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

[Arehexes]

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 a moron, assuming you know someone just because he made a comment you don't like. You sound like a presumptuous moron to be honest.

 

[TheMariner]

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.

Yes, let's indeed talk about a TV series or a movie. What's involved there? You need to write the story, film the story, and then touch everything up in post, adding special effects here and some extra sounds they couldn't get in filming there. That sounds so much harder than creating an entire world from the ground up, building character models, animating them which usually involves heavy amounts of motion capture nowadays, coding all the physics (assuming they're using a pre-existing engine), coding and programing the models to act out the story, keeping the visual quality to the set near photo-realistic 1080p standards of modern gaming. Then they also have to do everything a movie requires; writing the story and score, recording voice actors and musicians, and doing final touch-ups afterwards.

[sarcasm]So yeah, I totally see where you're coming from. Video games require the exact same amount of time, effort, and money as a TV show or movie and these developers are rather greedy for assuming they can charge us more.[/sarcasm] TV series and movies have other sources of income than consumers. TV series get money from the station they air on and movies get a lot of money at the box office.

Lower sale prices would likely not diminish piracy numbers. Most pirates I know would torrent the game regardless of its price. You can sit up their on your high horse casting brash judgments on people you don't know at all or you can attempt to understand the fact that these people are in the game to make money, and they aim to do just that. If they're greedy for expecting compensation for their efforts then so be it.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

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.

Yes, let's indeed talk about a TV series or a movie. What's involved there? You need to write the story, film the story, and then touch everything up in post, adding special effects here and some extra sounds they couldn't get in filming there. That sounds so much harder than creating an entire world from the ground up, building character models, animating them which usually involves heavy amounts of motion capture nowadays, coding all the physics (assuming they're using a pre-existing engine), coding and programing the models to act out the story, keeping the visual quality to the set near photo-realistic 1080p standards of modern gaming. Then they also have to do everything a movie requires; writing the story and score, recording voice actors and musicians, and doing final touch-ups afterwards.

[sarcasm]So yeah, I totally see where you're coming from. Video games require the exact same amount of time, effort, and money as a TV show or movie and these developers are rather greedy for assuming they can charge us more.[/sarcasm] TV series and movies have other sources of income than consumers. TV series get money from the station they air on and movies get a lot of money at the box office.

Lower sale prices would likely not diminish piracy numbers. Most pirates I know would torrent the game regardless of its price. You can sit up their on your high horse casting brash judgments on people you don't know at all or you can attempt to understand the fact that these people are in the game to make money, and they aim to do just that. If they're greedy for expecting compensation for their efforts then so be it.

Read a little further into the discussion. I've already established that the average cost of developing a videogame was around $20 million in 2010, while the average cost of a film was $59 million in 2003, the most recent date I could find a solid figure for. For reference, the average cost of a videogame at that point would have been somewhere between $1 and $6 million. Estimates of the current average cost of a film seem to range from $69 million to $100 million, but the MPAA no longer publishes that statistic, which makes it tough to say for certain. So you're right, video games aren't comparable in production costs to film; they're actually much, much cheaper. So yeah, it really is greedy to charge $60 a pop for something that is so much cheaper to produce than its nearest equivalent product.

Edit: Actually, I just found a <link=http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/07/business/fi-movies7>solid source claiming an average cost of $100.3 million to make a film back in 2006. The average cost of a videogame in 2005, which, admittedly isn't 2006, but should be close enough for this purpose, was all of $5 million. Yet a videogame would still set you back $60 compared to a film's $20 or less, depending on how you decided to view it. So yeah, I feel completely justified in calling the publishers greedy.

Edit Edit: Finally, if lowering prices wouldn't prevent certain people from pirating the games, nothing will, and they do not count as a lost sale. Those are the people who won't pay for it no matter what; why punish the paying customers to try to bring in those assholes?

 

[Weaver]

The piracy rate on PC is just sad, and then ppl wonder why we end up getting poor support and shitty ports.

The PC also has a way bigger install base than the consoles. Even though I know people won't believe this, the world is a lot bigger place than just North America. In some of Europe and Asia (except japan) PC has bigger numbers.

 

[wiredk]

So wait wait,a ll the shitty games that focused on multiplayer made it into the top 5? You know, the games you can't play online pirated?

Awesome. I think someone's boosting their numbers to make themselves sound more popular than they are.

 

[jakefongloo]

At first i was going to pirate Black Ops, you know stick it to the man. But then i realised i didn't even want to expend my bandwidth on it...

Aww yea stick to him show him you're the boss! you know how much of a tool you sound right now?

 

[Lunar Templar]

Sissies. March into a store, look the associate in the eye and demand to buy Kirby's Epic Yarn like a MAN.

PREACH IT!!
and i wanna be there to watch you trip over your own words trying to do that with a straight face

 

[BabyRaptor]

Games that focus on sigle player don't have a high replay value.

This is simply not true. Replayability has a ton of factors in it that vary from game to game and also person to person.

 

[Vibhor]

Ugh
Pirates have pretty bad choice for games to pirate

 

[Daedalus1942]

I wish i had pirated Mass effect 2. Biggest waste of $110 on a CE ever...
These people had such insight. I wish I had seen it coming.
-Tabs<3-

 

[jakefongloo]

Some day some game designer will come up with the magic DRM that works so well it'll put a stop to pirating for at least 6 months maybe JUST maybe the grinch will see his heart grow 3x that day and lower the prices for games for the rest of us.

 

[Daedalus1942]

Ugh
Pirates have pretty bad choice for games to pirate

I know right?
No mention of Amnesia: the Dark Descent, or Fallout New Vegas anywhere.
-Tabs<3-

 

[Laze]

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.

Just a theory - single-player only (or at least single-player oriented, meaning existent but unpopular multiplayer) games like Dante's Inferno are more popular to pirate because stripping keychecks and DRM mechanisms out of local files is much, much easier to do than fooling some actively patched multiplayer server into thinking that you have a legitimate copy of the game.

In layman's terms - it's much harder to pirate and play a multiplayer game (like Starcraft) online than it is to pirate a single-player game and play it on your computer with no needed Internet communication.

(DISCLAIMER: I'm not a pirate!)

EDIT: This also applies to consoles, I would imagine, even though I used the word "computer"

 

[Nemesis729]

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

....No.. Its just easier, if it was just as easy to pirate for consoles as it was fro pc people would be doing it just as much

 

[Firia]

Well those numbers for PC suck but its good knowing I'm NOT one of those numbers. Never have pirated a game and never will.

Your words + Your Avatar = Total Success. xD

I've pirated a few things in the past, but I'm mostly cleaned up now. I use open source software when I can, and I own only a ps3, so I can only buy the games I want. No piracy there.

 

[geizr]

And yet the Humble Indie Bundle also raised money in the millions, despite an average contribution of under ten dollars. Yes, there are some people who will always pirate, no matter what. However, these people are absolutely not lost sales, because we've already demonstrated that they wouldn't pay for it no matter what the cost is. There's also plenty of people who are willing to pay, but not anywhere near the established price. You've even illustrated my point -- the standard price point is too high, but there's basically two options to get the game cheaper: pirate it, or buy it used. The publishers look at both cases and say that they're hurting their revenue and need to be stopped, when in fact it's a resounding cry that $60+ is too high for what they're selling. My whole point here is not that piracy is acceptable, but rather that it's not as big a deal as the content providers claim it is, and is instead a scapegoat used to avoid facing the fact that they charge more for their product than the market will bear.

If the market can not bear the price of a game and the company can not sell sufficient copies at a price the market will bear such to balance the cost-revenue equation for that game, then there is no choice but to cease production of such a game until better methods of balancing the equation can be found.

It is difficult for me to buy the argument simply because the pirate has illegally obtained a copy of a game without paying. It would be one thing if people determine the game is too expensive, and so, they don't purchase it and don't obtain a copy of it. That would definitely be a sale that would not have happened. But that is not what pirates do. They decide not to purchase the game but obtain a copy anyway. This is a sale that should have occurred but did not. But, then to further go on to make rationalizations that it's the game developer/publisher's fault for charging too much just strikes me as making a child's argument("I want what I want, and you better give it to me; or, I'll just take it anyway"). In my opinion, no amount of rationalization or argument justifies such action or gives sufficient reason to deflect the entirety of blame toward the game developer/publisher. That just strikes me as trying to evade responsibility for one's own actions.

 

[ZephrC]

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.

Actually, Shamus had an article here once that talked about an indie developer that had messed around with a bunch of different kinds of DRM, and they had estimated that they gained one sale for every thousand pirates they prevented.

So that number was probably too high.

Problem: Indie games, especially the sort the have little "experiments" with DRM, aren't drawing the same attention as mega-release games. As such, there simply aren't as many people willing to buy it in the first place. An experiment like this is simply there to prove a point, but that point has to include the fact that the numbers are not to scale.

Look at Black Ops. This isn't some "indie developer" making a "niche game." This isn't an experiment to see what DRM does, where people participating in the experiment are likely aware that something like that is going on. This is a game that the market shows people effin' want. And, as such, it didn't come with an indie price tag.

This all-or-nothing crap is what has to stop. Someone may not be willing to pay $60 on launch day, but they may be willing to pay $45 a few months later. Now, since there's a free version that's easy to get, they pay $0. That is lost revenue. Not a lost "full price" sale, no, but a lost sale.

There is a period between Launch Day and the sale of the first batch of used copies. Publishers can still make reduced-price sales during that period. Piracy largely eliminates that period. So, you can add those losses to the 1:1,000 launch-price losses. Now you're getting a more realistic picture.

The problem? It's impossible to prove any non-sale was a lost sale. So what's to be done? We rely on common sense. Which of the following is more plausible?:

1. That someone with absolutely no interest in ever paying any amount of money for a product is suddenly going to want it simply because it's free? (Unlikely. If they're interested in having it, they're indicating they'd spend at least a little to get it. If they have absolutely no interest, they wouldn't even think to download it.)

2. That someone with some interest in the product, but perhaps not full-price interest, was instead sidetracked by the presence of an illegal, but free version, resulting in at least the lost of a reduced-price sale. (Far more likely, given what we know about people and their buying habits.)

Well, I'll grant you that the one in a thousand thing is probably not particularly accurate, but you seem to have a funny idea of how piracy works. Most pirates do purchase games. They pirate when they're broke or unsure if they'll like the game, not because they're trying to be internet cool. That's just a few vocal idiots.

Speaking as an ex-pirate (It's been about a decade since my last act of piracy.) I can say for sure that pirates all download waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more games than they'd ever seriously consider paying money for anyway. They can play around for a bit with a game they'd never consider buying, or try a game they think they might like but probably wouldn't risk paying real money for. It really sucks for a game like Alan Wake that desperately needed the sales and was just interesting enough that it might have pulled in enough to make a difference, but that really is the exception. Even for Alan Wake it probably wouldn't have made a difference even if there was some way to end all piracy. The vast majority of pirates have a game budget and pirate to play more games then they can or will pay for.

Also, used games start turning up long before the price goes down, so I'm not sure why you brought that up.

Anyway, even all that's ignoring the fact that most pirates are from countries that don't give a crap about piracy anyway, so there's really nothing we could do about it. Are you going to convince Russia to crack down on piracy?

Really, I'd love to give those games all those sales. I'm not trying to encourage piracy. It's theft, plain and simple, and the developers do deserve all the money they could have gotten if they sold those copies. I just think it will never happen no matter what we do. There's no money to be made in ending piracy, and I suspect that the big publishers are spending more money trying to end theft then they're making in increased sales from the effort. It'd probably be better if we all just shut the hell up about the whole damn mess and stopped making it seem like piracy is so common it's normal. That's really not helping.