sequel package.
Seems like a more workable business model than sitting in a corner, sulking, mumbling that all PC gamers are thieving bastards.
08/10/2008 at 18:35 Erlam says:
Yeah so, edit is gone as mentioned. A couple other comments I forgot to add:
-There’s a theory that games are easier to create on consoles. That is far, far from the truth. In fact, the PS3 is so insane to make games on, PC seems like a walk in the park. When I was at EA, we had five of our areas seven 360′s brick in the first two weeks. Of those five replaced, another three broke down a month later.
-Aren’t indie games doing extremely well on the PC? When was the last time you saw something like… argh name escapes me, those card-game/strategy games, on XBox live or something. Seriously, the console market is ‘more profitable,’ but only if you’re a major company. You have no choice, as a small company, to do anything other than PC games.
08/10/2008 at 18:45 trillex says:
A bit off-topic but am I the only one who sees the connection that since publishers have moved more and more over to the consoles, games have also slowly become dumber and dumber? Then PC gamers sometimes gets tossed a bone by a shitty port and all of the PC gamers gather around to see why console players praise this game as their new messiah, but the PC gamers can’t see what the hell they are talking about and just think it’s an average game. (Read: Halo).
08/10/2008 at 18:46 Monkfish says:
If Endwar’s delayed PC release really is down to The Piracy Argument, then why aren’t Ubi doing the same with Far Cry 2, which happens to be another of their multi-platform releases?
08/10/2008 at 18:51 Sam says:
Also, if we’re being pedantic, can the people using “wrong” to mean “illegal” please stop that? Illegal is not a super- or sub-set of immoral, and probably never will be.
You can only argue that piracy is wrong if it is immoral, and you can’t use legality to argue that.
(Not, again, that I don’t believe piracy is wrong, but I do think that it’s problematic to conflate “immoral” and “illegal” – one of them is possibly universal, and the other one is mainly down to governmental preference in your current location, for a start. If people are going to have an argument, we can at least decide on the terms.)
08/10/2008 at 19:01 eyemessiah says:
Cliffski: “All the forum arguments in the world will not help until PC gamers accept that if they want more PC games, they have to buy games and stop pirating them.”
Cliffski, I’m disappointed to see you haranguing PC gamers!
Maybe I should just buy an PS3 and abandon PC as a platform because at least then I won’t get criticised and accused quite so much by the people who develop the games I buy?
Personally I think these sorts of comments represent one of the least constructive responses to piracy possible.
You and I both know that the only people who take offense at these sorts of comments are the people who actually pay for games. The pirates, by definition, just don’t care what you, or I or Ubisoft say. They are immune to haranguing, criticism, and argument. You might as well think of piracy as being something like the weather, or the tide, it doesn’t care that we’d like it to stop doing what its doing.
Which means that you are right of course that all the forum arguments in the world amount to very little, but given that there is basically no tolerable solution to the piracy problem I really think its worth bearing in mind that the other problem, the problem of the increasingly hostile relationship between PC developers and PC gamers is one that is very much under our control.
Developers can not hope to sell more by insulting their customers, even if they are very angry. And even if they wrongly suppose that the pirates will feel so chagrinned that they will miraculously start buy games instead of duplicating them for free.
I understand big software houses taking some titles away from the PC because piracy makes it difficult to turn a profit on them, but what I don’t understand is why they can’t gag the execs who then use their face time to effectively say “well, you made us do it, you bunch of crazy pirate dicks!”. It just seems unnecessary and pointless to me!
(I’m not including you in that crowd ofc cliffski! Only the first paragraphs were in response to what you said, the rest is broader rant territory.)
08/10/2008 at 19:08 eyemessiah says:
EDIT: (as edit is gone!) I didn’t mean that to sound quite so “you”y. By “you” I don’t mean you, Cliffski. I mean the wider “you”!
08/10/2008 at 19:10 eyemessiah says:
Actually some of them are you… Bugger it! I need edit!
08/10/2008 at 19:16 me says:
i don’t know guys, but here in brazil the piracy for pcs is bigger than consoles just because consoles are more expensive. any pc game costs about half the price of the console version, even the hardware for pc are cheapier, a hd4850 cost half the price of a xbox360 in our stores, and i know that back in usa xbox 360 are being sold by 199 and this ati graphics by ~175.
08/10/2008 at 19:18 Kismet says:
It would definitely be interesting to get some insight on publishers’ analysis methods to reach such conclusions. At last some vague hint about the methodology.
Especially in cases where it’s not plausible they’re basing their theories on their very same sales figures, considering the release patterns adopted by Ubisoft in the last few years for what concerns multi-platform titles.
I won’t argue with the business decision behind it (not because I agree with the theory that simultaneous releases negatively impacts console sales, it’s just that this kind of speculations without hard data tend to be a bit pointless in the long run and I’m old and tired), but since the effect of such statements and the circumstances that generally generate them suspiciously move the discussion in the realm of marketing / PRing strategies, maybe it would be the case to go a bit more in depth, in order to be taken seriously.
08/10/2008 at 19:25 Stromko says:
Actually they might be right (partways) that this delay, if it means a viable PC code won’t even exist until the console version is available for awhile, would logically allow people to buy the game on console before they could rent it.
However, I for one never buy console games anymore, because I can’t be bothered to boot up my little gimp-puter, especially to play a genre that’s going to be a pain in the arse on a controller. I -RENT-, totally legal, and only about 8$ at worst. 99% of the time I don’t feel the need to make a second rental because by definition anything that doesn’t use mouse and keyboard doesn’t get its hooks in me, so that’s only 8$ at most they’re ever getting from me for a given game.
It’s not a choice I’d like to have to make. One way they have a massive distribution channel to extract 8$ from me, the other way they try to foist a 60$ (w/ sales-tax) PC purchase on me that is non-returnable and non-refundable no matter how much I might regret the purchase. Naturally, if you’ve been burned before by a given publisher or developer combo and don’t have tons of cash to throw away, you’re going to either rent or steal given the choice between the two odds.
A lot of people will wait to play a strategy game on the platform where it belongs, and given that, yeah, it’s pretty easy to figure out how to pirate if you can figure out how to run a PC game at all, this decision by Ubisoft won’t help them.
I remember when you could actually trade a PC game back in, you still can with console games and nobody seems to mind. I’m sure a lot of publishers would like to add expendable keys to half their console games but realize that might piss off customers who’ve grown to expect a 10 – 80% return on their investment when they’re tired of their new game. Perhaps if they’d applied the same thinking to PC games the retail box scene wouldn’t be on such a decline.
08/10/2008 at 19:28 Rei Onryou says:
As a PC game enthusiast, I like to buy a lot of games (primarily boxed, but I’ve got a fair bit on Steam). The problem is, come XMas crunch time (i.e. now), we can’t spend what we want to. I end up putting games into categories of preference:
1) Must have on day of release – I.E. Left 4 Dead
2) May not buy immediately depending on reviews – I.E. Dead Space
3) Won’t buy until sale/price drop – I.E. GTA IV
Most people may disagree with my choices, but the point remains that I won’t have £100 or so to get them all at once, nor until perhaps a few months after release. If this is a typical gamer conundrum, then at XMas, game X will have lacklustre initial sales. Rather than blame it on competition, it’ll blamed on piracy.
And in reference to Ubisoft on Steam, if they allow us Euros access, and put up a Ubisoft complete pack, I’ll buy it on the spot.
@cliffski – I would love to buy all my games direct from the devs, but if that were the case, I’d have two dozen different digital distribution systems and it’d be a nightmare with all the accounts. Steam is considered the solution to this. Yes, Valve get a cut, but it allows us a central place to get our games. If lots of comparable competitors were to pop up, it’d just cause the consumers a headache, so its better to stick with Steam.
08/10/2008 at 19:29 Stromko says:
Er, I meant they could logically purchase it on console before it could be /pirated/. Yeah we really need edit.
08/10/2008 at 19:39 andy says:
whatever happens to the pc gaming scene, the pirates will remain, its not like they’ll all of a sudden say “drat, there’s no pc games anymore, i guess i’ll have to retire my hax0r skilz for good”… they’ll just turn 90 degrees to their right and say, “ok, lets rip the console games now”.
and then what are the pub(e)s going to say? “we will be putting out titleX on the 360/wii a month later because everyone’s grandma has hacked those and its killing our console sales”.
08/10/2008 at 19:46 DRcancerface says:
I don’t know about this subject. I don’t have unlimited funds so when a game for PC is delayed I go buy another for my DS and hope its fun. Then when the PC game comes out I see lame reviews so I figure I’m not missing anything and buy another DS game. This happened with spore. I wanted to buy this but read so many horrible reviews about it being boring and drm stuff I just bought clear sky instead off steam. Also I don’t have a ps3 but I did play gta4 on a friends and its fun but it does get boring fast the missions are stupid, multiplayer is fun kind of…so why would I buy this on PC a year later after I now don’t care about it? Why would I buy mirrors edge when I can goto a friends and watch him play it and take a few tries myself, the mystery is over if its great ok neat am I going to be able to afford this whenever it comes out on pc or do I need a few new shirts? I’m not rich so its going to be left4dead on nov 20 until january. I really want fallout 3 though :O
08/10/2008 at 20:05 ImperialCreed says:
Interesting little story after surfacing on Ars Technica:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/dodgy-digits-behind-the-war-on-piracy.ars/4
They actually tried to find evidence to support some of the “Piracy is killing the industry” comments and statistics. Can you guess what they found?
Not much. Granted this is purely an American perspective, but still, looks like a lot of the touted numbers don’t hold up to scrutiny.
08/10/2008 at 20:19 Mori says:
Somehow making people wait and pissing them off makes them less likely to pirate your game, and more likely to go and buy a console to play it on
I buy games to support developers I like, if I don’t like them (because they don’t like me), it certainly puts some doubt in my mind as to whether I should give them my money or not
08/10/2008 at 20:27 Kadayi says:
@Shadowmancer
I’m not convinced about the pricing argument being the reason Ubisoft forgoes European releases on Steam. Generally AAA titles in the US retail at $60, not $40 so the pricing is quite comparable to European equivalents.
08/10/2008 at 20:37 rocketman71 says:
Preorder for EndWar canceled because “Stupidity’s killing Ubi”
08/10/2008 at 20:42 Devan says:
Well, I’m a developer and the only significant loss of income that I think is credible is from the younger console-goers who plan to buy for their console but then change their mind in a simultaneous launch because they hear they can get the PC version for ‘free’. Anyone who already plans to get a pirated copy is no source of revenue anyways.
That’s why I can see the logic in a _somewhat_ delayed PC launch and I think that’s justified if they take that extra time to make a quality version and not a cheap port.
As I see it, the main factor that publishers should be concerned about is the (majority) of people who choose not to pirate and want to buy the game. The publishers need to focus on capturing and retaining those customers, and if they happen to be PC customers, then this type of attitude is likely to turn them away.
So with a delayed PC launch, your balancing a subset of console gamers who might have been lured to the ‘free’ route against a subset of PC gamers who would have bought it with a simultaneous launch but end up not buying at all.
If the publisher estimates that this balance is in their favour then I think that justifies a delayed launch BUT it does not justify this baseless slander against the platform as a whole.
08/10/2008 at 20:51 Devan says:
(hmm, it seems I can’t edit my posts)
I was going to add a response to Cliffski
@Cliffski
I respect your opinions here since you’ve done your research and as an indie dev you’re the type most affected by sales fluctuations. I sure wish publishers would take a look at your research instead of making claims without showing any real data. After all, half the reason I buy your game is because they have no DRM and as a consumer I value that. Times are changing and I think that big developers would find a much more cooperative and ‘spendy’ PC market if they focus on what the paying customers want instead of what the pirates don’t want.
08/10/2008 at 20:54 perilisk says:
“You could have afforded it if you chose to spend your money on the game. ”
Firstly, I don’t believe in any non-utilitarian justification for intellectual property; no inherent right to be paid just because you did something that benefited other people, but without their prior consent; and certainly no inherent moral obligation not to replicate useful information.
That said, from a utilitarian perspective, there’s only so much a rational person will spend on media, because there are other expenses that are non-negotiable (food, electricity, shelter, taxes, etc.) and where failing to pay is bona fide theft. Once that budget is expended, there are two worlds for every other game — the world where the you don’t buy the game and play it, and the world where you don’t buy the game and don’t play it. The former is objectively better from a utilitarian standpoint, and both are equivalent as far as the content producer is concerned. The main issue here is that people can easily deceive themselves as to whether they would pay when the option of free is available, but it’s still commonsense to assume that there are many cases where piracy can’t possibly translate to a loss. If there’s no loss, then how is there a moral issue?
08/10/2008 at 21:00 dhex says:
on topic of both numbers and the dreaded p-word:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/dodgy-digits-behind-the-war-on-piracy.ars
08/10/2008 at 21:15 RichPowers says:
@DarthS
That trend is NOT true when it comes to sales of The Orange Box.
08/10/2008 at 21:16 RichPowers says:
grrr no post edit. Here’s the link saying that The Orange Box sold 1.5 million on consoles and “significantly” more on PC.
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/36952/The-Orange-Box-1-5-Million-Console-Sales-Significantly-More-On-PC
08/10/2008 at 21:21 JulianP says:
These statements about piracy killing sales are starting to sound like anti-PC propaganda.
08/10/2008 at 22:15 cliffski says:
“Firstly, I don’t believe in any non-utilitarian justification for intellectual property; no inherent right to be paid just because you did something that benefited other people”
WTF?
It’s about incentives. if you don’t give me an incentive (re: money I can use to buy food) in return for making PC games, then I will go back to carpentry or IT support.
All the intellectual posturing in the world will not change the fact that developers have bills to pay.
Nobody cares if you want to make arguments about marginal costs or the dictionary definition of theft. These arguments don’t pay my rent, or that of any other PC developer.
It really is that simple.
08/10/2008 at 22:27 Dizet Sma says:
Pahalial says:
Worth noting is that Sins of a Solar Empire patching – the game largely in question in Brad Wardell’s linked post – has since begun … for which you need to have a legit game. So while piracy may have seemed insignificant enough at launch, they’ve since [apparently] decided too many people were giving the standalone patch installers to friends who’d pirated the game.
It wasn’t a case of ‘giving away’ the patch installers to friends as they were freely available from the Sins website, as well as other places. The last patch (1.05) wasn’t available as a direct download from the site, nor is the 1.1 beta release, you have to add the Stardock Impulse manager to get them and this does a CD key check.
However, the 1.05 patch is available elsewhere on the ‘net and both files were certainly recently available on USENET warez groups as well. Therefore someone with a legit copy of the game has downloaded them and posted them elsewhere.
What this says about the mentality of those PC Gamers is up for question.
08/10/2008 at 22:51 Paul Moloney says:
On Valve and PC sales figures:
“Doug Lombari: We were very happy with both the Xbox 360 and PS3 sales. I think the Xbox 360 version did just over a million, while the PS3 [released later in December] version did a few hundred thousand copies. So I think when all is said and done, The Orange Box will have sold about 1.5 million copies on the console, which is great. But the game’s PC sales were much stronger.”
WHY CAN’T THEY TELL US?
Seriously, do any of the FPS staff know why Valve refuse to issue these figures? Surely it would be the best rebuttal to the PC-gaming-is-dead crowd?
P.
08/10/2008 at 22:59 Wolfoz says:
@KG
Just another thought regarding the number of console game torrents on torrent sites vs number of downloads.
As I’ve said on a previous PC piracy debate, it is even more difficult to get the numbers of pirated copies of games on consoles. Its more of a hidden problem for the following reasons:
Mr A pays for console, buys a couple of games, then is told, for a sum they can get their console chipped/fixed so they can play pirated copies. Mr A then buys pirated games for a fraction of the real game’s cost (or in some cases, has the knowledge to know where to get the games and the facilities to burn them himself). Now, is any of that trackable at all? Not really, the console games will be downloaded by less people as it will only be the people with the facilities to create the pirated copies, and it only needs to be downloaded once, and can be easily redistributed. This can be true of PC games, but I believe that if you have the knowledge of where these sites are, and had enough experience of getting round the DRM previously, then as a PC gamer, your more likely to do it yourself than pay for even a pirated copy. By the way, at no point am I saying that if you are a PC gamer, you will know how to pirate games, just trying to show why the PC game torrents may be downloaded more frequently than the console ones.
08/10/2008 at 23:00 Andrew says:
EndWar always struck me as a title that would do better on console anyway.
A lot of the marketing for it was the usual ‘RTS… but on console!’ stuff, with the other innovations/novelties playing distinctly second fiddle. I’m kind of surprised it’s getting a PC release at all.
08/10/2008 at 23:13 Paul Moloney says:
“Crysis Warhead is $29 dollars, which works out at €21, significantly better than the €39.99 Gamestop tried to bleed out of me.”
Jesus, dude; make Froogle and Gamestracker your new friends:
http://www.gamestracker.com/
http://www.google.co.uk/products
I got Crysis: Warhead from play.com for just €21. Steam is usually more expensive than online shops, unless they’re doing bargains (I bought both the iD pack and the Max Payne pack for half price recently).
P.
08/10/2008 at 23:15 Larington says:
I’m not sure I agree with the idea there are more gamers on consoles. The installed base of gaming capable computers is massive, think of how many computers are capable of playing Peggle.
Really I think the issue only shows up when you get to the AAA block buster titles which, as time goes on, I’m starting to increasingly question the value of since it tends to be generic shooter XXI that publishers get all gooey-eyed over.
I really wish Valve would just give us the numbers for sales of their source games on the different platforms as well, I’m tired of seeing the same old rhetoric without the evidence backing it up.
Actual numbers.
Real. Bloody. Numbers.
I’m also pretty tired of publishers saying, game X sold fewer copies on PC than on console, blaming piracy, and forgetting to mention they released on PC weeks or months after they did on console, when the marketting campaigns have run out of funding and steam (sic) or putting totalitarian digital restrictions management in that makes privateers feel justified in using illegal download channels instead of guilty.
08/10/2008 at 23:19 Larington says:
Anecdotally, one of the members of a science fiction group over in wales bought a nintendo DS for her son and got an R4 thing whilst she was at it, her reason being that DS games are generally far too expensive, good games (ones that provide good value for money presumably) get bought, not so good ones, well, I doubt it somehow.
08/10/2008 at 23:44 Hoernchen says:
DRM is killing PC.
08/10/2008 at 23:53 Memyself says:
“Firstly, I don’t believe in any non-utilitarian justification for intellectual property; no inherent right to be paid just because you did something that benefited other people, but without their prior consent; and certainly no inherent moral obligation not to replicate useful information.”
That is one of the stupidest things I have ever read. You have no inherent right to useful information created at the expense of someone else.
As for the “non-utilitarian justification”: Paying ones bills is very utilitarian. Charging money for efforts that cost money to produce is utilitarian. Maybe not for you. But you seem to have forgotten that the user is only one half of the equation.
Are you obligated to pay for a given product? Of course not. But you’re not entitled to it for free, either.
09/10/2008 at 00:18 Duoae says:
@ Larington:
I agree about the DS games price thing. I never understood why they are more expensive than a fully fledged PC game (e.g. Crysis or some other blockbuster that cost millions to develop)…. plus Nintendo games never go down in price – even for the gamecube. I wonder if they make retailers keep the games at a certain price point?
09/10/2008 at 00:42 Scott says:
I just read all 219 comments. Good discussion. but im tired
09/10/2008 at 00:57 The Unshaven says:
Just in case it’s relevant, here’s a link to a significant statistical analysis of music filesharing done in 2004: http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf
Its conclusion? That the impact of piracy on music sales was indistinguishable from zero.
- The Unshaven.
09/10/2008 at 02:32 Jon R. says:
Keiron can go on about how console piracy is just a fraction of PC game piracy, but this is largely because as a wannabe hipster fuckwit he can rest of writing complete bullshit without bothering with even the most rudimentary glances at the big picture. It’s a fraction in places where people are sold consoles and their games for relatively reasonable prices. Places where it’s cheaper to import your console than to buy one made for — or even IN — your region, requiring you to have a modchip anyway, it’s quite dominant. In places where PC piracy itself is relatively small (which tend to be the places where they’re more affordable, however barely — fucking wonder, that), console piracy is also not that noticeable.
FunFacts:
http://www.qualtality.com/?page_id=74
* Doom 3 had upwards of 50,000 leechers in a very short time. Todd Hollenshead, id Software’s CEO, also stated that it was their best selling title to date.
* The PC version of CoD 4 cost the equivalent of $73 in Italy, $79 in Sweden, and $83 in Spain. The average income for Spain in 2004 was around $30k. On the console side, you don’t even want to know what Guitar Hero cost in Poland, where the ESA complains that modchips are common.
* Italy, Spain, Poland, and Sweden were named by the ESA as being “among the most problematic countries with respect to online piracy”
* All of the ESA’s goals involve using government resources to fight and persecute piracy and “educate” people on the value of IP. Not a single word is mentioned about working with governments on excruciatingly hight tariffs.
* All the people who’ve complained about piracy just so happen to be those whose absence the medium would not miss if they were to suddenly disappear. Dear old Cliffski’s a perennial reminder of this, but others include the auteurs at Epic and now, of ALL fucking devs, the “creative director” of Ubi Shanghai.
09/10/2008 at 02:38 Errr says:
Reading all the comments I can’t help but feel that piracy is a great excuse. Probably the ONLY excuse that can be used for anything from sliding sales to 9/11. Plus video games makes you violent.
Piracy has been around since games were distributed in 5 1/4″ floppy disks. Sure took a LONG time for it to kill the industry! This fact alone disputes whatever garbage excuse any company makes to justify its profiteering agenda.
09/10/2008 at 02:59 Scott B says:
So what they’re really saying is: “we’re creating a lack of good games for the PC, and blaming the lack people playing games on the PC on piracy.”
Sweet.
09/10/2008 at 03:18 Greyface says:
So now that this conversation is eons old, I’ll throw in the two of my cents that I’m sure you were all eagerly awaiting.
I play PC games. Exclusively. I will only buy a Wii possibly someday maybe if a) I do not have to buy a television and b) I can get hilarity to ensue. I’m fairly certain I can accomplish b.
That said, I spend my liquid budget (not counting cigarettes and fast food, what kind of spartan lifestyle do you think I lead?) on two things. Books and PC games. Thassit. My monthly spending between the b/f and I is well into the hundreds of dollars US (200-400), or approximately three pounds GB.
The reason people don’t count the money me and mine spend on PC games? I fucking refuse to purchase a game at $60.00 whose only claim to fame is its high system requirements, or because it’s a 007, or Clancy, or Halo, or etc game. Fuck that. I’ll shell out high dollar for something that looks good, is a sequel to a good game, or that I’ve heard good things about. For the most part, most of my purchasing is in the ~$10.00-20.00 range. Even if it’s shit, or last year’s game, it’s only a tenner, right? Could be a great buy or a lesson learned. Point is, by the time I buy mine, no one cares that it sells.
PC gamers don’t have the luxury of renting games for $1.99/night to see if the game is worth the -what?- $800.00 console games go for nowadays. We have to buy (or pirate) our games to get beyond the crippled 1% of game demo. Is it really worth it?
By way of example:
-We paid $50.00 or so for Hell Gate: London. It looked good, we loved Diablo, heard good things from the b/f’s kid. It was amazing. Then, the bf bought a lifetime sub for it. Another $150.00. Then I bought a copy and a lifetime sub. $400.00 spent on a game that died in less than a year and we’d do it again.
-Conversely, I will not buy Assassin’s Creed until it sells for less than $19.99 because I haven’t heard a goddamn thing about it but hype. There is no price too high for a great game, and any price is too high for a crap one.
I have never, ever pirated a game. I’m afraid to try the Pre-CU/NGE SWG servers because it feels too much like stealing. I may, however, start a list of companies that accuse me of a crime and send off a missive to each letting them know I’ll never purchase one of their titles again.
09/10/2008 at 03:35 redrain85 says:
Good god, not again. I’m getting so tired of hearing the “Piracy is killing PC games” and “PC Gaming is doomed” headlines every bloody month. As others have said, it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the publishers keep saying it enough, it must be true! They’re fooling themselves, along with everyone else, into believing it.
Look, I’m not saying piracy isn’t a problem. It is. But it’s also a convenient scapegoat for other serious issues. Piracy has always existed, as far back as the earliest computers and “consoles” (before they were called consoles). It was a problem then, just as much as it is now. But you didn’t hear game publishers whinge about it as much.
Naturally, the first things people will say are “well, high speed internet and BitTorrent have made piracy easier and more widespread than ever”. Bullshit. The amount of piracy on the C64, for example, was huge. HUGE! It was what made the platform so popular. Why do you think so many people bought C64s? So they could get free games off their friends.
I didn’t own a C64, but I used to pirate tons of games for all the computers I owned over the years. I could get just about any game I wanted, sometimes even before it arrived in local stores. I downloaded them from a BBS or went to swap meets and traded disks.
It was almost as easy then, as it is now. If people think that high speed internet access has changed anything, by making downloading huge files easy: they’re wrong. Downloading was much slower back then, but the files were also a lot smaller. It’s all relative.
The difference between now and then, is simply down to one fact. Publisher GREED. Game costs are spiralling, and so are the sales expectations. At one time, selling 1 million copies of any game was considered a stupendous success. Now, it’s a fucking failure! This is how absurd the market has become.
I’m sick and tired of the propaganda war from the game publishers against the PC, and trying to force people into buying consoles by using dirty tactics: like delaying the PC release, or companies like Microsoft and Sony bribing publishers the release exclusive content for one platform only.
Here’s are some tips for all the game publisher PC doomsayers. Who knows, it might err . . . umm . . . INCREASE your PC sales? Now there’s a thought!
1) Stop treating your PC customers like dirt and handing them sloppy seconds console ports.
2) Stop moaning and bitching about piracy, and implementing draconian forms of DRM. You’ve already tried using the stick. It’s failed, utterly. Time to use the carrot instead. Give your paying customers something of VALUE, something the pirates can’t steal. Like extra goodies, either in material form or in the form of patches/support/content only available to registered paid customers.
3) Stop releasing PC versions of games months, or even years, later. By that time, all the hype will have died down and nobody will care any more. Anyone who really wanted it, will have gotten it for another platform already. And you wonder why the PC version then sells so poorly? If you absolutely feel it’s imperative to delay, in order to prevent zero-day piracy that hurts the other platform releases, then delay it. But make it a week, not months or years.
So, when is the vaunted PC Gaming Alliance going to stick up for PC gamers? They’ve done what, release one sales study since they formed? And that’s about it? Have they been out there, actively advocating the platform? Are they organizing efforts to get “exclusives” for the PC platform?
Just what the hell are they good for, again?
09/10/2008 at 03:53 Eli Just says:
Seriously, what the fuck? I hate that I can’t play a game on my PC while all those people who aren’t nearly as enthusiastic as I am to play the game just can play it just because they want to play with thubsticks and I want some more control and a higher resolution? Don’t blame piracy when there is a service like Steam available. I used to pirate games, because I didn’t know better and I thought that most games were shit, and not worth $50. Guess what? I played Half-Life 2 and holy shit, it opened my eyes. You can’t expect to put out the kind of crap that we see on Wii right now and expect somebody to play it. You have to make a GOOD game, and then I don’t care if it has no DRM, not even a CD key, it will sell like hotcakes. Take for example NIN’s new album The Slip. It was free, I liked it, and even though I already had it, I bought the CD when it came out. You might have to take some piracy, but that’s not all sales lost, some of them are even sales gained. I’ve definitely pirated a game that I though was Ok, and then when I saw that it was good, I went and paid full retail for that. Valve has continually published great games for PC, and they are only making money.
09/10/2008 at 04:00 perilisk says:
“WTF?
It’s about incentives. if you don’t give me an incentive (re: money I can use to buy food) in return for making PC games, then I will go back to carpentry or IT support.”
That isn’t a moral argument, even from a utilitarian perspective, it’s just a statement of fact. I never said I didn’t support copyright law, I just said it’s only justifiable to me through the sort of consequentialist argument you made right there; I said that so that the argument that followed could be based on a utilitarian analysis.
“That is one of the stupidest things I have ever read. You have no inherent right to useful information created at the expense of someone else.”
In what sense? I certainly have no right to use force to compel an author to write a book (shades of Misery…), nor do I have a right to lead someone to believe I will reward them for creating a work and then using the information without paying.
On the other hand, if I hear/read something interesting on the news and tell someone else, we just duplicated useful information, and the newscaster got nothing. Is that immoral? Your statement is substantially more restrictive than even copyright law would allow. Bear in mind that to restrict the ability to copy information to one party, you must impose restrictions on freedom of expression. If you believe that free speech is a human right or even just a critical social good, you need to be able to justify every exception you make.
Look, if no incentive mechanism exists at all, no one gets ripped off or abused. Anyone who invents something or writes a story or song or game or software tool under such circumstances is either doing so for their own benefit, for the joy of self-expression, out of a sense of altruism or idealism, or for a patron (who in turn wants it for one of the prior reasons). The world is worse off for it (it’s essentially a world where Linux is the dominant OS and YouTube replaces Hollywood), but no one is treated -unfairly-.
09/10/2008 at 05:23 perilisk says:
“Sam: Let’s be honest. We can’t do historical comparisons, because the idea of copyright infringement is a far newer one. The word “theft” pushes buttons that go back to the bloody Bible and before. This is wired into us – hell, there’s some people who say that it’s wired into us in a genetic level. We all understand a repulsion to the word “theft”. Copyright infringer doesn’t sound nearly as bad, but I think that’s mainly mental nonsense.
If there was a way back in the ancient history for people to do a magic spell which copied someone’s efforts with no effort of your own*, I suspect the word “Copyright infringer” would carry a similar nastiness around it.”
Yeah, it’s too bad ancient texts like the Bible have nothing to say about scenarios like that — I bet if they had considered the issue, those guys would have been pretty disapproving of some jerk just magically duplicating stuff that hardworking citizens went to so much trouble to originally bake/catch and then giving it to people for free. Jesus Christ, consider the economic ramifications!
09/10/2008 at 05:34 DigitalSignalX says:
230 posts and counting.. avast ye angry internet men!
I visit a scene “release” site daily to catch up on TV shows and random movies, and there’s an endless parade of Ps2 and XBox torrents. PC games are almost the exception.
On a side note, I would have never known “Guild 2 Venice” had been released if not for seeing a cracked copy on that site. I ordered it today online. Score 1 for pirates HELPING sales.
09/10/2008 at 06:38 Rudolf says:
publishing behemoths crying “piracy” sounds like old news to me. And what good did it do the music industry? Nada. Ergo: Valve will be the Apple of digital games distribution. Everyone else will jump on the bandwagon at one point, be it sooner or later. Regional Pricing models will exist, but not with the huge differences we see in boxed copies today.
09/10/2008 at 06:48 redrain85 says:
Just to highlight a point of irony . . . the 360 version of Fallout 3 is being pirated as we speak. Go to the usual suspect sites and see for yourself.
Zero-day piracy (hell, NEGATIVE-DAY piracy) . . . it isn’t just for PCs any more! ;)
09/10/2008 at 07:44 Tony says:
It’s not being delayed across the board, just the PC version will trail behind the console version. Gamespot says consoles in late November, and PC in February http://www.gamespot.com/news/6198824.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;4. I still think it’s poor for a dev to punish everyone for the pirates, especially with a radical new game like EndWar.
09/10/2008 at 08:55 NoNamePls says:
It’s Ubisoft Shanghai title, I’d say let them delay or better still can the PC version. Their last title Double Agent was not only a crippled 360 port but also buggy as hell. They also claimed that you had to disable half the settings to run it on modern display cards……are you frackin kidding me?!
09/10/2008 at 09:30 sigma83 says:
First thought: Who cares, it’s only EndWar
2nd thought: Oh wait, Ubisoft.
3rd thought: Oh _shit_, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 2.
09/10/2008 at 09:34 Cataclysm says:
@ redrain85
Pretty much spot on to my thoughts.
09/10/2008 at 13:50 Mohamed says:
the only solution to avoid PC piracy “DRM” , and to lower its price , if the pc games prices (especially the downloadable ones) hits the 15$ margin i am certain that piracy will be negligible and the users will accept the DRM
09/10/2008 at 13:56 Hermes says:
Hmm, no matter all the best PC games have already been made. I’ll rest back on my x-com, x-wing series, homeworld, original half life and be happy. I need no new pc games. I would never dare pirate any of the classics but this new tripe that publishers have been putting out asks to be pirated just to be tested out and then hurled onto the digital heap of Uninstall land.
09/10/2008 at 16:44 Fazer says:
You have to see this – Fallout 3 for Xbox 360 has been already pirated – http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=45491
OH THE IRONY
09/10/2008 at 17:04 Paul Moloney says:
“I need no new pc games.”
That’s putting it a bit strongly… but it’s true that if PC gaming did go into a few years lull, there’s plenty of old games I would finally get a chance to concentrate on. There are so many classics that I’ve only touched upon.
“Fallout 3 for Xbox 360 has been already pirated ”
CONSOLE GAMING IS DEAD.
P.
09/10/2008 at 18:24 Duoae says:
@ Paul:
So… now that console gaming is dead. Will developers move onto mobile phones instead?
;)
09/10/2008 at 18:47 dsmart[3000ad] says:
@ John Walker
09/10/2008 at 19:40 sigma83 says:
NMA is the fallout forum that hates fallout 3 on principle right?
09/10/2008 at 19:40 StalinsGhost says:
Anyone else quietly actually quite happy about the Fallout 3 leak on 360? I’m anti-piracy, but I can’t help but want to see more of this. If only so CliffyB has to try to somehow swallow pride. It’ll be even more poignant should it happen to GoW2. I’ll be unashamably happy if that happens.
09/10/2008 at 19:45 sigma83 says:
Shooting one’s mouth off is not PC-exclusive it seems :P
09/10/2008 at 20:01 Ghiest says:
FA3 might have been pirated but the most popular p2p sites still only have low four figure downloads for an eagerly awaited triple A game compared to … say a recent PC release of fifa 09 (not even a popular game in the states as it is here in europe) which as ten to fifteen times the downloads and seeds or take a more popular game like spore that has over 250,000 downloads from a single site alone (although two major torrent sites do mostly share their trackers so that would be a large chunk of overall downloads).
I did some quick calculations, the top 10 downloaded (pirated) from each of the available other platform choices other than pc’s doesn’t even equal the no.1 downloaded pc game, infact it was about half the total. This was done fairly quickly using their download counts and the most popular seeded torrents on the site.
So yes pirating exists for almost all formats but you can’t really deny the numbers (if they are correct from the torrent site). It all comes down to how many of the pirated games are lost sales.
09/10/2008 at 20:26 Erlam says:
Anyone else notice that the top three (currently) most pirated games all have DRM or some sort of equivalent?
HMMM.. it’s a mystery of ‘epic’ proportions.
09/10/2008 at 20:32 dsmart[3000ad] says:
There aren’t that many modded consoles around, so the downloads of a pirated xb360 game is much much lower than if it were a PC game since you can only play pirated xb360 games on a modded console.
If the proliferation of pirated console games was that big a deal, publishers won’t be crying foul over PC games. Obviously.
09/10/2008 at 20:38 Tuor says:
My paranoid, cynical self says that this whole piracy issue is a smoke-screen. The real reason is about control and, of course, profit.
So, let’s say you’re some big company like Microsoft. You see this big PC gaming industry, it has lots of publishers, lots of devlopers, and there’s lot of money being made. Heck, they’re even using your OS to run the platform. But that’s not enough: you want more.
So, you make your own platform, one that doesn’t play well with others, but which you can develop games for using code similar to the PC. The only thing is that the product will be locked in on your system. Since you completely own the platform, you can charge publishers for using it. Not only that, you can exercise control over aspects of individual games, and thus control over the companies making them. This can lead to pressuring said companies into making products exclusively for your system.
Next, you start buying up game development houses. You set them to working at making games chiefly for your system. At first, the quality of the product might suffer a little as the devs get used to the new system and the sort of games (which you have dictated) expected by people who use it. But wait, you are still making the OS for the PC platform, and you don’t want people to stop buying new versions of your OS, so you have to deceive them into thinking that you’re not really doing what you’re doing. So you have your PR guys talk about how important PC gaming is, and how you as a company are really working hard to support it. Just keep spouting empty rhetoric and announce plans that go nowhere and have no real effect on anything while continuing on in your real endevours.
But you need to do more. If you want real control, you have to make other platforms actively unpleasant: if left on their own, they will still retain too many people simply through inertia, so provide active momentum to cause change. Stop releasing products for other platforms or go one better: prevent other companies from releasing to competing platforms.
But that still might not be enough, especially for game franchises with a large amount of legacy PC users. To really drive in the knife of change, continue to release games for them, but make sure they are ported poorly. Even better, change the demographic the games are aimed at so that even if the port is done well, the actual series is no longer on the same level it once was or has the same target audience that it once had.
You’ve made the platform. You’ve bought lots of dev houses and made lucrative deals with publishers. You’ve instilled the perception that the PC industry is in decline. You’ve changed the mindset of new gamers to thinking that your platform is superior to all others. You’ve gotten many existing gamers envious due to all the new games being released to your platform (something you’ve been orchestrating, remember). You’ve convinced many stalwarts of the old regime that their products will be stolen and there is much more money to be made with the platform you control. The money is there. The new gamers are there. You have control of the platform, and thus all these parts become dependant upon you. Plus, you profit from every game sold for your system while viable alternative platforms wither way.
Yeah, paranoid, but IMO it fits with observed data.
09/10/2008 at 20:38 Buemba says:
My guess is the reason why certain companies lock their games on Steam for some regions has to do with publishing agreements made locally. Generally when you sign a contract to distribute a product in a certain region you add an exclusivity clause to it, and each sale through Steam is a lost sale for the local publisher who paid for the rights to sell it.
While I doubt it’s the only reason (It certainly doesn’t explain why 2K/Rockstar suddenly locked their catalog to Brazilian Steam users even though it used to be available until last year) it’s a probable one.
10/10/2008 at 10:37 redrain85 says:
@Ghiest:
It doesn’t change the fact that the game IS being pirated. Two weeks before release, no less.
10/10/2008 at 12:33 Jesucristo says:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/fallout-3-leaked-online-three-weeks-before-release
:)
10/10/2008 at 13:13 redrain85 says:
Three weeks, even! And approaching 3,000 seeders + leechers total, after 24 hours. And this is merely on one site/tracker. $60 per copy x minimum 3,000 copies = $180,000 in retail sales, potentially lost in just one day.
Yep, piracy on the 360 isn’t a problem. *cough*
17/10/2008 at 09:02 Johnny Spot says:
This is truly funny for this type of game. It is an online game. I don’t recall seeing anything about it being single player either. So if it is an online game and it is meant for being online, why not use an online account system to ensure people have purchased it, you have to login with a specific account to actually play the game.. This just baffles me in regards to this game. This is one game I was really looking forward to.
17/10/2008 at 23:16 Kanakotka says:
Bullshit both in ubi and comments, especially from cliffski, again. :D
First of all, mininova, for instance, is by far a greater place than piratebay, which is pretty much ”hey, we want to take the flak from you, look at us do publicity” piracy site, perhaps around 12th, 15th largest piracy source at the moment… and rapidshare isn’t even 50th. But there’s no mention of this, because due to media, the only place you appear to know of is piratebay. And their bandwith usage is mainly search engine and hosting simplest info files. In such way you really can’t do much bandwith-wise, can you?
And the true reason for delaying the game on PC is the INTIMIDATING LINEUP that’s awaiting there. Not anything else. WAR, WoTLK, Borderlands, Littlebigplanet, Diablo 3, Fallout 3, Fable 2 and other ”small and unnoticable titles” say hi.
17/10/2008 at 23:16 Kanakotka says:
…why did i put LittleBigPlanet on PC lineup? :/ Where’s my edit button? D:
17/10/2008 at 23:31 Kanakotka says:
I really need that edit button. Sorry for triple, RPS crew.
Now, I cannot say ”torrent sites aren’t a problem for game developers” sure they are. But it isn’t even near the problem they make it to be. Have you ever seen a piracy info file that doesn’t have the mention of supporting the developers? Buying the game if you like it? Other than a few, out of the hundreds that i open handedly can say that i’ve downloaded, i can mention a few, and those usually were nonsensical groups or even a single person releases, which usually were then ”done right” later by the bigger names in piracy.
Also, torrents and torrents. Bollocks. Torrents don’t even make the bulk of piracy. Peer-to-peer traffic does, and i’m still not talking about torrents, which… are pretty much peer-to-everyone and everyone-to-peer. I’m talking of DC++, which singlehandedly holds the ”crown” of piracy today. petabytes of data are exchanged every waking hour, 99% in the name of piracy. But… is it really such a bad thing?
Yes, and no. It’s not theft, it’s evaluating what you get if you were to purchase product. On a longer than norm scale. I often try to seek betas, but not to share the beta, this is the… legal way to play the game for… relatively free before it’s release, sometimes afterwards. But here’s a good comparison; Near where i live, there’s a car firm that takes test drive to a whole new level. They give you the keys to the car, and give you an entire week to drive it for pretty much rental price, they catch is that there is a GPS tracker in the car, that you cannot remove or the car stops working(well, in theory) and if you decide to buy it, the rental price is removed from the sum. This is kind of how piracy works in comparison to the demos. You get the full product, free of charge (well, internet, computers, electricity account for that rental price…) with the only difference of the week limit not being there.
If i like something, i will buy it. And for me, and i’d dare to say, most of the people who pirate games, that’s what it’s about. Quality control. It’s not because of money, per se. I have money, but i really do not want to spend money on something i do not like in the end. I do not have enough money to spend on something of ShopTV quality, for instance, this holds true for games.
PS. This ramble was written 2 in the morning. It has alot of rambling and inaccuracies. Try to avoid critizism on those.
21/10/2008 at 18:32 codemaster57 says:
PC version delayed? So if I want to play this game on day one I have to buy the (somewhat) overpriced console version? Good move ubisoft, blame the pirates… Or I can just play world in conflict (which will probably be the better game anyways)…
Seriously though an RTS mainly made for console will probably look (and probably play) like crud on the PC…
23/10/2008 at 20:11 Chris says:
I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone bring up the point of piracy helping game sales. Though I guess it was indirectly (try before you buy, etc). Not everyone who pirates is a lost sale, and not everyone who pirates is a nonsale (ie. someone who wouldn’t buy it regardless). Plopping down 50+ smackers for a new game isn’t an impulse people are general comfortable with, especially if money is tight and they can’t afford to buy all the games that look like they could be interesting. Doubly so if they can’t return it (thanks, DRM!), if they don’t enjoy it, or can’t even run it (thanks again, DRM!). I’d be more interested in buying other non-gaming stuff I know I would enjoy than games I can’t know I’ll get enjoyment out of. And even if I still can’t afford it, I’ll be able to talk good about it to my friends, who may make the decision to buy it based on my experience with it (double-edged sword: I’ll also be able to talk badly of a game I was able to try, and discourage friends from buying it; of course publishers can’t have that, they want you to pay for their bad games).
Also don’t forget people that pirate the game *after* buying it, for a hassle-free cracked executable.. how else would you be able to play Half-Life 2 without Steam constantly running in the background and revalidating itself after every once in a while? How else would you be able to install Spore or the like without worrying if you’re over your install limit? If a game has hefty DRM, I’ll be more likely to buy it if I can pirate it and get a DRM-free copy. Though generally I just won’t buy games that have restrictive DRM, to not encourage them to use it.. though not buying inadvertantly *causes* them to use more DRM.. funny that. (PS. contrary to what some poeple like to state, Steam is not the answer to DRM.. Steam *is* ths DRM! I know plenty of people who will never ever install Steam because of it, myself included).
The “solution” to piracy is simple: don’t worry about people that wouldn’t buy the game in the first place, and make a game potential customers will want to buy. Make games that players will want to reward the creators for, and not worry about being accused of being a criminal (in the form of “activations”) because they bought it. This means actually making a good game (le gasp!) and not a cheap knock-off or a yearly roster update in new packaging. Bethesda did this with Oblivion (which, BTW, had no DRM at all besides a simple CD check, and become a top-selling game for the PC; there was another more recent game that also had little-to-no DRM and also became a top-seller on the PC). I was able to play Oblivion before I bought it, found it highly enjoyable, thus bought a copy. If I can’t try/demo a game (and I mean a good demo, that works to show what the full game is like, not a bone tossed out for us to shut up about), I’ll be much much less likely to want to buy it.
It’s also true that video games production values have sky rocketed in the last decade or so. Not every game will sell well. Not every game will recoup losses. It’s a simple fact of business. But I bet these large publisher houses, who are used to seeing good returns on investments, suddenly aren’t.. not because people are buying less, but because they’re spending more. I mean, hey.. Blizzard publishes good games and gets a return on their investment.. Activision publishes good games and gets returns on their investment.. surely Activision-Blizzard could publish games with double the development cost and get a return on their investment, right? ..right?
It’s not like they can say “you aren’t shoveling money into our pockets fast enough!”. They gotta blame something other than themselves for not getting full returns on investments.. so why not this invisible threat called “piracy”?
24/10/2008 at 10:35 Paul Moloney says:
Chris, forgive me for sounding terse, but if you say “I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone bring up the point of piracy helping game sales”, then you haven’t read any of these piracy threads carefully. This argument is ALWAYS coming up. Yes, of course some people will download a game to merely try it out, then buy it. But the vast majority aren’t that honest. Bethedsa have said that more than half of the PC support calls are related to people attempting to use a pirate copy. That alone costs them a lot of money. Yes, it became a top-selling game for the PC, but then the problem is that since all games as selling less on the PC, even the top-selling games sell far less than on consoles.
24/10/2008 at 22:22 Chris says:
I actually just meant in this thread. I’ve seen the argument come up before, which is why I thought to bring it up here.
I also know that the majority of people who download it aren’t doing so to try before you buy.. the majority who download it would never have bought it in the first place. And yet others may try-before-you-buy and decide not to buy.
I’d like to know, though, how Bethesda can claim that the majority of PC support calls are for pirated versions when the pirated versions are exactly the same, sans a CD check. And for those that do have a no CD crack, you can’t know whether they use one because they don’t want to put up with keeping the CD in the drive (I know many people who do this), or because they genuinely lost their CD (having to get it out all the time to put into the drive, and put back just increases the risk of losing it..).
To be clear, though, I have no issues with Bethesda or anyone refusing support for anyone using a cracked version, for whatever reason. If you still have the CD, reinstall a clean version and make sure the trouble is still there.
06/11/2008 at 20:46 Alexander says:
It isn’t exactly hard to find a torrent or anything of any game out there if you want it bad enough. PC users do seem to have this idea though that their software should be free for some odd reason, just google it theres plenty of hits on the topic. Console gamers are willing to pay top dollar for high quality games so why exactly should Ubisoft release Endwar onto PC immediately when they know that yeah real dedicated people will buy it but loads of people will wait a month or two and download it. The PC crowd just needs to pull there head of out their arse and realize developers have other markets who will buy their products if the PC market wont respect the law.
16/11/2008 at 04:18 RichPowers says:
The three editors who reviewed EndWar for EGM give it between a C- and C+. Like I said in my earlier comment: it’s such a tragedy this might not come to the PC.
17/11/2008 at 16:11 Daniel says:
I only have 1 thing to say.. Chiped Xbox360. Its now around 40 mins to pre of the xbox rls of L4D and im able to go to whatever tracker i want and download a console game for free to O.o..
I meen.. they really need to see the entire picture these companies.. it dosnt matter if its pc or console.. Games will allways be “pirated” But to lable pc users pirates and going about with their war vs “pirates”.. Thats what making their sales go down on both pc and console sales. The disrespect for their consumers. And apperently you now days even buy beta staged games.. The consumer becomes the testers even when it comes to console..
I freaking want a game thats done and playeble when i spend around 70£ for a freaking game.. not something thats half done(yeah, console games are accually that expensive where i live ._.*.)
If they just could spend abit more time making games ppl accually wants instead of pukeing out loads of crap and whining about sales going down because ppl dont buy their crap… mayby then they’ll accually get something sold..
13/01/2009 at 04:24 FlakAttack says:
Opinions are subjective, but if they weren’t, I’d bet money on a formula showing that the longer it takes to port a game to PC (or whether it ever gets to PC) is inversely proportional to how good it actually is. Basically, the worse the game, the longer it takes to get to PC. REALLY bad games never make it to PC.
You guys have to admit, this is often the case.
09/02/2009 at 18:14 PHeMoX says:
I should not necropost, but it’s very tempting to pirate games from those publishers that spread this kind of bullcrap. Of course, it would eventually make them right in what they say instead, so I won’t …just to mess with ‘em. Not that I ever download pirated copies. But damn… these ridiculous claims about piracy is becoming silly.
29/04/2010 at 13:43 John says:
I think Piracy is an excuse, we’ve long known that there’s more money for them in pushing the consoles, look at some of our best old games: Gunship – crapped out to hook the console kiddies, NASCAR Racing – crapped out because EA forced the licensing through the roof. It’s happening all over, eventually everything will (and I say serves them right) grind to a halt, because it’s the PC that has always driven innovasion forwards, there’s be no XBox without PC’s, graphics would in all likelihood still be as they were in the early 90′s but for PC’s. I say they stop whining and lower the prices, then piracy will die off, it won’t go away, but they do have a part in the blame, look how prices drop after a few months of a game coming out, if they can sell it for a tenner 3 months down the line, then sell it for 15 quid on release, the pirates will not be able to make it worth it, as people would then buy the original, it’s the stupid 35 quid price tags.
11/10/2010 at 09:40 boots says:
All publishers need to do to sell PC games is make PC games for the PC. People own PC’s because they want to play PC games, not because they like spending $1000 extra on their unit to play console games on a monitor.