Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

[UnderGlass]

Poor Titan Quest...

Thanks PC gaming pirates... thanks for fucking that up.

I also find the last line interesting : "It's really, really hard to be profitable by concentrating only on PC," he said. "Unless you're an MMO."

Wasn't the idea of Kingdoms of Amawhatever supposed to be the intro for their MMO game?

another MMO? uggghhh...that kind of puts me off this game..just a bit

I am 90% positive that was/is the initial announced game plan for this IP. I do not have any sources handy to quote tho. Nor am I motivated to research that and get back to you... sorrys ; )

It put me off too, for the record.

I'm pretty sure you're right there. I believe Curt Schilling talked publicly about the future of the IP in terms of an eventual MMO around when the game was first announced. Hopefully a few years of development has tempered his enthusiasm. Frankly - however this game turns out - I just don't think it's got the chops to carry a MMORPG. It would basically be second-tier RIFT clone.

 

[Vault101]

*looks at Blizzard*

Hmm...they seem to be doing pretty good. It must be because of their console games...oh wait.

its because they own the MMO thats pretty much been the 1# and no one can topple it....I doubt it would be that way if they were still releasing the RTS warcraft games

 

[Jodah]

*looks at Blizzard*

Hmm...they seem to be doing pretty good. It must be because of their console games...oh wait.

its because they own the MMO thats pretty much been the 1# and no one can topple it....I doubt it would be that way if they were still releasing the RTS warcraft games

Let us not forget Diablo, the most successful E-Sport Starcraft, and the fastest selling strategy game in history, Starcraft II. And to discount WoW is like saying the only reason Valve is alive is Portal.

 

[Babitz]

Of course KoA wouldn't do well as a PC exclusive because PC gamers aren't interested in such shitty games.
Also, console games also get pirated and console versions usually hit the torrent sites faster than their PC counterparts. Basically, he's an idiot.

*looks at Blizzard*

Hmm...they seem to be doing pretty good. It must be because of their console games...oh wait.

its because they own the MMO thats pretty much been the 1# and no one can topple it....I doubt it would be that way if they were still releasing the RTS warcraft games

Yeah, too bad SC2 was such a massive flop and too bad Diablo 3 won't sell like crazy the minute it's out. What a shame.

If his game doesn't sell well, he's a bad designer or his publisher didn't market the game properly, but I guess piracy is the hip trendy scapegoat for incompetence nowadays.

 

[Gaetan Durocher]

(New here, but just had to reply to this)

Huh? I thought that with all the studies showing at the very least that the impact of piracy cannot be measured, that this kind of rhetoric was dead. I have the impression of reading something published 5 years ago.

Anyways similarly to Baresark, I pirated Titan Quest when it came out in the period where I bought one game a year and pirated all the rest, and didn't even play it to the end because it got too repetitive. Yet a while ago I purchased it on Steam, where by now I've purchased about every game that I pirated in the past, having finally some money to do it.

If I had ignored every game that I couldn't purchase back then, I wouldn't have had the slightest interest in purchasing them now... I would've gone directly with Torchlight or a similar game instead.

I think my 380+ games on Steam are a pretty good testimony that pirates often end up the biggest fans/customers. Not to mention that most software devs I know have become fans of games by pirating the shit out of everything they could get their hands on, and that's how they decided they wanted to study software engineering and go into games development. So piracy creates devs with a wide game culture for you as well dude! Stop complaining!

 

[Something Amyss]

Says the relatively unknown person who ignores things like Minecraft. And Super MeatBoy.[/qoute]

Yes, two games does make a pattern he's clearly ignoring, rather than being standouts.

And that console piracy does exist.

I must have missed the part where he said "there is no piracy on consoles."

And that sometimes games fail because...they fail.

This, at least, is true.

incidentally, I never heard of this game.

Hard to buy stuff you don't even know about.

 

[quantumsoul]

"Frazier was a designer on marred by pre-release piracy [http://www.amazon.com/Titan-Quest-Gold-Immortal-Throne-Pc/dp/B000WCCURW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328231129&sr=8-1], 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."

What I got out of that was crappy DRM caused poor sales because it made pirates badmouth the game. Not defending the pirates just pointing out that DRM probably did more damage than piracy would have. Especially if any of those pirates were to buy the game after they tried it.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Says the relatively unknown person who ignores things like Minecraft. And Super MeatBoy.

Yes, two games does make a pattern he's clearly ignoring, rather than being standouts.

Do I have to name all the games that succeeded on the PC despite Piracy? There's more than a few.

And that console piracy does exist.

I must have missed the part where he said "there is no piracy on consoles."

Implication. If he won't develop on the PC because of rampant piracy, that implies that the consoles he will develop on don't have rampant piracy.

 

[Space Jawa]

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.

True but there is a good chance it wouldn't have been purchased in the first place.

Then what the frak are they doing playing the game if they never had any intention of paying for it in the first place? If you're not willing to pay for it, don't use it!

 

[Gaetan Durocher]

What I got out of that was crappy DRM caused poor sales because it made pirates badmouth the game. Not defending the pirates just pointing out that DRM probably did more damage than piracy would have. Especially if any of those pirates were to buy the game after they tried it.

This. (Except that I do defend the pirates, at least some of them, in some circumstances.)

Still to the guy's credit, I must say that I think that the type of piracy that affects sales the most credibly might be the pre-release one. In a publisher's dream world the DRM would have minimal side effects on the game's reputation and technical support problems, and it would hold at least 2 weeks before being cracked. Most sales happen in that period apparently. Then, all the impulsive people who just can't wait to play the game and have money but won't pay for anything unless they're forced to will buy it. It's impossible to know how many of those people there are, however... must depend a lot on the game's target audience, for one thing.

 

[Sylveria]

Someone working on an EA gaming blaming piracy for for their failings? I'm shocked. Wonder how poor the pre-orders for Reckoning are if they're already launching their "It's all piracy's fault" campaign.

Also, how did Titan Quest get pirated before the game even launched? Sounds like he had some pretty major security issues within the studio if that was allowed to happen. Also sounds to me like the game would have been far more successful if they didn't force in an anti-piracy feature. Maybe if you had just accepted that piracy will happen and you can't stop it, instead of trying to screw with it, you would have gotten positive buzz instead of negative buzz. But this is an EA employee, they don't listen to common sense.

Then there's all Fitch's "passing the blame" behaviors in his article, sounds like he engineered his own downfall, but rather than accept that, he just cried it was everyone else's fault. Did this guy work on Amy also?

"There are few better examples of the "it can't possibly be my fault" culture in the west than gaming forums." - Michael Fitch, THQ Creative Director

Yep, you're a walking, talking example of it, Mr. Fitch, as are your colleagues.

 

[Sylveria]

Poor Titan Quest...

Thanks PC gaming pirates... thanks for fucking that up.

I also find the last line interesting : "It's really, really hard to be profitable by concentrating only on PC," he said. "Unless you're an MMO."

Wasn't the idea of Kingdoms of Amawhatever supposed to be the intro for their MMO game?

Yeah, darn pirates, they ruin all the PC games, except for all those hugely successful ones.

Oh, hey, crazy thought, but maybe, just maybe, good games sell and bad games don't?

 

[Lunar Templar]

Cue angry PC gamers calling BS in 5...

not angry, but still calling BS. mostly cause EVERYTHING seems to be the fault of pirates anymore, its getting pretty pathetic in all honesty.

 

[Sandytimeman]

Lol, as if I needed another reason to not buy their game. Yeah I agree Starcraft 2 TOTALLY flopped because of all the piracy...Same with Half-Life 2 TOTALLY BOMBED /sarcasm

Does anything else really need to be said, Blizzard and Valve are two of the biggest most successful companies out there, and they are mostly PC developers. These guys are just trying to mask lazy design and try and stop piracy.

But guess what I'm not buying or pirating this game, in fact, shit if your game isn't worth my money, it sure as hell isn't worth my time.

 

[Legendsmith]

its launch was marred by pre-release piracy [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/81926-THQ-Creative-Director-Opens-Up-About-Iron-Lore], 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>

Hello? Guys? Anyone else notice that it was stated that there was DRM in Titan quest that made people think it was buggy? So they didn't buy it. Sounds like DRM hurt sales more than pirates.

Honestly, they can blame piracy all they want, and I'm not saying piracy is right, but they will have to deal with it. Valve has already done this with Steam.
Whether or not you like steam is beside the point:
The fact is that it is a service, not a product.
As we become more advanced, the economy moves more towards services. Multiplayer is a service, that's why it keeps getting shoehorned into everything. Manufacturing is cheap, which means that the money is not in making products. Services are not cheap, not easily replicated, so the money is there.
Services aren't like products. I can't get on my computer and start up Bootleg steam servers. Even if I could, it's something that can be easily tracked by authorities.

Jim Sterling has already covered this in his recent Jimquisition episode. Pirates offer a product for free, publishers offer a product for money. People are going to go for the former, because often it doesn't come with DRM!

Pirates can't offer cohesive services, publishers can. They just need to realise that they have to do so to get people to buy their game.

Times are changing, companies need to get with them.

 

[ph0b0s123]

Fear Of Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

That's a more accurate headline.

We could get into the argument of that each piracy case isn't a lost sale and so on, but the fact is that piracy DOES end up costing the company sales.

The question is how many sales. Just saying it cost them sales does not help much as it could be an extra 50% sales, which is worth jumping up and down about, or 1% sales which is not. Saying piracy costs sales, just does not cut it anymore as people are now more cynical.

And as someone else has said, it looks like it was the DRM that did not work in the pirated copies that screwed things up. So the inclusion of faulty DRM causing the loss of sales is just as logical an argument as piracy did it.

Was there a demo released for this game anywhere near release? A demo would have proved the game was working OK.

 

[Hisher]

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.

True but there is a good chance it wouldn't have been purchased in the first place.

Then what the frak are they doing playing the game if they never had any intention of paying for it in the first place? If you're not willing to pay for it, don't use it!

Ok so I go to a friends house and we decide to watch some awful movie I never would have bought or intended to watch on my own. Now does this mean I never should have watched that movie and now that I have seen it I owe the publisher $10?

If there was never intent to purchase no sale would have been made. Piracy does not equal the loss of a guaranteed sale.

It is time that piracy stops being blamed for "killing" PC exclusives when it is far more likely to be the fault of laziness, bad game design, horrible DRM, and the fact that the console market is larger and easier to sell to.

 

[xDarc]

My advice to Ian Frazier:

Learn how to make cheaper games.

"In July 2010, The Rhode Island board of Economic Development approved a $75 million guaranteed loan to 38 Studios. 38 Studios has promised to bring 450 jobs to the state by the end of 2012 ... The company is developing two products."

So I call bullshit. The piracy rate is the same as it has always been. The internet may mean millions of illegal downloads, but back in the early 90's we copied that floppy. It may not have been as widespread, but neither was PC gaming.

The market has grown and piracy has grown with it, but the rates- not much different.

 

[Rad Party God]

Maybe Titan Quest didn't sell well in the first place, because it wasn't good enough, until they released it's expansion that fixed many bugs and added some more needed content to it. And even then, the community still fixed a shitton of bugs still left in the game.

Pirates don't ruin your game, bad corporative decisions, plus a shitty game are to blame. It's also starting to get old, to simply blame the pirates is just as lame to blame your dog for eating your homework.