Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

[Geekeric]

I guess I'm just not with it, because I actually bought Titan Quest (and the sequel) off Steam for $5. I didn't finish it {yawn}. I'd say maybe the real problem, judging by the hostility from these PC gamers, is not piracy but developers and publishers without a clue how to go about communicating with the public.
I'd tell Ian Frazier to stick to designing and stop talking to the press.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

"The PC, with piracy being as rampant as it is, is really hard to make money from."

That is absolute bullshit. Seriously, there's the obvious example of Minecraft there which has been pirated tonnes. Is Notch living on the street without a job right now? Oh right. No.

So the most popular games on PC are making money regardless of piracy. That proves....what, exactly?

That proves that if you make a good game then you're in the clear, it's also a good example of the positive effect of piracy on relatively unknown games. I would probably have never have bothered buying the game if I hadn't played a friend's cracked copy first. Why do you think Notch has always been so blasé about piracy? Because in the long run most of those pirated copies converted into a sale.

This is what you're saying;

Unpopular kid at school: "I don't think I want to go to the school dance. I don't think I'd be cool there."

You: "OMG U TARD LOOK AT ALL THE CHEERLEADERS AND THE JOCKS! They go and THEY are cool! You're dumb!!!111"

Firstly, I'd never use 1's in the place of !'s. And no, I'm not saying that. It's nothing to do with popularity, no game starts out as popular. Did Minecraft start out popular? Of course not, it started out as some relatively unknown web-based game. It's quite a simple scenario of "If you build it, they will come." If you make a good PC exclusive game and market it properly, people will buy it, and you'll make money. If it flops, I would say that either people didn't deem it to be worth the price or you marketed badly.

Piracy hurts developers, but piracy alone won't kill a game.

My point is that bringing a new game to the PC market is tough if you don't have a million and a half followers.

That's ridiculous, everyone has to start somewhere, and no one starts with a million followers.

The success stories aren't as common as you think...

Sure, I'll concede that. But for these people to proclaim that "It's all piracy's fault!" like a petulant child when it clearly isn't, is just insulting

 

[Aeonknight]

I'm gonna go with this fellow.

We're on the internet for fuck's sake. There is absolutely no justification for using piracy to "demo" a game anymore. You can find plenty of reviews, screenshots, system specs, gameplay video/trailers, etc. all over the place. If you made an ignorant purchasing decision, it's no one's fault but your own.

"Hey guys, we know we've like, bought off every reviewer in town, and we've got those spambots giving positive praise to our games...And we know you might want to play the game before paying for it but look at the pretty pictures! They're even moving!!!!!!"
Yeah, can't see why anyone would want old-time demo's.

That's your rebuttal? That every single reviewer, blogger, youtube account, hell every concievable mean of showing value or worth in a game... is in the developer's pocket?

Tactical facepalm indeed. Try again. Without the bullshit conspiracy theory this time.

 

[Syzygy23]

Angry PC gamer here to say that a pirated game is not the equivalent of a lost sale.

Yeah, it's a product being used that wasn't paid for.

It's stealing in the sense that... Instead of going into a store and buying a candy bar, you use some magic cloning device to make a copy of the candy bar. You got a copy of the stores candy bar without paying for it, and ate it. Will you buy the candy bar now? Nope, because you're already full from the copy you just ate.

Suddenly everybody starts walking in with magic cloning machines and just makes copies of the things they want. Nobody buys things anymore, because they can just make a copy with no strings attached. manufacturers don't get any money, so they go bankrupt and can't fund any new products. Soon all you have are the same OLD products being cloned ad infintum, and society stagnates.

 

[mrhappy1489]

I'd make a list of upcoming PC Exclusives, but someone already did [http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1216513p1.html]. Enjoy the impossibilities!

I was actually going to point to this.

I find it hilarious that they say that PC exclusives NEVER happen when there are literally thousands of total conversion mods which can only be played on PC. Just because there are 90 games exclusively on PC being hyped at E3 doesn't mean that their not happening.

Off the top of my head, all of the productions from StabYourself.net. Cry of Fear, Afraid of Monsters, the Stanely Parable, Garry's Mod, every single Valve game that received updates and was released first. Killing Floor, the Red Orchestra series. Sven Co-Op, Minecraft and finally Dungeons of Dreadmor. I'm pretty sure most of these were / are succeeding at some time. And mainly thrive on the PC.

Angry PC gamer here to say that a pirated game is not the equivalent of a lost sale.

pirate: " i have no interest in this game what so ever, i would never buy this not even in a sale down the line"

pirates friend: "so your not getting it then"

pirate:"pirated it"

And don't give me that demo shit, there is enough info in reviews and pre release vids/info now a days to know how a game is before we even touch it.

I'm sorry, but no it is not. No matter how much you tell someone about the mechanics of a game, it can be hard for a person to understand them when they haven't played with them yet. And no, a pirated copy is not a lost sale, at least in theory. A lost sale is losing money from something that the person would have bought but for some reason didn't. Since nothing physical is being handled, and since I bet 90% of pirates don't intend to buy the game anyway, nothing is being lost.

Its not a lost sale as it is a customer using something without buying it first.

I'd make a list of upcoming PC Exclusives, but someone already did [http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1216513p1.html]. Enjoy the impossibilities!

Ehh, they look alright, nothing to lose my pants over.

Look at some of those indies coming out for free such as Mari0. http://stabyourself.net/mari0/

Or Cry of Fear http://www.cry-of-fear.com/

Or World of Warcraft [you probably know about it]

Minecraft came out first on PC, therefore I'm counting it here still.

Terraria. Binding of Isaac, Cave Story [same thought process as Minecraft], Killing Floor, Red Orchestra series, Serious sam series, Counter Strike Source, Amnesia the Dark Descent, the original Half Life. Theres plenty to lose your pants over, you just need to turn over a rock or two.

My pants shall remain on for now, but if you know a release date for that Mari0 game, there is indeed a chance that they could come off.

 

[mrhappy1489]

Ian Frazier may claim it was Titan Quest piracy that turned him off PC exclusive development but it turns out he has a minority opinion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crate_Entertainment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Dawn

The actual developers of Titan Quest are developing Grim Dawn as a PC-exclusive for release in 2012! So perhapse before we all weigh Mr Frazier's words to much how about we weight the deed of his former colleagues who ae

I'd make a list of upcoming PC Exclusives, but someone already did [http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1216513p1.html]. Enjoy the impossibilities!

Ehh, they look alright, nothing to lose my pants over.

I lost my pants over this. What kind of games are you playing that make this seem un-pant-loosing worthy? I want to see them!

Spoiler: And Veylon's list is far from comprehensive, click to see more with video

-Trackmania 2
-Shootmania
-Natural Selection 2
-Torchlight 2
-Interstellar Marines
-Blacklight Retribution

And let's get some perspective here, what console exclusives are there for 2012?

Xbox 360:
-Halo 4
(Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor not confirmed for 2012)

PS3:
-Sly Cooper
-Last of Us
-Twisted metal
(who knows about Agent, or Last Guardian release date)

OK, how about for both PS3 + xbox but just not on PC:
-Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
-DmC
-Ninja Gaiden 3

PC isn't really being left out of anything like Red Dead Redemption of 2010. The two big Rockstar games GTA5 and Max Payne 3 are getting PC releases.

PC has a load going for it and it is not losing the multiplatform titles.

You know what? I think this Ian Frazier guy is trolling us hard, either that or trying to openly rationalise why he abandoned his former colleagues to go work for EA!

My friend my pants will remain firmly in place thank you very much. While some of these games look entertaining, in my opinion only Blacklight, the rest of what you have shown me are from genres that I have no interest in, especially care racing. Blacklight almost made me lose my pants, but I have a sinking suspicion that it will be lacking either a single player, or that it will be a tacked in piece of shit. I have seen some neat little pc exclusives that have my pants on the floor, but none of these are they.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

I'm exclusively a PC gamer and that Titan's Quest game looked/looks completely uninteresting. Sounds like bad game companies trying to blame their failures on anyone but themselves. I don't see Paradox Games suffering, they make a tidy profit with their niche games. I don't see Blizzard suffering, even without their MMO, SC2 made bank for them. I don't see Valve suffering and they are basically a metric for the success of all PC digital distribution. Hell even CD Projekt Red for all the noise it made about games being sold has been moving up in the world, securing more market share and gaining more capital. Although they might not be so much of a PC centered studio anymore what with their putting the Witcher 2 out on Xbox in a few months or so.

 

[Simonoly]

Are we to presume that every person who pirates a game would actually purchase it if a pirated version was unavailable to them? How can a developer even know if the poor sale of a game is due to piracy and not simply due to poor quality or some other factor? And if they can accurately quantify how many people have pirated a certain game, there's no way of knowing how many of them translate to actual sales where people have simply wanted to test whether their PC can actually run the game before shelling out £30-£40. Yes, I imagine that piracy can eat away at profits in some instances, but it seems unlikely that it is to the extent that we are led to believe. I get the feeling that no one is really bothering to sit down and attempt to understand and address the issue of piracy in video games.

And why is it always seen that PC gaming is dying in relation to consoles? Isn't it possible that consoles are just evolving to become more and more like gaming PCs?

Also, I have a 360, PS3 and a couple of gaming PCs. I'm not sure about anyone else hear, but I have far far more exclusives for PC than either of my consoles.

 

[Gerwich]

The PC, with piracy being as rampant as it is, is really hard to make money from. My first game was Titan Quest, a hack 'n' slash RPG, which was PC only, but the amount that it was pirated was the difference between us staying in business and going out of business.

Yeah, I don't think piracy was the only thing hurting Titan Quest's sales.
I think the lack of advertising and the game just being bad might have been factors.

 

[NortherWolf]

That's your rebuttal? That every single reviewer, blogger, youtube account, hell every concievable mean of showing value or worth in a game... is in the developer's pocket?

Tactical facepalm indeed. Try again. Without the bullshit conspiracy theory this time.

Youtube account, oh no. That's pretty much the last bastion of critical reviews available.
However, if you hadn't noticed lately, there's been a string of bad publicity occurrences where companies have either bought off or bullied reviewers to give games good grades. Kane & Lynch comes to mind. My main point is still this however: WHatever happened to the f*cking demon you pricks? I don't want to watch another f*cking video, let me try the f*cking game!
When I grew up you could rent games before buying them, that seems impossible these days, so a playable demo would at least be nice.

Rather than settling for your..."Oooh, shinies!"-approach.

 

[Aprilgold]

My pants shall remain on for now, but if you know a release date for that Mari0 game, there is indeed a chance that they could come off.

I'd say, give or take a month or two. Counting that he has gotten a lot done and its getting very close to release time. Hes putting in very small details from the original Mario into this new hybrid. Such as 1 block step overs. In the original, when mario approached a small gap between blocks, he would step over.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Angry PC gamer here to say that a pirated game is not the equivalent of a lost sale.

Not all pirates buy games they already own. Because they cant afford the item they feel they deserve to have for free.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Piracy is douchebag behaviour. That's not opinion, that's fact.

I miss when journalistic integrity was considered a strong force, when the phrase "that's not opinion, that's fact" would never have been thought to be uttered in regards to such a statement. As a news contributor, you should be ashamed. Your job is supposed to be about presenting facts, not coloring facts to suit your needs. Today's media is sickening.

As a News Corp employee, I'd like to remind you that people are smarter than you give them credit for.

As a user of this website, I can tell you that Andy is a contributor who does, in fact, provide news that is actually news and editorial that isn't opinion.

And whilst we are here, i have to say i agree. Pirates are douchebags. You want content? Pay for it.

Not buying a pc titile that doesnt have a demo? Tell the publisher. If you pirate the game, the publisher sees no reason to change their behaviour.

 

[WarpZone]

specifically an undocumented security check that dumped players out of illegal copies of the game. That led to some very negative word-of-mouth about its buggy, unfinished state prior to launch, which turned out to be inaccurate but still hampered sales and contributed to the studio's demise.
Permalink

In other words, a better title for this article would be:
DRM, Not Piracy, Killed Kingdoms of Amalur.

 

[Kroxile]

just more EA bullshit claiming everything else and its mother is the problem while they hold their hands over their eyes to keep from seeing its really their bullshit business model that is causing them trouble.

 

[katsabas]

I am not a PC gamer and I am still calling bullshit on this. That would be valid if every exclusive released on PC is above average and that is SO. NOT. TRUE.

Wanna know a PC exclusive from 2005 ?

Wanna know a console exclusive from 2005 ?

So, yeah. Wrong.

And further back. In 1997, iD software developped Hexen II which of course sucked. Saturn and Playstation got Symphony Of The Night. Piracy didn't kill the PC exclusive. Rather the unfathomable number of shitty exclusives that you have to dig through to find some really good games.