And the Most-Pirated Game of 2010 Is...

[mad825]

do they mention how it was tallied up? eh, I don't care, peers can be spoofed and there could be re-downloaders. did they also include infected copies that were unusable?

I wouldn't claim the statistics absolute but within a near margin. in any case, it's very unsurprising.

 

[Delusibeta]

Those of you saying that piracy is a minor problem with few real effects should remember that there are the superstar development teams who make high-end AAA+ titles, and then there's everybody else. An extremely small number of games account for most of the budgets AND profits in the game industry: clearly something like Black Ops makes crazy money for Activision despite the rampant piracy of it. Below that level, though, things are very different, and most dev teams are struggling to survive. Nothing compares to the feeling of making a smallish game that gets great reviews, has everybody buzzing... then realizing that despite this it's being stolen left right and centre by your 'fans', and the return on your investment is so low that you probably won't make payroll.

I agree there's a certain over-selling of piracy from some (large, corporate) quarters, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a plague with very real effects.

Cheers

Colin

The problem is that piracy has existed since day dot, and will continue to exist regardless of what lawmakers do about it. Honestly? Piracy stats should be ignored. I wouldn't be surprised that had there been zero piracy, badly selling games (such as Alan Wake) would still sell badly.

If you can come up with a way that makes the retail version more attractive than the pirated version, good for you: just don't expect any large change in your sale figures.

 

[Vhite]

Will PC gamers get achievment?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I guarantee you this: the first time you ever put blood, sweat and tears into making something good, put it up for sale, then see it stolen by 95% of the people who claim to be your fans, your views on piracy will harden. It's literally a visceral shock to realize just how blindly two-faced a lot of these people are, mainly IMO because they have no idea what it means to produce something rather than just consume.

Cheers

Colin

Each of those games sold a couple million copies on PC too.

Shitting on your fans, because unrelated people don't give you money, is the most retarded thing anyone working in an entertainment industry can do.

I refer you to my above post, sir. The games industry is more than high-end AAA+ games that sell millions of copies. And I stand by my argument that if you get dozens of hours of pleasure out of someone's creative work, but refuse to pay the (usually quite reasonable) price they're asking in return, there's a certain cognitive dissonance in calling yourself a 'fan'...

Cheers

Colin

I've had quite a bit more than "dozens" of hours out of the original Star Wars over the years. That wouldn't make it worth $60 on its own, in a hypothetical situation where Lucas decided to charge that much. If you consider $60 a reasonable price for a videogame, you are quite a bit removed from the real world.

Well, that's just not true. Alan Wake, for instance, did not sell particularly well, and they obviously have had trouble getting funding for their next game. And you can't honestly tell me that you think fifty to sixty dollars is an exorbitant price for something that a group of people spent years meticulously crafting. Or maybe you can. Maybe you are that selfish. I don't know.

If used game sales and piracy cost the industry roughly the same amount as each other, well, that's double the loss of sales. I'm sure that if you put your mind to it you can see why they might not like that. And yes, they are trying new things that are not working. But doesn't it tell you something that these companies are spending millions of dollars developing drm, and marketing their new strategies, all the while pissing off consumers? They do this because piracy and used game sales is a problem for them. It costs them money.

I'm sorry, but $60 is not a reasonable price for an entertainment product. For that price, I could spend the day at Disney World or Bush Gardens instead. The equivalent product here is the DVD, which goes for something between $10 and $30, depending on how recent the film in question is and how much it comes with aside from a single cut of the film. Games may be a longer form option, so let's compare it to something that actually tends to be longer: season boxsets of TV series on DVD. Those tend to go for between $20 and $40, and are generally a minimum of 12 hours long -- in other words, much longer than the average game is today, and spread out over a larger number of discs to boot.

So why do videogames cost so much more? Greed, pure and simple. These companies piss off their customers in the process of squeezing more money out of them because they know that, whatever the internet petition might say, they will come crawling back when the next game in the series comes out. And the beauty of it is that they have no real reason to lower prices, since they've managed to set the price to the same rate across the board, leaving customers to either pay it, pirate it, or buy it used. Since piracy is illegal, they have no problem demonizing that instead of lowering prices to compete; used sales are more problematic, but if some of the discussions on this forum are to be believed, they've managed to demonize those too, and are refusing to lower prices in order to get closer to what the consumer is willing to spend. I really don't see how you can support that, or accuse me of being selfish for pointing out how greedy these publishers are.

 

[EHKOS]

*looks at Dead Rising 2 being dled*
>.>
I was surprised Fallout New Vegas wasn't in there. I would have thought the train tracks of many peoples minds would have been "If they don't fix their bugs I'll just download it".

 

[OANST]

Those of you saying that piracy is a minor problem with few real effects should remember that there are the superstar development teams who make high-end AAA+ titles, and then there's everybody else. An extremely small number of games account for most of the budgets AND profits in the game industry: clearly something like Black Ops makes crazy money for Activision despite the rampant piracy of it. Below that level, though, things are very different, and most dev teams are struggling to survive. Nothing compares to the feeling of making a smallish game that gets great reviews, has everybody buzzing... then realizing that despite this it's being stolen left right and centre by your 'fans', and the return on your investment is so low that you probably won't make payroll.

I agree there's a certain over-selling of piracy from some (large, corporate) quarters, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a plague with very real effects.

Cheers

Colin

The problem is that piracy has existed since day dot, and will continue to exist regardless of what lawmakers do about it. Honestly? Piracy stats are static and should be ignored. I wouldn't be surprised that had there been zero piracy, badly selling games would still sell badly.

If you can come up with a way that makes the retail version more attractive than the pirated version, good for you: just don't expect any change in your sale figures.

So, piracy should be ignored because it's always been around? Oh, okay. For that matter, we should just ignore rape and murder, too. I mean, it will always exist. We should just accept that a certain percentage of people will be raped or murdered and get on with our lives already.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Yeah it is totally sad how piracy drove all the companies on that list out of business...oh wait it didn't.

I guarantee you this: the first time you ever put blood, sweat and tears into making something good, put it up for sale, then see it stolen by 95% of the people who claim to be your fans, your views on piracy will harden. It's literally a visceral shock to realize just how blindly two-faced a lot of these people are, mainly IMO because they have no idea what it means to produce something rather than just consume.

Cheers

Colin

Maybe instead of relying on an obsolete system that of distribution monopoly and information scarcity you can come up with a way to make money that leverages cost free, widespread information distribution.

 

[Bretty]

Look at how much higher the rate of piracy is on PC. Entitled geeks will steal anything if they feel they deserve it.

I heard it is annoying to pirate XBOX and Wii games?

Oh well...

I use these metrics to determine game of the year.

 

[teisjm]

Look at how much higher the rate of piracy is on PC. Entitled geeks will steal anything if they feel they deserve it.

I think the higher rate is cause it's a lot easier, or at least more commonly know how to pirate stuff on the PC, than on consoles, at least the PS3 to my knowledge is hard to pirate stuff on.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

I find it quite interesting how the piracy rate on the PC is only about three times as high as the rate per console. I say only, because pirating a PC game is hardly a challenge, the chance of getting caught is slim to none, and no modifications to the platform are necessary to get the game to run. So either the console crowd is comprised of more pirates than previously thought, or the PC market is not being brought down by pirates.

 

[OANST]

I guarantee you this: the first time you ever put blood, sweat and tears into making something good, put it up for sale, then see it stolen by 95% of the people who claim to be your fans, your views on piracy will harden. It's literally a visceral shock to realize just how blindly two-faced a lot of these people are, mainly IMO because they have no idea what it means to produce something rather than just consume.

Cheers

Colin

Each of those games sold a couple million copies on PC too.

Shitting on your fans, because unrelated people don't give you money, is the most retarded thing anyone working in an entertainment industry can do.

I refer you to my above post, sir. The games industry is more than high-end AAA+ games that sell millions of copies. And I stand by my argument that if you get dozens of hours of pleasure out of someone's creative work, but refuse to pay the (usually quite reasonable) price they're asking in return, there's a certain cognitive dissonance in calling yourself a 'fan'...

Cheers

Colin

I've had quite a bit more than "dozens" of hours out of the original Star Wars over the years. That wouldn't make it worth $60 on its own, in a hypothetical situation where Lucas decided to charge that much. If you consider $60 a reasonable price for a videogame, you are quite a bit removed from the real world.

Well, that's just not true. Alan Wake, for instance, did not sell particularly well, and they obviously have had trouble getting funding for their next game. And you can't honestly tell me that you think fifty to sixty dollars is an exorbitant price for something that a group of people spent years meticulously crafting. Or maybe you can. Maybe you are that selfish. I don't know.

If used game sales and piracy cost the industry roughly the same amount as each other, well, that's double the loss of sales. I'm sure that if you put your mind to it you can see why they might not like that. And yes, they are trying new things that are not working. But doesn't it tell you something that these companies are spending millions of dollars developing drm, and marketing their new strategies, all the while pissing off consumers? They do this because piracy and used game sales is a problem for them. It costs them money.

I'm sorry, but $60 is not a reasonable price for an entertainment product. For that price, I could spend the day at Disney World or Bush Gardens instead. The equivalent product here is the DVD, which goes for something between $10 and $30, depending on how recent the film in question is and how much it comes with aside from a single cut of the film. Games may be a longer form option, so let's compare it to something that actually tends to be longer: season boxsets of TV series on DVD. Those tend to go for between $20 and $40, and are generally a minimum of 12 hours long -- in other words, much longer than the average game is today, and spread out over a larger number of discs to boot.

So why do videogames cost so much more? Greed, pure and simple. These companies piss off their customers in the process of squeezing more money out of them because they know that, whatever the internet petition might say, they will come crawling back when the next game in the series comes out. And the beauty of it is that they have no real reason to lower prices, since they've managed to set the price to the same rate across the board, leaving customers to either pay it, pirate it, or buy it used. Since piracy is illegal, they have no problem demonizing that instead of lowering prices to compete; used sales are more problematic, but if some of the discussions on this forum are to be believed, they've managed to demonize those too, and are refusing to lower prices in order to get closer to what the consumer is willing to spend. I really don't see how you can support that, or accuse me of being selfish for pointing out how greedy these publishers are.

The dvd is absolutely not an equivalent product. For one thing, I think you're buying your dvd box sets used, because your idea of their price point is pretty low. Also, you are talking about a medium that in almost all cases has already made their money back with profit before it ever comes out. Theatrical releases for movies, and advertising revenue for tv make up the majority of what those mediums make. Video games don't have that.

 

[zHellas]

It's true that not every download is a lost sale. While it's a safe bet that some of the pirates would have bought the game were there no other choice, there's no way of knowing how low (or high) that percentage would be.

I would approximate 0.2%.

Ah. So you're a pirate.

Talk about jumping to conclusions.

Am I wrong?

For the record, you're wrong.

Ah. So you're a liar.

And you're a troll.

OT:

Well when a game is that damn popular obviously it's gonna be pirated.

Also I'm suprised so many people pirated Dante's Inferno.

Not insulting the game, but it doesn't seem like the type of game you'd want to pirate.

Halo: Reach does, and yet it's quite low on the list.

 

[Tomster595]

Wow, Bad Company 2 in second place. I feel bad for DICE. They don't deserve to get tripped off like that at all.. I'm somewhat less sympathetic about Cod though.

 

[OANST]

It's true that not every download is a lost sale. While it's a safe bet that some of the pirates would have bought the game were there no other choice, there's no way of knowing how low (or high) that percentage would be.

I would approximate 0.2%.

Ah. So you're a pirate.

Talk about jumping to conclusions.

Am I wrong?

For the record, you're wrong.

Ah. So you're a liar.

And you're a troll.

Looks like we are both right.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

This doesn't suprise me in the least, but I'm suprised the top five didn't include MW2.

 

[OANST]

LOL @ Alan Wake. Good. I hope Remedy has learned a valuable lesson here. Don't announce a game for multiple platforms then yank one just before launch. That thing would've sold very well on PC. Instead, it sells a little over the number of times it was pirated. Priceless.

Other people's misfortune is so hilarious, eh?

 

[maantren]

Those of you saying that piracy is a minor problem with few real effects should remember that there are the superstar development teams who make high-end AAA+ titles, and then there's everybody else. An extremely small number of games account for most of the budgets AND profits in the game industry: clearly something like Black Ops makes crazy money for Activision despite the rampant piracy of it. Below that level, though, things are very different, and most dev teams are struggling to survive. Nothing compares to the feeling of making a smallish game that gets great reviews, has everybody buzzing... then realizing that despite this it's being stolen left right and centre by your 'fans', and the return on your investment is so low that you probably won't make payroll.

I agree there's a certain over-selling of piracy from some (large, corporate) quarters, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a plague with very real effects.

Cheers

Colin

The problem is that piracy has existed since day dot, and will continue to exist regardless of what lawmakers do about it. Honestly? Piracy stats should be ignored. I wouldn't be surprised that had there been zero piracy, badly selling games (such as Alan Wake) would still sell badly.

If you can come up with a way that makes the retail version more attractive than the pirated version, good for you: just don't expect any change in your sale figures.

Piracy has existed for the whole life of videogames, but in many different forms and with many different effects on the business equation of making a game. Torrenting, for example, enables piracy on a completely different level than doing tape-to-tape copies of Commodore 64 games in 1987 did. At the same time, you have the expansion in both paying audience and videogame budgets, which interact to create hot and cool spots in the business equation.

At the moment the huge, established franchises which cost tens of millions per title and dominate sales are good business propositions able to absorb piracy and make profit. But games just below that (especially new IP like Alan Wake) usually aren't. Then below that there's a sweet spot in lower-tier licensed properties, then below that there's a murder spot where indie devs go to die, then below THAT there's surprising opportunity in 1-5 man teams doing things like iPhone games, mainly because their costs are so low.

If you decide that piracy will always exist and nothing should be done about it, on the current pattern you're effectively saying that the games industry should be locked into mega-budget franchises, licensed games, and tiny indie devs working second jobs. Piracy isn't going to go away, but working out better ways to counteract it will help the industry avoid going all the way down the road of rational, anti-risk conservatism that says everything should be either Black Ops, Ben 10, or Minecraft.

Cheers

Colin

 

[Tohru_Readman]

I loved Alan Wake and it really annoys me when I hear so many people pirated the game. I understand not everyone wants or has the money to paid for a game when it first comes but give it a few months or just rent it. There is no reason to pirate, especially when it comes to the titles above. Since you will be able to pick them up cheaper in a matter of months or sometimes even sooner. Take for example Need for Speed Hot Pursuit you can already get it for about £25.00 in the United Kingdom and it only came out about a month ago.