On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
How will that stop anything with my modded wii and 360?
I don't pirate games, if I'm interested in a game, I'll buy it after I do research on it. I'll rarely buy a game on day one (maybe a week later after I see all the complaints about the gameplay) unless the company tends to make amazing games (Nintendo for example)
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
How will that stop anything with my modded wii and 360?
Wasn't Skyward Sword available a week before release if you pirated it?
On November 30 2011 23:59 2WeaK wrote: I don't pirate games, if I'm interested in a game, I'll buy it after I do research on it. I'll rarely buy a game on day one (maybe a week later after I see all the complaints about the gameplay) unless the company tends to make amazing games (Nintendo for example)
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
How will that stop anything with my modded wii and 360?
Wasn't Skyward Sword available a week before release if you pirated it?
Yes it was, which adds to the advantages of piracy, you get it (a lot) earlier.
I'm all about the free sharing of data and information. If you don't want your product pirated, make better security measures to ensure this doesn't happen. It's things like piracy that drives innovation and change, the world needs this to grow. Just look at how napster changed the technology world as we know it today. When I download music/movies now, I see myself as contributing to the technological advancement of mankind
I too have made the mistake of blindly buying a game based on good reviews. Actually, back in high school I did this with Vagrant Story. I bought the game because Gamepro (I think it was Gamepro at least) gave it an extremely high score, calling it one of the best games ever made. IGN also has rated in at something like 9.8/10, one of the highest rated games on IGN of all time.
I hated the game. I spent $50 on the stupid thing and I hated it to high heaven. I played like two hours of it, found absolutely nothing interesting, and just never played it again.
Another example was with FFX-2. Another extremely highly-rated game on pretty much all websites, but all in all, Squaresoft's (or Square-Enix's) biggest piece of trash to date. I was able to do about an hour of this game before I tried to take it back, where Best Buy refused to return my money. $59 gone. At this point I decided that Square-Enix owed me about $110 for the shitty ass games it sold me, and have since evened things out by downloading some of their better games. Fair is fair, I say.
Without downloading a game first, how am I supposed to know how good it really is? Game review websites are biased towards the companies for which they advertise, game demos are either too short to tell us anything or don't even exist at all, and game previews give next to no information about the game itself 90% of the time. We, the gamers, have paid high prices for games for years because we know it's necessary to support the industry. But I'll be damned if I'm going to get ripped off for my hard-earned money on a piece of crap.
On December 01 2011 00:01 zimz wrote: when people have extra income and feel secure about their future they will stop pirating.
Quite an optimistic view. However, I would think more people pirate because they can rather then because they have to. If money was the main reason then cheap indy games wouldn't be pirated like they are.
Of course, I think fighting piracy is a losing battle unless developers start using improved draconian methods like always-online and such. Even then, as shown by Ubisoft's scheme being cracked, those probably aren't full proof either. Developers need to worry more about what they can control, which is providing a high quality product at a reasonable price and without nuisances that are avoided when pirating. Too many times the pirates have a better quality product then people who bought the game legally.
I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
On November 30 2011 23:42 daemir wrote: The industry itself is feeding the pirating machine, plenty of good points in this topic.
Something is very, VERY wrong with the product if the pirated version is simpler, easier and more convenient to use than a legally purchased copy.
Pricing on products, especially some electronic vs physical products is downright retarded. Example from a well known, well loved(?) Blizzard Entertainment and none other than Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty:
The day or 2 before the digital game price was announced, it was, if memory serves, very much the release date of the physical box as well. Local shops were pricing it at the 30euros range, give or take a 5, but this time I decided, to hell with a box and all that crap, let's save the planet and not buy useless garbage coming with the box, but instead get a digital copy. And then the day dawns, when the digital copy pricing is revealed, 59.90 euros. For a digital copy. Vs a 29.90 from local store box. Hell, the collectors edition was priced 35.90. ... ... yea, I cancelled the "digital preorder" and legged to the store to buy a box for 29.90 instead.
Wait, what? SC2 was 30 Euro on release in your local store? It's only down to 40 in here, and that's only now, it cost way more on release... That's not how you make loyal customers. Meh.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
My mate, Dangerous Dave, he buys games he pirated after he finishes them. It leads to at least a couple of replays in any case.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
I bought Skyrim after I played the pirated version for a weekend. I had never played an Elder Scrolls game before, nor any other free-roaming RPG, so I had no idea whether the game was going to be fun for me. Just recently Steam had a sale on Oblivion (the predecessor of Skyrim) and I bought it as well (not played it yet). 2 purchases that happened purely due to a single game downloaded.
I agree that most people that pirate games don't take the step in actually buying it, but it's a big exaggerated to claim that noone does.
There's no "battle". There's nothing to fight here. If developers will publish polished games, treating their customers with respect, rather than coming up with new and creative ways of making the playing experience worse and troublesome they will turn a profit. It doesn't matter how many time a title has been illegaly download, it does not correspond to the number of sales in any way whatsoever! Developers go about it the wrong way - packing their games with intrusive DRM (which does *NOTHING* to prevent piracy - every single game out there, on every platform, has been pirated; usually within hours after initial release). CD Projekt RED's stance is absolutely perfect in the situation at hand.
The Witcher 2 has been downloaded 4.5 million times not because it had no DRM, but because it was a good game. I will say this once more - DRM does nothing to protect games from being pirated; if anything it scares away potential customers.
I thought this thread was going to be about piracy on the seas, I'm a little disappointed
I download pretty much all films/TV/music I watch/listen to but I don't really pirate games, but then again I don't really play many games, it's been mainly BW for the past 8 years and most other games have been either on consoles or free to download games anyway...
I can see the problem with piracy for developers but I agree with zalz that it isn't that big a deal and keeping the internet as it is is more important.
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
There are pirated games for consoles as well. If all games were to move to consoles, all energy would shift from PC piracy to console, and the same thing would happen again.
True, but i doubt it would be just as many as it is now for PC.
I don't have exact numbers, but here in México City that statement is not true: Given consoles are generally much cheaper than gaming PC's, it's actually hard to get pirated PC CDs (guess they don't sell well), while LITERALLY you can get pirated CD's for every console by walking 5 blocks on any direction. Sad thing when you think about it. While the media stays digital, it will be pirated, no matter the format.
I will never pirat a PC game. If its not good enough to pay for its not worth playing. However music and movies I consider free domain after they hit the radio, tv or dvd.
I remember going to gamerevolution.com back in the day to check to see if a game had a high score, which would then lead me to buying it. Boy, that didn't always work out rofl.
Like others have said, pirating 4.5 million copies is kind of a wrong way to put the statement. I am pretty certain, that a lot of those 4.5 million people have bought the game after they pirated it (obviously not a huge number, probably not even half would have bought the game but its still a lot). Sure the initial piracy is a good idea to make it seem as if the company was robbed, but I know a couple people that would buy the game after pirating, myself included. However, I chose not to buy Witcher 2, because it just wasn't my type of game. Would have never bought it in the first place unless it was on a big sale, and I wanted something to test my graphics card on.
From past experiences, what really makes me want to buy a game is how well the developers promise not to "cheat" us out on game content. Which is what really makes me laugh in the end, how they kind of advertise this aspect of not cutting short on development. For example, Skyrim is one of those games where in their numerous ad's, they go on about how long it took to develop their game, and all the processes that took place, and even have this humongous collectors edition, with extra footage on the making of the game. If this game is getting that much content, has this many people vouching for its quality, and yet can be bought for the same price as every other game, with less content, why the hell should I pay for 60$ for every game when I could just test (and very likely not enjoy) some and then buy ones that I like?
I am going to be purchasing skyrim, without any pirating at all. Simply because all the good reviews I got from from friends and forums just makes me want to experience the entire thing without any hassle of cracks, and I am willing to wait to get the actual copy, which will be after school semester ends. Another cool small thing that makes me want skyrim is the little map that comes in the hard copy. I am curious as to why internet steam copies are the same price as hard copies with the box, map, and disc inside as well. This same concept goes for battlefield 3, which I purchased as well.
Points that convince me into buying a game is this: If the company wants to base it's game around multiplayer: [1] Are the developers known for providing quality patches regarding balance changes and proper connection? i.e. Blizzard not i.e. Relic [2] Are the developers going to create multiple re-hashes of the same game every year? i.e. EA Sports (Madden, etc), Activision (Call of Duty series), EA (Battlefield and Bad company series combined which follow along the same gameplay). [3] How good is the gameplay?
If the company wants to base it's game around singleplayer: [1] Are the developers known for providing bug support and quality patches? [2] How long is the game, and do I like the gameplay or storyline?
And here are some examples of games that would have made me sad, especially as a kid with no income at all, if I bought them. -Call of duty: MW2, Black Ops, World at War [I bought all the call of duties from the first and all its expansion packs the day of release, and call of duty 2, which was quite frankly, a call of duty 1 with better graphics, but at the time that was perfectly fine, since graphics went through a huge upgrade at that time period.] -World in Conflict [really bad multiplayer gameplay] -Mass Effect 1 -Dawn of War Soulstorm (which was a terrible shit-storm of a game). To be honest, Relic's Dawn of War series is what prompted me to start pirating games anyways, since they just create terrible sequels and try to milk a game out of their money as much as possible ditching all forms of game balance. -Hellgate London [This game was fucking horrible, and I bought it, I am so fucking pissed to this day that I bought this scam]. To this day, Hellgate London remains as the sole reminder of why I should not buy a game on release, and pirate it first, unless there are a shit ton of reviews on it. -Company of Heroes expansion packs. [I bought the original, never even bothered to play its expansions, because I learned from Relic's responsibility issues with games after Dawn of War]. -Fallout NV, that was horrible.
So pretty much, each developer has a checklist from me, and if I have to keep marking things off on how I felt I was fucked over, like Hellgate London and Dawn of War, I will buy less from that individual company, and it will simply reinforce the reason to pirate on initial release dates from other companies.
So far, Blizzard is the only company that really hasn't let me down. Except maybe WoW, my account got stolen, like three years ago, and I only found out now by trying to look-up my character, and finding out that it was deleted, and my password changed, but thats just internet douchbags.
If you want to reduce the amount of copies pirated on release dates of games (or prior), the only real way is to fix shit companies that release shit games with false advertisements like Hellgate London. However, if the developers make an awesome game, then a lot of people will buy them anyways.
The ones who don't are generally going to be the ones who would never buy games in the first place, without the chance to just get them for free.
EDIT: It might be a good idea if developers split their game's releases into multiplayer versions and singleplayer versions, and split the costs accordingly (with multiplayer being more expensive if thats their focus; like 40$ for multiplayer MW3, 20$ for singleplayer). That would probably make me buy some of the call of duties, since I like playing their single players more so than their multiplayer, but would rather not buy the entire package.
On November 30 2011 22:16 LilClinkin wrote: The Witcher 2, a single-player action-RPG (and fantastic game) developed by CD Projeckt, was estimated to have been illegally downloaded over 4.5 million times.
This is disheartening news. For those not familiar, The Witcher 2 is a single-player action-RPG with extremely high production values: Plenty of unique high-resolution art assets, voice acting available in multiple languages, a diverse range of quests and alternative endings. Essentially, TW2 provides the gamut of features that you'd want from a hardcore single-player role-playing experience. Unfortunately, the cost of producing such experiences has skyrocketed compared to 10 years ago, and costs are only going to continue to increase. If pirates continue to leech off the hard work of developers like CD Projeckt, the market for such games is going to crash as the profitability simply will not exist.
Long story short: Those epic 50+ hour experiences you grew up playing will be replaced by episodic, DLC, subscription based, watered-down nonsense. The crux of the problem is, how do you provide incentive for players to pay to play your game? How do you deter piracy?
Enter Dark Souls. Any one who has played Dark Souls (or its predecessor, Demon's Souls), is aware of the unique multiplayer gameplay found within. While they are both predominantly single-player games, you are perpetually connected online via PSN (unless you manually choose not to be) with others who are playing the game. This grants you the option to invade their world and kill them (and be invaded yourself) at any time.
When Dark Souls broke street date by approximately 1 week, a few shrewd pirates jumped at the opportunity to download the game early for free. How did the developers respond? They invaded as level 999 black phantoms every world of every pirate, and slaughtered them repeatedly.
This anecdote sparked within me an idea: Imagine if such justice was dispensed by the user-base of paying players? What if not only the devs, but all honest gamers could invade and slaughter all of the pirates in their own game world? What better way to combat piracy than to empower those who legitimately pay to relentlessly slay and abuse those who would seek a free ride?
This idea can be taken in any number of directions. Post your thoughts and own ideas on player-driven and gameplay-driven DRM methods.
I think the entire piracy discussion is kind of overblown out of proportion. Here's why.
Most of the torrent numbers are not filtered for country from which the request originates. Why is this important? The highest piracy numbers are from countries like India, Russia, China and other countries in Asia/Eastern europe. These countries have traditionally never been the biggest markets for games and the pricing strategy for most of these games has been literally converting the dollar/euro price in the game directly to the local currency. This leads to massively overpriced games (in proportion to the salary of an average individual) and correspondingly lower sales. People pirate games here without any guilt or remorse simply because the games are massively overpriced, and there is very little done here to alleviate the problem.
The point I'm trying to get at is this : How many of those 4.5 million downloads are actually from people who would have otherwise purchased the game? I'm pretty sure the people in the countries that I mentioned were not going to purchase the game in the first place given the atrocious pricing. Given that, I might say that in terms of lost sales, the number is more around 1/5th of the number. Don't get me wrong, its still a significant number. But I'm just saying that without analyzing the data more clearly its hard to say that every pirated copy leads to a lost sale.
Disclaimer : I am not in any way supporting pirating (I have a huge collection of games on steam half of which I haven't even gotten around to playing T_T). I'm just trying to give some perspective on those numbers from my personal experiences with people around me.
On November 30 2011 22:50 ZtOzZ wrote: I think that game developers will slowly stop making the games for PC, since there is so much piracy compared to consoles.
How will that stop anything with my modded wii and 360?
Softmodding a wii and removing traces of it (if you want it repaired) is stupid easy and basically requires an sd card. On another note, I have bought BW twice, Downloaded it at least 5 times, Wc3+TFT bought once, downloaded at least 20-30 times.
On November 30 2011 23:42 daemir wrote: The industry itself is feeding the pirating machine, plenty of good points in this topic.
Something is very, VERY wrong with the product if the pirated version is simpler, easier and more convenient to use than a legally purchased copy.
Pricing on products, especially some electronic vs physical products is downright retarded. Example from a well known, well loved(?) Blizzard Entertainment and none other than Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty:
The day or 2 before the digital game price was announced, it was, if memory serves, very much the release date of the physical box as well. Local shops were pricing it at the 30euros range, give or take a 5, but this time I decided, to hell with a box and all that crap, let's save the planet and not buy useless garbage coming with the box, but instead get a digital copy. And then the day dawns, when the digital copy pricing is revealed, 59.90 euros. For a digital copy. Vs a 29.90 from local store box. Hell, the collectors edition was priced 35.90. ... ... yea, I cancelled the "digital preorder" and legged to the store to buy a box for 29.90 instead.
Wait, what? SC2 was 30 Euro on release in your local store? It's only down to 40 in here, and that's only now, it cost way more on release... That's not how you make loyal customers. Meh.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
My mate, Dangerous Dave, he buys games he pirated after he finishes them. It leads to at least a couple of replays in any case.
Just an example of F'd up pricing. How can you justify shit like this to an end user? How can the customer with common sense understand that a printed, packaged and shipped version costs HALF of what a digital download does.
On December 01 2011 00:18 Kickboxer wrote: I've never heard of someone buying a game after having downloaded and played (finished) it. Ever. I don't know who is spreading these platitudes but stuff like this is hurting any reasonable discussion. Stop kidding yourselves... if you pirate a game you either finish it and forget about it or decide you don't like it. None of those leads to a purchase.
What are you even saying? That anyone who pirates have absolutley no intrest in a sequel for the game they pirated? They have no moral fiber what so ever? Give people some credit.