By Alec Meer on December 8th, 2008 at 4:37 pm.
Another day, another post about piracy to fuel the impassioned debate of the principled hordes. See how we dance for you.
It’s a particularly interesting piece of piractical news this time, even if you generally avoid the shouting matches around the subject. Filesharing news site Torrentfreaks have done some mathematical investigative work, casting an eye over a bunch of trackers to come up with what they reckon are the 10 most pirated PC games of the year to date. Care to bet on what’s number one before we draw back the curtain?
Worth noting that, annoyingly, we don’t know quite what sites Torrentfreaks have monitored for this or what their research methods were. It’s more than likely private trackers aren’t included, for instance. The actual totals could well be far higher than the “estimated download count” below, but if their maths is correct it should at least be a reasonable snapshot/average of the year in torrents. It may be entirely off-base, of course – but it doesn’t seem fantastical.
1 Spore - 1,700,000 – Sept. 2008
2 The Sims 2 -1,150,000 – Sept. 2004
3 Assassins Creed -1,070,000 – Nov. 2007
4 Crysis - 940,000 – Nov. 2007
5 Command & Conquer 3 - 860,000 – Mar. 2007
6 Call of Duty 4 - 830,000 – Nov. 2007
7 GTA San Andreas - 740,000 – Jun. 2005
8 Fallout 3 - 645,000 – Oct. 2008
9 Far Cry 2 - 585,000 – Oct. 2008
10 Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 - 470,000 – Oct. 2008
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking either:
a) “but Spore’s rubbish!”. In which case, shuddup. We’ve done all that shouting already.
2) “it’s because of the DRM! This is a successful protest against the forces of evil!” In which case, mmmmaybe. Mmmmaybe not.
That Spore’s high placing is a direct result of its headline-making crazy-copy protection is certainly the popular theory. It’s hard to doubt that it didn’t play some part, thanks to a double whammy of protestors voting with their feet and protest-observers being confused and afraid by all the Chinese whispers about what Spore’s copy protection actually involved. Take a look at the number 2 game, though. That makes me doubt that Spore’s bittersweet chartopping here is quite as simple as so many will likely presume.
It’s The Sims 2 – a four year old game, and still significantly more torrented than this year’s heaviest hitters. That’s certainly nothing to do with DRM – that’s simply demand from a potential playerbase that’s way larger than most others even dream of. Given that Spore comes from the same stable as The Sims 2 and transparently chased the same audience, there’s a pretty strong chance a meaty fraction of its leechers came from that demographic, not the the DRM protest/fear demographic. I have no figures to back this up, sadly – this is just me raising an eyebrow and saying “eh? EH?” knowingly. Most likely, Spore’s king of torrent hill status is a combination of both factors. The same can’t be said for game number 3, which is really something of a mystery.
From my sagging office chair, it rather seemed as though the PC port of Assassin’s Creed came and went pretty quietly. There was some hoo-hah about dodgy performance and ludicrously protracted exit procedures, and there was the hangover of console AssCreed players irate about its comprimises, but it didn’t really seem to inspire either great love or great protest.
So why so high? Possible factors: the fact a version was leaked significantly before it hit the shops; the fact it came out during a relatively quiet time for big-name games, so perhaps enjoyed heightened interest; the fact it had pretty high system requirements, so may have appealed more to a tech-savvy audience, au fait with torrenting; the fact it did have something of a bad rap off the back of the console version, which made interested players more reluctant to purchase. All theories, and there’s probably one simple answer I’m too stupid to deduct. It sure does look weird there, though.
No real surprises otherwise – all big-name sequels, as you might expect. Only 3 of the 10 are original IPs, in fact. We can also doubtless expect the likes of Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 to climb higher once they’ve been on sale for longer, while GTA IV and COD5 should make their presence known very soon. Also, San Andreas being so high after three years seems odd, but that’s most likely down to extreme anticipation for GTA IV.
So, not a complete picture of the year that was in terms of piracy, but it’s an interesting document of what have been 12 months that seemed to really shake PC gaming. Or our comments threads, at the very least.
DRM: HUGE SUCCESS.
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What a shame?
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How surprising to see you here Meat!
I’d say the one thing this chart brings to light is that the argument that the majority of people who torrent are the tech-savvy and the hardcore gamers could be argued. The appearance of The Sims 2 and Pro Evo in the list, while maybe not proving it beyond any doubt, certainly cast dispersions on the argument.
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I’m still amazed that it’s the pirate-consumers themselves who are being targetted, rather than the torrent sites. How have they been able to avoid being shut down for what they do? It’s mad. You don’t get drugs off the street by arresting drug abusers, you go for the distributors. Likewise, to stop prostitution you hit the pimps.
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Interesting article. it doesn’t feel like you often get per-year sales figures for games, and certainly not from the torrent side of things.
Now what would be *even more* interesting is if you compare these top-ten to the retail top-ten of the year – I guess you’d have to merge all western countries together, then, as the torrent market is global. Anyway, those numbers would show how big torrent is to retails, which I’ve yet to see any numbers on.
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I wonder if the list took all of these expansion packs into account, concerning The Sims 2 and especially Crysis (“Warhead” also has the DRM).
Also, not a single Valve title in the Top 10. Nor a Stardock title either. Nor DMC4 (despite the laments of VP). And nor World of Goo (despite the supposed 82% rate. Dammit obscurity.)
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But Spore is rubbish!
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There’s only about 2 games, maybe 3, in that list which are actually good.
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Speaking of Valve, how come nobody brought the story about the amazing lifetime retail sales figures of the company?
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@Bobsy: you sound like McNulty off The Wire.
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Umm, how do they track what downloads are from this year?
Also:
1. a downloaded .torrent isn’t a downloaded game
2. there are a ton of non-public trackers
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I wouldn’t be surprised if The Sims is so high because of the fifteen-year old males who are too embarrassed to admit they own it, and so keep it on a burnt disc in their sock drawer.
Hell, it’s what I do with my copy.
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In the case of World of Goo, 82% of not a lot is still not a lot.
And valve lifetime retail sales continues to blow my freakin’ mind everytime I see it
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Anyone else download torrents of games you own in order to make backup copies? Because torrented games often packed in an easier to transfer format with DRM by-passing capabilities that are important for backing games up now adays. I might just be a loner on that front though.
@Gravatar: it is called a “report” you can get downloads from the database by time and create a list based on the counts… I am assuming that is how they got this info… it takes like 10 minutes to throw together.
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@Bobsy:
Torrent sites aren’t illegal in Sweden. Which is where The Pirate Bay operates out of.
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@Bobsy:
But that’s not how it actually happens in the real world, just in TV dramas. Cops aren’t interested in protracted cases trying to gather evidence on drug dealers when they can nab a user off the street, get the +1 to their arrests and if they happen to be carrying enough, call them a dealer. It’s a heck of a lot easier to go after the little guy.
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This is completely unacurate
Assasins Creed never seen a proper crack , and is rarely shared. And Fallout 3 also never seen a proper crack and is unplayable. Sims 2 , i thought its a game fathers buy to their teenage daughters for birthday …or what ? They torrent it ? LOL
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@Lobotomist: Fallout 3 is playable.
But seriously, I’m with Meat Circus: DRM is a huge success. Can’t wait to see what they do next.
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I found proper releases for both Assassin’s Creed and Fallout 3 days after their release, Lobotomist.
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torrentfreak releases inaccurate data. this is news?
The site is just a base for pro-piracy rants, I’m surprised anyone takes what they say seriously.
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The numbers do seem off – I’m surprised that Warcraft 3, Half Life 2 and Civ 4 are no where to be found, they seem to be traded as much if not more than Sims 2. Equally, the list seems to be slanted towards American downloads, it would be interesting to see what would happen if you threw China’s results into the list.
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@Pags: Saying that Pro Evo isn’t for “hardcore gamers” is a bit… well… ill-advised. Just because something is a sports game doesn’t make it “casual”.
@Sho: I often download pirate copies of games I own but are in a box somewhere (moving house frequently means this tends to happen) because it’s usually faster and easier than going searching for it. Usually this is for older games though.
If I was tracking complete downloads, i’d look for unique IPs with 100% of the download. Which you can get off a tracker.
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Of the four games I purchased on that list, there’s one I wish I had pirated. There’s one game I played a demo of, and won’t buy or pirate, and one I pirated and played for an hour. GTA:SA I purchased, and will likely pirate soon – my disc is battered all to hell, and I can’t buy the game without the “mod-killing” patch attached*. If I decide to try Spore again, I’ll probably pirate it first to end-run aroound DRM and the like.
* Interesting to note that GTA:SA is playable right out of the box. The only patch released removed mod-capability.
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@Lu-Tze: Perhaps it’s just different definitions of ‘hardcore’ gamer we’re using; thing is, being that most British people have a better-than-vague understanding of football, I’ve always thought of it as a more casual game. I know plenty of people who have no interest in games other than the next iteration of Pro Evo or FIFA (though I suppose you could argue that it makes it even more ‘hardcore’).
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@bigolslabomeat:
The statement remains true. You would get the drugs out of the streets if you would arrest the dealers.
But that is not possible with torrent sites anyway…
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Wouldn’t it be an idea for trackers to place anonymous polls on each torrent’s info page, with which downloaders can specify the reason they are pirating the game?
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Is it just me, or do the numbers seem very low? Given the wailing and gnashing of teeth from game developers/producers, I would have thought the numbers were far higher.
I think accuracy of figures is a bit suspect on both sides of the argument.
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Spore- DRM Crap, overhyped game that was rubbish. No surprise
Sims 2- Game that you only get if your a casual gamer so this is probably the more hardcore gamers downloading it to see what its like.
Assasins Creed- Has rubbish Secrurom that you have to install on your system, buggy as hell, and sometimes you can even install it. Massively hyped game that was rubbish.
Crysis- You don’t know if you can run this or not, why buy the thing? Also massively hyped, also bugged to hell. And the fact it doesn’t work on all system furthers this.
Command and Conquer 3- Has Secrurom
Call of Duty 4- No idea about this one but it was massively hyped, and all the console lovers loved it, maybe some PC Gamers were suspicious.
Fallout 3- Now this is a casulty of DRM but it has no DRM on it. Lots of people complaining that Betheda had gone the way of EA on amazon and various other forums scared a lot of people making them download it becasue they wanted to put a middle finger up to them. Shame it was overblown though and it didn’t deserve it.
Far Cry 2- Has limited installs secrurom, and has a few bugs here and there.
PES09- A yearly game, usuall yearly games don’t advance that much so people are probably pissed off that there not getting their moneys worth and can’t be bothered to pay every time there is a team change.
Nope i don’t think this list surprises me, if anything I don’t see why Red Alert 3 isn’t up there.
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What I find most interesting in this, is that these numbers, while being high, are nothing like what we get the impression of. Spore is in a class of it’s own at 1.7 million, and I’m betting they planned on selling a lot more than that, and probably did (EA said it sold 2 million in its first two weeks).
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The Sims 2 (expansions included) and Spore are both financial successes for EA. The Sims 1 was also pirated extensively, yet it still sold a bazillion copies.
Someone mentioned Civ IV as a pirate favorite. According to Wikipedia, it’s sold over 4 million copies at retail (this doesn’t count expansions).
Put another way, some of the most pirated games happen to be the most profitable.
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The Sims 2 has had Securom for a while now, starting a few expansions back. My girlfriend installed the expansion and Securom happily informed her that she must disable her emulated CD drive before she could play the game. She didnt have one.
This was a game she had spent many years and lots of money on.
The only ways for The Sims 2 players to play the game without Securom are:
1. Install all the expansions, one after another (there are many) and crack the main .exe before running it
2. Just pirate a compliation of Sims 2 + all the expansions
So I don’t think its out of the question that DRM has something to do with The Sims 2 being pirated.
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So now what happens? We wait for an industry exec to glance over the list, look at the MSRPs, add them all up, and call it half a billion dollars in lost sales?
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I tend to agree with Alec’s point about the hype surrounding Sims 2 and Spore being more important than the DRM when it came to piracy. Actually looking at the games I find it hard to believe DRM had that much of an impact on making these games so high up – if you believe these figures. I’d actually be shocked if COD 4 wasn’t really one of them (although – side note, does anyone else think this appreviation sounds like Cod 4 – a fish simulation game?).
As it is, it’s the high profile games that are there. Fallout 3, Far Cry 2 and Red Alert 3 would always get pirated loads simply because they’re high profile but only in gamer circles, Crysis for the same reason (plus people’s uncertainty about whether their computer can run it) PES because it’s a yearly title, and Sims 2/Spore/GTA San Andreas because they’re big, popular games with collossal player bases, and a lot of people want them without paying for them. Spore too was always quite uncertain as far as it’s actual quality went, so that may have contributed too.
To attribute the list to DRM seems to me a little silly. I don’t approve of it, but this list is hardly a triumph of the anti-DRM brigate – rather it’s the triumph of people being rather predictable as far as the games they want goes.
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Does anyone have a percentage figure for Spore’s rubbishness yet?
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I did of course mean C&C 3 rather than Red Alert 3 in the last post.
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Close to 1:1 sales/rips? Surely not; I don’t think even the most rabid consumerist would claim that kind of success for any piece of digital content. We also have historical reports of 700K downloads in week 1; they’ve basically only doubled since then? I know it’s usually an exponential decay, but that’s still silly. Seems like these numbers have to be gibberish in some way.
If we’re just talking about proportions, then fine.
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I agree with Pags. The notion that games which appeal to the “tech-savvy” audience are more likely to be pirated is not one we want the industry to be having. And the top two titles in the list seem to discredit that idea.
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Was this data filtered by regional markets?
My gut reaction to Spore and Sims 2 was that they were obvious candidates. The casual gaming demographic is gigantic compared to “mainstream,” which is to say the demographic we all belong to. But that doesn’t jive in my head with a large piracy figure. The same group of people that keep PopCap in business are torrenting, burning, cracking? No, there’s a wrong assumption in there.
Maybe these games are just ridiculously popular in China.
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Who cares, I mean really? Who cares? I hear the Devs don’t even care anymore and even pirate their own games. Just for fun.
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I think that list also doesn’t take into account that some people, like me, open multiple torrents ( me, not patient ). It can then look like the file has been downloaded an additional 3-5 times. That can influence the numbers as well.
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No Mass Effect? That alone raises my suspicions about this list.
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@ Bobsy:
But the downloaders ARE the dealers in this case, all the trackers do is tell you where to find the games, it doesn’t give them to you. If they did then they would be liable but as far as I know telling someone how to commit a crime is not a crime. Like all those books on being a cheating at cards are for “educational purposes” *wink wink, nudge nudge*
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World of Goo is at 13 right now.
God bless the noble pirate.
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I must own 500+ games, lately now that I own a house and need money, I Just don’t have the cash to buy a game for 40 or 50+ dollars… I pirate because most mainstream games are crap to me, I need to make money count!
I bought Spore… Once I got to the end game I wish I would have pirated it first…
I think money is tight, and people are tired of dropping 50 bucks on a crap title! I haven’t played a game in a few years from a large developer that I feel is worth paying for.
I think of pirating as an extended demo.
I’ve bought a bunch of the stuff coming out of Russia and haven’t regretted a single purchase so far!
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Like someone said, those numbers don’t seem that high for worldwide piracy rates, if you’re considering 90% rates to be normal and that big games will sell over a million anyway.
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Yeah, I’m not sure about the claims of people who say they can’t afford Crysis but can afford a PC to run it. I suspect it’s more like “I’d prefer to get it for free if I can”. But this is an old debate anyways.
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Number 3 is easy: people pirate bad games teh way people buy bad games: people follow the hype.
Theres no reason for people pirating games to be more wise than these than pay for the game. Maybe less, as no paying for the game make less of a sacrifice to download these.
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I torrent games that i own and the discs are buggered. This tells me that most pirated games are either selling alot or hyped alot. Both if you are spore. I wonder how many of those own a copy. More than the ass creed people i’d wager.
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I wonder–and this is nothing but beard stroking, I realize it introduces more problems than it solves–but I wonder if the cost of games being universally lowered would be an effective deterrent for pirates? When reading about AssCreed, I found myself thinking “but you can pick up the XBox version at any Blockbuster for under twenty bucks.” Of course, not everyone has an X Box, but I do, and I know that if I were a pirate, twenty dollars would be a fine trade for being able to play the game immediately, no faffing about with torrents and download speeds. As I said, it’s an inherently flawed theory, but I wonder what kind of price tag your average pirate puts on their time? And what kind of games would we be playing if their release day price point was hacked by forty dollars? Hmm. HMMM.
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Reply to my own bad self
I meant 13th busiest torrent
Reply to Leeks
For the most part PC games are £10-£15 cheaper than console versions and depreciate faster. It’s just a few bewildering standouts like COD 4 that are £30.
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I bought spore spore, I have a retail copy of it right here.
Then I pirated it and cracked just to stick it to da man!!
Didn’t really, but it’s believable, which is the point.
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Surprised Mass Effect didn’t make the list.
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I am shocked how much Assasins Creed got pirated.Which is weird since Crysis got more marketed on the pc more then assasins creed did but assasins creed had tv marketing. Also the whole mess where the torrent version of the game wasn’t quite working was huge riot on FORUMS (more marketing) and then people might not want to buy because the game is out 6+ months later the CONSOLE version. I personally torrented the game and didn’t like the game because of its repetitiveness. Anyways these number also prove another thing if you add sales figures of these games plus piracy you get a huge number ! . So developers should develop better more pc centric games and people will buy there games.
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Ilove these lists. It jus shows that DRM is not working at all.
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Jon is right – in fact, if you want to keep the drug analogy going, it would be like shutting down streets because that’s where dealers and users hang around (ofcourse the whole drug analogy is pretty wonky anyway).
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I think the question of whether or not DRM *caused* Spore to get pirated is missing the point. The important thing isn’t whether the excessive DRM made people *want* to pirate it, but the simple fact that it did nothing to *prevent* people from pirating it. These numbers may not show that non-DRM games sell better, but they certainly show that DRM does not prevent piracy. They show that regardless of everything else, the DRM in Spore did not achieve its intended purpose.
cliffski: Says who? I suppose you have more accurate piracy figures?
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The explanation for a big number of Assassin’s Creed downloads could be the leak of a flawed version before release. People downloaded it, played through the first city and got stuck. When the game was actually released, the same people most likely downloaded it again. So maybe the actual number of ppl playing a pirated version of AC is “only” around 500k.
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It has a bit of a reputation for being hard to steal.
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Do what you want ‘cuz a pirate is free. . .
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Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Smurfy. That song’s going to remain in my head all night now. Why?!
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@Mike K
Ditto. Though not house owner, student.
In my mind it always seems pirating, or shall we please just call it downloading, games is about value for money. Guess the MMO-types have figured it out, if the game is worth playing another month it also is worth paying for another month.
Hm, is this a new idea? Cut away all the DRM, lower the initial price to €5-10 and charge €1 a month for the ability to continue play.
Or better yet, let people pay what they think the experience is worth after having had 24 hours or something to evaluate. Or let people pay €5 to try it for a week and then pay what they like…
Hm, the first one seems obnoxious, but the second one might actually work?
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Does this count the ones actually, physically pirated in ships off the coast of Somalia?
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@ack
So the solution to DRM is to charge people for it?
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Interesting numbers, although not as revealing as the World of Goo data was. Without knowing about potential selection biases (some torrent tracker sites seem biased toward one genre or the other, so an imperfect selection can lead to major problems in data validity) and without good data on how many sales the games made in the same time period, it can be a little tough to make a meaningful analysis from this data.
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Are we sure they’re not counting all the Sims expansions in the Sims 2 figure? There must be at least a dozen by now (nice cash cow EA…)
If everyone who downloaded Sims 2 downloads each of the expansions too that’s going to inflate the total a lot.
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This report would be far more meaningful if it compared torrent downloads with 12 month sales figures (and maybe an average review score). Perhaps the most torrented games are the ones that, you know, are the best and/or most popular? That would hardly be news.
On the other hand, if there was little relationship between torrented games and their respective sales/quality, then that would definitely be interesting.
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That’s the whole thing with this ‘study’ – as long as there’s no real insight how these numbers were obtained, they have very little meaning.
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I believe the reason that assassins creed is pirated so much is that people who already own a copy for Xbox/Ps3 do not want to purchase another copy.
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A question:
How many games on that list AREN’T some of the best selling games of the year?
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@Leeks perhaps I wasn’t very clear, I think I said “Cut away all the DRM…”
I was trying to argue that perhaps part of the problem is pricing, as neither Mike nor me will pay €50 for a game we will play for a night or two. I would happily pay €5 for playing a game two nights and then forgetting about it though.
So perhaps a different pricing model can make people like me buy more games.
(I do buy games I like enough to play for more than a couple of hours)
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Do ‘tech-savvy’ gamers actually use torrents? I know I haven’t used a file sharing resource since the days of Napster…
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I think a fraction of the Sims 2′s piracy is down to EA’s practices – I know many serious fans of the game who have put up with years of crap from them but finally lost it this year with some of the stunts they’ve been pulling with add-ons and talk of the Sims 3, and many have openly said they’ll pirate from EA from now on. This is coming from people who are not big gamers or particularly bothered about the Big Issues of gaming, and who often aren’t particularly techie, too. I doubt it’s a major factor, and I don’t lay the blame squarely on DRM, but EA are a widely loathed company even among who love the Sims.
It’s also plausible that people have decided to download the Sims 2 and buy the add-ons they want, rather than fork out several times over for largely trivial add-ons. ‘course, it’s all speculation, and I think you’re quite right that the overwhelming factor (for both the Sims and Spore) is simply the staggeringly enormous fan base. It appeals to people of pretty much every age and gender and lifestyle, and there are no language issues at all – the whole game could be played without text without much trouble. Spore is arguably similar, or at least it was certainly advertised as being such.
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Let’s see:
AssCreed console release date : nov 07
AssCreed pc release date : april 08
Hum. Did they really count the pc torrent downloads ?
Should I really trust their numbers if they can’t manage to geht the release date right ? Did they probably add the early leak downloads ? Everyone who grabbed the leak had to download the game a second time a month later, due to some jerusalem trouble…
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My first thought was that they’re all (mostly?) £30+ games. I’ve noticed games on steam slowly climbing towards the $60 mark.
so I guess the expensive games get ripped off. Now there’s a shocker…
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Flamebait:
I’m surprised PES makes the list, because most football fans I know don’t have the knowledge required to even download a torrent client!
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I experiment with prices a lot. My stats show me that once a game is more than $10, any price between 10-23 makes absolutely no difference to the number of copies sold.
People might claim they buy a game if it was cheaper, they may even believe it, but in real world experiments, they just do not.
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And where is Left 4 Dead?
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Fuck, that’s exactly it. ;_;
Hmm… I’m surprised Assassin’s Creed is that high up there, played a bit with my friend, didn’t it think was ‘OMG AWSUM!!11′ Mass Effect is playable, as is Fallout 3. The funny thing about Mass Effect is that people had problems with pirated versions but it turned out the game is bugged regardless, perhaps to high heaven.
I agree San Andreas being so high is odd, but Fallout should climb the ranks in no time.
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I would think that Assassin’s Creed appears because of the tech specs and that people wanted to see if it actually ran, a bit of a curiosity factor – I’ve personally never got round to getting it for fear of it setting my house on fire.
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I experiment with prices a lot. My stats show me that once a game is more than $10, any price between 10-23 makes absolutely no difference to the number of copies sold.
People might claim they buy a game if it was cheaper, they may even believe it, but in real world experiments, they just do not.
Well, it seems they do, but only if “cheaper” gets as low as $10. I’ve always thought the barrier was about £15/$15 myself (games traditionally having a 1:1 currency exchange rate), and have been saying so in features for years, but I wouldn’t be amazed if it was a little lower, since consumer price expectations have been falling – in the mid 90s when I was buying a lot of music CDs the “standard” price was £13-£14, but now it’s more like £9, and DVDs have had a similar fall in street price.
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Is this ranking based on .torrent files downloaded, or actual complete games downloaded?
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Chaps,
On a completely seperate topic, has anyone who uses http://www.bloglines.com to keep track of new posts here noticed it stopped working a few days ago? The last new post it registered was the flight sim one. Other blogs seem to be fine.
P.
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Where is the list for console market?. Xbox360 can be pirated, PS2, PSP, nintendo DS… where are those numbers?
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It always happens, doesn’t it? The mention of piracy causes the comment count to explode.
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I bought Sims 2 for full retail when it came out, based purely on reviews, not having played a Sims game before. I played it twice. Since then it’s been gathering dust on the ‘games I don’t play no more’ shelf (quite a big shelf). I could have saved at least one merry pirate some bother if I had known how it would rank, either with some timely advice or an offer to give the game to them.
I can quite understand people downloading a game as a ‘try before you buy’, especially since games like The Sims 2 can’t really have a downloadable demo – there have been more than a few that I’ve bought (and avoided buying) thanks to various online resources.
Right, I’m gonna clean off that shelf tomorrow and head on down to Cash Converters. You know, it’s a shame that there’s no ‘cartridge’ format for PC games so we could all rent them from Blockbuster etc. There was a big music CD and PC game rental store near here a while ago and it was a bitch seeing them shut down.
Have I made a silly boo-boo?
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@ Paul Moloney: Bloglines gets snared up on RSS feeds occasionally, they have to be poked to restart the feed.
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I’m thinking
(iii) You should work on the consistency of your enumeration. FALE!
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You don’t get drugs off the street by arresting drug abusers, you go for the distributors. Likewise, to stop prostitution you hit the pimps.
Yeah, cause making drugs and prostitution illegal have really helped cut down the numbers of consumers and suppliers alike.
Shutting down torrent sites will stop pirating too, and banning alcohol and fatty foods will lead to a super human utopia for all.
Bottom line : Anything I choose to do with my life is no other fuckers business so long as I don’t hurt anyone else.
I’ve pirated many games in my life, and no one else was harmed in the process. I’ve also bought alot of games too, specifically from small guys like Introversion, and from Steam, mainly due to the conveniance and quality updates I expect to get afterwards.
I wish the silly myth of piracy amounting to harm would finally be dispelled.
Going into a shop and shoplifting a copy of GTA IS stealing because that shopkeeper now has one less copy of GTA that he can’t sell.
Me getting a copy of a game from a friend hurts no one. I’ve “stolen” a potential sale in the same way TESCO “steal” customers from ASDA
When are we going to stop indulging conceited developers and their PIRACY = STEALING fantasy? Yes you made a game. Yes it cost a lot. Yes it would be nice for people to buy your game, but if they can find a way to get it for free that harms no one else, then they should be free to do so.
All of my friends have pirated games, and all of them have payed for games too, game developers would do wise to work out what makes that difference than to spend time grand standing about evil pirates and slamming punishing DRM on their games.
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Those devs working for free, were they miracle?
(After being bitten numerous times) I unhesitatingly pirate every game before I buy it to make sure the damned things work; I don’t pretend that enjoying devs’ work and giving nothing back is a sustainable, acceptable way to go about gaming.
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@miraclemetal
Piracy is stealing. Why is that a fantasy? They have created a product, and you have illegally taken it and used it without paying them for it. Harm does not have to be done. If I break into your house and take a nap on your couch, and then leave I may have not done any harm or caused you any loss, but you still can get me arrested for breaking and entering…
You are right in that there is no direct harm, and quite possibly no loss in revenue (since there’s very little evidence linking piracy with lost sales). But it is still wrong and illegal.
At the same time, as an investor in entertainment companies, I wonder how much benefit all this money and effort poured into DRM I’m receiving. As an investor I don’t care if 100 people bought it and 1,000 people pirated or if 100 people bought it and no one pirated it. The return to me is the same. Obviously there’s some value in brand protection, but I wonder if EA is doing research to determine the value of DRM, or if this is simply a crusade “at whatever the cost”?
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Armchair analysis time:
1. Spore – Reason: Most heard it was a bunch of mini games wrapped up as a Civilsation But In Space kind of game. Most remained unconvinced without some form of demo. Oh, and DRM, eat shit and die EA etc.
2. The Sims 2 – Reason: People are thieves, and/or have lost their original disks.
3. Assassins Creed – Reason: Tech check – it’s a console port with all the worries that usually entails (performance, ludicious misuse of the platforms controller of choice ie mouse/keyboard, GUI issues, blah).
4. Crysis – Thieves, mostly. There was a perfectly good demo to do a tech check.
5. Command & Conquer 3 – Thieves. Demo for this too, and tech wise it could run on a deep frozen Mega Drive.
6 Call of Duty 4 – Thieves. Had a great demo.
7 GTA San Andreas – Thieves, console port gitters. It should also be noted however that it’s almost impossible to get this game in some regions now days due to limited stock.
8. Fallout 3 – No demo. DRM had risen to head around release.
9. Far Cry 2 – DRM. No demo. Console port (it’s not, but multiplatform develpoment makes people nervous, perhaps justifiably).
10. Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 – Good luck finding this in some stores. Console port dramas.
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But Spore is RUBBISH! And torrent sites are great site to test a new game, before you buy it, since so much crap games without demos are released from major Devs. Try it first, and then buy it. I usually buy the games i like, cause if i like them, developers earned my money.
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Piracy is stealing. Why is that a fantasy?
Clue: what you want is a dictionary.
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What everyone’s missing is Assassin’s Creed got leaked weeks in advance of release, as was widely reported at the time. I think that’s easily the biggest impact on its position here if you think about it.
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First 5 titles are EA’s DRM crap. So who’s laughing now EA? Still wanna put DRM on your games?
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So in conclusion, some popular games were pirated a bit last year. Amazing.
We don’t even know the first thing about the methodology behind what these numbers actually are.
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@miraclemetal – Don’t talk twaddle, there’s no direct repercussion like the stealing of a physical product, but it’s ludicrous to say pirating games has no ‘harm’. That’s shows an alarming lack of economic understanding.
You only perceive that you’re not harming anyone if you allow yourself to be a privileged minority.
Do you expect people to say that it’s ok for you to have your games for free, but we’ll all pay for them to be developed? If so, fuck you. Let’s all pay nothing for our games and let the $15m creation cost for a high spec game come from the magical pixie land in the sky.
Nobody *wants* to pay money for something if they don’t have to unless they’re gripped by charitable urges. If you make it acceptable to take without paying or pay if you want, then the value is $0.
You say you choose to pay for some games because you like them more, or you like the developer, or you only have so much money, but had it ever occurred to you that you therefore don’t get to have the other games? They don’t suddenly become free because they fail to match your criteria.
You don’t get to pick and choose the cost of something. (Barring weird Radiohead CD experiments)
Don’t misunderstand, I hate bad DRM, and have pirated a game or two in the past, but don’t kid yourself that it is anything other than wrong.
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Oh, I also don’t agree with the whole pirated copy == lost sale.
But since it does not hold that pirated copes = lost sale * x where x = 0 saying the above doesn’t remove the effects of piracy.
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First 5 titles are EA’s DRM crap. So who’s laughing now EA?
I would imagine that EA are, whilst simultaneously reclining on solid gold furniture and snorting powdered diamonds, just because they can. They may have pissed off a load of people and lost a lot of sales to their awful practices, but it’s just a drop in the ocean to them, and at this point they could pretty much shit in a bucket and pay some magazines to give it 9/10 and they’d still sell it at a profit.
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@sinister agent: Do you know something about Army of Two 2?
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miraclemetal is right.
Hear me out first! We all understand economics, right? Supply and demand. Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it. And so on. People buy stuff when they think the cost is justified. That’s where the money comes from to make the games in the first place – the assumption that if a good enough product is produced a high enough amount of people will pay for it. And to paraphrase Scott Adams, there’s a big demographic who is either crazy or will buy anything that you can find buyers for pretty much any product imaginable.
Taking something physical is theft – because someone is then deprived of it. They had it. Now they don’t. Taking something (game code) which is not physical, costs nothing to duplicate (let’s avoid being pathetically pedantic and ignore the bandwidth, storage, electricity, etc, shall we?), and never actually existed before you ended up with it? Well, that’s not taking, then, as far as I’m concerned.
JonFitt’s totally right that when nobody pays for something capitalism craps its pants. We all recognize that. But let’s say you were never going to pay for some game, no matter what (for whatever reason – anti-DRM, anti-company-in-question, whatever). So you download it. As far as I can tell nobody comes off ‘worse’ in this scenario. Why? Because in our hypothetical situation, there was never any outcome in which the game was paid for. I don’t know if anyone objects to this reasoning on a case-by-case level; what objections I’ve seen are due to the self-evident fact that not everyone can act this way. Call me naive, but I believe people are better than that. As easy as digital piracy is (and it could barely be easier), shit still sells. If I wave my magical economics wand, I can make the following ridiculously generalized statements: sales are proportional to quality and inversely proportional to cost. If one makes the assumption that a sufficient percentage of the general population aren’t complete asses, then so long as a company produces a sufficiently ‘good’ product, and prices it reasonably, things will look after themselves.
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Note to self: design game called “army of tutu”
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@cjlr: That’s what I thought for a while. The problem is, no one can categorically say they would never have bought the game unless they never have the game. It’s an unprovable statement: Maybe you wouldn’t have bought it full price, but when Steam has a 50% off sale, maybe you would have bought it then.
There will be a portion of people who could claim they weren’t going to buy a game, but really would have done had they no choice and the price aligned with their desire.
Also, if you claim that the price you consider a thing is really worth to you is zero, why are you downloading it at all!
People buy shit, this is true. But when you start allowing piracy on principle, and remove the wrongness, then those people will just start taking shit for free. Friends and relatives will say “You know it’s perfectly legal to take Sims 2: Bowtie Expansion for free right”. Then the whole piracy model breaks down.
It relies on people saying “I’m going to take this, but someone else will have to pay for it”. So I have to pay for Crytek to push the graphics envelope, but “you” should get it for free. Because “you’re” special? (Not necessarily *you*)
You think it’s ok to have a system where there’s an exploited group paying for a freeloading group?
Any volunteers for the exploited group if there’s no penalty for being a freeloader?
Side note:
However I think a certain amount of piracy would keep a monopolistic system in check (if EA literally bought all the developers), but that’s not the case.
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It seems the main reasons for piracy are a huge sense of entitlement and a corresponding lack of willpower (for every other – non-digital – commodity if you can’t afford it, you don’t buy it, if you want it that bad, save your pennies then buy it) which taken together speak of the immaturity of the deniznes of the interwebs.
The Speak You’re Branes sections on most sites (YouTube, BBC, IGN etc.) reinforces this. Here’s hoping the electronic society grows up by itself before its forced to by outside agencies.
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@cliffski
Thank you for the reality check. Have you had any luck with sub $10 games? How do people react to prices above $23?
Do you think the route Burnout Paradise is taking, with the full game available as demo, but with a time-limit is a good one (it seems as such for me)?
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JonFitt:
Or, to put it another way… An ecosystem can’t survive if everything’s a leech. It’s funny, you’d think the very technology of torrents would’ve illustrated that much to cjlr and miraclemetal.
(No, wait guys, I’ve totally worked out how never paying for stuff isn’t abuse of its producers! ‘Cos, like, coders only make code, right? And the designers only direct that code into something enjoyable, and the artists only make… art. Art doesn’t exist either, right? HEAR ME OUT! So, anyway, you can boil their work down into a bunch of magnetic fluctuations on a disc, right? That’s practically nothing! It isn’t real! And if the game’s not real… none of the work must have been real! I’ve simultaeneously cracked the code of society, nature, and the First Law of Thermodynamics itself! If none of the work was real… then the thing I’m downloading emerged from nothingness! Like, why would I pay for that? I bet you guys wished you were this smart, you’d loads more spare cash leftover.
…Hang on, a film can be reduced to essential non-existence, too! ‘Scarface.mpg’ is nothing but tiny magnetic blips! I’ve got to inform Hollywood! They’re paying billions of dollars to produce stuff that won’t even exist! Makes me wonder why they bother pressing all those DVDs, since nothing on them will exist either… In fact, this means the entire digital revolution was nothing but… a mass vanishment! Photography? Typography and prepress? I don’t what they’re doing to make those books and magazines and art shows, ‘cos it’s gone! Digital fuel injection? You won’t get me in one of those cars! Email? Everyone’s basically throwing their communiques down a black hole! And the internet! My god, it’s just a vast blank space! Which is good, ‘cos the nothingness really didn’t capture my abs on Facebook back when it was manifesting. Hoist the imaginary mainsail, imaginary seaman! We’ve got to warn the world! Because the internet itself does not exi–
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@JonFitt
Yes, it’s true that the most one can say at any moment is whether or not the current (and near-future) market price is good enough for them. Without knowing future conditions (I don’t – but anyone who does, feel free to weigh in!), it seems a bit silly to wait for some vague unspecified turning point in the nebulous future. Downloading a copy today doesn’t preclude purchasing one later (at your 50% on Steam deal, let’s say), if you follow my view honestly. I’ve DONE that.
It seems to me that people, being, by and large, not assholes, would recognize the big picture. It’s like, er… fishing. If one person takes extra fish, the system recovers, but if everyone does, it tanks. And looking at global fish stocks… well, it would appear on the surface that my optimistic outlook is built on thin ice. Which is frozen over quicksand. Even so, I don’t know that anyone’s claiming to be unequivocally freeloading (but then, who’d admit it?). I didn’t exactly claim to establish a value of zero, either: just lower than any available price. There may be, as you say, an inevitable ‘exploited’ group and a ‘freeloading’ group… But depending on, well, quite a few factors, I’d bet that most people would a good deal of time skipping between the two, were they to exist.
And I didn’t mention this before now, but there is one case in which nobody can dispute the legality of software downloads: if retarded DRM schemes deprive you of your LAWFUL right to make a PRIVATE copy of something… Anything which is limited to either a single physical manifestation or a finite number of digital transfers is just plain asking to be pirated.
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@ James T
Yes, because reductio ad absurdam is ALWAYS the inevitable result of any position besides complete and utter neutrality, right?
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SuperNashwan says:
So in conclusion, some popular games were pirated a bit last year. Amazing.
We don’t even know the first thing about the methodology behind what these numbers actually are.
Totally.
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Err, you guys do know torrents aren’t the only way to get “scene releases” and there was an internet b4 torrents ;) thus those numbers are really flawed and only represents maybe 30% or less of actual downloads.
Groups don’t actually release anything to torrents (besides n00bs/homebrew). There are other ppl down the chain that do that. Nor do they care if anyone actually d/l’s the game. All they care about is being 1st to crack it/releasing it, for credits to topsites and their own elitism.
Sometimes I wished the scene would close shop for a few months just to see all the crying on torrent sites and for people to get a clue.
Piracy has its good and bad points. Not everyone on the planet gets games cheap and while someone in the States is going “man its only $30″ someone else is Australia is “farking $100 for a gamE?” or some Asian countries where they sell them for $10 a pop to try and stop the illegal street stores. So buying 10games a year can be unrealistic for some ppl thus they will buy afew games and pirate others.
The publishers and middleman are really ripping us off generally and slowly due to DD we are finally getting some savings but for a NOBOX edition we are still getting ripped off. The problem isn’t something that will change overnight but it is a complex problem with “industrial age” mentality execs vs “information age” and since we are still in the early days of the Info age, it be still awhile till things change as a whole.
Some games get good support after the game is released so anything broken gets fixed with patches and others get little to no support(be it because the company went under or they moved onto another game) and a broken game remains broke(or if you are lucky and happen to have a dedicated community behind the game) like GPx series etc Alot of ppl(like me) have been burnt this way. You have to learn it the hard way tho.
Some games are single player 10hr, little replay affairs and they want to charge the same price as a game that you can play for years and years ie: adventure vs FPS. (another major problem how do use measure value for money in games).
Some games have no demos and ppl will d/l a pirated game or app to evaluate it b4 buying(which is one of the main advantages for a scene release). Sometimes the demos don’t represent the actual final game or something major has changed since the demo and ppl need to re-evaluate.
Some ppl are just mad tightasses and cry about how expensive everything is and wont ever buy any game ever because they are poor BUT they still have the money to spend $$$ on vidcards and quadcores(yeah go figure). Half that list of games provided are some of the most demanding graphical games. Tho again this can come back to what they perceive as value for money.
I think after playing afew MMO’s now like WOW/WAR etc the ~$11-$15/mth mark should be how most games should be sold(well i still get taken to the cleaners for the $100BOX).. Pay as you play will prob become reality more so in the future as current DRM dies and something replaces it(something has to replace it). Something like STEAM. Tho again Audiosurf was only $9.99 and I still play it now 9mths later where as Portal was… part of Orange Box, played the full game and never played it again… Soo I guess I need to work out the kinks with that idea :)
Then we have the “insert CD/DVD” games where the game must be in the tray at all times. While I never believe clowns that say “i scratched it” or “i lost it” having the option to not have the CD in the tray is nice esp when the drive is also used as a burner and dvd player and it can getting annoying. Some game developers eventually give in and offer patched versions but again it depends on how much after box support they provide. Cracks provide this option.
I know some ppl like playing games just to be the “1st” to finish then spending hrs on forums telling us how cool they are and all the flaws the game has and why they are glad they didn’t pay for the game, not really playing the game and moving on to the next game b4 you get a chance to finish installing it. They don’t see any value in any game, I don’t think these ppl hurt the sales.
Some ppl are just collectors, much like stamps and sports cards in the good old days they now collect warez and rarely actually play the games they get. Same deal I don’t think they would buy these games but since they have the means they do it, maybe a drug fix :)
You can mix and match the above with everyone here I think. Everyone has tried it for different reasons a mix of the above whatever but the main jist of it is that the PC games industry needs an overhaul and when publishers complain its piracy that caused the company to fall over, blah blah, for me it sounds like just another excuse for not fixing the real problems lets blame the pirates. Piracy has been around since the 80′s! and it hasn’t stopped M$ and EA making billions. It’s not a new problem just that more people have access to it.
Finally to the ppl that mentioned that they d/l the full “pirated” game to get a “backup” LOOL!! Pirated games aren’t some magical version! They are either CLONECD/DVD versions of the game you just bought or they have injected the “crack” into the ISO. Save your bandwidth! just d/l the crack from gamecopyworld (b4 torrents! OMG) esp if you don’t want DRM or if you want to remove the “no cd” check. The releases don’t provide legit keys for on-line play(usually) only to actually install the game. So if you happen to have a legit version and happen to use a crack because you don’t want DRM, its OK ;)
(i only intended to make mention that torrents/sites don’t really represent the scene in anyway or its the only place to get things, as its been mentioned here and PCG mag b4, consider it a letter to the editor that I never bothered sending haha).
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One of the better posts about piracy, SPEEDCORE.
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I for one , pirated the game in protest. I don’t usually pirate games, nor do my friends. I however , this year , pirated 4 games. Mass effect, crysis, red alert3 and spore , not because of not being able to afford it, not because of my wanting it, but simply because their idea that they own the game after selling it to me is absolutely morally wrong.
Its like selling you a house , and then setting terms as to who is allowed to enter the house , what products you’re allowed to have in the house, what furniture you’re allowed to buy etc.
I’m sorry but if you are selling property , intellectual or not, then you have no say what the person is allowed to do post purchase. Sure replication should be limited for commercial gain but not to the extent of telling people what they are allowed to have installed on their pc or including limitations to how many times you can install it.
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@ Speedcore
I think anyone who knows anything about anything is aware of the way cracks and such get out. Besides, if its clean, who cares what the source is? All a ‘pirated’ version ever is, is just an image and a crack.
I mostly agree with the other stuff you said… but:
“While I never believe clowns that say “i scratched it” or “i lost it”…”
I used to think the same thing… Until my much beloved and frequently used CD of Red Alert 2 exploded. We’re talking shockwaves. Enough force to blow open the drive tray. I was finding little plastic shards in my case for months. The laws exist for a reason: shit happens. If you can’t get your sorry ass a (legally-entitled) backup/replacement ” ”legally” “, fuck ‘em.
And really, doesn’t it make perfect sense that someone would afford the hardware but not the games? I mean, working with a fixed amount of money, would you rather have a) a good system and lots of pirated games; b) a mediocre system and a handful of games; or c) no system and lots of games? Well? Tough call, eh?
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cjlr: Provide a broken principle, get a broken result. I refer you to Jon Fitt for the rest.
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Fallout 3 being up there doesn’t surprise me, It is nearly AU$120 on Steam.
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Holy shit, you’re joking…
…Ah, according to XE, it’s about 106 AU (from 70 US). Thank you market crash! Even the bricks-and-mortars don’t gouge you like that. I wouldn’t pay half of that for FO3, but maybe that’s just me.
…Ditto CoD4, which is still going for 90 AU! Well, it’s us who dictate the prices in the end…
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Hmm, if the “scene” closed up shop, I’m fairly sure somebody would quickly take their place. They aren’t bio engineered borg, they’re just regular people who have talents that can and will be duplicated.
I’m not overly concerned with why people pirate games. There is, I imagine, a number of why’s and some (like myself) don’t even have one.
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Yeah, what happened to Steam always being a better deal than physical stores? I was looking at Prince of Persia and it’s $50 USD on Steam, but only $29 CAD (~22 USD) in stores here, not even as a sale price. That’s a rather ridiculous difference.
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Always? Steam has never been a better deal than physical stores with the very occasional exception of one of their weekend sales. That’s one of the problems with Steam.
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@ James T
“Provide a broken principle, get a broken result.”
I don’t see it as broken.
Yes, you can get basically any media for free these days. That’s indisputable. If, in the absence of a “freely available” version of work x, you would not buy it; if that becomes an option, and you then take it, it can’t be equated to a lost sale. From where I’m standing, that’s indisputable.
So far as I can tell, then, any disagreement is based on application, not on the reasoning. It depends on your assumptions regarding how ethically the population in general will respond. If someone’s not ethical they’ll take whatever they want and let everyone else bear the burden of cost. If someone holds themselves to a standard then there’s no conflict.
But to continue from there is to delve into a rather contentious philosophical argument about morality. Suffice it to say that you’ve got your assumptions and I’ve got mine. Working with the same facts, we’ll draw different conclusions. I like to delude myself into thinking I present a fairly articulate case, but somehow I doubt we’ll be convincing each other of anything any time soon.
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