No Demo's, putting quantity over quality, not keeping up with the times committing to steam-like platforms, and when they do they charge the same price as they do for a CD with all the tangible items that cost money to produce.
Game developers are big contributors to the rise of piracy.
Also 4 pirated for every 1 sold means first and foremost that you can't keep selling games for 60 bucks. How many of those people wouldn't bother with pirating if the game costed a more reasonable sum i.e. 30 dollars? If this isn't a prime example of free market/supply demand models working the way they supposed to i dunno what is. Publishers just use piracy as a scapegoat and an excuse for their inability to adapt and their archaic business models.
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.
It's quite irrelevant how many times a game is downloaded. It's actually totally irrelevant. What's relevant is how many games you sell. Do you sell enough games to break even/make a profit or do you not? That's the question that should be asked but developers are so fucking thickheaded that they instead look at the amount of downloaded games and declare all of those people criminals.
Why not just say "what can we do to make those pirates into legitimate consumers"? Sure, you can't turn all of them around, perhaps you can't even turn most of them around but you can try. DRM and other stupid shit only fucks up for the legitimate costumer anyway.
It pisses me off when developers and publishers keep whining about how many times their game is downloaded and yet never answer the question "did you sell enough games?".
No, actually what's relevant is whether or not they made sufficient profit to justify making this game in particular compared to developing another game that might have been easier to develop. Do you know why Call of Duty games are basically the same game every time without any real changes in gameplay? Because it's easy and cheap to make a new game with basic changes, and they know they'll sell copies. Piracy kills innovation.
On December 02 2011 06:05 Sfydjklm wrote: No Demo's, putting quantity over quality, not keeping up with the times committing to steam-like platforms, and when they do they charge the same price as they do for a CD with all the tangible items that cost money to produce.
Game developers are big contributors to the rise of piracy.
On December 02 2011 06:05 Sfydjklm wrote: No Demo's, putting quantity over quality, not keeping up with the times committing to steam-like platforms, and when they do they charge the same price as they do for a CD with all the tangible items that cost money to produce.
Game developers are big contributors to the rise of piracy.
What a cop out.
I buy my games. But me having my principles has nothing to do with gaming industry inability to adapt to modern market even despite such spectacular examples to follow as Riot, Blizzard or Valve.
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.
It's quite irrelevant how many times a game is downloaded. It's actually totally irrelevant. What's relevant is how many games you sell. Do you sell enough games to break even/make a profit or do you not? That's the question that should be asked but developers are so fucking thickheaded that they instead look at the amount of downloaded games and declare all of those people criminals.
Why not just say "what can we do to make those pirates into legitimate consumers"? Sure, you can't turn all of them around, perhaps you can't even turn most of them around but you can try. DRM and other stupid shit only fucks up for the legitimate costumer anyway.
It pisses me off when developers and publishers keep whining about how many times their game is downloaded and yet never answer the question "did you sell enough games?".
No, actually what's relevant is whether or not they made sufficient profit to justify making this game in particular compared to developing another game that might have been easier to develop. Do you know why Call of Duty games are basically the same game every time without any real changes in gameplay? Because it's easy and cheap to make a new game with basic changes, and they know they'll sell copies. Piracy kills innovation.
Must be the reason for all those CSI clones, Big Brother clones, Jersey Shore clones, and so forth. Businessmen kill innovation.
I think like max 30% of people who pirate games would by them if they couldn't pirate them. It is silly to say that 1 pirated game = 1 unsold copy.
Still, this is a huge problem and even more huge in the music industry I feel. Adding chargeable DLC will only punish the non-pirating players though, and I am disgusted by the greed that some game companies have in terms of DLC. The sad thing is it is just getting worse.
On December 02 2011 05:47 Crushinator wrote: I pirate games all the time, and I do not feel guilty at all. I did not steal anything from anyone or hurt them in any way. I ocassionally buy a game I dont have to, but not often. I bought Skyrim recently because I liked it and wanted convenient updates. However I think Portal 2 is the best game ever made and I pirated that. I never bothered to actually buy it because I'm just that lazy. I do not feel I have to make excuses because not supporting something is not the same as harming it, in my eyes but here are some anyway: I'm poor, I'm lazy and I care very little.
Sorry, but this bothers me more than a bit. I've tried to stay out of this thread too much, but I just want to say my bit.
This sense of entitlement is really irritating. There are a couple reasons I can understand pirating, like if the game isn't available anymore or you live somewhere where it will never be released, though I doubt you live in like Uzbjeziaersisdstan.
However, if you can't afford something that's available, what makes you think you should still get it? You're not entitled to everything you want. The digital age has made it easy to "steal"/pirate a multitude of things, everything from music, to games, to movies, to information, to personal data. Yet all these things you try to rationalize away because this new type of theft isn't really theft and therefore you're doing no wrong?
No. You're still taking something that's not yours, that you didn't work for, give money for, exchange goods for, and in the end you don't deserve. It's not yours just because you can take it. Is this a moral question? Sure, but avoiding it isn't going to do you any favors in the future.
People today (at least in America) have it in their mind that they should just get everything. It's a spoiled generation, who never learned the value of a dollar or a hard days work. You keep taking the easy way out and expecting to get the world for putting forward the least amount of effort? I have no pity or remorse for you when you get smacked in the face with a big case of the real world.
DRM is the dumbest thing developers have ever come up with...the only thing its done is cause headaches for legit customers. Its done absolutely nothing to curb piracy...I can still go out and dl any game I want in a few hours. Like people said developers need to focus on making their games more accessible instead of trying to stop piracy which they will never do. Steam for example...my game purchases have gone up like 200% in the past year solely because of steam. All of the deals they have + easy accessability. This is what developers need to focus on.
On November 30 2011 22:24 Interloper wrote: Many people who pirate do so because they want to try a game out. If they enjoy the game, they will buy it too support the developer. 4,5 million downloads becomes a useless figure since you can not in any way know how many of those 4,5 million purchased the game afterwards. I feel that piracy is a good way to get rid of shitty developers how make crappy games only for the sake of making money (Well all developers want to make money ofc, but i hope you get my point). Good developers get the money they need and then some. Piracy will not be the end of gaming.
(just found this thread, sorry if this has been covered a lot, just felt like sharing)
This is exactly my take on piracy. Devs don't invest time in making good demos so the next best thing is to download the game illegally and juge for myself if it's a worthy purchase after an hour or two of gaming. This is exactly what I did with Skyrim. I played Oblivion (which I had bought) and didn't like it. Thankfully it was one of the steam deals (more like steal) and didn't bother losing such a small amount. I still played through it but it was a less than good experience.
In comes skyrim. I priated it a week after release, played it until the first mega early fight (don't want to spoil just in case) and knew this was a game I'd play a lot and enjoyed. I immediately bought the game and transferred my saved games. Without piracy, I wouldn't have purchased this game because of the previous iteration of the series.
Of course, not everyone is as honest as me and most who pirate games won't buy it even if they enjoy it. But let's think for a moment; If the game isn't downloadable illegally, would they buy it or just not play it? I think the latter would be the option for many.
Piracy hurts and helps the gaming community at the same time, unfortunately, when the big companies try to fight it they end up hurting the gaming community more than preventing piracy. At this time, the popular response to piracy is to not offer the game on PC or offer parts of games through DLC which results in us getting games that are greatly watered down and of poor quality.
Hopefully the smaller game makers out there end up proving to the "big shots" that anti-piracy is not a solution, or at least, not in the form they currently fight it.
The Witcher 2 has been downloaded a ton of times, but still CDProjekt is sticking to its no-DRM policy.
This is why they are to be respected so much more than any other game developer out there, especially when we look at what the big companies have been doing more and more (I'm pointing at you despicable Ubisoft, yes I am).
This is why I have bought a copy of both The Witcher 1 and 2, CD Projekt are the only serious guys in a world where people make you suffer for having paid something while the pirate can enjoy the games in a pleasant way without enduring the stupid "always online" DRM shit etc...
I pirate console ports but not games where PC is first hand. TW2 is such a game and it's just sad it get pirated like this. There is really no good reason why piracy is good or not bad. Doesn't matter whether the game has DRM (TW2 didn't), developed for PC first (like TW2...), a demo or classic PC games stuff are used to have like free content (DLC) (TW2 had this...). Every single game gets mass pirated on the PC.
I couldn't care less for the shitty FPS that are mass produced for the consoles by the big companies that have a strong opinion of piracy and that would poop on every PC gamers face regardless of piracy. But I do care of classic PC genres that are clearly dying, like turnbased strategy games/4x sci-fi games, action RPG's heck even RTS! These are the only reason why I'm still playing on PC primarily and it looks like the market for these games will shrink to obscurity and we'll only have indie games with (usually) great ides but 1k bugs and insufficient funds to develop a quality title.
On December 02 2011 05:01 Runnin wrote: If you think the price of a game is unreasonable then don't buy it. I don't own a Lamborghini, not because I don't want one, but because I think the price is unreasonable. Porting off a console may be lazy, but it is not fraudulent - it is simply a PC game with a poor UI. Calling it fraudulent is hilariously middle-school-girl caliber dramatic.
You're right that it's damn near impossible to stop pirating and that DRM is largely ineffective. Trying to turn the tables and blame developers for pirating is laughable though - it's time to drop the pirates as Robin Hood myth.
I hope that someday you ask your boss for a raise and he tells you "don't you make a livable wage already?". If a game is good enough for you to play it, then pay for it, whether or not they make their budget back is irrelevant. You aren't entitled to a game just because the company made some money.
THIS
The extent people will go to in order to justify piracy is hilarious.
I find it hard to believe most of those pirating games are doing it cause they just want to try it out, or cause they're rebelling against a corrupt establishment.
They're doing it cause they can get something for free and get away with it.
Obviously it doesnt bother people as much when the crappy new Harry Potter game or one of the other 100 film-to-game cash-ins EA releases every year gets pirated.
But when its happening to companies like CD Projekt who produce a quality product and are one of the few still willing to make games like The Witcher 2, it really shows how bulls**t the attempts to justify piracy are. I wonder how many of those who pirated The Witcher 2 are amongst the people who bitch about developers not making any good role-playing games anymore.
But when its happening to companies like CD Projekt who produce a quality product and are one of the few still willing to make games like The Witcher 2, it really shows how bulls**t the attempts to justify piracy are. I wonder how many of those who pirated The Witcher 2 are amongst the people who bitch about developers not making any good role-playing games anymore.
No doubt that CD projekt got shafted(judging from the comments never played witcher myself). But the people who claim that as their motivation aren't trying to come up with excuse- how can they possibly know that Witcher is good before they have played it? And the people who can't afford the game- what's the harm in them downloading it? They wouldn't have bought it otherwise anyway.
A game being overpriced actually makes me want to pirate it even if I wasn't interested in playing it in the first place (and I don't mean overpriced as in "I don't want to pay 60 USD for it", I mean overpriced as in "Why the fuck are you charging me 100 USD when everyone else pays 60 USD and the median income in my country is only 2/3rds of your country?!?")
I do respect the honest developers such as CD Projekt that are trying to do PC gaming right, I'd never pirate from them since they make awesome games and do stuff such as the 'Fair Price Package'. No such feelings for companies such as Activision though, the only thing that stops me from pirating their games is that I feel that my usage cap is worth more than their crap.
I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
I rarely buy games but only when i KNOW the game is going to be good and worth while (ex. Skyrim, Uncharted 3, SC2 HoTS) will i spend my money. Most of the time i can just bug my friends who buys the game when they are on sale. sure the games are a few months old but like i said if i really wanted the game i will buy it.
Simply put, people who pirate a shit ton of video games are meh to me. They might feel cool for saving 60$ but whatever.
On December 02 2011 08:27 XerrolAvengerII wrote: I pirated witcher 2 and deus ex human revolution, and after playing some of those games I am hugely thankful that I didn't buy either of them, because if I had I would have raged my head off at how much they irritated me in terms of performance, controls, or mechanics.
Pirating is like free insurance for the gamer... if A) game runs on the machine - respectably B) game is also fun / not-irritating then C) buy the game...
Piracy protects the gaming consumer from bad game designers and distributors by protecting their money and allowing them to invest into the games and companies of worth! The gaming market has been crutching company names and flashy advertising to sell games, even when the quality has been slowly dropping. Piracy is an "abusable" tool that gamers should use to help them decide which game designers they want to encourage...
If you want more good games, you buy the games from good companies. Consider it natural selection to an extent.
And like i mentioned above, Piracy is an abusable tool, it SHOULD be used to inform gamers of quality... although, many people ABUSE it in order to keep unlicensed copies of software.
Nuff said.
Piracy isn't a tool for anything, it's illegal and people need to stop trying to justify stealing.
The internet allows us to share ideas, and piracy is just a name for the effect of this sharing of ideas on our outdated societal systems, monetary, economical, political, etc.
Unfortunately we still live with outdated systems that cannot keep up with other developments, so for now what we have to do is simple. Support those developers who deserve it.
EPT
