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).
Related Stories:
Preorder for EndWar canceled because “Stupidity’s killing Ubi”
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.
(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.
“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?
on topic of both numbers and the dreaded p-word:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/dodgy-digits-behind-the-war-on-piracy.ars
@DarthS
That trend is NOT true when it comes to sales of The Orange Box.
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
These statements about piracy killing sales are starting to sound like anti-PC propaganda.
“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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
DRM is killing PC.
“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.
@ 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?
I just read all 219 comments. Good discussion. but im tired
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
“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-.
“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!
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.
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.
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! ;)
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.
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?!
First thought: Who cares, it’s only EndWar
2nd thought: Oh wait, Ubisoft.
3rd thought: Oh _shit_, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 2.
@ redrain85
Pretty much spot on to my thoughts.
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
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.
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
“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.
@ Paul:
So… now that console gaming is dead. Will developers move onto mobile phones instead?
;)
@ John Walker
NMA is the fallout forum that hates fallout 3 on principle right?
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.
Shooting one’s mouth off is not PC-exclusive it seems :P
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.