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.
Related Stories:
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.
Surprised Mass Effect didn’t make the list.
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.
Ilove these lists. It jus shows that DRM is not working at all.
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).
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?
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.
It has a bit of a reputation for being hard to steal.
Do what you want ‘cuz a pirate is free. . .
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Smurfy. That song’s going to remain in my head all night now. Why?!
@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?
Does this count the ones actually, physically pirated in ships off the coast of Somalia?
@ack
So the solution to DRM is to charge people for it?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A question:
How many games on that list AREN’T some of the best selling games of the year?
@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)
Do ‘tech-savvy’ gamers actually use torrents? I know I haven’t used a file sharing resource since the days of Napster…
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.
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…
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…
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!
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.
And where is Left 4 Dead?
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.
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.
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.
Is this ranking based on .torrent files downloaded, or actual complete games downloaded?
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.
Where is the list for console market?. Xbox360 can be pirated, PS2, PSP, nintendo DS… where are those numbers?
It always happens, doesn’t it? The mention of piracy causes the comment count to explode.
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?
@ Paul Moloney: Bloglines gets snared up on RSS feeds occasionally, they have to be poked to restart the feed.
I’m thinking
(iii) You should work on the consistency of your enumeration. FALE!
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.
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.
@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”?
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.
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.
Piracy is stealing. Why is that a fantasy?
Clue: what you want is a dictionary.
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.
First 5 titles are EA’s DRM crap. So who’s laughing now EA? Still wanna put DRM on your games?
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.
@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.
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.
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.
@sinister agent: Do you know something about Army of Two 2?