By Kieron Gillen on May 17th, 2010 at 6:37 pm.
Alec sighs and points at Blues News who points at The Sixth Axis who points at Edge magazine who points at Epic President Mike Capps in an interview situation who points at Piracy for Epic’s pointing away from the PC. He says things like “We still do PC, we still love the PC, but we already saw the impact of piracy: it killed a lot of great independent developers and completely changed our business model.” and “So, maybe Facebook will save PC gaming… but it’s not going to look like Gears of War.”. More here. I’m sure everyone agrees, so I’m tempted to just close the comments thread because there’s nothing to say, but maybe I’m wrong.
17/05/2010 at 18:40 Fitz says:
Valve.
Ends thread.
17/05/2010 at 19:27 HexagonalBolts says:
I can’t believe that other companies are SO incredibly, painfully short sited, that they can’t just look at valve, realise what they’ve done right, and apply it to themselves.
17/05/2010 at 20:39 Bhazor says:
Yes Valve, if only more publishers would realise the benefit of invasive, mandatory and often unreliable DRM in securing their PC profits.
17/05/2010 at 20:42 Psychopomp says:
Here we go again.
17/05/2010 at 22:51 MWoody says:
Valve own their own store. I question how successful they’d be if they were still just a ‘dev.
18/05/2010 at 02:24 Davie says:
Well, since every game they’ve ever made has been met with critical success and excellent sales, I’m sure they’d be doing fine.
18/05/2010 at 09:20 Crush says:
Valve dont make expensive eye candy games like Epic do, sure their nice but they are by no means pushing the visual envelope.
Plus Valve makes games for the Xbox 360 too so they are not exactly PC exclusive. They are merely two sides of the same coin Valve puts the PC first and treats it’s console versions as second tier games whereas Epics puts the console version first and the PC version second (if at all).
Mr Capps could have worded it better like, studio growth, rising development costs given the type of games Epic makes coupled with piracy leaving a pool of paying PC gamers that simply meant staying PC exclusive is financially untenable for them.
18/05/2010 at 12:01 Carra says:
Blizzard.
End end thread.
18/05/2010 at 12:36 frymaster says:
people keep using the word “invasive”
I don’t think it means what they think it means
(a system which installs no drivers, and has no obfuscated registry keys or file paths, and that appears in add/remove programs, doesn’t qualify)
there are at least some ligitimate reasons why people might wish to avoid steam (“what happens if it all goes tits-up” is a fair point, assuming you aren’t talking about a multiplayer-centric game, since they pretty much all require a central system of some kind) so I don’t know why people have to spout the same old catchphrases, when they don’t even apply
as regards the original statement: I think they’re just sick of piracy. Even if people come up with lots of numbers suggesting it doesn’t affect sales – and that’s not something that can be shown, at least to any sort of actual rigour – that still doesn’t mean it isn’t pissing them off. “I was never going to buy your crap anyway” is pretty poor consolation for someone ripping you off and taking advantage of your hard work for free, emotionally, and since they probably make less money from the PC market anyway, I can see why they’d go “bugger it”
these are the 2 ways piracy affects PC gaming: by distorting the data bean-counters use to make decisions, and by seriously pissing off the creating people who actually make the games. At the intersection of the two lines is something like ubisoft, and each step on the road was so small they probably can’t recognise their own madness.
18/05/2010 at 14:48 Gutter says:
Valve works because they are unique.
When Valve stops being unique, and it’s coming, things will regress to the way they are now.
17/05/2010 at 18:43 Vinraith says:
Epic has only been relevant on PC lately because of the Unreal Engine, UT modability, and the Make Something Unreal contest. If they abandon that, I suspect “Source 2″ will pick up the slack (and move us all a little further down the road to total Steam dependence, dammit).
17/05/2010 at 20:10 jon_hill987 says:
I think you are right, while the loss of Unreal Engine for PC would be bad, (the Loss of gears of War, not so much) others will take it’s place.
Apart from about Source 2, which I don’t think will ever be made, or to be more accurate I think it already has been made and was called Source again. Episode 1 used a different engine from HL2 as did Episode 2 and Left 4 Dead, Valve don’t need to write a new engine from scratch, they can just keep updating the one they have indefinitely.
17/05/2010 at 21:38 Mithrandir0x says:
Why I don’t see anyone talking about ID Tech 5?
17/05/2010 at 22:11 Heliosicle says:
Source and Unreal have both been around for a while, and Id Tech 5 seems to run on magicalness that it can run so well and look so good. Plus no one except games press have seen Rage so its an unknown quantity.
17/05/2010 at 22:38 Vinraith says:
Plus didn’t they explicitly say they weren’t opening Rage’s engine to modding? So it’s totally irrelevant, basically.
18/05/2010 at 08:43 Wulf says:
Vinraith is correct, as he frequently is, despite our disagreements about Steam. >.>
Rage uses a special sort of Übertexture which is wrapped around a level, this Übertexture needs to be processed by Übercomputers which Ordinary Gamers don’t have access to, or something of the sort. So sayeth Id as to why their engine can’t be modifiable and why it’ll never be available as a standalone engine except to those who can afford the aforementioned necessary Übercomputers.
I’m hoping Source will pick up the slack and become even more friendly to developers and more enticing to them if Unreal Engine drops the PC. I’m not so bothered by that, anyway, really because I’ve never been a huge fan of the UE. I had many reasons, some of which are down to how people misuse it, and some of which are down to limitations of the engine myself. The biggest problem I have, I think, is that every game I’ve seen use it (Borderlands, UT3, Gears of War 2, Mass Effect 2) has Dead Face Syndrome.
Mass Effect 2 was a great game, but geez did it ever have dead faced people with staring, empty eyes (this is a well known thing, no?), and Borderlands had the same problem, those still, staring eyes, so did all the other UE games, which I shudder at. The reason I hope that Source picks up is because, by comparison, you have Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and Zeno Clash. All of which had really lively and emotive characters, who actually had visible emotions tied to what they were saying. Their faces weren’t made of plasticine. And on times they’re almost bloody lifelike, and I’d love to see a game take character emotions to the same levels as Vampire. Truly, I would.
So I’m not too bothered by any of this, really, since things that would probably never bother console users bug me, and things they might never notice but appeal to me would be more en force on the PC.
18/05/2010 at 11:59 jeremypeel says:
@Wulf: As a pretty frequent console (Xbox) gamer, I can tell you it is something that bothers even us, the consoletard underclass.
I played Mass Effect directly after running through Half Life 2 for the first time and spent a lot of time wondering how much more emotive it could be with some proper facial animation. Bioware have come along leaps and bounds since KOTOR in this regard and I understand the emergent nature of the dialogue makes detailed facial animation a much bigger task, but I’d love to see it happen.
(On a related side note, did anyone here read Edge’s feature on LA Noire? Exciting stuff.)
22/05/2010 at 08:29 Wulf says:
@jp
Hrmm. None of my console friends ever really mentioned this to me (or that they had any issues with Mass Effect, visually), and I tend to think of that sample as representative, but now I’m beginning to think that I just need smarter friends whom also enjoy console gaming.
Furthermore, I’d made this assumption because the Unreal Engine is more prevalent–on the 360, at least–in games like Gears of War, I’d begun to think that console gamers had just become desensitised to that. They might have embraced an attitude where they didn’t give a shit if the characters were emotive or not if the game was actually fun, at least, that was my assumption. Again though, I’m glad that there are console owners who want better than that. I’m actually glad that there are people like you whom are sticklers for detail in general, since it’s your opinions that might eventually lead to more detailed console games. I’d love to see the console audience kick up a fuss about this stuff, really, because then when I play these games on the PC I’d get the stuff I want to see, regardless of their origin.
As it stands, I thought that Mass Effect 2 was a brilliant little game, it really grew on me, even though it was a slow burn, and I enjoyed my time with it. I’m definitely looking forward to Mass Effect 3 as much as I’d look forward to most things. It’s hanging somewhere behind Guild Wars 2 on the list of things I really, really, really want to play. The thing is though is that there’s part of my brain that’s dreading that the characters will have those dead, dead staring eyes again. Part of my brain really wishes they’d move to the source engine, but I know that’s never going to happen, even though it should.
I apologise if that comes over as a sleight, anyway, as it wasn’t meant to be. In the same way that a film fan might not care if tiny details from the books a film was based on were just left out, the film fan would just enjoy a great film and not be a stickler for detail, and I can’t blame them for that. As it stands though, both you and I have seen how emotive characters can be–thanks to Valve–and it’s good to know that that desire goes further than the PC.
17/05/2010 at 18:43 Bigglesb says:
Meh, don’t really care, tbh. Haven’t made a game I’ve wanted to play for aaaages. Let the consoles have their pumped up tripe : )
17/05/2010 at 23:23 MadMatty says:
agreed.
17/05/2010 at 18:44 Schrodinger's Lolcat says:
Someone should send these guys a telegram. They seem a little out of touch.
17/05/2010 at 19:08 Uhm says:
DEAR EPIC STOP
17/05/2010 at 19:39 Rosti says:
PLEASE MAKE MORE GAMES I ENJOY STOP I WOULD LIKE THEM ON THE PC STOP THANK YOU STOP
17/05/2010 at 20:01 Mechorpheus says:
You sir, can have a cookie!
18/05/2010 at 01:06 Nesetalis says:
BUT I STOP
EATED IT STOP
18/05/2010 at 07:46 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
SOLID STOP
18/05/2010 at 08:26 Nick says:
STOP HAMMER TIME STOP
17/05/2010 at 18:44 Sagan says:
The one thing I would really like to know is how much any random game, say BioShock 2, made on consoles and on PC. I would like to know what kind of numbers we are talking about here.
Other than that: I’m pretty sure that we have had this discussion before, and I’m already pretty certain as to how the comment thread will turn out.
17/05/2010 at 19:28 bob_d says:
“Bioshock 2″ is probably a bad example, as it was seen as a console game primarily, and was thus #1 in Xbox sales but didn’t make the top 20 in PC sales (where sales were absolutely dismal).
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ is probably a better example, as it was top 10 for both consoles and PC. In the US, in November, it sold 6 million console copies (4.2M Xbox 360, 1.8M PS3), but only 170 thousand boxed copies on the PC. There were *perhaps* as many Steam sales as boxed PC sales, but all in all it probably didn’t sell over 300K on the PC in that period. This sort of sales disparity is usual for games with PC and console versions. You begin to see why publishers consider the PC a sinkhole in which sales are lost to piracy, whether that’s true or not.
17/05/2010 at 19:42 redrain85 says:
Meanwhile, the original Bioshock is probably a good example: as of June of 2008, about half of the copies sold by that point were the PC version (1 million out of 2.2 million).
17/05/2010 at 20:04 Mechorpheus says:
Those ‘Chart’ sales figures will forever be meaningless until they include Digital Distribution numbers. Bioshock 2 most certainly gained a significant number of sales from Steam, myself being one of them.
18/05/2010 at 00:48 bob_d says:
@redrain85
“Bioshock” is pretty atypical, actually, in that half its sales were the PC version (at least by that point; the PS3 version came out later.) I can’t think of another game with such strong PC sales relative to the console versions. Every game where I’ve seen numbers, the console versions outsell the PC version by 4-to-1 or more; granted, this doesn’t include digital download sales, but it doesn’t appear that more than half of the Bioshock PC sales were downloads, so I can’t believe it would make up the difference in all the other cases. Also, anecdotally, friends who work at game companies that make both PC and console versions tell me that the console versions always sell better.
@ Mechorpheus
The Bioshock 1 sales numbers given above *do* include digital downloads, as that 1 Million PC sales number came from the company, not retail trackers.
18/05/2010 at 03:49 Wedge says:
Games that actually have some marketing put into the PC audience, like say BFBC2, sell quite well on PC. In fact it outsold it’s console counterparts on either system. But when a game is primarily marketed to a console base and they’re like “oh, there’s a PC version too”, which is clearly a port of the 360 version of the game down to the GFWL and often still having button mappings for a 360 controller… well then of course it sells much better on a console. And even then the PC version can provide nice supplementary sales, provided the PC version you give out isn’t abhorrently broken (which they often are).
18/05/2010 at 09:32 plugmonkey says:
You think MW2 only sold 300k copies? Seriously?
There were 82k people were all playing it yesterday at the same time. Six months after it was released.
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
That must be a very loyal 300k. Either that, or by the same calculation, L4D2 must have only sold about 50k copies.
18/05/2010 at 11:39 Lars Westergren says:
@bob_d
“can’t think of another game with such strong PC sales relative to the console versions. Every game where I’ve seen numbers, the console versions outsell the PC version by 4-to-1 or more; ”
Dragon Age.
17/05/2010 at 18:49 redrain85 says:
As soon as I read that article: I laughed, then concluded that Mike Capps is clearly out of touch with the PC market. Since companies like Valve (pretty much any title), Blizzard (WoW and Starcraft 2), and EA (Sims, BFBC2) will be able to tell a different story.
Epic is in Microsoft’s back pocket now, anyway. So what else should we expect to hear from him?
17/05/2010 at 18:49 Tei says:
“So, maybe Facebook will save PC gaming… but it’s not going to look like Gears of War.”.
And maybe no. Who knows? but the PC market is alive and is always generating new ideas and stuff, because is innovative.
The console market, on the other hand, is home for derivative repetitive shallow blockbuster-fest of “games”.
“We still do PC, we still love the PC, but we already saw the impact of piracy: it killed a lot of great independent developers and completely changed our business model.”
Yea ,heres a list for you:
- Pandemic.
- Bullfrog
- Westwood Studio
- Origin
- ….
Bad publishers has nothing to do with Studios releasing popular games and be forced to closed doors.
17/05/2010 at 21:39 Alastayr says:
Tei, man. I’m serious, you should make Michael Pachter your bitch and get paid for this.
17/05/2010 at 23:31 Brumisator says:
Pachter is already a bitch
18/05/2010 at 07:05 Bret says:
But not Tei’s bitch.
So, you know, room for improvement there.
18/05/2010 at 08:40 Stromko says:
Several of those studios were very good, until they were brain-drained and soul-sucked by their overlords. Being gutted or forced to churn out progressively shittier expansions isn’t piracy, not user-end piracy anyway. It’s more like mobsters who acquire a liquor store via racketeering stealing all the merchandise and burning it down for the insurance money. You know, modern free-market stuff.
17/05/2010 at 18:50 Mac says:
Not really fussed – when was teh alst time they released a blockbuster? UT2004?
UT3 was okay, but it didn;t really do anything different to UT2004, and it was missing Assault mode.
GoW sucked nuts on the PC and was only released a milenia after teh 360 release.
If this is their business model then – meh, who cares ….
17/05/2010 at 18:55 suibhne says:
UT3 was also missing the Onslaught gametype, not just Assault; its new Warfare was a paltry imitation of both. And it was missing the large number of truly good maps released with UT and UT2k4, made by third-party mapmakers like Hourences, as Epic moved all mapmaking in-hour for UT3 and was unable to replicate the same level of high-quality gameplay.
UT3 did some things very well, but it was overall a huge disappointment and a very sad swan-song for Epic Games on PC.
Also, UT3′s state at release, and for almost a year afterward, makes BC2 look downright polished. xD
17/05/2010 at 19:33 bob_d says:
UT3 was a game? I assumed it was a tech demo used to sell their engine to game developers…
17/05/2010 at 20:58 Mr_Day says:
It is kind of sad that Epic’s contribution to gaming was to allow a bunch of other developers to make good games.
I mean, I love the Unreal Tournament games, but you can’t help but feel that they only needed one. Not one every other year. How did it go again?
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament 2003
Unreal Tournament 2004
Unreal Tournament 2008
Unreal Tournament 3 (because we can’t count)
17/05/2010 at 21:28 Bobsy says:
I did like Jazz Jackrabbit. He was… er… green? Or was that just Bucky O’Hare?
17/05/2010 at 21:45 ZeeKat says:
Yeah, Epic Pinball was cat’s pyjamas too.
17/05/2010 at 22:13 Mr_Day says:
Do you know, I had completely forgotten about Jazz Jackrabbit. I stand corrected.
18/05/2010 at 08:42 Stromko says:
The original One Must Fall was pretty good, though the 3D-engined sequel was absolute ass. Unreal 3 was an abomination on release, terribly controls and sickeningly swimmy interface, only mods make it worthwhile at all and even that, barely … Nice of them to release the engine to developers though, their engines will be missed.
17/05/2010 at 18:52 robrob says:
Lovely weather today isn’t it?
17/05/2010 at 18:55 Larington says:
I say! Yes, tis smashing weather, what what!
Good lord, I just dropped my monacle!
17/05/2010 at 18:53 Chris says:
Remember, boys and girls, every pirated copy means a lost sale. We know this because we know how many copies we would have sold.
I’m assuming he’s actually trying to piss off PC gamers by even mentioning Farmville, which seems to be a cross between Amway and an incentive to delete my FaceBook account.
17/05/2010 at 20:25 Flimgoblin says:
Zynga seem hell-bent on making their own place outside Facebook to put Farmville, probably because they realised Facebook had managed to become even more evil than they had.
18/05/2010 at 01:20 bob_d says:
The music industry is pretty bad about claiming piracy = lost sales (in some cases the claimed “lost sales” nearly exceeded the GDP of the countries in question), but I’ve not seen anyone in the game industry make such comments with a straight face.
He brings up Farmville because, in the last year-plus, game sales have seriously slumped (PC game sales have been going down for a decade) while Farmville made crazy, crazy profits ($250 million in one year). The publishers started asking why they were spending $50+ million dollars to make a AAA title that had a very small chance of even making its money back when they could make Facebook games at 1/1000 the cost with a much bigger potential for profit. For various reasons (piracy plays some role, but it’s not clear how big of one) PC game development is becoming unsustainable, but the casual, social-gaming market is booming. Soon there will be more money in the casual market than in the traditional PC market (if there isn’t already). The result of which is the move towards making the PC the platform for cheap casual games and the console would have the AAA titles.
@ Flimgoblin
Facebook is now demanding a rather large percentage of the profits from games on Facebook; since Zynga owns most of that market, they’re looking to set themselves up as an independent portal where they don’t have to deal with Facebook on those terms.
18/05/2010 at 16:47 Luckylad says:
He’s what I like to call a professional troll. He says things just to get a rile out of PC users and then goes “oh look at just how violent and unstable to PC userbase is.” This coupled with their idea that every single game on the PC is pirated 20x more than actual sales means that we are at a crossroads. More than anything they want to make simplistic games with even simpler control schemes for the console. The question is do we try and get them back or do we flip them the bird and say good riddance. I’m more for the latter.
17/05/2010 at 18:55 RogB says:
Theres more of their target audience (12 yr old male) on xbox. (Meeow)
17/05/2010 at 19:31 Rich says:
Mummy and daddy forking out £50 a pop for their darling pubescent grease-stain’s latest grey-guys-killing-other-grey-guys-in-a-grey-world* fix, is undoubtedly a more lucrative market.
*Art direction, what’s that?
17/05/2010 at 21:28 Phoshi says:
I do believe art direction is something those “homo sexuals” their fans keep telling them about use to excuse their lack of shotguns with chainsaws tied to them.
17/05/2010 at 18:56 Finn says:
Blizzard, Valve, Bioware.
Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.
17/05/2010 at 19:00 GT3000 says:
I won’t go into how I’ve seen Valve’s products being pirated but the system isn’t fool-proof, no system is. Going off of that, it’s hard not to see his point of view. You don’t see pirated games on the consoles because it’s virtually impossible. I think he’s a product of his environment. Or at least has grown accustomed to the security afforded to consoles not rivaled in PCs. Not defending him but he is spot on about F2P microtransactions, they work. Even if you hate them with a burning passion.
17/05/2010 at 19:06 Tei says:
“You don’t see pirated games on the consoles because it’s virtually impossible.”
R3 chips for PSP, Xbox360 warez sites, modded WII consoles,… thats hardly true.
17/05/2010 at 19:07 redrain85 says:
You don’t see pirated games on the consoles because it’s virtually impossible.
The 360 torrent ISOs that I see days, or even weeks, before each new title’s release indicate otherwise.
17/05/2010 at 19:12 Clovis says:
Of course, Tei didn’t mention the PS3 where it really is still almost impossible. The XBOX can definitely be pirated though. That’s why PS3 game sales are so insanely higher (per machine) than the XBox.
Oh wait, that last bit’s not true at all …
17/05/2010 at 19:13 Jay says:
Only the PS3 seems to have avoided piracy so far. And, incidentally, has the lowest sales.
(Unless that’s changed).
17/05/2010 at 19:14 Jay says:
Bah!
17/05/2010 at 19:14 GT3000 says:
Right but these are apples and oranges. It isn’t as accessible as PC-based pirating where the only thing barring you is an executable or key-gen. Never mind that you aren’t logging on and playing with other people via Hamachi (or in Ubisoft’s case, their own servers) whereas if you pull that stunt on any of the consoles, your console gets shit-canned for life.
Like I said, no system is fool-proof but it’s significantly harder for the masses to pirate on a console than it is on a PC.
17/05/2010 at 19:21 Simon says:
I would hardly say it is ‘Apples and Oranges’.
Sure, it is somewhat more difficult to pirate Xbox 360 games than PC games but finding someone to flash the firmware on your Xbox 360 drive is not particularly difficult if you can’t do it yourself.
The Wii is incredibly easy. The PS3 is really the only one that is ‘impossible’ at this point.
Note that you said:
That is just plainly false.
17/05/2010 at 19:25 DJ Phantoon says:
I play internet on my Xbox just fine whenever I bother to look at the dumb thing.
I also refuse to pay for Xbox Live.
17/05/2010 at 19:55 Psychopomp says:
The problem isn’t that piracy on the PS3 is impossible, it’s that it’s fucking expensive. Blu Rays, and a real Blu Ray drive will cost you half a mountain of gold.
17/05/2010 at 19:04 Demon Beaver says:
I guess Survival of the Fittest also works in the pc game developer market. Let’s hope for more new good games and less Gears of War.
17/05/2010 at 20:34 FunkyBadger says:
Because, what, Gears of War is a bad game? Have you played it?
The whole “I never fancied her anyway” angle really doesn’t buttress your (their) argument.
18/05/2010 at 07:16 Red Avatar says:
Actually, GOW is a very overrated game. I played it on both the Xbox and PC and yes, on the Xbox it felt more right but it didn’t stop it from being a shallow game. It’s a “blockbuster” game as has been said – popular but shallow. Fine for those that like to keep things simple but it won’t hold my attention for too long. Especially not since the PC conversion felt cheap and came months too late.
Anyway, Epic are idiots. I supported them and bought UT3 and due to a wide-spread bug I couldn’t see more than 10 servers at any given time. It took them THREE MONTHS to fix the bug by which time I had already sold my copy because by then they had already started whining about poor sales. Boohoo Epic, you fucking cry babies.
17/05/2010 at 19:07 geldonyetich says:
“Dude, do you think 9 out of 10 PC gamers being pirates is severely hurting the platform?”
“No way! Me and 8 out of 10 of other posters on this comment thread think piracy is a great, guilt-free occupation. Therefore, the PC platform is fine.”
“How very unexpected.”
17/05/2010 at 19:19 rocketman71 says:
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy
Besides, the 360 has the same piracy (less in relative percentage, more in total numbers).
The reason everybody goes to consoles is because developers like Epic get a turd, put it in a box, and it sells 5 million units. PC?. Not so much. UT was great. UT2003 was a mod. UT2004 was a nice improvement. GoW was totally broken. UT3 was completely consolized.
They’re not even trying because they know we don’t trust them anymore. But yeah, it’s our fault for being pirates, if you listen to anything CliffyB, Mark Rein or Mike Capps have said in the last 5 years.
There was the same level of piracy in 99. They didn’t complain then. Perhaps it was because then they used to make good games. Now, like id, they just make good engines.
17/05/2010 at 19:20 Finn says:
I don’t see any commenter supporting piracy or denying it’s existence; that said, successful games are successful (ah!) regardless of how much they are pirated, all the companies indicated above (Blizzard, Valve, Bioware) have had their games massively pirated and still they rack a very good profit, good enough for them to know that piracy doesn’t hurt them as much as alienating their consumer base by releasing games solely for other platforms.
I really don’t care any more, it’s like neodarwinism applied to game developers: the good stay, the bad migrate to the consoles, fine by me.
17/05/2010 at 21:30 Vinraith says:
@rocketman
Yeah, that article really needs to be emblazoned in flaming letters outside the corporate headquarters of every major game publisher. There an irrational panic surrounding piracy, and if anything is damaging the platform it’s that panic, far more than the actual phenomenon. The only saving grace is that the more rational developers seem to not-so-coincidentally produce most of the better games.
17/05/2010 at 22:46 Hallgrim says:
PC: Develop game, pirates download game and don’t pay us.
CONSOLE: Develop game, people buy used games and don’t pay us.
PC gaming didn’t fail Epic, Epic failed at PC gaming.
17/05/2010 at 19:07 BB says:
Every Epic game looks the same, every Epic game plays the same, and every Epic game for the last 7 years has been a complete snooze-fest. Of course no one’s buying these half-assed console ports on PC, they are awful, derivative, crap.
17/05/2010 at 20:45 Mman says:
“every Epic game plays the same”
Because UT3, Gears of War and Shadow Complex play exactly the same. That’s a ridiculous statement whether you like the games or not.
18/05/2010 at 00:06 NekoDaimyo says:
Yeah, but mind you, Shadow Complex wasn’t really developed by Epic, but Chair Entertainment. Buggered if I know what Epic did in Shadow Complex’s development, of course.
17/05/2010 at 19:12 rocketman71 says:
There’s really nothing to say, except that Epic is a joke, and that CliffyB is a clown.
17/05/2010 at 19:15 Mario Figueiredo says:
Really, I’m all hyped! Only the good ones are staying.
17/05/2010 at 19:16 WildeAnarchist says:
Gears of Snore!
Ah ha ha.
I rest my case.
P.S. Anybody else having trouble logging into their wordpress account?
17/05/2010 at 19:17 blargy says:
-.. . .- .-. . .–. .. -.-. … – — .–.
17/05/2010 at 19:17 Hmm says:
It’d be great if RPS could conduct an interview with someone from Epic and have a chat about them covering subjects like PC gaming, why Epic is so clueless and completely forgot how to make their PC business successful, that joke of an organization called PCGA , how nasty it was to release Gears 1 on PC and NOT the vastly improved sequel and so on.
Anyway, EPIC FA… you know what.
17/05/2010 at 19:23 Hmm says:
Oh, and show him how well STALKER or the Witcher performed. Dragon Age also sold rather well, didn’t it?
17/05/2010 at 21:42 archonsod says:
Yup.
I think the problem is that certain devs/publishers have this expectation that a good console game is the same as a good PC game, and therefore if the game does well on one format you can simply port it over to the other and achieve the same success.
Not only is this untrue of many games, but one has to ask whether the lack of success of things like Gears of War on the PC has more to do with it being a lazy, half arsed port than any inherent problem in the market or the game idea.
18/05/2010 at 08:52 Stromko says:
They should just admit they aren’t willing to pay enough in money, effort, and talent to make a decent PC game.
17/05/2010 at 19:18 Petethegoat says:
That was beautiful, Uhm.
17/05/2010 at 19:19 Petethegoat says:
Reply fail, naturally.
17/05/2010 at 19:21 adam says:
Piracy isn’t to blame for business failure. Not knowing how to manage a business when money gets a little tight is though.
Stop using the piracy cop out. A very small percentage of sales is effected at best by piracy. The only research demonstrating anything contrary makes use of unscientific polls and fudged numbers by the music industry. Most repeat piracy is by people who wouldn’t pay for the stuff anyway and are merely “collecting” anything they can get free.
17/05/2010 at 19:26 Vadermath says:
Hold. The phone.
We won’t be getting more titles like Gears of War?! Dear mother of god!
Seriously now, without the sarcasm; Lately, the PC market has been simply bustling with amazing new indie titles, and PC-oriented companies have been churning out games regardless of piracy, as it should be. If you want to go develop games for kiddie consoles, fine. You’ve set money as a priority then, which is also fine. But it’d all be so much less annoying if you wouldn’t give us the (extremely popular, as of late) “We’ve moved away from the PC because of piracy” excuse. I honestly haven’t seen piracy run more rampant now than, say, half a decade ago. If you really don’t care about the cash, and are honestly concerned about piracy, why not do something to make games more accessible? Just take a leaf out of indie gaming’s book. Be honest to your fans, make good games, and put them at accessible and reasonable prices (not bleedin’ 60 bucks, that is) and people will actually buy them out of pure good will, and desire to play with honesty instead of stealing. Those that still won’t are probably pirates who’ve never even bought a game, and aren’t really considered a part of the PC community. The only thing Ubisoft has achieved with its new policy is, ironically, a large number of honest gamers pirating their games (or not buying them at all) out of pure angst.
17/05/2010 at 19:27 Risingson says:
Sometimes the piracy argument can be valid. This isn’t one of those cases.
17/05/2010 at 19:29 Vadermath says:
Has there actually been a reported case of that argument being valid?
17/05/2010 at 19:33 Mario Figueiredo says:
@vandermath
Do not fall for the trap that it is thinking piracy has no effect on sales whatsoever. It’s as insulting as Epic arguments.
17/05/2010 at 19:31 Flakfizer says:
“..it’s not going to look like Gears of War”
Excellent news.
I’ll be glad to see brown, third person space marine shooters become console exclusive.
17/05/2010 at 20:21 Feet says:
Yeah, that bit made me giggle. Presuming that Gears of War and it’s ilk are the epitome of what a game should aspire to is such a blinkered and moronic statement all I can do is laugh. Way to undermine everything else you said Epic! Which considering the preceding statement about Facebook, is probably for the best.
So much wrong in one sentence, it’s quite incredible.
17/05/2010 at 19:33 teo says:
Epic are talented at saying stupid shit about PC Gaming
Hate on their games all you want though but they’re responsible for the biggest innovation in shooters since regenerating health, gotta give them credit for that regardless of the infantile sensibilities in their games.
17/05/2010 at 19:59 Psychopomp says:
What? Cover systems?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_Switch_%28video_game%29
17/05/2010 at 20:00 DJ Phantoon says:
I cannot think of a single game with regenerating health that was actually any good, or if it was at least decent, needed regenerating health at all.
17/05/2010 at 20:12 Psychopomp says:
Uncharted 2?
Butcher Bay?
Bad Company 2?
Portal?
17/05/2010 at 23:35 Thants says:
Call of Duty 4?
Crysis?
Just Cause 2?
Max Payne(A little bit)?
17/05/2010 at 19:36 Kalain says:
I know a man who will chip your Xbox for £20 and he’ll do it whilst you wait. He’ll also sell you the games you want, released and ones yet to be released when he has them. I don’t know anyone, aside from my son, who has an unchipped Xbox.
The DS has a higher piracy rate than the PC because its even easier to pirate software for it (copy -> Paste)
The only console thats foiling people is the PS3, but thats not selling as well as expected anyway.
17/05/2010 at 19:36 Skurmedel says:
I wonder how all these companies survived the early PC gaming days where piracy was ripe. It would be nice if somebody could present the business benefits of moving your games to consoles (and exclude the harder-to-pirate-benefit) so one could know how much skepticism one should apply to these statements. While I buy everything I play it still feels like console games just is better business.
17/05/2010 at 19:43 Mario Figueiredo says:
Piracy wasn’t ripe in the early PC days. Piracy is ripe today. But anyways, costs of production were much lower. Games were also usually developed by one guy or a small team of developers. So the effects of sales were more pronounced, and less sales still amounted to a hefty gain on most cases.
Not that this makes a case for Epic. But I don’t see why we should bring false assumptions into the mix. That’s their strategy.
17/05/2010 at 20:03 DJ Phantoon says:
How far back are we going, Mario? Because if you’re talking Atari days, companies pirated game ideas off each other. If we go farther out, sharing discs was enough, then we could copy discs, then the internet became prevalent.
Piracy has always been around. Just depends on how you define it.
And in regards to this news story? It’s about time they went away. Nothing of value was lost here, folks!
17/05/2010 at 20:05 Walsh says:
Absolutely false, piracy was far more casual in the early days of PC gaming. It was so easy, it was ridiculous to hand someone a floppy copy of a game with a copy of the goofy code well.
17/05/2010 at 20:06 Corporate Dog says:
“Piracy wasn’t ripe in the early PC days.”
So those code wheels and manual page passwords were… for added fun?
17/05/2010 at 20:19 Skurmedel says:
Where I live it was extremely ripe, CDs packed with games circulated. You could get a CD with like 5 to 10 high profile games on them, often stripped of superfluous resources. And before that you could more or less get a couple of floppies by somebody and you would have the whole game. Maybe you couldn’t get the games through a simple Google search, but piracy was still there, just a more manual process. I don’t know if this constitutes as “early” to you, around 98′. But I know piracy was around on Atari as well.
17/05/2010 at 20:21 Mario Figueiredo says:
I don’t see where I said there was no piracy back then. But I’ll be hard pressed to ever agree that the piracy levels of yesteryears were as high as they are today. For one there was no mass distribution of pirated material. There’s wasn’t even a mass computer gaming market. P2P was still a pipe dream and the more mundane online distribution channels were either private and kept “secret”, or simply not at the reach of the vast majority of gamers who didn’t even have a internet connection. For another copying or lending disks was no more easy than today’s ability to reach pirated content.
You can argue otherwise. It just won’t get through me.
17/05/2010 at 20:46 Corporate Dog says:
@Mario: If my 12 year old self could figure out how to get pirated games with a modem and BBS access, it wasn’t quite the secret distribution channel you think it was. Casual copying was probably even a greater threat at the time, since literally everyone did it.
My Boy Scout troop, which met at a Mormon Church (and which was predominantly Mormon by membership) was a HOTBED of such casual pirating.
In any case, as I suggested above, if piracy wasn’t so rampant, why would game publishers go to the added effort and cost of including copy protection schemes (however rudimentary) with their games?
In the early days, printed materials had a TREMENDOUS overhead cost, and manufacturing one of those wonky little code wheels wouldn’t have been cheap. So why bother, if pirating wasn’t anything like it is today?
17/05/2010 at 21:20 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
@Mario:
> For one there was no mass distribution of pirated material. There’s wasn’t even a mass computer gaming market.
It would be really interesting to see figures for piracy rates (or best estimates thereof) as a percentage of game sales for the last 20-30 years. I honestly doubt the percentage has increased, though clearly the number of people pirating games has increased just as has the number of people playing games.
17/05/2010 at 22:00 LukeE says:
Yeah I don’t think I ever bought a game before I turned 14. All the games I played were passed from one friend who had more pocket-money than the rest of us, to another friend on disks alongside badly sketched copies of the box cover art drawn on one side of a photocopy of a code-wheel.
17/05/2010 at 22:29 Mario Figueiredo says:
@Velvet
Yes, I believe the numbers have increased significantly. The percentages of gamers who pirate games however, is left for anyone to guess. Neither I think a reliable study can ever be made on that matter. I don’t suggest anything about the latter. But I’m a strong believer the former is true. The number of pirates have been consistently increasing over the years. Piracy has not been as widespread in the past as it is today. Neither it has been so easily accessible or has served so many different types of consumers markets. Yes, piracy is ripe today. There’s no possible comparison with the past.
But, let it be known that I personally don’t consider the gaming market as the most problematic. For it’s nature, I think the book publishing industry to be one of the most sensitive industries to piracy. And the one that has been suffering the most.
@Corporate Dog
Boy, those were the days, were they not? In any case, I don’t agree. BBSs were a safe heaven for piracy indeed. They were totally uncontrolled, almost completely free of any kind of monitoring. Only the big ones had to keep on their toes. But piracy was essentially an underground activity, performed on smaller ones and with very little public exposure. Certainly not anywhere near the level of public exposure offered by P2P. Besides, online access was rare. You would count with the fingers of one hand the number of people online on a small town. If indeed there was anyone.
It was cheaper, more practical and much quicker to just copy the disks from someone. Downloading a 1.4 Mb floppy disk worth of gaming material could take you anywhere from half an hour to several hours depending on your speed and if you had to wait in line for your turn.
BTW, I hypothesize the resurging of BBSs to serve darknets sometime in the near future if the current trend to fight piracy based on court issued subpoenas requesting ISP logs increases and gets widespread governmental support.
17/05/2010 at 22:30 damien says:
@ mario:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64_software#Software_Piracy
a bit of history helps a great deal when talking about what were and were not historical conditions.
17/05/2010 at 22:53 Mario Figueiredo says:
Oh, cmon Damien. Keep in context. We are talking of PC games. You could say the same of Sinclair games.
And again… you didn’t have such a widespread use and access to piracy. Neither the C64 or Sinclair markets were anywhere close to what is the PC market today. Neither I see anything on that article that hasn’t been discussed here by everyone.
18/05/2010 at 08:34 Nick says:
Remember how video piracy and copying music cassettes killed the Film and Music industry?
18/05/2010 at 08:56 archonsod says:
“Neither the C64 or Sinclair markets were anywhere close to what is the PC market today”
It was probably bigger. Everyone I know had a spectrum or commodore, I didn’t know anyone with a console. Plus, IIRC the spectrum caught the tail end of the first big game boom.
17/05/2010 at 19:39 Nick says:
I don’t see how quoting Blizzard and Valve as counter examples really seals the argument – the fact is, it implies that you HAVE to do something monumentally different (Steam) or special (WoW) to really get security as a PC-only developer.
Hell, nobody likes ‘Cliffy B’ or whatever the fuck he’s called, and Gears is a bit of a twelve-year-old boy’s wet dream, but I would at least agree that the days of premier, PC-only AAA titles WITHOUT some kind of service component are drawing to a close, and like it or not, most developers AND publishers would blame this on piracy, fair or not.
17/05/2010 at 20:02 Corporate Dog says:
I’ll see your Blizzard and Valve and raise you a Stardock.
18/05/2010 at 08:35 Nick says:
Valve aren’t a PC only developer either.
17/05/2010 at 19:39 TCM says:
To summarize, he doesn’t pay any attention whatsoever to the thing he’s criticizing.
17/05/2010 at 19:43 Vadermath says:
@Mario Figueiredo: Please, I by all means didn’t think piracy has no effect on sales. But I believe it has a far smaller effect than it is presented to have.
17/05/2010 at 19:48 Mario Figueiredo says:
Ok. My bad. It felt to me that was the argument. See it so many times, that I grow too suspicious foir my own good. Sorry.
17/05/2010 at 19:44 DMJ says:
I bought Gears of War for PC.
* I had to run it in a little window because it wouldn’t run fullscreen.
* It kept hanging.
* A patch made the entire game unplayable because patching the game made the game think it was a “hacked” version.
* The frame rate was hideously erratic – from running smooth as melted butter when there were twelve million things happening at once to juddering to a halt when chainsawing just one enemy.
I had less technical trouble with STALKER, and that’s saying something.
Once a series becomes a “killer app” on Microsoft’s little box-toy they release a half-hearted port of the first one on PC with no fanfare 18 months later, then declare that piracy means that in future this flagship series will only appear on console.
I can’t decide if I’m talking about Gears of War or Halo with that last bit.
18/05/2010 at 08:08 Lars Westergren says:
@DMJ
I also bought GoW 1 for PC and had the awesome bug where I was two thirds through the game and the online save system managed to corrupt the single save file you are allowed. Start over from beginning, yay!
I am really worried about Epic not making more games for PCs though. It would be awful to miss out on mature, original and well written games such as GoW2: (not safe for work)
Youtube
18/05/2010 at 08:37 Nick says:
I was fortunate enough to win a copy from PC Gamer (well, it was supposed to be Microsoft but they never sent it so kind Mr. Pearson sorted me out with one) and it was quite fun, but I never finished it after I got bored about 2/3rds of the way through. Its not a bad game just nothing special.
17/05/2010 at 19:45 Dan says:
Epic is still sore that UT3 was such a poor seller.
17/05/2010 at 20:15 jackflash says:
I wouldn’t even buy the thing when it was, what – $4.99? – on Steam. That’s how uninteresting it looks. Oh, also, I’m a pirate. Not.
In reality, I spend probably $200 – $400 a year on Steam games. Epic just never made anything worth buying. I didn’t think the original Unreal was any good, either.
17/05/2010 at 19:47 Quests says:
If a pirate didn’t download, he wouldn’t buy either.
How hard can it be to get this?
PIRATES will never buy, no matter what you do to them. Because they simpyl don’t have the money to.
17/05/2010 at 20:40 FunkyBadger says:
I think you wrote “money” there when you meant to write “morals”.
Ta.
17/05/2010 at 22:27 Apsas says:
I spend more money then you on games.
And.
I Pirate.
Why do I pirate? Cause I’m not paying 50-60E for a consoleport, or for a game I can’t test before I buy it. (GTA IV fooled me for the last time.)
Why have I bought ~120 games on steam the last 12 months? Cause I’m a pirate without money and morals.
I’ve bought games I’d never buy if I hadn’t had the chance to ‘try’ it first. I’ve canceled preorders after ‘trying’ a game.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/file-sharers-are-content-industrys-largest-customers.ars
18/05/2010 at 01:25 RedFred says:
Especially given the fact most shops won’t let you take a game back that does not work on your computer.
17/05/2010 at 19:48 RQH says:
I wish they would just say “More people buy the types of games we make on consoles these days, so that’s where we’re putting our investment.” Because that’s, you know, the truth. Especially when you release an inferior PC version months after everyone’s bought your game on console. As someone who pays for the games she plays (in spite of having very little disposable income), I resent the widespread idea that PC gamers are all entitled brats who want their games for free. Some of us are just discerning consumers.
17/05/2010 at 20:02 Mario Figueiredo says:
It’s particularly offensive because I could put my money on the bet that the vast majority of console owners are also PC owners. So, they are calling pirates to the vast portion of their console market too.
Meanwhile, I have to agree. I think it also is happening because developing games for the console is far less costly. The real problem with PC gaming, in my view, is the ubiquity of the platform coupled with a lack of standardization. It’s too spread out. AAA titles have very rigid technical requirements and it’s becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to develop for it when one has to tackle with all sorts of hardware drivers and whatnot. This does not only increase development costs, but also after sales costs. Here, I accuse the PC platform of becoming a developer’s nightmare. Consoles are far simpler. Developers need only to worry with one hardware set. That’s it.
17/05/2010 at 20:10 AndrewC says:
Consoles have certification processes to go through and the platform owners take a big old percentage of every game sold. Epic, in fact, having some cast-iron franchises to fall back on, are in a perfect position to release a PC exclusive AAA title (or at least an AA title. Maybe ABB. Yeah.) direct to cutomers. Not even using Steam. It would certainly make a nice experiment.
17/05/2010 at 19:52 Saucy says:
Piracy funds terrorism and kills children.
Not paying for things gives terrorist magical power to create money out of thin air.
That’s how bad piracy is.
Epic know the score.
17/05/2010 at 20:06 DJ Phantoon says:
To take this ridiculous argument further, you know how the buying system normally works. You give publishers money and they give you a game. Well the money doesn’t go anywhere when you pirate! And when nobody buys anything, we go into a recession!
PIRATES ARE THE REASON FOR THE RECESSION!
17/05/2010 at 20:15 AndrewC says:
Umm, the organised crime argument is aimed at the buying of pirated games or movies at car boot sales or from that Asian man who comes round the pub with a rucksack.
18/05/2010 at 01:27 RedFred says:
Well good on them. The recession has cleared out many substandard businesses and piracy seems to be doing the same for the gaming industry.
Think of this as a purge.
18/05/2010 at 01:43 bob_d says:
@Andrew C, too:
Industry organizations have semi-successfully conflated _copyright violation_ with _piracy_ with _theft_ (none of which are remotely equivalent to any of the others). The end result is that they just sound absurd when trying to dissuade people from copying or buying pirated copies. Sometimes they *are* absurd when they’ve become so confused by their own propaganda that they suggest that downloading is the same as stealing a car. They’re not really helping the industries they represent with rhetoric like that.
17/05/2010 at 19:54 colinmarc says:
It’s not because of piracy, but it seems like there is a bigger/easier-to-reach market on consoles. A whole lot of people who are happy spending $60 on Gears of War.
17/05/2010 at 20:00 Turin Turambar says:
Epic pc game doesn’t sell = piracy! = they left pc
But myself, i wonder if doing a game totally designed around console hardware and audience (GeoW) and a new UT game totally out of place and time, with “advanced graphics” which actually made the game worse instead of better has ANYTHING do with the fact of their poor sales in pc.
17/05/2010 at 20:12 TheSombreroKid says:
he’s always been smoking shit but why the fuck did they bother with the pc gaming alliance?
P.S. if unreal 3 had been on xbox and GoW was a pc exclusive, GoW would still have sold a tonne and Unreal 3 would still have sold like shit.
17/05/2010 at 20:13 Collic says:
Piracy is just the wipping boy publishers can blame for their own failures. You’ve made a game that’s bombed on PC; perhaps because it wasn’t a very good game; perhaps because it was designed for a console with little no effort put into it’s PC equivalent; perhaps because you released it as an xbox exclusive only bringing it to PC years later when everyone even marginally interested had already played it, or something shinier; or perhaps it was because of those evil, insidious pirates.
I wonder which one implies no blame on their part, and is easier to explain in the tense shareholder quarterly meeting.
17/05/2010 at 20:17 Gwyn says:
The piracy argument is total bullshit from their perspective though, as everyone had to buy UT99, UT2K3 and UT2K4 so they could be played online.
UT3 needs a legal copy to play online too, of course, but it’s shit and outdated and people have moved on. Piracy is just a convenient red herring for Epic to divert attention from the fact that their once-loyal fanbase has outgrown them, and that they’re not really relevant anymore.
17/05/2010 at 20:19 TheSombreroKid says:
also more people are connected to steam regularly than xbox live, it also has more peak users and total accounts.
17/05/2010 at 20:21 Bleeters says:
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
17/05/2010 at 20:26 Sir Derpicus says:
I’m fine with epic going consoles only. Their business.
What I’m not fine with is them citing piracy as the cause.
Yes, PC games sell like shit compared to their console counterparts nowadays, but I refuse to believe that the development cost for PC ports of console games (because that’s what they usually are nowadays – a port of a console game rather than console games being PC ports) outweigh the profits gained from legitimate PC game players.
I mean shit, there’s a million accounts on Bad Company 2 (I think, don’t cite me on this), and I can hardly think that it cost more than 20 (or even 2) million dollars to make Bad Company 2 run on the PC.
Maybe Epic doesn’t have enough resources (manpower) to dedicate efforts to another PC installment, maybe Epic didn’t do so well with Gears (2) and unreal (I’m guessing neither), but piracy is NOT a valid excuse.
(I’ve pirated my share of games, I’ve yet to even bother pirating gears of war/2. I never played either of those games on console either. I also bought Unreal 3 during a special on steam. I prefer team fortress 2 by MILES.)
17/05/2010 at 20:27 Frankle says:
Didn’t a guy from a different publisher recently state that that was utter horse doo doo. and it was just a lousy excuse by game developers?
Anyway MY opinion is:
Pc gamers are generally more mature and don’t get pocket money any more. so have an understanding of the value of money. Left 4 dead sold well at first, but sales went through the roof when steam had a sale. that sale clearly didn’t hurt valve in the slightest. quite the opposite. (try selling games at a reasonable price)
If you make a lousy console port it shows you don’t care. So why the hell should we care about you?
Indy developers who don’t have restriction from men in suits. They A, make quite often great games and B, also care about the consumer. mostly due to the fact that they are like us.
Like any of you care about my rants… *cries in corner*
17/05/2010 at 20:36 Klaus says:
“…it killed a lot of great independent developers…” Citation needed! While I’m sure piracy has some effect, I’m also sure it’s not that bad. Why not focus on just making a quality product? Spending so much resource on something that is inevitable is silly.
Piracy; it destroys jobs, steals children away into the night and was responsible for the destruction of Pompeii (The Doctor is, of course, innocent).
I have never played Gears of War, and I really have no desire to. I don’t even want to pirate the damn thing.
17/05/2010 at 20:44 FunkyBadger says:
I’m also sure it’s not that bad.
And that belief is based on what? Insight devirved from the magic space fairy? And yet you demand citation’s from the other side of the argument.
17/05/2010 at 20:56 Klaus says:
And that belief is based on what?
Some sort of logic or common sense? Or maybe it is indeed from my lovely magic space fairy. Who knows.
Their statements seem pretty hyperbolic to me. Killed ‘great independent developers’? Ok, I’ll bite. Who, exactly?
I’m not the one making these allegations, they are. And since they are, it would be… courteous of them to cite some examples to back up those seemingly reasonable allegations.
17/05/2010 at 21:07 FunkyBadger says:
Klaus: logic is not data, neither is common sense. Without data the whole argument is futile, whether its them saying “Piracy is killing us” or you saying “Nah, it doesn’t hurt at all”.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander though, you have no facts to back up your belief either.
17/05/2010 at 21:34 Klaus says:
I’m not saying piracy isn’t hurting them at all. What I find so hard to buy is that piracy is so potent that it killed ‘a lot of great independent developers.’ That means these companies would have absolutely flourished if not for piracy, because he isn’t saying piracy helped speed up their demise. He’s saying that these unnamed companies died because of piracy.
you have no facts to back up your belief either
True enough, however I am willing to meet them halfway or somewhere short of there and they are complacent with what I see as irrationality.
17/05/2010 at 22:18 FunkyBadger says:
The trouble with “meeting them halfway” – and I completely understand why this approach seems reasonable – is that its still an uninformed position.
It seems to me that the msall to mid sized producers would be hit hardest by piracy, but there’s very little to back this up (the World of Goo figures suggest indie piracy rates, some figures put about by indie devs on these boards) – but again, its extremely uninformed, and hence, useless.
MORE DATA NEEDED
18/05/2010 at 09:07 archonsod says:
Piracy may have harmed the great independent studios, but I can’t help but think that people like EA offering an obscene amount of money from them probably helped along the way. Particularly considering half the time these independent developers then go on to form a new game studio ….
17/05/2010 at 20:38 drewski says:
Gears of War is alright multiplayer, but the single player is nonsense.
Epic haven’t released a game I particularly liked since…ummm…maybe one of the Unreal Tournament games.
17/05/2010 at 20:40 Wodge says:
Must admit, the only thing i buy on PC nowadays is indie stuff and RPGs. Most games get so little support on PC, whereas the XBox version usually gets the DLC, Patches and all the other good stuff months before.
If Epic want people to buy their PC games, best put some effort into them, UT3 was just a generic sci-fi shooter, with an over hyped single player. As someone mentioned earlier, was just a tech demo for UE3.
Epic needs to make UT4 the most comprehensive multiplayer shooter going, more focus on persistant stats (every game has them now), maybe an unlocking system for cosmetic upgrades to your characters (not just a few items, hundreds of ‘em, think Brink) and do what Dice did with Battlefield, let PC gamers know exactly what they’ve done to improve the experience on PC, from the menus through to the improved graphics.
Level design that’s not completely forgettable is nice too. UT3 had nothing like UT2k4s Rankin, and Deck 18 (or was it 17, I forget, all looks the same) was just a direct remake, and the maps i enjoyed the most were remakes of Q3A maps, which were completely wrong with UTs movement and dashing malarkey.
And PLEASE sort out warfare/onslaught/assault. Make your mind up what it is, having a map list populated with supposed Warfare maps which are infact assault with orbs is daft, just put the gametypes back in, thanks.
17/05/2010 at 20:57 Adamos says:
Look at Valve Epic. A platform that more than 25million people have access to games
But is not only Valve. Look at Stardock. They relatively success with impulse let alone Sins of a Solar Empire a game with a budget of 1million and sales of 1 million
and there are alot of ecamples. Bioware with Dragon age and Mass effect, Creative assembly , Relic, GSC with original Stalker more than 1,5 million copies sold, Cd Projekt they sold enough to ensure witcher’s successor, Crytek apparently made a lot of money from Crysis since they bought Timesplitters devs and now they are developing Crysis 2 for all 3 platforms
But gueess what Epic the only reason your games dont sell on Pc is because the only decent Pc game you made was back in 2004 with Unreal Tournament, SInce then you only gave us a direct port of Gears instead of taking any advantage of Pc platform and Worst of all you destroyed UT franchise with the mediocre UT3 and yet you expect us to buy your games
18/05/2010 at 00:39 PHeMoX says:
That sums up nicely how I feel about it too. Although Valve isn’t doing a good job at STEAM when it comes to currency exchange rates and localized discounts or availability when games launch.
Buying games on their release date feels somewhat like getting ripped off in my opinion.
In the end it’s marketing crap and complaining retail we as customers can do without and it’s defeating the very point of having a digital distribution in my humble opinion too.
I do like the Weekend Specials and the big discounts they’ve often got going though. But it’s also probably the only time I still buy games on STEAM.
17/05/2010 at 20:57 pupsikaso says:
F* you Epic. I don’t even want to play UT after that any more.
17/05/2010 at 20:58 DuckSauce says:
Humble Indie Bundle
Enough said.
17/05/2010 at 21:03 Suprore says:
Touche, all of those unreal engine licenses bought by the humble indie bundle developers will make back epic’s losses.
17/05/2010 at 21:43 Gabbo says:
To be fair, Epic has what, 50-80 people working there? It’s much easier to get by on PWYW sales when you only have to cover a handful of people.
That said, if Epic wants to stick to consoles and drag their feet on the PC, fine. There are more than enough companies who make entertaining games for the PC as it is who seem to be making off well enough. Not getting an Unreal or UT game from Epic (or console ports) is no big loss to me. I’d rather they simply continue to show their support through efforts like MSU and releasing the UDK. Other people can use those tools to make up the ground Epic doesn’t want to cover any longer.
17/05/2010 at 21:01 Suprore says:
Okay, honestly guys? Epic can see their sales numbers. You cannot. Epic feels they are losing money on PC with their current business model. Seeing as epic has access to the data they are [i]probably right[/i].
Is it because of piracy? Who cares! The company Epic Games can make more money on consoles, quit acting like you know better than they do because you read the newspaper occasionally and pirated business tycoon.
17/05/2010 at 21:09 Mr_Day says:
Mike Capps said that piracy is killing the PC industry. I personally feel that to be a load of balls, but there you go. People here are citing alternative business models and arguing over their merits. Seems to be a useful way of debating the point, not arguing over where the money is.
Is it because of pirates? Who cares! I mean, apart from Epic as it was the point of what he said, but apart from them!
Right, I am being a dick, I’ll stop.
17/05/2010 at 21:10 Mr_Day says:
Er, where the money is between consoles and PCs, is what I meant. I realise that alternative business models is in fact arguing over where money is.
See what dickery gets you, me.
17/05/2010 at 21:12 DuckSauce says:
How much does it cost to support PC though, surely they can still get profits, regardless of dropping sales, put in a little extra effort like some Indie developers and for example Valve do and win the PC gamers for them.
Things must be pretty bad if they can’t make a profit at all of PC games anymore. It seems like a loss of profits to me…
And “Because of piracy” well. It doesn’t matter what’s the cause, but they’re claiming the cause to be people that are mostly lost sales anyway. So what reason could there be else that sales dropped so much that they have to shy away from PC gaming.
17/05/2010 at 21:08 Nimic says:
I can’t remember the last time I pirated a game, and I used to pirate almost everything. I genuinely believe that most cases of pirating games is more a case of “can’t afford” than “won’t pay for it”. Now I can afford games, I buy them.
Of course, I only buy good games, which might be where Epic is going wrong. For that matter, even back when I was pirating left and right, I always used to buy certain games and games from certain developers. Like Valve. And Paradox Interactive. And the Civilization games (Alpha Centauri included).
So really, I think the best way to avoid piracy is to make a good game. You wouldn’t think it’d need to be said.
18/05/2010 at 00:00 karthik says:
Ditto. For a second it felt like I was reading something I wrote.
18/05/2010 at 01:32 RedFred says:
Nimic speaks the truth.
17/05/2010 at 21:18 teo says:
Yes cover systems.
Like them or don’t; it’s undeniably a hugely influential piece of game design regardless.
There were games with regenerating health before Halo too but Halo popularized it, just as GoW popularized cover systems. Nobody cares about Kill Switch other than to link it like you just did, it doesn’t matter if it was technically first because it wasn’t the game that executed it properly.
17/05/2010 at 21:19 teo says:
Failed reply
As always
17/05/2010 at 21:19 Radiant says:
Playing games on xbox live = good.
I just spent 4 hours playing super street fighter 4.
It’s a good way to play on an even playing field: same hardware, same specs, relatively the same gear.
BUT SHITTINGLY BADLY EXECUTED.
Playing “AAA” on the pc is a nightmare of spec matching and shitty ports.
Playing GREAT games on the pc on the other hand is relatively easy thing to do.
17/05/2010 at 21:23 GT3000 says:
Virtually impossible may have been a little much. It is MUCH more difficult to pirate a console game because of the hardware involved. This does much to ease the minds of those who are convinced that piracy is the Devil. Is there still piracy on the console market? Yep! Is it as bad as the PC market? No. Everyone here has pirated a PC game, maybe those who sit on their high horses of ethics and morality haven’t (I suspect even they have too) but those are far and few in between. Not many can say they successfully pirated a console but honestly, why would you risk turning a 300 dollar piece hardware into a paperweight anyway by either bricking it or getting it shitcanned from the proprietary multiplayer services. We run no such risks on the PC market and thus why I can understand the love for the consoles from a publisher’s perspective. It ensures the product is getting sold.
17/05/2010 at 21:24 GT3000 says:
Reply fail
Naturally I was responding to my first post.
17/05/2010 at 21:36 Mr_Day says:
A lot of people seem to think that pirates, like sisters, are doing it for themselves.
At our local computer store the biggest seller was DVD-R and Blu Ray recordable media, most of it going to people who would regale us (customers and staff) with details of a fantastic business as a seller of pirate movies and console games to people. The pirated copies don’t always, it seems, have to be free – just significantly cheaper than buying a new game at retail.
The shock of losing access to a special multiplayer environment is also not a huge deal – most of them, strangely*, don’t pay for Live gold membership, so losing their account is hardly a problem.
*by strangely I mean ‘not very strange at all, if you think about it’.
17/05/2010 at 21:33 Novotny says:
Home Taping is Killing Music!
Poor Bono & Bruce, Bowie and the Beatles only got by on welfare – just about – during the 80s.
Oh wait, it’s 2010. What’s changed? Nothing. They still charge obscene amounts of money for their entertainment products.
17/05/2010 at 21:47 stormbringer951 says:
They’ve said that PC gaming was dying since 1985. Drama queens.
17/05/2010 at 22:25 FunkyBadger says:
PC unit sales have stayed at a similar level (source, err, Molyneux… does that count?) – unit cost has increased ~5x, production costs have increased ~2-x, therefore profits go down…
17/05/2010 at 23:57 Thants says:
Why would unit costs be 5x more? I would think that they’ve gone down hugely. Especially with digital downloads. Bandwidth isn’t free but it’s cheaper than having to ship out an actually box.
18/05/2010 at 23:35 FunkyBadger says:
I meant cost to buy, erm sale price might have been a bit less, err, rubbish…
17/05/2010 at 21:47 LionsPhil says:
@Mithrandir0x: Probably because ID’s engines haven’t ruled for a while; it’s all been Source and UnrealEngine.
Of course, if Epic go “meh” at the PC, they’re just begging for ID or Valve to eat their big, fat, engine-licensing lunch. Which would be kind of a shame, because Tim Sweeny is a smart guy who put some serious thought into language design for UnrealScript.
Also, lol piracy, UT99 and UT2003/4 were officially patched no-CD not that long after release and were huge sellers. What’s it like living in denial that UT3 sold terribly because it was, in fact, crap?
17/05/2010 at 21:49 jonfitt says:
I am going to ignore this one and instead sigh, and post an:
EPIC FLAIL!
17/05/2010 at 21:50 Eric says:
Why are these people never caught saying these things to someone who can call them out on their bullshit? Or perhaps a better question, why doesn’t anyone ever do it, right then and there, rather than later in snarky blog posts? Obviously somebody from Edge interviewing the president of Epic should know their stuff well enough to be able to mock that position at least as effectively as we do. So why doesn’t it happen?
For those of us who already know it’s crap to call it crap in the corner of the internet where everybody knows it’s crap doesn’t help the situation. The people he’s actually speaking to, the general audience of Edge (or whatever interview the crap is being repeated in), just hears “oh, the PC isn’t profitable” and goes back to waiting for Halo: Reach.
17/05/2010 at 22:27 FunkyBadger says:
“as effectively as we do” – your havin’ a giraffe, incha?
You could sum up this thread – and many like it I’m sure – as:
70% – Gears suX0r!
20% – Cliffy sucks!
10% – Uninformed debate around the issue at hand.
Way to go, internets.
17/05/2010 at 22:54 Lilliput King says:
The general audience of Edge hate the PC anyway. When hearing of its alleged upcoming death they reply “but of course” before disappearing into the Nintendo shrine in their attic to wank themselves silly over the Zelda/Mario slash fiction they spent the afternoon writing.
The Edge audience can’t be won or lost. It isn’t helpful to think of them in those terms.
18/05/2010 at 01:25 D says:
“10% – Uninformed debate around the issue at hand.”
- Oh there FunkyBadger, I don’t think you’ve made that many posts yet.
18/05/2010 at 14:22 Malibu Stacey says:
I read the actual article being referenced in my copy of EDGE about an hour ago during my lunch break.
The last consoles I bought were my PS2 & Gamecube, neither of which have even been unpacked since I moved into my new flat last July. I do however do a fair bit of PC gaming as you can see from my Steam profile.
17/05/2010 at 21:50 Mr_Day says:
Several people have mentioned now that Epic’s big contribution to the PC has been the Unreal Engine.
Here’s a thought.
Source, by being a viable alternative, has cut into their once proud profit margin. Does that seem unreasonable?
Their pc output of late has been practically non existant – even in this fantasy realm of 6 years ago, what did they have out and on the boil? Unreal Tournament. That seems to be their only PC output until GoW some considerable time after the Box version*, and Shadow Complex by Chair – which sold, if I recall, pretty poorly on both PC and X Box.
What if they had been sustaining themselves on the Unreal Engine, and Valve scuppered them? Just a random firing of craziness in my head.
* A year! It was a whole year! I didn’t realise that.
17/05/2010 at 23:06 Lilliput King says:
That’s part of it, I imagine. Seems to me it’s been something of a general decline anyway. UT 2004 was met with general acclaim from fps fans and modders alike. UT3 met with no real acclaim from anyone. Not terrible, but not ground breaking or particularly interesting in any way. I’m not suggesting I don’t care that they’re going (I’d prefer if they didn’t) but UT3 wasn’t killed so much as stillborn.
18/05/2010 at 00:05 Mr_Day says:
I got UT3 at release, and it never particularly grabbed me. For some reason I always loaded up 2004 to have a quick go on one of the many onslaught maps – was it onslaught? Where you bridged your base to the enemy one and blew it up? – but despite those same modes being in UT3, it just didn’t seem as interesting.
Even when they were set in some dystopian city, there was something vaguely clinical about everything. Very off putting.
18/05/2010 at 03:41 Urthman says:
Shadow Complex bombed on PC. Hasn’t sold a single copy.
18/05/2010 at 13:52 Mario Figueiredo says:
Err… I thought the argument was about the Unreal Engine, not Unreal Tournament. Why are you talking about Unreal Tournament?
The list of Unreal Engine games is huge. But I think the most significant feature of the engine is the ability of programmers to greatly modify it and derive their own engines from there. This has been a near de facto standard engine for modern games for a very long time. So, yes the Unreal Engine has been the greatest Epic contribution to the gaming community. I don’t see why this recognition should removed from them.
The Valve Engine is no real substitute (neither I think Epic will abandon its overly profitable UE market just because they wish to stop doing games for the PC). If, and when, Valve deals with the scripting issues with the Source engine and fully introduces them on the SDK, then yes! UE will probably have a strong contender. Possibly even become outdated. But for now, you will get a large percentage of AAA (and not so AAA titles) being developed with the Unreal Engine or with their own engines derived from UE, while non AAA titles will keep being developed with the more direct alternatives like Torque.
17/05/2010 at 21:54 Fazer says:
Another failure of Epic is right here – http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODI1OA
There will be no UT3 for Linux.
17/05/2010 at 22:08 Snuffy (the Evil) says:
Ignoring the PC market is a terrible idea. If the PC has one advantage over the consoles, it’s modability, and I’m fairly certain a sizable chunk of developers are hired either directly or indirectly through their modding efforts.
Now, releasing the UDK for free was a marvelously grand idea from them, but if they’re not going to continue to focus on building talent then all of those efforts are wasted.
18/05/2010 at 01:02 oceanclub says:
“If the PC has one advantage over the consoles, it’s modability, and I’m fairly certain a sizable chunk of developers are hired either directly or indirectly through their modding efforts. ”
This is a good point; if the industry went console-only or or mainly console only, where do they think they’d get their developers from? I’m sure there are games courses, but there’s not that many of them, and I doubt the best ones pick up their skills in a 3 year window.
P.
17/05/2010 at 22:13 ZeeKat says:
Whole thing about independent developers being killed by piracy looks funny in context of that recent indie “pay what you want” bundle that scored over million bucks in a week. Yeah, looks like total failure.
17/05/2010 at 22:29 FunkyBadger says:
So one counter-example disproves the theorem?
17/05/2010 at 23:11 redrain85 says:
Capps really undermined any credibility he had with his “piracy killed indie developers” statement. Can anyone think of a single developer that went out of business, citing piracy as the reason? I sure can’t. (Okay, scratch that. Perhaps one. Iron Lore.)
But I can certainly name a lot of console-focused or mutliplatform developers that have gone out of business lately, and none of them named piracy as the reason for shutting down. Usually the concensus as to the reason they shut down was because – wait for it – they made bad games that simply didn’t sell.
17/05/2010 at 23:32 Jimbo says:
I think he’s talking about companies with employees and so on, selling games; not a handful of guys holding out a begging bowl every so often.
17/05/2010 at 22:21 Frosty says:
Mike Capps just instigated a M-M-MONSTER KILL to his reputation. He is purely GODLIKE for his stupidity.
That was the stupidest joke I’ve ever made.
17/05/2010 at 22:37 Jad says:
While I agree with all that Epic’s excuse is bullshit and all that, I’m really annoyed at all the people on here saying essentially “I don’t like the Gears of War series, so I’m glad its console exclusive now. PCs are for indie games and the occasional game from our small number of big devs, like Valve and Blizzard.”
I love indie games, I love Valve games, I love Stalker, I love turn-based strategy games, etc.
But I also like to play big mainstream games. (I like dumb action movies and burgers too!) I like my PC, I do not want to buy a console, I feel more comfortable on my PC, and I’m not made of money. So *any* game that was formerly on PC and is now a console exclusive is a game I can no longer play, even if I want to.
Don’t like Gears of War? That’s fine. But taking that dislike to mean that its totally okay for Gears to not be available for those who want to play it? Seriously, screw you.
Again, Epic’s argument here is garbage. But “the PC is better off without them” is garbage too.
17/05/2010 at 23:30 Mario Figueiredo says:
You do have a point there, Jad. And I made a remark of the kind you criticize. And I’m sorry for that.
You are right of course. And to make matters worse, it’s not that I haven’t think of that before (or have never suffered in the past of the exact same feeling you are having).
18/05/2010 at 10:35 drewski says:
No, you just disagree with the argument. Just as you feel blockbuster games should be on PC for your own personal enjoyment, so do many others feel blockbuster games shouldn’t be, for their own personal enjoyment.
You’re making the same error they’re making, just on the other side of the argument. PC gaming may be better or worse of or neither for the lack of Epic Games, but whether or not individuals like playing blockbuster games on their PCs isn’t relevant. That’s simply a question of taste.
18/05/2010 at 16:38 Jad says:
Just as you feel blockbuster games should be on PC for your own personal enjoyment, so do many others feel blockbuster games shouldn’t be, for their own personal enjoyment.
What? Who has the kind of monstrous arrogance to gain personal enjoyment from denying other people the opportunity to participate in a leisure-time activity on their own terms? Who is that big of a dick?
I don’t particularly like competitive multiplayer games. I don’t play much multiplayer at all, and when I do it’s usually co-op. As a result, I don’t have much interest in PC darling Team Fortress 2. Which is fine.
However, if I went on each TF2 patch thread and said “I wish Valve would stop clogging up my gaming news and just stop making updates for this game I don’t like”, I would be shouted off the forum. I’d also feel like an asshole, because who am I to deny other people fun?
Furthermore, if I said that I would gain personal enjoyment if Valve stopped selling TF2 for PC and moved entirely to Xbox development, I would be told to shut the fuck up, go die in a fire, get off the internet. And rightly so.
If you don’t like a game, don’t play it.
If you do like a game, do play it.
That’s all anyone needs to do.
17/05/2010 at 23:13 FluffyM says:
Epic have never released a game relevant to my interests. Good riddance.
17/05/2010 at 23:22 Jimbo says:
Come on, Gears of War is the consoliest console game I can even imagine. They aren’t poaching a beloved PC franchise that we’ve nurtured from infancy here. If you really want to play it just get a 360, they cost about £3.50 or something.
Valve and Blizzard really aren’t great examples of why this guy might be wrong, with each having exceptional and massive vested interests in the platform (Steam, WoW + Korea). I feel a better response would be “WTF about Bulletstorm?!”.
18/05/2010 at 00:01 LeChuck says:
I didn’t know piracy was killing the “game engine” business. Sorry :(
18/05/2010 at 00:19 GameOverMan says:
Excuses, excuses…
I think the problem here is that the typical console owner is “happy” to pay 60-70 € for a (overhyped) game. On PC is more difficult convincing people to fork out that much since there are more games (including the indie scene), good sales (on Steam, direct2drive and the like), even wonderful initiatives such as the recent Humble Indie Bundle AKA “pay whatever you want in exchange for a handful of DRM free games”, so 70 € for another sequel wouldn’t seem very good value for money.
18/05/2010 at 00:32 getter77 says:
I’m pulling for UNITY3D myself—they just strike me as more “with it” in terms of wanting to do right by everybody.
18/05/2010 at 01:06 El_MUERkO says:
So long, thanks for the Unreal engine, homogenising gaming into a dull soup since 2000.
18/05/2010 at 01:59 jaheira says:
Batman:AA wasn’t homogeneous. Or soupy.
18/05/2010 at 17:48 El_MUERkO says:
Fair point.
I just wonder how many games would have stuck to the four-highly-detailed-enemies-on-screen model that the UT engine favours if there was greater competition in the engine market.
18/05/2010 at 02:12 Kevbo says:
Heheh some good comments.
Glad to see most people on the same page :)
18/05/2010 at 02:17 Nobody Important says:
Epic complaining about piracy on the PC is much like a farmer complaining about the spot of land he didn’t plant any seeds on.
18/05/2010 at 02:33 Shalrath says:
“Valve own their own store. I question how successful they’d be if they were still just a ‘dev.”
Blizzard?
Bioware is doing fine with PC gaming. DICE has had a huge success in the PC version of Bad Company 2. Take Two? (Civilization). GSC Gameworld (of stalker fame)? Relic (Dawn of War?) There are tonnes more; I think it’s sad people look at Valve (and Blizzard too though) and think “Wow, that’s it” for PC gaming. Jesus, people, there are HUNDREDS of studios out there.
I also want to know which game of theirs was pirated so badly they turned from the platform… because I can’t think of a game they’ve made for the PC in years that people actually liked.
18/05/2010 at 03:27 bill says:
Facebook games might not look like unreal 3 now, but they’re INCREDIBLY dumb if they don’t see that they could do pretty soon.
Mobile phone games have already gone from being sub-NES graphics to being close to PS2 levels on the iphone. Browser wise we have things like InstantAction, QuakeLive, Unity, etc.. and with the rise of netbooks, ipads and other devices we’re gonna see pretty darn good graphics in facebook games pretty soon.
If I was them I’d want to make sure all the facebook devs were using my engine for their games. But then again, if I was them I’d have wanted to have Wii devs using my engine too.
Gonna skip all the piracy stuff as that was covered quite well by wolfire. (90%piracy = very few lost sales).
18/05/2010 at 04:22 ChampionHyena says:
Oh, Epic. You used to be my favorite.
Of course, all of this is hardly news. Epic was pretty much done with us in the Gears 2 days back when CliffyB was saying crap like “if you’re savvy enough to plug in a video card, you’re savvy enough to be a pirate” or whatever. And honestly, they can decide however they want to approach their business model and game design. I don’t have to be happy about it.
Regardless of how boring Gears can be, regardless of how uninteresting UT3 was, regardless of the ridiculous crap we hear from their talking heads, having Epic say they’re going to deliberately ignore a chunk of their audience is a loss. Maybe they’re in Microsoft’s pocket, maybe (definitely) they are misunderstanding the nature of piracy, but we’re doing ourselves a disservice by casually tossing aside what Epic’s done for video games.
I bought the super-fancy version of Gears 2 for the Xbox (and have the chainsaw gun to show for it), and guess what? I got to eat blurry, grey, poorly written, stop-and-pop monotonous shit. So no, I can’t say I care if we see games like Gears on the PC. But these are the people who brought us Make Something Unreal and UDK and–for God’s sake–Unreal Tournament. Say what you like about ID being the granddaddy of the FPS, but then think of just how many games you play today that look like UT99′s Assault mode.
The thing is that Epic could be doing so much good for the platform if they weren’t being nearsighted. They already are doing good for the platform: look at how many Make Something Unreal winners are actually development studios now, or how many Unreal mappers have a job in the industry today. But to drop the PC ’cause it’s not where the money is? That is lazy as hell. Never mind that the people making the biggest money on PC are making some of the biggest money in gaming, but the PC is still the place to find the clever sorts that I know Epic must still have on staff.
Again, the nebulous nature of digital distribution means that we laypersons really have no clue about how games are actually selling–hell, NPD definitely doesn’t. But when you hear tell of people paying what they want for indie games and the developers sucking up tons of cash, or someone like DICE putting out a whizbang shooty AAA game like BFBC2 and having it sell more on PC than anywhere else… there’s got to be a way to do it right, hasn’t there? I know I’ll pay for anything that keeps me entertained. I don’t pirate games, and–as has been pointed out plenty of times–the people who do pirate games just want stuff for free, no matter the platform or even necessarily the content. That tons of people get pissed off when news like this comes around proves that there is still a huge PC gaming audience, and they want to keep playing games.
I barely recognize Epic anymore. They used to thrive on the openness of the platform–remember when CliffyB himself would review user-made maps?–and now they’re making bland games and finding lazy excuses to ignore a bunch of their fans. What happened to all the character they used to have? They used to be a band of nerds like us who were in it to make cool games, and they did. Now they’re some strange, faceless entity who are in it to make easy money. And they are. But money and PC development are not mutually exclusive, and plenty of studios will tell you so. Hell, who thought that we’d be playing our Resident Evils and our Street Fighters on PC?
So yeah. “Good riddance,” I guess. I couldn’t care less if we got more Gears-ey sameyness on the PC. What I want is the cleverness that made Epic a rising star to begin with. In all their concern over “where the money is,” that creative spark can’t ALL be gone, can it?
18/05/2010 at 04:32 DMJ says:
A malfunctioning neuron dropped this into my consciousness after reading that:
15 years from now the massive corporate behemoth that is 2DBoy will abandon the PC quoting “laser space piracy” as the main culprit. Rock Paper Holographic Shotgun comment threads diss the one-time darlings of the PC gaming scene, saying they hadn’t produced anything worthwhile since Universe of Goo 8 – Squish Me Harder.
18/05/2010 at 10:22 MD says:
:D
18/05/2010 at 05:51 Snooglebum says:
You were incorrect, Kieron. There are 194 things to say, it seems.
18/05/2010 at 06:00 Kantong says:
My opinion:
- Make games that are good and entertaining, no more shovelware
- Make reasonable demos. XBLA games and Burnout Paradise PC are good examples, get the full game but limited if you like it and you can continue playing from your demo save. One of the reasons I stopped buying games is because I cant try them first. Hence why I think a-lot of people pirate. They cant try out a game before they decide to spend their hard earned money, so they skip it or pirate it.
- Cheaper games, I will happily buy a game if there is a demo and it is sub ~$70 aus. Sorry Activision you lost a sale because you were trying to sell COD:MW2 for $110.
- Stop milking consumers, remember the days when cheat codes were free? Having to buy an unlock to get all cars just because I want to mess around with the game is BS. Also Publishers seem to think it is a great idea to charge the same for retail as they do digital distribution, where I remember someone from Valve was saying the whole point of Steam is to be cheaper and more accessible.
18/05/2010 at 06:14 Jayt says:
Mike Capps can suck my dick.
18/05/2010 at 07:41 bhlaab says:
Yeah, their great strides into the PC market were Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3. Maybe piracy wasn’t the problem.
18/05/2010 at 09:07 Muckbeast says:
Why is it that consoles have less piracy?
Simple. Console owners have OPTIONS.
1) Rent games.
2) Buy used games.
3) Sell back their games.
4) Subscription systems like Gamefly and others.
PC game devs clamped down on used game sales and rentals, and so they left people with only ONE option other than paying full price, all the time: piracy.
Tons of people pirate games to “try them out” and admittedly, often don’t bother to buy it even if they enjoyed it. Imagine if they could have rented it, and then known they had to buy it to keep playing? Or imagine if they knew they could always sell back a game for about half their money back if they hated it or if it was really short?
Console gamers have options. PC gamers don’t. There’s your problem.
18/05/2010 at 14:32 Malibu Stacey says:
FYI he bitches about used game sales in the article too.
Direct quote from the last section of the interview since I have this months EDGE on my desk (probably shouldn’t do this but bugger it, RPS can delete if necessary):
“Piracy hurt, subscription is the answer. Used game sales are really, really hurting console – how many players never paid us for Gears</em? – and the response to that is people are putting more and more into DLC, retail-only download codes and those kinds of thing. And it makes sense. Dragon Age is a good example, focusing efforts on the people who paid for it.”
That was in reply to being asked if people are going to be frightened by the metamorphosis from current PC-gaming to Facebook gaming (follow on from the end of the quote on the linked page).
18/05/2010 at 14:37 Malibu Stacey says:
buggered up closing an em tag as you can see. That whole section shouldn’t be italic only the words “Gears” & “Dragon Age”.
18/05/2010 at 09:09 Wulf says:
I’m beginning to wonder if the problem with PC games isn’t piracy at all but simply too much effort for not as much money. I’ll explain.
The thing is, I don’t doubt that any RPS regulars are the sort who’d pirate something and not pay for it, and I believe that we are generally representative of the PC market, at least in the UK. I think the problem lies elsewhere, and it’s an intrinsically PC-centric problem. When developing for platforms, the PS3 is sometimes left out because it’s more difficult to develop for, and people keep coming up with excuses for that. The fun part is is that the PS3 has been cracked and all ready has custom firmware (no, really, look it up), but it can’t run backups yet.
Now, eventually, the PS3 is going to gain the ability to run ISO files natively, similar to how the PSP can (and wish it wouldn’t, since it hurts the homebrew scene, and people would probably damn me for wanting to play my legally owned copy of Ultima VII* on my PSP). The thing is is that not many people are going to be able to do it, buuut… this will become an excuse for the PS3, soon piracy will be “rampant” on the PS3 because it’s more difficult to develop for. You might be able to see where I’m going with this.
The thing is, Microsoft rewards people for learning how to use the 360 and provides tools for the 360 that make it easy to code for. Similar tools exist for the PC, sure, but we have as much of a problem as the PS3, because a developer has to keep PC specs in mind. It has to be scalable down and up. This means that a developer (see DiRT 2) usually has to put a little more effort into a PC game than a thrown-together console game, otherwise they’re rightly called on a shitty port. Moreover, it takes a different sort of marketing to appeal to PC gamers, and (perhaps most significantly) we’re used to lower prices.
Activision hiked up the price of Modern Warfare 2 and console gamers didn’t care, PC gamers–on the other hand–are very shrewd and savvy, we bought it when/where it was cheaper for a price we thought was reasonable, we’re not as cattle-like from my observations and we don’t run out and buy the latest AAA title regardless of its price. So they have to develop it specifically for the PC, they have to market it to PC users, and they can’t price-hike in the same way as they can with the consoles because they know we’ll find a way around a high-price anyway, and if we can’t we’ll just wait for a Steam sale.
I’m not done yet, either. Due to the high range of quality we have on the PC currently, we often want a demo to see what a game is like before we drop money on it, otherwise we’ll keep waiting until it drops in price or shows up in a sale before we eventually plump for it. So they need to convince us more than console gamers that something is actually worth it, and if they don’t put out a PC demo then it’s at their own peril. Furthermore, a demo will show if a developer hasn’t quite completed the PC port yet, and whether there are glaring issues. Since I imagine that there are times where a dev just has to bite the bullet with a deadline and ship the PC version, sorely incomplete and badly ported, and pledge to fix it all up with patches later. Something we may or may not believe.
So, while there is ever the ongoing “OMG PC PIRATES!” excuse, I really don’t believe that’s the reason. I think that anyone who uses that reason is just covering their arse. I think the real reason is that big publishers are just deciding that the PC isn’t worth it for their profit margins, since they have to put in more work for a less insane price. What I’m getting at is that the PC market is almost fair compared to the console market (and I own a console or two, so I’ve seen this first hand, which is why I rarely ever buy console games), and fair does not compute with shareholders.
Eventually Microsoft is probably going to have the console monopoly on AAA games, and the PC will mostly have people making games for it who are dedicated to making PC games. But there’ll always be money here for anyone who wants it, maybe not as much money, but still money. And the undisputed success of some independent developers shows that this will always be true, and it also reveals the truth that there’s a far bigger divide between PC and the consoles than there is between any two consoles, because of our exotic hardware and the ethos of the users.
So, Epic can call piracy all they like, but I’ll always read it as: “Sorry guys, we’re just too lazy and greedy, the grass is sooo much greener on the 360 side. You just don’t pay us enough to cover CliffyB’s ongoing plastic surgery.”
18/05/2010 at 14:20 squirrel says:
To begin with, PC is a computing machine for general computing purposes, and gaming is just one of them. Game developers are all crazy to expect PC gamers to invest a lot in their PC for hardware upgrading just to play games. The developers are just so stupid to refuse to invest in optimizing with some mid-range and even low end hardware. They keep make PC games that can only be played on some very high-end hardware. If I can play those games with gorgeous graphics on a USD300 game console, I definitely wont go for the version that can only be play with merely satisfactory graphics on a USD1000 machine. As simply as that.
18/05/2010 at 09:13 Sarlix says:
Apparently we’re all no-good eye patch wearing pirates. Which is why we just gave over 1 Million Dollars to people who asked for nothing more than 1 cent. What scum we are. Aye! har! shiver-me-timbers!
18/05/2010 at 09:39 Wulf says:
I think we just look out for our own. Our own being anyone who understands and respects us. I feel that developers like Wolfire do, and I never get anything cynical from them. In their announcements and in their forums they’re some of the nicest people you could hope to know, and they come over as very genuine. That’s why I think that Wolfire is a model for future businesses. The base rule is: be awesome to people, treat people like people, and don’t take yourself seriously.
Honestly though, have you seen their Meebo chat logs? John has the patience of a saint!
18/05/2010 at 09:17 Drac says:
You know what it is, I think?
Developing for the PC is like golf…no getting a sprained ankle, sitting out for a few games, and still getting a million dollars.
You have to show up, play, and do well to get paid well.
These companies have two problems:
1. They love control and power…they’re so neurotic and the word of the day is always “MINE.” They can’t handle the thought of something not being under their thumb, and so they go nuts with the DRM thing. They can’t fathom that, just maybe, it is them that is the problem…which brings me to point #2, the salient point for this discussion.
2. They’re unwilling to do art…or maybe they say/think they’re willing, but deep down, they’re not.
I would say confidently that most piracy does not represent a lost sale in the slightest. If piracy was the plague these guys make it out to be, EXPLAIN THE SUCCESS OF STARDOCK. Explain how they got from being barely a blip on the radar to a major name in the industry. (NOTE: it’s not that piracy isn’t hurting…but it’s like going nuts over a flesh wound when there’s a guy who just got blown apart by a mortar standing right beside you…but you won’t acknowledge him because you’re so convinced that the fact that you got hurt, even a little, is the end of the world.)
All without one shred of DRM…great games with grand artistry about them, and doing it for their audience.
That’s my sub-problem under this problem, many of these big companies go the way of most “singers” I see: they’re not doing it toward or for the audience. They’re not entertaining you…they’re showing off how good they are. They’re on-stage masturbating and we lap it up.
On consoles it’s really easy to sell this stuff…it’s easy to train people to love the soulless “same ol’, same ol’.” This isn’t even restricted to gaming…this is us at large. *see what I like to call the “Disney Effect”…the people it sells to us are all the same, and all made shells to project marketing to us…to gain money. That’s it: power and gain.*
Right now the gaming industry is run on fear and greed…and it’ll probably continue that way.
The PC is anti-that…it is an open platform where the innovation happens (by the way, this is not a console bash, nor am I saying innovation can’t happen on consoles. I’m just saying that the nature of the console is toward the current state of things, while the nature of the PC is against); indeed, innovation MUST happen, or you won’t sell. PC gamers are something of a spoiled lot…but a good spoiled; we can’t accept the status quo that is going on in the industry, and due to the PC’s nature (it is NOT a gaming platform, it is “simply” itself…and that makes it unlimited…and scary) any who hold to PC gaming cannot be so “tamed.”
Unless the PC is turned into a closed platform.
See: Valve.
Valve is good, but I dislike its nature…and how it must be intertwined with everything. That is a console right there.
We’re just lucky Valve puts out fantastic games…but, let me not start a Valve-bash; such is not my aim. I will just mention that I don’t like it’s trends and move on.
I would say that my point is that there is a box around the industry…it is a tiny box we have been trained to love…but the industry fears the outside, and that is where the PC dwells. Indeed, I would call the PC the “champion” of that outside
…and that is why it is hated so, I think. To approach, these companies must cast their surefire deals to make money out of the same old thing to the wayside and embrace what they so fear.
…but the life of an artist is never about the money anyway, and a grand fallacy of all this is that money=success.
Yes, you need money to run, but if it is what your focus on, then it will shape all your efforts — you will only do what you see as necessary for the money. You become a slave, chained up in that little cave of a box as you produce more of the same and more DRM to keep other kids out of your yard…but it only keeps the nice ones out; the bad ones just jump the fence.
The games industry is showing up, but is the same half-hearted performance time and time again good enough? What if a small side organization started to give the interesting performances, started to step out and do well?
Then we get a pay-what-you-want indie pack making a lot of money.
Then we get rave reviews of indie games.
Then, all of a sudden, the indie games are on the front pages long after our Assassin’s Creed 2s and Gears of War 2s and God of War 3s have faded from the forefront.
The indie wave is countering this stagnation that is trying to infect the PC…as I see the Darkspawn Chronicles are coming up today. Yeah, paying for a mod…and a simple mod at that. That’s not gonna happen.
Come on guys…come on Ubisoft, come on Epic, come on you many others. Get your stuff together(and stop taking yourselves so seriously); start actually playing your sport instead of maintaining the safe status quo that is presented to you.
Dang that was dramatic…I hope it was also lucid. YEAH for post-midnight…err…posts.
18/05/2010 at 09:25 Pod says:
“Alec sighs and points at Blues News who points at The Sixth Axis who points at Edge magazine who points at Epic President Mike Capps in an interview situation ”
Sod ‘em and just link straight to the interview.
18/05/2010 at 14:43 Malibu Stacey says:
It’s in this months EDGE magazine. Bit difficult for RPS to link to something printed on actual paper (and I doubt RPS are the type to link to magazine scans especially when it’s the issue currently on sale).
18/05/2010 at 09:29 Dawngreeter says:
So this is the gaming equivalent of Steve Jobs saying iPad gives you freedom from porn?
18/05/2010 at 09:38 redpanda says:
I seriously don’t get all this “internet piracy is killing the industry”. Seriously? I mean, Is it really worse than it was in the 90′s? I mean, when I was a teenager I don’t think I bought more than a couple of games a year. But I copied everything that anybody around me had. I had a box full of copied floppies… I think the ratio was something like 10 or 15 ‘pirated’ games for each original… And everybody around me, my friends, my schoolmates, were the same. And the industry managed to survive. Is it seriously worse now, the days of multiplayer gaming and draconian DRM systems?
18/05/2010 at 09:54 GameOverMan says:
No, it isn’t, but today they think that the videogame industry is the new Hollywood so they want to make hundreds of millions.
18/05/2010 at 10:02 Dawngreeter says:
Not having grown up in “the West”, I generally abstain from commenting on how it used to be back before the Internet. I generally assume that my childhood experience with everyone copying games from each other might not be representative. But it really seems to be, as reading RPS has shown me. And if that’s the case, piracy can’t really be the issue.
Control is the only issue I can see. Just like Apple, consoles have full control over what you’re allowed to do on their gaming system. There you’re just a rent-paying tenant, not a home owner. Waiting for the next generation of actual computer users to create something new and then bug your kids to set it up for you because you have no idea what’s going on.
18/05/2010 at 13:21 Tei says:
Theres already a comment that explain that.
Piracy is slighty worse, but the main change is that budgets are x5 now, so the profit is failling down.
Is idiotic to blame the piracy, because has not changed, and is idiotic to expect the pirates to magically start buying games, all the games that pirate, but most managers on the industry seems to have this magicall ideas.
18/05/2010 at 09:48 Teo says:
Do not confuse a game engine with a game’s art. If you see dead eyes on a character, that’s usually the art department’s “fault”. Maybe it’s the other way around. They are so realistic, that the only thing that’s missing is life itself.
18/05/2010 at 09:59 mbp says:
Please Kieron don’t just leave this out for us the masses to discuss. I would really love to hear your considered thoughts on the whole future of PC Gaming.
Of course piracy is a problem but I believe the cost and complexity of maintaining a decent gaming PC is a much bigger one. A considerable investment of time, expertise and money is required to play high end games on a PC whle console gamign has brought high end gaming to the mass market. It is no accident that the growth in PC gaming at present seems to be driven by casual games than can be played on very low end hardware.
So the centre of commercial mass has long since moved to consoles and yet there is an explosion of creativity in indie and casual gaming on the PC. Can this withstand the assault of the IPhone and the Ipod?
MMORPG are the other pillar of PC gaming at present but I have a feeling that phenomenon has shot its bolt. Games like WoW will continue to be cash cows for many year syet but mmorpgs dont seem to be able to attract and hold onto the same numbers of subscribers.
One hugely interesting thing in PC gaming at present is the pricing. While console gaming get more expensive al lthe time PC gaming is gettig cheaper and cheaper. The gaming value to be had on the PC these days is nigh unbelievable.
18/05/2010 at 10:46 XM says:
Everything Epic did after UT2004 sucked that’s why they didn’t sell. They always point to the failure of UT3 and Gears of War PC on pirates. But in fact as we all know UT3 was too clumsy and Gears of war everyone already got on the 360 if they liked it plus it was broken with GFWL.
They need to wake up and stop putting their balls in one court. the only way to survive in this day is get as many customers as possible. So multi platform is the way to get most money this is what Crytek are doing and Epic have a dig at them saying Unreal Engine 4 is the future. But they are waiting for next gen consoles. That’s like making a big TV no one can buy until their houses are bigger.
They are getting one thing right and that’s living up to their nick name “Epic Fail”.
Now they got some other company to do their dirty work and make a multi platform game all because they signed their studio away to Microsoft. Now they are stuck with making their games for the 360 only, great move if your worried about getting as much money as possible.
18/05/2010 at 11:42 DiamondDog says:
The level of ignorance and snobbery directed towards console gaming in some of these comments is truly staggering.
Well done.
18/05/2010 at 12:30 Dominic White says:
Those who label themselves as ‘PC gamers’ (as opposed to gamers who own a PC – and don’t call me a console kiddie, I started out with an 8086) often end up ten times worse than the console owners they complain about so vehemently. I’ve never been told that I’m a retard by a Wii owner.
Paranoid, insular and fuelled by hate. It’s depressing to see.
18/05/2010 at 16:16 Wulf says:
Yep. The PC audience is very likely the worst, no doubt. But to think the console audience is innocent is to be fooling oneself. To say that console gamers don’t have their own share of ignorance (even the big names) is also fooling oneself.
Some of the best examples I can think of are: Penny Arcade painting all PC gamers as pirates, simply because they own a PC, and lamenting the horrid creatures we are compared to console gamers, who are supposedly saints. And the nonsense that goes on in console wars, just take a look at the rows that erupt about PS3 versus 360 stuff on the VG247 comments threads. They can be every bit as bad as what we see here.
Considering the first example, it’d be easier to not treat the console owners as outcasts if large numbers of them weren’t doing the same to us. Really, no one’s innocent in this. But I’ll give you that we are bad.
18/05/2010 at 16:25 Lilliput King says:
“Some of the best examples I can think of are: Penny Arcade painting all PC gamers as pirates, simply because they own a PC, and lamenting the horrid creatures we are compared to console gamers, who are supposedly saints.”
Link, please?
18/05/2010 at 16:51 Dominic White says:
Yes.. I’m sure Penny Arcade hate the PC and everything it stands for. They’re also the biggest Blizzard fans on the face of the planet. Not sure how that adds up, to be honest.
In all seriousness, they just seem to stick to the ‘We’re above all this silly jibber-jabber’ line, while trying to avoid pissing off their multitude of sponsors. They’re in the awkward position of hosting a major convention on a regular basis, and trying to be satirical about games. If they tell a major company to go fuck themselves, they end up losing a lot of business.
18/05/2010 at 16:57 Dominic White says:
Oh, and I’m going to be a little preemptive here and say that citing this strip as evidence of their PC-hate is retarded:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/2/19/
Why? Because that’s Gabe (who is portrayed as being about as smart as a dog in the comic) arguing with a literal strawman. In circles.
18/05/2010 at 17:52 DiamondDog says:
I don’t think anyone has said that console gamers are immune to displays of ignorance. All I’m saying is I find it a bit depressing that a PC community such as this still trots out the same old stereotypes.
Although with stories like this I can see why some resort to that “fuck you” kind of attitude.
18/05/2010 at 18:55 Lilliput King says:
@Dominic
I was thinking that might be the strip Wulf was thinking of. Which would be to entirely miss the point of that strip and associated blog post, to be honest.
18/05/2010 at 12:13 The Great Wayne says:
This is all bullshit. And trying to theorize upon “why consoles sells more yadda yadda” is BS as well. Consoles and PCs have different audiences for a huge part. Piracy has nothing to do with that, given consoles being cracked is always a matter of time and success of said console.
Thinking otherwise is just underestimating what a bunch of young men can do with enough motivation and time. Which games publishing corporations don’t do, they aren’t that dumb, it’s all PR and smoke, most often toward the shareholders.
Most of the companies that once were ok and fell in the trap of eager capitalism are now doing crappy games, therefore doing crappy benefits while at the same having to cope with increasing results demand. They have to blame something for it, and piracy is as good as it comes, it rings some bells even into people that doesn’t understand a word about computer gaming.
When people in suits will awake to consoles being hacked into oblivion, it’ll be something else. Yeah it is that stupid, they’re just monkeys, y’know.
18/05/2010 at 12:34 int says:
I loved Epic Games when they were fairly new, with Jazz Jackrabbit and Jill of the Jungle and of course Unreal. I am sad that they have pretty much abandoned the PC.
Founder Tim Sweeney has really lost it. Interview from 2008:
http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/36390-unreal-creator-tim-sweeney-pcs-are-good-for-anything-just-not-games
18/05/2010 at 14:06 squirrel says:
He does have the gust to ban us PC gamers for their commercial failure of their PC games. How fail they are? Make a few USD million less? My heart is breaking for him.
Why Gears of War failed? Can Mr Capps justify the decision of not implementing interplay between XBOX and PC players? You think that pathetically short add-on to the campaign section could compensate this loss?! To gamers, the only difference between an XBOX and a PC for a shooter game, is that one use mostly gamepad while another one use mouse and keyboard. And I can tell you there are so many XBOX gamers actually use mouse and keyboard to play. To them, since there is absolutely no difference between XBOX and PC for the very same game, why would one stupidly choose the PC version while there is no guarantee a satisfactorily large community could be established for it? Even for those good boys and girls who stick to gamepad, shooter games on XBOX are mostly very fine tuned for gamepad (I used to play Halo 2 a lot, it worked so unbelievably great that I am so amazed how shooter games can be played so well with gamepad). You dont even have to blame DRM for its failure (someone at reclaimyourgame.com caught Epics games implement activation limits on PC version of Gears of War, I never uninstall my game so I dont know if this claim is correct). It’s the shortcoming of the game itself that leads to its “commercial failure”.
18/05/2010 at 14:15 Malibu Stacey says:
Because VALVe set the prices, discounts & release dates for all games in every region on Steam.
Of course the actual games developers and/or publishers have no say in it, it’s all VALVe being omnipotent overlords orchestrating everything. Right?
18/05/2010 at 14:26 jalf says:
Er no, because Valve sets the default exchange rates, and does not have a suggested regional pricing policy. Because prices doubled overnight when Valve enabled European prices.
Of course Valve doesn’t dictate prices on the games they sell. But you’re kidding yourself if you think they’re innocent or helpless in the matter. Prices are outrageous on their platform because Valve allow them to be outrageous.
18/05/2010 at 14:36 Malibu Stacey says:
My first ever reply fail (was reply to the last comment on page 1)!
jalf isn’t it funny how VALVe’s own games seem to be priced pretty competitively in all 3 currencies? Especially when they do sales of their own stuff too? Wonder how that works.
I like how you’re blaming VALVe for allowing people to price their goods how they see fit. Perhaps they should be more dictatorial & tell people how much they’re allowed to charge for stuff? It seems to work really well for Microsoft right? No complaints there?
18/05/2010 at 15:32 Myros says:
Hardly any point adding to everything that has already been said, but what the hell …
Crappy company makes crappy games blames pirates, pretends companies that do make it work don’t exist.
Cheers.
18/05/2010 at 18:00 Lavitz says:
Okay, we have been over this before when they said NO GEARS OF WAR 2 . I wrote samething before and ill do it again, this applies to all console ports. NO ONE WILL BUY A GAME 8 MONTHS AFTER ITS BEEN OUT ON ANOTHER PLATFORM THIS WILL EVEN HAPPEN ON CONSOLES. If they wants gears to be successful include some pc features, and make sure the controls work well on PC and people will buy there game. UT3 was free on STEAM NO ONE PLAY BECAUSE THE GAME SUCKS. So epic should stfu and figure what they are doing wrong.. instead of bitchin about piracy .
18/05/2010 at 18:26 DK says:
The best thing Epic ever did was One Must Fall 2097 and Jazz Jackrabbit. And those were on PC – until they make a game as good as either of those again, they eff right off to the consoles.
18/05/2010 at 18:58 RakeShark says:
I think people are too busy harping on facts an opinions as to why PC Gaming is either dying or thriving.
To be rather blunt, the day the Personal Computer (to include Windows, Macintosh, and Linux based computers) becomes an obsolete gaming platform, is the day Adobe Photoshop, 3D Studio Max, Goldwave, and Notepad all become console-native programs. And when a developer and publisher make an honest and earnest attempt to produce a AAA-title using nothing but those resources and a gamepad to create their assets, sell it for $60, and reap of profit much like Modern Warfare 2, on that day, I’ll chuck my PC out the window and become a console-exclusive consumer.
Till then, the PC will remain both a viable and profitable market, and remain THE featured farm ground for new talent, who will create tomorrow’s smash hits and utter failures. The day the PC market stops becoming a gaming platform quite frankly is the day video gaming as a whole will begin to die.
I think Epic is simply stating a shallow opinion, and only two things tend to allow you to shout such opinions as loudly as they do: Success, and obsolescence. Even those two absolutes are typically matters of opinion.
To finish this off, it’s my opinion that Mike Capps is a muppet.
19/05/2010 at 04:01 free2game365 says:
Epic make too much money from licensing UE3 on the PC to just drop it.
19/05/2010 at 13:56 Consumatopia says:
But taking that dislike to mean that its totally okay for Gears to not be available for those who want to play it? Seriously, screw you.
If Epic doesn’t want to make games on PC, then it’s totally okay for them not to make games on PC. The fact that their reasons for doing so are bullshit and that their games aren’t particularly well suited to the pc only makes it even more than totally okay.
19/05/2010 at 20:15 MMORPG Games says:
Another excuse from a large developer for their poor console ports games.
Indie devs are doing fine as long as they have a decent polished product. They sell their games on steam, impulse and gamersgate and on their sites. They only have a problem when they game becomes so huge that it will be cracked, but even the sales makes a decent income to get a profit and make new games.
Big companies just like to boycott PC since they release on crap games, more appropriate for the console crowd since they are dumbed down to a point that you need one finger and an IQ of 50 to play it. No challenges, no innovation. Of course they are a few rebels out there, but just too few.
I dont give a **** on what Epic FaiL Games are saying, same as with Ubifail, Epic EA Fail and others..
{/rant}
22/05/2010 at 06:33 Bob Dobbs is Dead says:
Here’s Epic who, as memory recalls, has classically had a shit marketing budget. Then in the last console era had Microsoft backing their marketing efforts. Gears of War goes on to sell tons of copies, and their response is to release a PC copy a year later, then bitch and bitch and bitch about how it didn’t sell as much as the console version.
Guess what. A game released a year after everyone has stopped talking about it isnt going to sell well. Surprise.
The PC gaming market is being destroyed, but not by piracy nor by PC gamers. It’s being destroyed by developers who are too caught in their industries self righteous bullshit to look at the fact that their marketing and development choices are placing PC releases far outside their marketing cycle.
GG Epic. You are killing your own market.
01/06/2010 at 10:12 James Murff says:
Facebook isn’t going to have bulging, homoerotic, testosterone-driven gunfests. What a shame. I really wanted to hear the latest plot about the Muscles Squad facing off against the Oil-Covered Wrestlers in the battle for most manliest man in the maniverse.
Gears of War: taking marketing to overly-aggressive teenage boys suffering from rage poisoning to w hole new level.
As long as PC users get Bulletstorm, Epic can rightly go stuff its arse on this one.