By John Walker on January 17th, 2011 at 3:43 pm.
Aw, that Cliffy B is such a sweetheart. With the news that Bulletstorm demos will be available for the 360 and PS3, but not the PC, clearly a few people with a big grey box are a little miffed. Is this in case of demo piracy? Er um. So the gaming’s Man Of Tact, as Blues report, has attempted to quell the storm with a thoughtful and thought-provoking tweet on the matter:
“http://bit.ly/eTr0BR – BULLETSTORM DEMO COMING TO 360/PS3 JANUARY 25th. In other news, PC gamers are grumpy about this.”
Meanwhile, even though they don’t deserve it, there’s a couple of new videos below.
The game comes out on the 22nd Feb, but how will we know if it’s our sort of thing, eh?
Let’s see who’s gonna be grumpy after I pirate the game out of spite!! >:D
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Who needs demos when you can play half the game and THEN buy it. Worked for me several times.
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/face palm…………….
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Looks like i’ll be getting my demo from TPB then …
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Just because something is “new” doesn’t mean you have to rush out and buy it right away. It’s people like that who’ve ruined Christmas!
Try doing what I do. Make a long list of good games from way back when that you didn’t get a chance to play yet. Play them until the currently “new” stuff is cheap.
This technique works great unless you’re a hardcore multiplayer gamer.
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“Try doing what I do. Make a long list of good games from way back when that you didn’t get a chance to play yet. Play them until the currently “new” stuff is cheap.”
http://xkcd.com/606/
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I love it every time a developer does something to PC gamers out of spite. It gives me the weak justification I need to pirate the game when it comes out.
It’s a wonderful cycle that gives me free games and pisses off the developers so they’ll do something else spiteful.
No, I don’t care about the big developers buggering off to consoles. As recent years have shown, big names going to console just leaves more room for up and coming developers in the market, developers who are savvy enough to give a shit about their customers.
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Would be cool if it wasn’t made by epic games and wasn’t on the unreal engine.
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It’s not made by EPIC ;) People CAn Fly made some great games (Painkiller), so it might be marketing because EPIC knows consoles are cash cows.
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They did a real good job with the GOW-PC port amirite?
Not gonna waste my time on this game,
back to super meat boy and starcraft!
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They did, except for the expired digital certificate…
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As far as porting it directly from the console to PC, they did that.
Adding dedicated servers/fixing online lag didn’t happen though.
Not gonna argue. I bought it, and was disappointed. Seems to happen with every game on the unreal engine despite the dev team.
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“Seems to happen with every game on the unreal engine despite the dev team.”
Counterexample: Mass Effect
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People Can Fly have been owned by Epic for a couple of years now, if I am not mistaken.
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This news (and Cliffy’s puerile conduct) is even more irritating when placed in context: Bulletstorm is the game Epic’s been hyping as PROOF that they still care about the PC as a gaming platform.
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lol good going epic you just gave an excuse to pirate the game to a group of people who were planning to steal it anyway.
edit: how the hell did this end up herei wasn’t even replying to anyone
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And here I was tempted to get this game…
I guess not anymore if things keep going that way! CliffyB, you might want to watch your words a little, especially when what you’re releasing is a FPS in a crowded FPS market in a HUGE year for gaming. I’ll take Brink or Rage instead.
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Quite! People buy people Cliffy B and you’re not selling yourself well!
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*sheesh*
A more logic argument would be to pirate the game, play it for as long as the demo lasts and then decide to buy it to play it further or not. ;)
Y’know, pirating doesn’t mean that you don’t have to buy it!
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A more logical argument would be to provide the demo in the first place.
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What a berk.
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Us PC gamers are such demanding asshats.
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I can’t recall the last time I played a demo of anything. Still, for people what use demos, this could be annoying. Maybe even insulting. Maybe that was the intention?
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I don’t remember the last time I played a demo of a AAA game either. It’s always such a hassle to download those large, bulging files and inserting them into my hard drive.
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Played the demo of Starcraft 2 just the other day. Meant I could see how well it ran before buying.
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I don’t understand this “demos aren’t useful” mentality. It confuses me. Without a demo to show me how well or poorly optimised a game is, I’ll either pirate the game and judge how optimised it is by that (which is their own damn fault), or I’ll just ignore the game all together and maybe pick it up for a few quid in a sale a year or two from now (also their own damn fault).
Demos are the best benchmarking tool we have available to us, just like with MMORPG betas and the like, and it’s helpful to know how a game will run on one’s system before putting down the money to buy it. If people are very interested in a game but doubtful it’ll run on their computer, this’ll just drive them to piracy to test it out. And like I said, those that don’t pirate it simply won’t bother.
Not releasing a demo is like a developer/company saying that they want their game to not sell, apparently to prove some kind of point about how we hate games developers or some BS of the sort. If they understood the PC and the necessities of PC gaming better, then perhaps their sales wouldn’t suffer so much as a result. Demos are important to a vast majority of PC gamers, I’d think.
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That’s the thing – the only platform out of those three that actually needs a demo, purely just to see if your machine can run the game, gets to be ignored.
It’s utterly baffling.
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Conversely, who here has played a demo and thought “My god this is shit”? I’m sure development houses have actually gone bust this way (Make my day – tell me this happened to Cryo). Often stuff that the console kiddies eat up in steaming platefuls just won’t do anywhere near the same business in the more discerning PC market. Perhaps someone at Epic is aware…?
Oh, and Cliffy B? Fuck you too.
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@qrter
learn to read recommended system specs perhaps?
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@Kadayi
Oh, come now. The multitude of bugs that can arise from the slightest variation in hardware can’t be gleaned from the recommended specs. It’s not like PC gamers haven’t had their fingers burnt on this sort of thing before.
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@Ridiculous Human
Given Epic make the unreal engine and it’s already ubiquitous across a number of existing PC titles I’d be of the opinion that it’s highly likely it will run as smooth a silk on most machines capable or running CoDBlops. Still here are the specs: –
Recommended requirements
Windows Vista (SP2), or Windows 7
QuadCore 2.0 GHz
Memory (RAM) 2 GB
HDD Space 9 GB available
Video Card DirectX 9.0c compatible, 512MB of VRAM
Disc Drive 16X CD/DVD Drive
Network Broadband Internet (TCP/IP) connection
How utterly daunting aren’t they ;)
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How long have you been playing PC games that you still believe system recommendations on boxes?
How cute and innocent.
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@Urthman
Long enough to know that the biggest problem people generally encounter is trying to run new games at settings and resolution levels that are beyond their aged graphic cards capabilities most of the time.
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And a lot of the time their systems are in alignment with what the recommended system specs -say-, Kadayi. It’s not hard to understand: there are numberless variations between one personal computer and the next, even if they have broadly similar specifications. Some games, you understand, rely on one section of the PC more than another part (Graphics Card, RAM, Processor…) and so it’s impossible to discern how a game will run on your PC just by reading.
Consider the fact that a lot of PC ports (and, it has to be said, some exclusives) are designed to only look good on high, and any settings below that suffer from outstandingly low textures that are just ugly to look at. From my own experience, two games on the same engine can vary widely in performance – I remember SiN: Emergence chugging along pretty badly on my PC, while Half Life 2 Episode 1 worked pretty damn smoothly.
Demos mean you can find out what works and what doesn’t before coming to a purchasing decision. I don’t see what’s so unreasonable or archaic about this.
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Long enough to know that the biggest problem people generally encounter is trying to run new games at settings and resolution levels that are beyond their aged graphic cards capabilities most of the time.
That’s just wrong. The biggest problem is that what counts as “beyond the capacities of your computer” varies widely from game to game. And console ports like Bulletstorm do not have a good history.
When I look at videos of Bulletstorm, I have no idea how it will run on my computer. I’ve got games that look better than Bulletstorm that run a solid 60fps and games that look far worse than Bulletstorm that struggle to run 30fps. And, like I said, it cute that you believe the publisher’s system requirements, but with more experience you’d know that they can’t be trusted — computers vary too much and publishers lie.
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@Hammer
I’ll be honest I think you are way overstating something. There just aren’t the huge differentials in PC to PC performance that you claim these days. A 2.8 GHz processor in an Asus board, is going to run comparatively as well as one in a gigabyte board, or one in an MSi board. Assuming you keep your hardware up to date in terms of Bios & firmware and your software drivers up to date, a comparable system will more than likely deliver comparable results Vs a similar component build. 10 years ago, perhaps I’d agree with you, but nowadays I’d say the market has stabilized considerably.
@Urthman
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, and I’ll keep on laughing at you dude. I mean the user is never ever wrong, right? It’s never a case that the user didn’t install the right drivers, or update their firmware or turn the printer on is it? It’s always a case that those dirty developers are lying to you, because they hate you personally.
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Four words: Grand Theft Auto Four.
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@Kadayi
My specs are just bordering that. It could run relatively well and still look good if I change some settings around, but it could also run awful and there may not even be much of any settings at all.
Either way, problem is I have no way of knowing – I’m reduced to guessing. In the same way I wouldn’t buy a pair of jeans based on guesses without trying them on first, I wouldn’t buy this.
Now, imagine what the situation must be like for the less computer savvy.
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@Ludden
Well if it doesn’t run, you could..I don’t know..maybe return it perhaps?
@Urthman
Ran fine for me when I turned down the resolution. Plays like a charm for me now on my present rig though.
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I come back to Starcraft 2. My system is below the minimum, let alone recommended, system specs. However, it runs OK without looking shit. It’s by no means smooth, but it’s playable. If it weren’t for the demo, I wouldn’t know that I could play it. Empire: Total War, on other hand, has a minimum specs. that are below mine, but it doesn’t bloody work. Every time I play for more than five minutes, the screen gets covered in shards of colour.
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@Rich
That you yourself acknowledge that SCII performance on your machine is not smooth because it’s below the minimum specs should be indicative of the fact that Blizzard probably want their gamers to enjoy a reasonable standard of performance.
“Every time I play for more than five minutes, the screen gets covered in shards of colour.”
That sounds like a graphics card issue. My advice is to check to see if there is a GPU Bios firmware update for it from your manufacturer, also ensure your graphic drivers are upto date (maybe even your motherboard as well). Also turn your ingame settings down to low and check the publisher/developers website for solutions.
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Double post
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Kad,
Blizzard wouldn’t have got a sale out of Rich if they hadn’t have released a demo.
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@The Hammer
Because Blizzard really need the money right?
The fact that it plays like a pig, but he’s prepared to play it that way through personal choice because he’s a masochist is not a strong argument that companies get their requirements wrong. From both a developer and publisher perspective the thing you least want to shove out the door is a game that runs like a turd on peoples machines because that hurts their reputations, so they aren’t going to recommend a system spec where you are lucky to get 15FPS at minimum setting & resolution. They are going to cater for what the vast majority would deem playable, I.E some level of hardware that’s going to operate around 30FPS at reasonable resolutions.
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@The Hammer
Dude. I suspect it’s entirely possible to install SCII on all manner of antiquated hardware, fire it up and ‘play’ the game at all sorts of horrendous FPS, but that’s not the sort of gaming experience Blizzard are probably wanting people to have (let alone tell their friends about). That you can run it at .5 FPS on an 10 year old XP machine with half a gig of ram is not a strong argument in favour of saying ‘developers lie about hardware requirements’.
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I didn’t say developers lie about hardware requirements; what I said was that, without a demo, Rich wouldn’t have been able to tell that Starcraft II worked to an acceptable level (for him) on his rig without buying the game. If he had taken the hardware requirements as gospel, then he wouldn’t have bought it.
For the record, I don’t think developers lie about their requirements at all; I think they have to work with a very, very hard conundrum. I do think recommended specs should universally mean being able to play the game on highest settings (or perhaps developers could give a third set of specs that shows that).
In this case, a demo has been healthy for the game’s sales. There has been a lot of cases where that is the case (and look at the success of F2P; F2P titles are, at their base levels, just very generous demos). Demos are ideal for finding out if you like a game, ideal for filling up bored afternoons, and ideal for benchmarking.
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Wulf: I never made the statement “demos aren’t useful”, nor do I possess that mentality. Indeed, in my second of two (point five) statements I was sympathising with people that want a demo and aren’t getting one. You extrapolated my personal feelings into a blanket ‘rule’ that I was somehow pushing on others. That must make life quite confusing.
I don’t personally find demos worth the effort, as big downloads they now are. And I don’t share the concern that a lot of people seem to have here about making sure the game will run on their computer, which is a valid concern. Don’t mistake that for me saying my computer is awesome, it’s a pretty chuggular crapshoot. But it can cope if I kick it enough :)
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I didn’t say it ran that badly. It doesn’t, that’s my point. Blizzard are clearly a company who are conservative in their quoted minimum specs, but still manage to make their games really scalable. The demo showed me this, which means I can happily buy it. The demo also illustrated the good job Blizzard made with their options menu. It’s a little thing, but pointing out what options rely on what part of your system has allowed me to optimise the game performance. I ramp up anything that relies on my graphics card, and switch off anything relying on my CPU. Blizzard have said before that they want to make Starcraft 2 accessible to as many gamers as possible. Releasing a demo is clearly part of that strategy.
Other devs. are not so conservative about their required specs. and clearly don’t do as much testing as Blizzard. For instance, yes you’re right about the Empire: Total War bug. It is my graphics card. Indeed, it’s a known issue with ATI cards that Creative Assembly never got around to fixing. That’s something you won’t know about if you just read the back of the case.
Anyway, my main argument is, if you’re system is in the realms of the recommended specs. for games coming out now, then you’re probably right that you don’t need a demo. If you’re beginning to dip below the minimum specs. then it’s absolutely essential.
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‘Video Card DirectX 9.0c compatible, 512MB of VRAM’ is not a specification, it covers virtually every graphics card released in the last 5 years.
Many people with computers far in excess of the specs listed above struggle to play CodBlops at satisfactory frame rates.
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Kadayi: “Well if it doesn’t run, you could..I don’t know..maybe return it perhaps?”
I had a good laugh at this. It’s been years since I’ve encountered any store that will accept returns of PC games if they are opened – regardless of whether they work on your system or not. The disc itself would have to be physically damaged for them to even entertain giving you the time of day.
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Guys, I figured it out.
Kadayi is actually a man made of straw. A straw man, if you will.
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@Thermal Ions
Find the stuff I posted in the thread about consumer rights. If you are sold a product that promises to be able to run on X hardware in a satisfactory manner, and yet it doesn’t, then they have every right to seek a refund or a suitable replacement. No amount of ‘no refund policy’ posted up at your game providers website etc overrides those consumer laws. The onus is obviously on you to ensure that any deficiencies in performance are not as a result of your hardware/software, but beyond that if there is still an issue than you have every right to demand either a replacement or refund.
@opel
Hey there, maybe next time you post you’ll come with a counter argument rather than a hollow accusation.
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Maybe the PC version is a lazy port and they don’t want anyone finding out. Least not without parting with £40 first.
Or perhaps they’re preparing to announce a six month delay to the PC version so as to maximise sales on the 360 which, lets face it, is the only platform Epic really care about these days :p
Unsubstantiated rumour mill go!
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Can’t help but suspect that you are right. I know it costs money to produce a demo, but is there ANY better PC marketing tool than having a thousand PC game sites telling all their readers “Hey look, bulletstorm demo is out, go try it”?
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Yep, that actually sounds about right. :p
A common fact is that people use demos to judge the optimisation of a game and its performance on their computer.
Common excuses:
- We can’t afford to develop the demo for another system.
Since all the assets exist on the PC first anyway, including the demo assets, this always strikes me as the most ludicrous excuse.
- We’re worried about piracy, our full game has DRM, you know?
Their DRM license exists for distribution of their game, other publishers have used this to put the DRM on the demo. If they were so worried about a lack of DRM, then they could simply compile the DRM into the binaries of the game itself. This actually is not a hard thing to do at all.
The truth:
- We don’t want you to see how poorly optimised our game is! Now please excuse us whilst we go demonise piracy for giving people the chance to actually check.
Yep, that sounds about right to me. :P
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£40? Really? Since when?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Arts-Bulletstorm-PC-DVD/dp/B003NSBMAI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1295287983&sr=8-2
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‘A common fact is that people use demos to judge the optimisation of a game and its performance on their computer.’
Can you please point me in the direction of this evidence.
Whenever (in the very distant past) I’ve ever bothered to download a demo it’s generally been because I want to gauge whether the game is any good/worth purchasing.
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@Kadayi
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I commonly use demos to benchmark whether a game runs or not. Judging the quality of a game, you can sort of make a rough educated guess from previews and hearsay. Working out how well a game can run? Well, on the PC there is no reliable way of knowing except from looking at the recommended specs, and there are no standards for that.
Demos are invaluable in this sense. And since there are no refunds with PC games, they are even more invaluable.
Edit: also, Cliff is a super douche/egomaniac, and watching him getting wound up by Pat Garrett was great. ;)
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‘And since there are no refunds with PC games, they are even more invaluable.’
You need to read up on consumer rights.
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@Kadayi
Humour me. Point me to the exact spot where it says I can get a refund because a game runs like garbage on my PC?
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@Mark
http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/after_you_buy/know-your-rights/SGAknowyourrights/
“If you are returning goods that are not of satisfactory quality or not as described and you inform the trader of the problem within a reasonable period of time, you may be entitled to full refund.”
I recommend you read the full thing. I’ll make the assumption you’re from the UK, however you’ll likely find comparable legislation overseas.
A shop might say ‘no refunds’ but they actually have no legal rights to refuse you if the product does not function as stated. If the game box says it will play on X system specs, but the reality is it doesn’t, then you are well within your rights to demand a refund assuming you make it within a reasonable period of time after the date of purchase.
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I am aware of this, but for some reason I didn’t think it applied to PC software. Interestingly, if I were to buy Bulletstorm digitally over the Internet, there is a grey area over whether the software is classified as a good or a service. This would change whether I would be able to claim a repair/refund or not. If it’s software as a service, I would have to claim damages off the provider, and that’s way harder to do.
You can see why they’re trying to move towards the latter model, hmm? ;)
Back on track, though, trying to get a refund for a PC game from a retailer, especially if it’s over the Internet, can be a battle of wills for which I am not prepared to fight.
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@Mark
The rights are there, if you don’t choose to use them due to personal apathy that’s your prerogative, but it does kind of undermine your position. It’s not that games can’t be returned, it’s that you can’t be bothered to no?
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It is possible to return opened PC games. I bought Chantelise from Amazon UK a few weeks ago and the TAGES DRM wouldn’t accept the CD key, I sent it back as defective, and Amazon didn’t quibble or complain, which was pretty good of them. So it is possible to return a PC game if it’s truly borked and unusable, but whether the recommended system specs being a work of fiction would be accepted as sufficient is doubtful. Worth trying, I suppose, and a worthy scientific experiment.
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My position that demos are invaluable benchmarking tools? True, it is weakened, but it doesn’t change how they continue to be extremely useful when considering purchasing.
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@Mark
Well maybe once the game is out, Epic will release a demo then.
I mean are you swearing off CoDBLOPs? Because there’s no demo of that? Because at a guess if you can run that ok, I doubt bullet storms likely to cause you any problems, given it’s the same engine and all.
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I’ve got Bulletstorm on pre order; had it on pre order since I saw it on deal. I didn’t buy COD: BLOPs on PC because of all the issues people were running into with the multiplayer, and I thought it was a bit shitty of them to release a game in that state. I think I’ll be alright with Bullet storm, tho. The specs look low and I bought a new gfx card recently.
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^ Is this official, that Bulletstorm runs on the CodBlops engine? Cod games do not traditionally run on UE3, I wasn’t aware that this had changed for Black Ops. Or does Bulletstorm not run on UE3?
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I’d much rather test a demo than rely on being able to exert my consumer rights for a refund. It’s going to be a hassle at most places, and sure you’ll likely get your way eventually, but quite frankly it’s a hassle that most people will happily do without once let alone multiple times.
If the publisher wants me to buy their game, they should be doing what they can to encourage me to do so. A demo lets me test the performance on my system, and see if I actually like the game as well (in my case for the last few years the later is usually more important to me personally).
A publisher who refuses to release a demo on PC will almost always automatically have their game placed into my “Only consider after reviews AND once it’s discounted” list as likely as not it doesn’t live up to the hype they’ve been pushing.
If it is a decent game then quite simply they are mad to have spent a fortune on marketing, and then not spend what would amount to a small sum in comparison to release a PC demo – something I’d argue that would have a considerable marketing influence on those buyers otherwise “on the fence”.
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My box is big and black, with a little grey square because I can’t be bothered to change the fascia on the CD drive. I am indifferent to this news.
I’m typing this with one finger to circumvent the spam blocker.
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My box is the exact opposite,… for the exact same reason. Who would’ve thunk?
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You two should swap fascias.
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I changed the fascias to my CD drives on purpose. To be unmatching and ugly. Black box, silver and 90′s computer ivory CD drives. I should probably spray paint something on the spare ones.
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Made me smile. FUNNY > BORING.
KG
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This. I agree with the Once-Was-of-RPS.
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Yep ^this
I chuckled. RPS comments have gone a little poe-faced recently.
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Can’t help it when you’re writing about a game that secretes mainstream through its pores. It is so full of it.
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Sure, his comment is funny, but still, it’s not like the guy doesn’t run a business, y’know, so I’d prefer if Cliffy was funny and would treat his customers seriously!
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poe-faced?
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If opinions are favourable, I might get it for a couple of quid in the Christmas sales in a year or two’s time. And then I probably won’t like it much because it’s probably just another modern
rock songcorridor shooter.So demo, no demo, whatever.
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Piracy is the best demo
People with a conscience would buy the game based on how good it actually is.
People without a conscience probably would not buy it anyway.
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Exactly.
Here’s a fun story: I watched a cam version of How to Train Your Dragon. Why? I have numerous health problems – sight, tinnitus, disorientation, and other physical problems (which I wouldn’t want to talk about) that simply wouldn’t allow me to visit a cinema. The last time I tried I had to solicit a friend’s aid to exit the cinema before I threw up. So being someone who obsesses about dragons, I had to see that film.
As soon as it was available, I bought it. I loved that film so much that I actually bought the most expensive version of it – the one that comes bundled with the Blu-Ray version, so I can watch it via my PS3.
I’m not ashamed to admit this, and that I do this with every film I absolutely have to see. In fact, I don’t do it that often because it means that my conscience leads me to buy the film regardless, so I tend to stay away unless I’m sure I’ll love it, but often my instincts for such are right on the money. Inception was another instance of this, where I watched a cam version and then bought it as soon as I could.
I see this as an artifact of the stupidity of the film industry – that they don’t accommodate for people with health issues at all, and they make them wait forever for the films to turn up on DVD/Blu-Ray. It seems so built upon discrimination to me. No films for you unless you’re an adequately healthy person. Blargh. But I trust the point is clear by this point.
That piracy exists, and that someone might pirate even, does not necessitate the idea that a person would never pay for what they’ve pirated. In fact, I’ve ended up buying films I would’ve otherwise had to just ignore thanks to piracy. Since otherwise I would’ve been so bitter about not being able to watch these films at the same time as everyone else that I would’ve just ignored them anyway.
There are just so many variables, here. Hating on piracy is a very two-dimensional and idiotic thing to do, a very clueless thing to do, in fact. I have one college-bound economist friend who’s absolutely convinced that piracy helps to bolster sales for many of the reasons I’ve covered, in fact, and this is a topic we natter about often. Usually, if a game isn’t selling, there are other reasons.
If a console port isn’t selling on the PC, it’s usually one of two reasons;
1. It’s a shit port that the vast majority (90%+) can’t run well.
2. It’s the sort of game that most PC gamers just aren’t interested in.
3. The developer has treated the PC gaming audience as being made up of only crooks.
4. The game is hitting the PC months after being released on the consoles.
5. The game has obnoxious DRM that people want nothing to do with.
Now let’s do the games run-down that fits these:
1. Grand Theft Auto IV, Stranger’s Wrath.
2. Street Fighter IV, Prince of Persia.
3. Epic.
4. Fable III.
5. UbiPlay games.
See? These examples exist, and I’m sure that there are other examples of this. If a developer cared about the PC, they’d develop their game alongside the consoles so that they could release an optimised, PC-tailored version of their game at the same time as their console releases.
And the funny thing is is that despite how much I dislike Bioware’s games, I absolutely cannot and would not deny that they’re a paragon of this – of knowing what most of their demographic want, understanding why a game needs to be optimised, and why evil DRM is bad.
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Wulf That is perhaps a little to much over-simplyfication.
There are many people that just pirate because it’s free and will buy it if it isn’t available for free.
Street Fighter 4 sold actually very good on PC, They didn’t bring Super Street Fighter to PC because there was to much piracy also. Prime example of pirates ruining it for everybody else.
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Hmm, I wonder which is better. Some sales + some sales lost due to piracy or no sales at all…..
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Ok… no demo… excessive gore (u.s. only, europeans are just screwed with this)…. probably some DRM… this could be a game getting more illegal downloads that sales in stores!
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Don’t worry, after the trainwreck of a marketing campaign I’ve lost all interest in it anyway.
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Other gems from CliffyB’s Twitter Feed.
“If the economy is still struggling how come I can’t find any parking at the damned mall?”
“Why are my gay followers hitting on me so much lately?”
“Every time I go to lunch with a co-worker who’s a parent with a minivan I always find a Cheerio stuck to my ass later in the day.”
Yep.
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…
I…
dsakglh
gsaidoghedhgshdgdsahgohsag
Aaaaugh. Ew ew ew ew ew.
As a gay person, I’m offended by the very existence of Cliffy “Don’t call me CliffyB” B, and the insinuation that anyone could find him attractive. The man looks like he’s 99.9% made of cosmetic products. He’s entirely artificial. Especially his ultra-white, super fake teeth that could likely outshine a small star.
I can’t honestly buy that any gay man would go for that. I really, honestly cannot. I imagine it would be like a straight guy wanting to hit up Barbie?
If that’s even remotely true, then mind = blown. That and there is no accounting for taste.
Edit #1: Not only that but in every video/picture I’ve seen of him, he looks utterly stoned. I can’t speak for other gay men, but I kind of want my partner to have some light to their eyes, some wonder there, you know, to register that the reality around them actually exists. I’ve seen more lively eyes on a zombie.
I am entirely squicked right now.
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Yeah, but Wulf, you’re not a gay *follower* are you? I think that makes all the difference.
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Just for contrast
http://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack
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Straight people DO go for Barbies. “There is no accounting for taste” Nail. Head. Etc…
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Yeah, but I’m straight and I’d have sex with Carmack if he asked. The guy is an amazing intellect.
CliffyB not so much.
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Fair points – one and all.
But still, ew. I’m sure CliffyB could have been attractive in some alternate reality, but with all that he’s done to himself to make himself a celebrity, he seems so completely shallow now.
JC is another story, yes. That’s one hell of a brain, right there, and he hasn’t tried to turn himself into some celebrobot.
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Wow, Turin. That IS a contrast.
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I wouldn’t touch ‘CliffyB’ for anything less than 100 quid, but there again I’m not one of his followers so I guess I don’t fall into that (probably fairly limited) homosexual gears fan and CliffyB disciple brigade he seems to be having so many problems/extremely satisfying sexual encounters with.
In other news, well what do you know, Epic are still dicks.
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I consider myself to be quite intelligent but damn. Half the stuff Carmack tweets I don’t understand.
Maybe I should start posting to RPS with my arse, I’m sure I can’t type too quickly for it then.
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If you have sex with a brain you get locked up.
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Stop posting about a crappy “cinematic” action console game that’s going to receive a craptastic port wrapped in G4WL that nobody with a PC cares about. Please, just stop.
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this
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Yeah, I’ve got to agree with this. RPS should be a site about PC games, not console games that have managed to make it to PC because the great CliffyB decided to throw us some scraps (emphasis on the ‘scraps’). I don’t mind ports, but when the developer shows a clear disdain for a certain portion of the game’s target audience, it really makes me wonder if there will be any effort at all put into the port. Hell, with a comment like his, I’d almost wonder if it wouldn’t just contain a virus to get back at those damn PC playing jocks that called him CliffyB in high school (speculation, maybe; but it would explain his attitude towards PC gamers).
In other news, PC gamers are comparatively less concerned about the lack of a demo – it’s CliffyB who’ll lose money after all.
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I guess the “no pc demo” is a good hint to “ignore this bad port”
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^ First thought that came to mind.
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In fact, judging by this comments thread, they should just stop with the port already as nobody seems to want it.
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Yay, another game I don’t need to bother with. Thanks, Epic, for helping me save money in this troubling economic climate.
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You know, looking at it from that angle I have to agree with you!
Thanks, Epic!
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I have never heard about this, but I’m going to download it, and then never play it.
I know, I’m a genius.
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Gabe Newell had his way with a drunken CliffyB back in around 2004. Mortified and his innocence forever taken from him, Cliffy swore to do everything in his power to destroy PC gaming.
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Do you have a source for this?
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Pics or it didn’t happen.
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Please. Stop.
I seriously do not need the mental imagery. I’m desensitised by Rule #34 and the Internet, nothing bothers me any more, but this… somehow does horrible things to my brain.
Edit #1: FFFFF. If this has invoked Rule #34, I will hunt down the commenters responsible.
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@TheHammer
Yes,
my penis.
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he’s right though you guys are extremely grumpy and a bit spiteful over a demo.
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You aren’t really one to talk about being spiteful and grumpy, to be fair.
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no but the fact it’s coming from me just shows how spiteful and angry some of the people here are.
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I’m grumpy and spiteful regardless of CliffyB.
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Yes, because we have very good reasons for not trusting Epic with releasing an optimised port, and we want a demo to benchmark for ourselves.
That makes us spiteful and grumpy.
Yes.
Did CliffyB woo you with his plastic mandoll ways?
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@Wulf Why so cynical about PC version performance? The last two Epic games I played were both really well optimised for the PC, and ran wonderfully.
Then again, they were Unreal Tournament and Jazz Jackrabbit ;)
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It’s not just that they can’t be bothered to make a demo, but they already have one made, they’re just not going to let us have it. Which seems like a pretty straight-forward “screw you” to us PC gamers.
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Do you really need a demo to figure out if you want to play this or not? I think 10 seconds of the trailer is enough.
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Wait, so what’s Bulletstorm? Oh, it’s a game? And it’s coming out on PC? No, I hadn’t heard…
*Watches trailer*… What are we, twelve?
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Destructoid? =D
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Of course, this might imply something remarkably like a demo arriving on Steam in the not too distant future
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Steam =/= demo, though.
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It could also imply that he thinks he only needs to say that it’s on Steam to shut us up.
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It is indeed possible you’re both correct, but he couldn’t really be that silly, surely?
Could he?
Oh dear.
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Yes, yes he could.
Expose yourself to his Twitter. Then feel the need to bathe in acid.
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What a complete tool. I’m never paying for any game associated with him ever again.
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I’m waiting for someone to make a 300 reference regarding the top image.
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I think you’ve beaten us all to it.
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So rumours of GFWL and no demo for PC gamers wow it’s like they’re actively trying to make it fail. They can say it’s coming to Steam all they like but it’s clear that this is going to be a clusterfuck. I really hope that People Can Fly haven’t forgotten their roots. But as for CliffyB well we’ve known he was a cunt since he made some mediocre maps for Unreal 2003 but for that last tweet he might aswell have linked us to the torrent himself.
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Rumours? Bulletstorm WILL use GFWL
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Didn’t realise it had been confirmed. SIGH. Well now there’s no chance I will find out if it’s good or not because I doubt I would even touch a pirated version of it now.
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Thanks for the GFWL heads-up (no, I had no idea).
I was going to give it the benefit of doubt, because CliffyB’s douchebaggery notwithstanding these are the guys who brought us Painkiller, but GFWL and now this? Cue Epic bawling their eyes out about PC piracy in 10… 9… 8…
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Sigh.
Why does anyone take Epic seriously any more?
Sometimes I wonder if console owners apply this staunchly to the lowest common denominator.
I know some of us are console owners, but I wonder of those whom are exclusively console owners, and I do wonder about it… I really, really do.
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What the fuck, GFWL? Really, that’s confirmed? Thanks for the heads up, last nail in the coffin for Bulletstorm for me. It’s too bad, because I was leaning towards buy it not long ago, it looked like decent fun and I liked Painkiller. But the recent marketing is making it seem way too obnoxious, and I would be surprised if it doesn’t turn out to an absolutely horrible port. Epic really are tremendous douches, too, it seems like they go out of their way to snub potential customers. I’ll bet they’ll blame the inevitable poor PC sales on piracy again.
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Hope you enjoy those 80-90% piracy rates, Cliffy.
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game looks lame. not even worth pirating.
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In other news, I am extremely miffed that a game I have such disdain for, by a developer I have such disdain for, is being released on my birthday.
Damn you, Blezinski.
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CliffyB is like a politician who has abandoned the grassroots movement that got him elected in order to cater to the corporate interests that subsequently bought him. In other words, an idiot. All the more for actively encouraging piracy with that tweet. I think he enjoys the provocation.
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They made the right move. No demo on the game tells us all we need to know, they think a demo would negatively impact sales.
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Yep, that’s what I was thinking too.
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Sad to see Epic is corrupting other pc fps developers now :/.
The “skill shot” bs irks me more than it should I guess, mainly because Painkiller was a good competitive ego shooter and now we’re left with this. It wouldn’t be that bad if it wasn’t for the drought the genre has been in for ages, with Epic’s incredibly bad UT3 launch as the nail in the coffin.
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Necrovision had “skill shots” (with names such as Brute Willis) and it’s one of the most PC-centric shooters of the last decade.
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the funny thing is the necrovision games were made by thefarm51 who are ex-peoplecanfly people
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CliffyB, always the douchebag.
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So, didn’t CliffyB say something a while back about not neglecting PC gamers anymore? I seem to recall him stating some sort of Pro-PC stance of his now.
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i was waiting for some interesting multi … but srsly? a freaking score attack with liderboards? wtf the game looks cool and crap but if they wont put any moaaaar stuff to multi im not getting it … as for demo? … it maybe sounds sad but as a pc gamer i … im used to it /cry
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CliffyB – if you got something, SPEEL DA BEENS!
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I speel my dreenk!
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Everyone should have a PS3 or 360 (or both) by now, not a big deal if you wanna try it out. It doesn’t seem like a mouse/keyboard would improve the experience much in this particular game.
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It’s a first person shooter…
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So? I played competitive CS for 6 years and even I can accept FPS games play fine with a controller. No FPS games these days require pixel perfect precision. I also happened to enjoy Borderlands a lot more using a controller.
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I have an Xbox 360 and the only FPS I’m ever going to play on it is Halo Reach. I hate using thumb sticks for looking, and I always will. I can’t imagine Assassin’s Creed feeling so fluid with a mouse and keyboard, but pivoting my head around with a stick still feels like I’m controlling one of those bloody grabber games you get in arcades.
“Everyone should have a PS3 or 360 (or both) by now”
This is a PC gaming blog, so the only thing you can be sure of is that everyone here is a PC gamer. Many of them will be exclusive PC gamers. I was up until a month ago.
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@Cale : Those controller-based FPSes have a field of view thirty degress smaller and hit-boxes thirty times larger to accomodate the control schemes… not to mention the auto-aiming helpers working in the background.
Takes a lot of fine tuning in a game for it to have ‘true’ PC shooter controls. Stalker is an excellent example. Call of duty isn’t.
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Benchmarking, CaLe, benchmarking.
It’s one of the reasons that PC demos exist, from the oldest era of the PC to modern day.
Don’t make me think of you as part of the console LCD now. :p
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Sigh…. there’s always one.
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Fair points, I was just saying it for those who wanted to have a go at the game. I forgot about the benchmarking side of it. I also don’t put any system above another generally, so that’s probably why it’s easy for me to forget that many people are really die hard about their platform of choice.
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@Wulf
Benchmarking? Do you not know how to read recommended system specs or something?
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Kadayi, even miniature difference in hardware – and also what you have on your hard-drive and RAM – can change performance by a substantial amount. Since that’s the case, then what on earth is wrong with benchmarking?
The only way you can be totally sure how a game is going to run on your PC is through running it. Comparing and contrasting specifications ain’t gonna do it.
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“Everyone should have a PS3 or 360 (or both) by now”
Why in the name of Christ (or whichever deity you prefer) would I want to buy a console. The majority of games released for PC are console ports anyway….
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Why own a console? Uncharted 1/2, Metal Gear Solid 4, Heavy Rain, Red Dead Redemption, Pac-Man Championship DX, Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, Bayonetta, Vanquish, Alan Wake, Limbo, Super Mario Galaxy 1/2, Enslaved, Rock Band 3, Gran Turismo 5, Yakuza 3, Demon’s Souls, Infamous, Flower, Katamari Forever, God of War 3.. I could go on.. barely touched the downloadable stuff.
If you love games then the platform you play them on shouldn’t matter. I love my PC as much as anyone here but I would never deny myself a great game just because it’s on another platform.
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Pretty good list actually.
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“If you love games then the platform you play them on shouldn’t matter. I love my PC as much as anyone here but I would never deny myself a great game just because it’s on another platform.”
Perhaps because of money restraints? Consoles cost money; at least double more than a game does. Some people don’t have that money; ergo they stick to one platform.
For sure, there are a lot of good console games out there, and I’m sure if people had cavernous pockets there would be a lot of crossover, but Christ, does it not occur to you that buying a console isn’t a financial option for some people?
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@The Hammer
Given Epic make the unreal engine and it’s already ubiquitous across a number of existing PC titles I’d be of the opinion that it’s highly likely it will run as smooth a silk on most machines capable or running CoDBlops. Still here are the specs: –
Recommended requirements
Windows Vista (SP2), or Windows 7
QuadCore 2.0 GHz
Memory (RAM) 2 GB
HDD Space 9 GB available
Video Card DirectX 9.0c compatible, 512MB of VRAM
Disc Drive 16X CD/DVD Drive
Network Broadband Internet (TCP/IP) connection
It’s hardly crysis.
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@The Hammer
The 360 has been out for over 4 years now. I got my most recent one for for only £120, half the price of some graphics cards. As for the games, I subscribe to Lovefilm and get sent 4 games a month for £10. I only bought 2 games last year but played pretty much every big release. It’s not all that expensive, really.
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Did CODBLOPs have a demo, Kadayi? Moreover, how many people on this site do you think bought it? It seems a very trite comparison to make.
Also: developers do not operate on a hivemind. Some take to engines differently than others. I remember, for instance, SiN: Emergence was pretty badly optimised in some levels, because they had been badly made, and were packaged in a way that made my PC lag, whereas Half Life 2: Episode 1 ran swell.
Sure, it might be on the same engine, but that’s apropos of nothing. Engine updates, texture details, level sizes, the fact that some games were obviously meant to be played on the highest settings only and anything below those settings look like trash…
There are a huge variety of reasons why demos are still useful; you seem to be appropriating the entire PC gaming audience to your own situation.
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Well that’s great for your situation, Cale, but for me and I’m assuming plenty of other people, £120 is not the price of an impulse buy. For those on tighter financial budgets, spending money on escapist items isn’t a priority. There’s also the issue of where to put yet another big white/black box, as well as what you’d actually use it for after the initial purchase. Of your list, only Uncharted 2, Red Dead Redemption, and Gran Turismo 5 interest me. Hardly grounds to fork out two hundred quid on a piece of hardware.
Take into consideration the upkeep needed for a PC – both in terms of upgrades and repairs – and the different lifestyles people have. And then take into account that, as said earlier, Epic were marketing this as a game that proved they were still infatuated with PCs, which, even if your previous point was reasonable and could be applied universally, is a stupid contradiction that speaks of saying one thing to curry favour, and then doing another.
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^
You’ve hit the nail on the head, which is rather apt given your username… :-D
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Yup. I’d love to buy a console to play GT5/Forza/a few random other games that I can’t think of at the moment. But to do that, I’d have to buy a console, a tv or new display to play it on (for ps3 at least, dunno if xbox has vga out), the games themselves, etc. For that price I could pretty much buy a new computer, which is a hell of a lot more useful than a console. Or if I weren’t in need of a new computer, I could buy lots of games at full retail pricing. Or, even better, I could buy food for a couple months.
Life as a student isn’t so black and white as all that.
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For me it’d be more than just the price of the console – I don’t even own a TV! Plus, console games cost generally more than PC ones…
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@CaLe
I don’t play on the PC just for the mouse and keyboard. I also play for dedicated servers/great communities, mods, graphics, 90 degree FOV, etc..
I’m almost positive Bulletstorm wont have mods or dedicated servers and the FOV will be 55 and not editable. It’ll most likely be a bad console port probably with terrible mouse controls ported over from the console controllers.
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Funny you should mention CODBLOPS, a game with severe performance issues on PCs well above the minimum specs and even PCs that could run things like Crysis easily. A demo of that game would have been very valuable as a benchmark.
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Cue Mark Rein complaining about the PC sales after-the-fact and denouncing it as a platform.
Morons.
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Epic releases BulletStorm – BobsLawnService indifferent.
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BulletStorm has the hell pirated out of it – Teddy and PC gamers indifferent. Cliffykins furious.
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That was a pretty obnoxious thing to say.
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Since when did Rock, Paper, Shotgun comments threads have so many people condoning (and pretty much advocating) copyright infringement? I mean, there were always a few, but not this volume. Surely the best message you*, as a consumer, can send is to ignore the game entirely? Rather than becoming one of a rather large number of “pirates”. Fair enough, lack of a demo is pretty bad (this coming on a day when Carpe Fulgur reveal what they reckon was a 40% conversion rate for the Recettear demo) but it’s hardly an excuse to download the material illegally.
A quick review reveals that there are only a few intending to pirate, but still more than I’m used to reading.
Also as has been noted GfWL is a steaming pile and should never be included in games. Doubt I’ll get this, personally. I was tempted for a while but that was somewhat before my money started evaporating, so while it still looks ridiculous I think I’ll be saving my money. I don’t really get many people’s reactions to this. Epic and People Can Fly are almost taking the piss out of Gears of War with this game.
*Yes you, with the hair.
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I agree. Instead of pirating this Duke Nukem wannabe how about we just do the right thing and ignore it completely. Bulletstorm – because it’s not worth it.
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Most of us wouldn’t really pirate, but we advocate it to tick off people like CliffyB. It’s petty, yes, but it’s entirely deserved. I mean, if the world thinks of PC gamers as pirates, then we might as well act like it, even if it’s not necessarily true that we’re going to steal and nick every bit of entertainment we can.
It’s often the case when a group are discriminated against for any reason. They’ll take the insult and wear it with pride. Look it up, throughout history. You have gay people using queer, you have black people using nigger, you have furries making funny images of ‘yiff in hell’, and you have PC gamers pretending to be pirates. It’s just to piss off the people who’re doing the discriminating in the first place, because frankly, we’re all a bit fed up of it. So we’re going to make fun, yes.
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I don’t advocate, regardless. CliffyB or not.
I pretty much agree with everything Rodeo said.
Also, please, PLEASE do not try to draw comparisons between wanting a videogame and the freaking civil rights movement and talking about discrimination. Grief.
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Agreed it’s getting pretty tiresome. Seems to be a case of whenever there’s some headline amounting to ‘Developer/Publisher are big meanies to PC gamers boo hoo hoo’ there’s suddenly a baboon chorus advocating everyone to ‘Steal that shit’ to somehow ‘learn them a lesson’. Games are entertainment, not a public right. If it any good, they’ll be reviews on it out before it hits release, if it’s questionable they’ll come after.
Personally (and with all due respect to Epic) but Bullet storm doesn’t strike me as the sort of game that screams must have ‘day one purchase’ , so why get worked up about? See how it reviews and then make a purchasing decision then, and quit with the ‘I’m a gonna pirating it’ talk and dragging this site down people, it’s becoming embarrassing.
Also huge /facepalm at Wulf. Please remove that entire paragraph dude.
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Oh Cliffery, you card.
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The torrent shall be my demo, then.
And I am keen on not buying things beyond $20… so it had better be a damn fine experience with lasting multiplayer value. *gritting teeth*
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I don’t know who is Cliffy B.
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You are not alone. I only know Biffy C., they have guitars, but this guy?
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you guys are being pretty harsh to the game just because of cliffy b’s (correct) comment and the lack of a demo. i haven’t downloaded a demo since the 1990′s and suddenly they’ve became the most important thing in the world overnight? wtf
but seriously though i loved painkiller so i’ll probably like this too.
its like the people here already decided to pirate the game the moment it was announced and are now just looking for excuses to make it seem “just”.
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Precisely.
But hey, I love a Two-Minutes-Hate as much as the next guy. Rabble rabble.
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he says precisely those things to get everyone riled up and talking about the game.
He must be saying MISSION FUCKING ACCOMPLISHED about now.
Still, I never much bothered with Epic after Unreal 2003, that was fun, but GoW was ridiculous and gave up after that. They make good engines but shitty games now-a-days.
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I think demo’s are becoming progressively less attractive. I remember back when a demo exceeding 100mb was considered a big download…then we have demos that are like a gig in size nowadays, or two gigs. Takes freakin’ forever to download the damn thing. Might as well just youtube some gameplay footage or let some dude from RPS buy/play/critique before committing to it.
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Agreed. I don’t want to download 2-3 gig tying up my internet to play a game for 20 minutes. There are plenty of good games reviewers out there that give good buying advice. I can’t even recall the last time I bothered with a demo (certainly not in the last 2 years).
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This is the problem for me as well. I used the be the sort of person who downloaded demos all the time and who really valued them as a test of whether the game was interesting or not. Now that demos have become gig-sponges, I never find myself downloading them anymore. I know, I know, modern internet connections can be speedy and all but it’s still a gig-pile.
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I can somewhat agree. The big size is generally a concern for me but only in the case with games I’m mildly interested in. So, for the most part I don’t care if a game has or has not a demo, though it’s worth noting that if some AAA game that I have more or less positive affection to had a substantially lighter “try-me-for-half-an-hour-and-then-please-please-buy?” version, I would absolutely try it and potentially buy the full game. However, if it’s the game I’m ardently waiting for, then whatever the size, I would undoubtedly download a demo which would be a major decisive factor of a possible purchase.
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well demos are important to me. they really help me decide, and every game should have one.
I am sad the game about the storming bullets does not have one. i think it should have one, so i could make a well-educated decision and be happy with it. which makes me be more open to consume other products in the futue. so that would be only positive for both me the customer and the publisher isnt it.
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You must get pretty sad then, given most AAA PC games don’t ship with a payable demo these days.
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I don’t actually, since I dont give a rodents ass about most of the “AAA Games”
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I just recommend torrenting the game. I have no problems with demos’ size – that’s just a couple of GBytes anyway, if you’re not in Australia or somewhere with cap on transfers, it’s not big. When publishers refuse to release a demo I can suspect their hide something – and it’s often true. Lazy ports with shitty textures and crap controls, it’s normal. No try = no sell for me, at least with AAA titles, because one of the trait of AAA title is hype (read: overhype).
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I won’t pirate it because of this, but I will wait for the $5 Steam Sale.
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Cliffy B Is still a massive cunt It seems.
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Why? Did he kill your parents or something?
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Just a small bit of advice: all this talk about how some of you are going to pirate the game does not help matters AT ALL.
The situation might not be ideal, and maybe you just want to say ‘f*ck you, EPIC/CliffyB/Rick Berman’, but you potentially do more damage long term byt taking a spiteful action because they did something you didn’t like.
If you want to try and change the situation, you don’t threaten those responsible by saying how you’re going to pirate the game. You go on the forums, email the team, even start one of those petitions that might seem so useless, but can provide a good rallying point to put eyes on one place. Consider the Minerva’s Den DLC that got released because PC gamers put up such a stink. It might also be worth it to consider that because there is not demo now, there won’t be one post-launch, and calling attention to it might alert those that will wait to use the demo for creating a hacked version.
You want to tell the powers that be that you’re angry? Fine. Just maybe not in a way that can potentially screw it up for the rest of us down the line.
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I have to be honest here, I don’t trust PC developers to be honest about Sysreqs and so before I drop £20-30 on their game, I want to see if it works.
If there’s no demo, I have only 2 options
1 – ‘acquire’ the game to test it – if it works, I always buy it (I like owning games!!)
2 – not bother with the game at all
Which of those 2 is better for the developer again??
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@trjp
What about: -
3 – Read/watch a number of game reviews/previews and make a decision regarding it whether Bullet storm is worth buying on that basis?
Kind of like most people do when a game doesn’t have a demo, like most AAA games don’t these days.
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@trjp
Also potentially –
4 – Wait for the Steam sale that will eventually knock the price down to sometime that you might consider worth the cost to jump in with less risk.
The issue with your 1st option, which is in part of what makes piracy the worst, is that if you are torrenting, the most common form to pirate, you’re contributing in the distribution of the game by your upload, regardless of how small our U/L speed might be. Furthermore, even if you aren’t uploading, you contribute the a particular torrent being popular enough to download by other users, and that is a factor when a developer want to show how their game got pirated xxx number of times, regardless of their perceived complicity but doing or not doing something that would have guaranteed your purchase.
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@Kadayi
Hello, I’m Common Sense. Today I am going to teach you to read comments. Look at the box above your comment.
Nice job!
Now, try to read all the words contained there.
Well done!
Try to find the key word this time. Did it? Let’s check results! The actual key word is “Sysreqs” (questionably a word, but it doesn’t matter now).
You won’t find performance rates of infinitely different sets of hardware in reviews/previews because, well, that’s impossible. Do I need to stress out the necessity of a demo in this case?
Common Sense, out.
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@Doesntmeananything
Fairly sure you’ll find plenty of game sites cover system reqs in their reviews as well, dude.
Also, developers don’t pull their system reqs out of a hat in some arbitrary fashion, they actually have to test them before they put them on the box (legal requirement). If they say a game will run minimally on a spec, guess what? It will run, minimally. That means no bells and whistles and low resolution. A recommended spec means you might get screen resolution, but again you aren’t going to get all the bells and whistles. The problem most people encounter is simply trying to play their games beyond the capabilities of their hardware (esp resolution, which is always a killer).
I’d of thought common sense would understand the concept of the user possibly being at fault.
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Oh, those requirements are just copied and pasted from official sources, no one would do any kind of thorough testing except for the actual developers. Which brings the question of the said testing: it is virtually impossible to test a game on all the possible combinations of hardware. And it’s not just performance, although a serious matter too, as those minimum/recommended requirements are not illustrative in terms of FPS and people have different thresholds of low FPS tolerance. There is a possibility of graphical glitches, freezes, etc., all due to specific hardware set-ups. It’s not programmers guilty of a faulty engine are to blame here, but those who decided not to release a demo.
Also, it’s good that you have a quite powerful PC, by the looks of it, and you can allow yourself to disregard those petty “sysreqs” shenanigans, but a lot of people are in a different situation. As a certain proof (which you use as well), I have a personal experience of a game that ran poor on my set-up, even though my box exceeded that “recommended” stuff. So, yeah.
It’s also cool to assume that most people are that incompetent. Like, that thing when ‘requirements are lies’ came out of nowhere.
(My initial comment hadn’t touched anything near the subject of the user’s potential incapabilities. Ah, but it makes that comment’s point all more valid.)
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People are behaving like babies for an Unreal Engine 3 game for God’s sake. So much nonsense about “Oh I want to see if it will run well on my system”… If you haven’t played any Unreal Engine 3 games in the last few years, then you haven’t played many games at all. A dual core and a GeForce 8800 is enough to run the engine, and has been for about 5 years now. If you don’t have the horsepower to run it, then just accept that it’s not for you and move on. There’s no need to be so pedantic about the “listed system requirements” being wrong. And this game is coming from the creators of Unreal Engine, so I think it’s possible they might be able to optimize it, don’t you?
Regardless of whether or not the game runs, it doesn’t give anyone an excuse to pirate it. People are so full of shit when they say that they will buy it after pirating. The number of sales that actually come from a pirated copy must be so insignificantly tiny that a broad generalization like that is pretty much spot on.
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@Doesntmeananything
Surprisingly I think you’ll find that publishers nowadays are generally keen to ensure that what’s on the boxes they sell is agreeable across a range of systems, and have fairly vigorous QA testing departments of their own separate from their developers.
“It’s also cool to assume that most people are that incompetent. Like, that thing when ‘requirements are lies’ came out of nowhere.”
The president of the USA, and his advisers were convinced Iraq had WMDs, yet so far they’ve not turned up.
All joking aside though, most people are incompetent as a rule. If you’ve any done any form of tech support, you’d know this (that was a long summer), because by and large most people lack the inclination and curiosity to think when they engage with a device/program 95% of the time, and it’s generally a lot easier to shout ‘It’s broken’ than figure out what the actual problem is, when one is encountered.
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Yeah that is pretty much true… hence the ‘worst port ever, I will never buy another game by X developer again’ comments.
That said, if in doubt it’s always worth waiting a few days after release and checking forums, especially if the game is released on steam.
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To my mind, demos serve 2 purposes…
1 – they market the game, well if they’re done properly they do – most of the recent demos on the 360 have simply showed how SHIT the game was (Quantum Theory demo saved many people a fortune!!)
2 – they allow people to see if the game will run on their PC. For a PC gamer, this is almost mandatory given the “lies” which are Min/Rec Requirements these days and the fact that software gets a (mostly undeserving) exemption from consumer law (preventing you getting a refund when you buy a turd).
So it’s about twice as important to have a PC demo as it is on other platforms – so not producing one shows you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.
Are you listening, Epic?
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“most of the recent demos on the 360 have simply showed how SHIT the game was (Quantum Theory demo saved many people a fortune!!)”
“Are you listening, Epic?”
Heh. I think they might be.
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Come on people it’s UE3 it’s going to be as optimised as everyother damm UE3 game is.
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Sigh.
Yes, because one game made in the same engine as another game is going to be optimised the same due to the similarity of the engine. Sigh.
COMPARISON: Any Bethesda game versus Ego Draconis.
Ego Draconis runs beautifully, most Bethesda games tend to be poorly optimised things that run like turds. Both use Gamebryo.
I’m not sure what Larian did to Gamebryo to make it run so well, but there you go.
Engine does not an optimised game make.
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Yes thats exactly the case, hell Fallout NV is perfectly fine on a system with a single core processor and an aging 7900gtx.
Bulletstorm made by PC developer PCF and Epic that made the damm UE3 in the first place, hell I can tell system requirments simply by looking at a screenshot.
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It’s a silly comment on it’s own, but I’m sure CliffyB will add something more to it, once the nerd rage settles down.
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“P.S. We’re only porting this in the first place because Mark Rein doesn’t want to be kicked out of the PCGA. They have free doughnuts at the board meetings.”
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Having demos on consoles, but not on PC is something that never made sense to me. Or are they treating pirated versions as the default trial method on PC or something?
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http://www.cliffyb.com/blog/
What an awful blog from an awful person. As long as this guy is there I won’t buy anything from them.
And RPS, thank you for having the guts to criticize him on sponsored posts…
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I believe he is, or has become ‘some species of Bro’
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/1/14/
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Maybe boycott all the people he sells game engines to while you are at it as well for what it’s worth, since he’s getting a slice. Oh no wait, that would be pretty much everyone….
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Dominic, aren’t you going to criticize this person for daring to call anything bad that someone else might maybe like? Or do you only do that with Recettear? =)
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Don’t be a berk, Berz.
Not liking a person for public feats of douchefuckery is different to claiming no one should like a game because one does not like it (subjectively).
We’re not hating on Bulletstorm here (I’m not, anyway), just on what sort of massive prick CliffyB has become. He used to be sort of alright as a nerd.
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Well good thing I wasn’t talking about the comments that are angry at CliffyB then, innit? (This one was a blogs-criticism).
Perhaps it would make more sense to point out the many comments that call Bulletstorm boring-looking or lame…but when you’re following someone across the internet to antagonize them, you have to take what they give you. =)
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I have to wonder, if CliffyB turns around in future and starts making PC only games, will the audience that’s deriding him personally with a ridiculous amount of ad-hominems suddenly do a 180 and pretend they never disliked him in the first place?
I saw a similar phenomenon happen with Gabe Newell and PS3 users after last year’s E3. All of a sudden he was lauded for his foresight where before he was derided as an idiot fanboy with a never-ending stream of extremely bitter fat jokes on the side.
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Like people treat Blizzard and, er, Creative Assembly, ever so kindly, subedii?
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Blizzard and Creative Assembly aren’t individuals. Like I said, there’s a ridiculous amount of attacking CliffyB personally here, and a lot of it for reasons pretty much unrelated to the demo but purely because he’s viewed as some kind of “anti-PC” figure here now.
I am not posting too quickly.
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Aye, sorry, I was being a bit contrary with that comment.
I do get what you’re saying, but I think there are figures in the PC gaming industry who are derided anyway (like Tales of Tales; there’s just two guys working on that, and they get an enormous amount of stick). Also, look at all the oh-so-funny fat jokes directed at Newell.
And really, we have to wonder at this point if CliffyB could helm a project that PC gamers take seriously at all.
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I just have to wonder how much of this angst is really about the lack of a demo. Dead Space 2 got a console demo as well, but as usual, not one on the PC. That’s happened in a fair few cases.
It just seems like it’s more targeted at the individual.
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I’m no fan of CliffyB, but I’m not full of venom about him.
I just think there should be more demos for more games. This particular news story gives the context for just such a debate. It’s not like Epic are the only culprits, as you say.
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Noap, there are PC developers (even exclusive ones) I absolutely despise.
And will continue to despise.
In the face of their flocks. 8D
*points at Bioware and Blizzard.*
Edit #1: Okay, I admit, I did have a hatesex fling with Bioware in Mass Effect 2, where I thought everything would be okay. Then they showed me alpha footage of The Old republic, and I realised that things would not be okay. You betrayed me, Bioware!
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Lol @ Kadayi all worked up because he doesn’t get what demos are for.
PS: Also, Amerimanga.
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@Pakoito
“A game demo is a freely distributed demonstration or preview of an upcoming or recently released video game. Demos are typically released by the game’s publisher to help consumers get a feel of the game before deciding whether to buy the full version.”
Hell, dude you best get editing Wikipedia and let em know that it’s all about the ‘benchmarking’. Because what’s important is not knowing whether the game is fun or anything, it’s all about whether it will give you decent frame rates. School those bitches.
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Er, Kadayi,
Frame-rates are part of “the feel of the game”.
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Pakoito, Afro Samurai is above criticism.
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@The Hammer
I think you’re reaching there. If that were truly the case, then developers would just release tech demos. After all why bother demonstrating game play/storyline etc, when it’s all just about the ‘benchmarking’ ?
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I said “a part”, not the whole part. I appreciate a demo for half an hour’s fun just as much as I do to research how it plays on my jigsaw puzzle of a rig. I had hours of fun with demos like Dawn of War’s, for example, which was generous with its features. I later bought the game, because I enjoyed it, and also knew it worked without a hitch.
The thing is, obviously not every game needs a demo attached to it. But the more expensive a game gets, the more necessary it is to give it a spin before you potentially waste your money. The thing is, specs aren’t exactly reader-accessible either. How do I know, for example, if having slightly-lower-than-required RAM isn’t too much of a blow if I have a far better graphics card? How will the game work then? I can’t say, and I doubt any sites can say, because it’s going to be really hard to find a performance review that specifically deals with the make-up of your own PC.
The bigger outrage here, for me, is that Bulletstorm is getting a console demo, but not a PC one, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason why. Sure, console users find demos useful too, but for the PC, there’s an added benchmarking dimension to the process. And for a game that was supposedly PC gamer friendly, this episode is anything but.
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@The Hammer
Because they don’t need to worry about optimising for various hardware skews with the console builds. With the PC release they are probably still doing that at present. Having the team waste their time optimising a demo when they could instead be optimising the real game would be a huge waste of resources.
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“Because they don’t need to worry about optimising for various hardware skews with the console builds. With the PC release they are probably still doing that at present. Having the team waste their time optimising a demo when they could instead be optimising the real game would be a huge waste of resources.”
Then how do we know they’re doing that competently?
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@The Hammer
Plenty of Unreal engine titles out there already for the PC that seem to run without hitch, so I’d say the odds are fairly good that the engines creators are likely to know what they are doing, esp given all the feedback they’ve accumulated over the years. A radical suggestion I know, but I’m sticking to it.
Please feel free to come back with some persuasive counter argument though. I’m all ears on that front.
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Alright, nay need to get snappy, Kadayi. You don’t have to be abrasive.
And I remind you that, although Epic are helping with the game, it’s People Can Fly that are developing it. Despite creator backing, there could still be problems on certain hardware.
Also: if they are plenty of Unreal titles on the market at the minute, then why on earth would there be a delay “optimising for various hardware skews “?
Also 2: Epic published games have had demos before. Like, er, Unreal Tournament 3. Which was multi-platform. This change in procedure can only really be credited to lack of attention given to the PC version. By that I mean it’s been seen as the third wheel.
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@The Hammer
“Also: if they are plenty of Unreal titles on the market at the minute, then why on earth would there be a delay “optimising for various hardware skews “?”
You’re not optimising the engine code, you’re optimising the game assets & the game code, those will be bespoke elements particular to the title (things like game model polygon counts for example)
“Also 2: Epic published games have had demos before. Like, er, Unreal Tournament 3. Which was multi-platform. This change in procedure can only really be credited to lack of attention given to the PC version. By that I mean it’s been seen as the third wheel.”
It is not also fair to say that since UT3 games technology has gotten substantially more complex and expensive to make? Is it therefore not unreasonable to assume that added complexity might not have an impact (see optimising)? What about protecting themselves against piracy by ensuring the game code is secure prior to retail release?
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““Also: if they are plenty of Unreal titles on the market at the minute, then why on earth would there be a delay “optimising for various hardware skews “?”
You’re not optimising the engine code, you’re optimising the game assets & the game code, those will be bespoke elements particular to the title (things like game model polygon counts for example)
“Also 2: Epic published games have had demos before. Like, er, Unreal Tournament 3. Which was multi-platform. This change in procedure can only really be credited to lack of attention given to the PC version. By that I mean it’s been seen as the third wheel.”
It is not also fair to say that since UT3 games technology has gotten substantially more complex and expensive to make? Is it therefore not unreasonable to assume that added complexity might not have an impact (see optimising)? What about protecting themselves against piracy by ensuring the game code is secure prior to retail release?”
All of which almost sound like reasons for having demos…
You’re pretty much arguing yourself into a hole there. “If you’ve played Unreal games before, then you’ll know how they perform! But wait! These are different! These need to go through their own process of optimisation and deploy more complex technology! So they can’t just release the demos quickly!”
So you’re saying the performance will be the same but different. Same difference. What?
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“All of which almost sound like reasons for having demos…”
Because?
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I’ve yet to play an Unreal Engine 3 game that can remotely come close to taxing my PC. At this point even L4D2 needs more muscle. I guess they could just totally, massively fuck up the PC version, but the actual developer is originally a PC company, and UE3 reduces the likelihood a lot beyond that.
But their motives for not bothering to have a PC demo nag at me. I want to hear a reason why, given some of the past attitudes towards the PC Epic has taken (the elitist PC gamer in me would call them ungrateful, after they got their start here with the Unreal series).
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This game will only ruin your appetite for DNF anyway, wait until it is a fiver on play (and amazon price match it).
Like tucking into a bag of maltesers before Heston Blumenthal serves you up foie gras and chips.
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Gotta love spanish press: they translated “PC gamers are grumpy about this” as “Epic says PC gamers are whiners” and made a flamewars-debate about how CliffyB is a d-bag.
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Ugh, naming other commenters in your posts never really goes well, but whatever, I have a few more pennies to throw in.
Kidayi: I don’t get why you are so against the idea that some people, somewhere might use a demo to see how well a game runs. Hell, even if you do read the recommended specifications there is little substitute for actually running the damn thing. I rarely download demos, it’s true. The last one I did download was Star Ruler (which I’ve not tried playing yet; where’s the Star Ruler love RPS? You promised you’d cover it some more!) and before that… well, maybe Half-Life 2, I don’t know. But I cannot rely on my personal experience to inform me about the habits of other users. The sizes of demos recently has been inflating, I don’t mind so much because I have access to a good broadband connection with no limits (while I am in my flat at least, not so much when I’m at home in a village) . Of course, many people are not in this situation, so inflated demos are not useful for them at all either, but that doesn’t mean we should just accept that we’re never going to be able to try a game before we buy it ever again. Finally, £40 is not an uncommon price for a game like Bulletstorm or CODBLOPS, I can’t actually stretch my budget to those kinds of purchases – not without making some big changes to my spending.
Onto the other side, it this thread is filled with a lot of hate for one man who is essentially nothing more than PR for this game. Are people consumed by the dichotomy of REALLY wanting to play this game but REALLY hating Cliff/(Epic games)? So much that they will deliberately infringe copyright in order to “piss off” some guy they’ve never met who makes games for a (lucrative) living? There are valid ways to send messages to companies, engaging in illegal activity over what ultimately might prove to be a few hours of unremarkable fun hardly seems like the best way. I suppose I ought to come clean, I really dislike the idea of pirating any material, OTOH I once downloaded Diablo after finding the Blizzard store wouldn’t sell it to me (I think that’s what happened anyway, it was a while ago). After spending a fruitless evening trying to get it working on my horribly broken Ubuntu partition I gave up and have since bought a disc copy, not that that makes much difference.
Wulf: your comparisons to the derogatory language used against minorities on the previous page come off as rather crass. As others have pointed out, you’re talking about a game. I’m not going down the “HERP, they’re only games” route (I’d hardly be commenting on this site if that were my opinion) but you’re talking about pirating a game. For your own (possible) enjoyment. And what kind of sense is there in acting like a “pirate” just because large game publishers release (admittedly aggravating) quotes saying most PC gamers are? Would it not be better to try to reduce the levels of filesharing and the associated consequences (like DRM systems that are only inconvenient to those that actually pay, for instance, or PC versions of games that are delayed or cancelled along with one of those aggravating quotes)? Now, I am of course not saying I have any idea how this should be achieved, but I think I’m really moving beyond the scope of this article.
tl;dr …I don’t know actually. Perhaps, “we should all calm down”?
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@Down Brodeo
I’m sure some might, but I find the notion that ‘Demo’s are all about the benchmarking’ a wild and unsubstantiated claim, and I think it’s only reasonable to question it. Especially when it’s being bandied around as an excuse to pirate games. I don’t recall people screaming about how a DA:O or ME2 didn’t have pre-launch demos thus denying them the ability to bench mark those games performance wise. What about CODBLOPs? Where’s the demo for that? Oh yeah it doesn’t exist.
If there was no demo on the 360 or PS3, would anyone be kicking up a stink about the lack of PC demo in reality? I doubt it. So what do we have then? People with a legitimate axe to grind, or a bunch of AiM with nothing better to do that get hysterical over what was probably more likely a business decision (they are likely still doing Q&A on the PC build with the publisher chipping in as well) than a personal slight on the part of the developer. These days on RPS it’s, like everything has to be seen as a drama.
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It would obviously be just as bad for PC gamers if none of the platforms got a demo, only without the added insult that they are actually making one, but not bothering with the platform in most need of it.
Also, who cares what their actual reason is. If they really want to service their customers but are busy with Q&A, do a post-launch demo.
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@Ludden
I suspect that’s probably what will happen anyway. Personally I’m not seeing this as an ‘OMFG must have game’ . It seems a little to camp and generic, so my expectation is that after launch they’ll probably go for a demo as well as heavily promote it via steam.
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Kidayi: I dunno, it was just that you seemed to be questioning anyone that would have liked a look at a demo. Personally, I probably wouldn’t have, I feel however that it’s important to try to see as many points of view as possible. It is a bit funny how much fuss has been kicked up by this though.
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Their last work on PC (Gears of War) didn’t exactly turn out to be a good port, I’d say the PC demo of BulletStorm would be pretty crucial to gain some confidence back but as usual Epic fails to walk the walk again.
Ah well, other and probably better shooters in March on PC aplenty.
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Hopefully this will save some people the agony of buying this sure to be crappy game and realizing they wasted their money. If this doesn’t tell you its a crappy port, I don’t know what else will.
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@ Kaydl: I’m beginning to suspect you work for one of the major video game publishers – not because you’re weakly attempting to justify this decision, but because your blinkered (and borderline obnoxious) refusal to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that you are in the wrong, or at least the opinionated minority, is uncannily reminiscent of that section of the industry’s attitude towards it’s customers in recent years. :p
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*pulls off Kadayi mask to reveal*
Gabe Newell (gasp) ‘There will be no episode 3, we are going for HL3 instead, reveal at E3 this year’
*Pulls off Gabe Newell mask to reveal*
Bobby Kotick (gasp) ‘The next CoD, multi-player will be chargeable, and you will pay me you little piggies, or yes indeed’
*Pulls off Bobby Kotick mask to reveal*
Clint Hocking (gasp) ‘ I’ve interesting things planned, which will blow you mind’
*Pulls off Clint Hocking mask to reveal*
Warren Spector (gasp) ‘ I made a terrible mistake abandoning the PC and I’m very, very sorry’
*pulls off Warren Spector mask to reveal*
Kadayi ‘ you seem to have some quaint ideas about what constitutes ‘evidence’ there mongo. A bunch of drama queens losing their shit over a perceived slight by a developer, is not exactly substantial of anything. There’s perfectly good reasons why a developer might not release a game demo prior to a retail release , such as taking away valuable development resources when the game is in the final stages of development, and not wanting to give potential crackers a head start on accessing the game code in order to make it available on torrent sites early in release (where the bulk of piracy issues generally occur). But naturally of course it’s easy to see right through those paper thin arguments and instead presume it’s because the developers personally hate your guts and views you as some kind of second class citizen. That has to clearly be the case, no doubt.
*waits for cheque from CliffyB*
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I lolled. :)
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How many conspiracy theorists does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change the light bulb, and another to find out who really changed it.
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@Kadayi
Given that Minimum Requirements tend to be almost Universally off the mark these days, you do genuinely believe that benchmarking to ensure the desirable level of performance of a game on one’s computer is not an entirely valid and logical reason for wanting a demo? Therefore, you believe that ‘resources’ (mystical, obfuscated, and oft misappropriated term that that is) should be devoted elsewhere, thus potentially costing Epic sales?
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“Given that Minimum Requirements tend to be almost Universally off the mark these days, you do genuinely believe that benchmarking to ensure the desirable level of performance of a game on one’s computer is not an entirely valid and logical reason for wanting a demo?”
Can you provide some evidence to support this claim?
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I have to admit that I don’t demo AAA games much these days. Largely due to an aging PC, and lack of interest in AAA games these days. However, I do demo indies all the time. And if I’m going to pay full retail for a game, you can be damn well sure I’m going to demo it and make sure it performs well/isn’t a buggy mess/is actually fun/etc.
Yes, gameplay footage on Youtube is definitely viable for finding out whether you’re going to like the game (and to be honest, in many cases, watching a LP is just as good as playing the damn thing yourself…) But that’s not -all- that demos are good for. There are still lots of us who like to benchmark using demos. I don’t think that’s such a ridiculous thing, especially given these days.
However, the important thing here isn’t that we’re complaining that there is no demo. It’s that the consoles, which traditionally had no such thing as demos, and, if you accept that reviews/youtube footage are sufficient to help you decide whether you’ll enjoy a game, serve no purpose at all, are getting demos. And, for some reason, the PC, which has had demos since time immemorial, and where we have actual reasons to want demos, doesn’t get one? If there were just no demo at all, we’d probably just shrug and go about our business, perhaps lamenting the days of demos.
That’s why we’re upset. It’s a slap in the face, especially coming from a studio that seemed to be talking about how they’re supporting the platform for real now.
As for myself, I really have no interest in the game, just as I have no real interest in any AAA shooters. However, I have been known to download demos of games that I’d never normally play whilst bored at night, enjoy them, then buy the game in question. I guess I’ll never be buying Bulletstorm…
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Treat PC gamers like shit and make shitty consoleized shooters
“Baaaaaaw why are people pirating my games u guys suck ;_;”
Stay classy, Cliffy.
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But he doesn’t and he didn’t actually say that, so what was your point again?
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Someone hasn’t been listening to CliffyB and Mark Rein for the last 6 years.
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Fact: Anyone who doesn’t realise that PC demos have always been about benchmarking since the dawn of PC gaming* is either someone who was born in the 90′s, or someone who’s only very recently switched from console usage to PCs. Someone who knows literally nothing about the history of personal computers, then.
<_< >_>
It’s true and you all know it.
* – a time when we checked a demo to see if it would glitch out on our new, but untested SVGA cards, to ensure that the sound wouldn’t freak out or not work at all on our spiffy Sound blaster Pro cards. I remember testing demos to ensure they’d work with my QEMM loadout, for crissakes.
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I also remember a time when demos were used by companies to show off their games and the latest innovations they’d made. Nowadays it seems more like they feel it’s a chore or a roadblock that stops their game from being a success (because nowadays the best thing about most ‘AAA’ games is their marketing).
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That the Moon revolves around the Earth is a Fact, that you believe everyone downloads game demos to benchmark their hardware is merely your opinion
No amount of pronouncements (however hysterical) are going to magically turn the latter into the former.
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It’s not just for benchmarking or seeing how a game runs that we need demos (though in these days where games are locked to an account, we definitely need demos for that), but also to see how well the game implements basic PC functionality – keyboard mapping, mouse controls, controller support, graphic options, etc.
Case in point is Dead Space. On the surface an excellent port, but you wouldn’t know from reading the various positive reviews that the keybinding is needlessly restrictive, so you can’t use arrow keys for movement, and that there’s a bug in the mouse support which means you have to force vsync on in your graphic card control panel to fix. Out of the box the experience is broken for many users, unless you search the net to find user made fixes!
Perhaps the problem is with games reviews not really testing basic functionality, but a demo allows users to see for themselves before they get lumbered with a game they can’t return or sell on.
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I will probably buy this since Painkiller was pretty awesome but that doesnt change that Cliffy’B is kind of a douche and should stop pissing off his customer base.
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epic only make a good game once a decade anyway, people can fly seem make decent games but not unmissable games.
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He seems to be implying that I cared about his game in the first place.
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Surely demos on consoles are pointless. They don’t need to check tech-specs, and so (except in very rare cases) the only outcome can be to put people off buying a game.
Whereas demos on the PC are useful and can show people whether the game will run on their system.
Illogical captain!
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Epic Games’ behaviour towards PC gamers disgusts me. They think every PC gamer is a pirate and act accordingly.
I don’t think every games developer is a moron, but maybe I should act like them and extrapolate.
Also: demos are good marketing tools, it is a very, very unsensible decision not to release it for all your potential customers.
Hell, maybe they are afraid pirates will play the demo without paying for it… wait a second…
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