Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

[PotluckBrigand]

Look, people aren't leaving Team Fortress 2 to play Farmville.

People are leaving Solitaire for Farmville. You know, the thing that the "non-gamer" average person waste away their office hours doing.

Don't mistake growth of something for substitution, there are about 1 billion computer users with access to the internet, and the majority of them don't plays ANY sort of games. For THEM Farmville is the best game they have played... by default. Farmville's success has more to do with how it exploits the particular Facebook network than it's inherent relative qualities, Farmville may be on the same platform as PC games but it isn't really competing with PC games like Team Fortress 2.

The thing is, people who have never played games before who start playing Farmville... this is a good thing. This is people who'd never consider gaming before are now into gaming a lot of them are going to consider more gaming on PC. I thing a small but significant proportion will move on to deeper games like on Steam and so on.

Well of course they aren't, but that's not the point. For every auteur game developer that is in the business to bring new, fresh ideas to the medium (Assuming there ARE any of those that aren't indie developers) there are a dozen companies that are only interested in the most cost-effective method for building their gold-plated car engines that run on hundred dollar bills. I was being somewhat facetious when I said it was a cataclysm, but what happens when it becomes clear to even big-name developers that micro-transaction browser games are going to bring in all that fuck-you money they so desperately want?

There's no way I'm leaving Team Fortress for Farmville (No, I'm leaving because after almost five years I think I'm finally bored, but that's not the issue), but what happens if we find ourselves in a situation where the Team Fortresses have been REPLACED by the Farmvilles not by us, but by the developers themselves? I'm honestly sick to fuck of seeing ads in my big-box titles to "Go and play our stupid-ass Facebook game and earn shit for the game you just bought!" I'm fine with DLC if it adds something to a game I like, and I don't begrudge a developer the right to charge me for it, but it's becoming an ugly trend where the paranoid among us (i.e. me) see it less as a trend and more as a sinister sign of things to come. I don't like being punished for not having a Facebook account by having content withheld from me, but at least it's only like weapons and armor... for now.

But to bring the original topic back around, think about it... true or not, the industry's big media focus right now in regards to PC gaming is piracy. It might be bullshit or they might be right. I'm not an economist, but you know what? It is really hard to pirate micro-transaction add-ons to ostensibly free but incomplete games. I don't know if they've figured that out yet, but I hope they don't...

 

[Meshakhad_v1legacy]

Discounting strategy games and MMOs, I still think that the console market is the main cause of the decline of the PC exclusive. I personally don't see a problem, so long as the PC version gets as much attention.

 

[Quakester]

I don't think both issues are mutually exclusive. I think piracy simply makes the console market more profitable over all. Releasing a game strictly for the PC means the game will be pirated, so there is going to be a loss of potential profit. Console games aren't pirated nearly as much. From a numbers standpoint it makes more sense to release the game on multiple platforms if you can.

 

[Carnagath]

Serious discussions do happen - on this very site. But not as a result of your 'news'.

Piracy is douchebag behaviour. That's not opinion, that's fact. It's a sense of entitlement run wild: I can't afford this game, or I'm not sure if I'll like this game, or I don't know if it's worth the money, BUT I have some god-given right to play it, so I'll take it without paying for it.

Serious conversations come from serious people who are willing to think and speak seriously. People who opt for silly rationalizations get what they get.

People who opt for silly generalizations get what they get too. Let's see an example where your generalization that "piracy is douchebag behavior, that's fact" does not apply. I was interested in Heroes of Might and Magic 6. A week before its release, I downloaded the demo on my gaming laptop, which is my only gaming PC, and played it perfectly. One week later, the game is released, I instantly buy it off Steam and it refuses to run. After hundreds of people report the same on the game's tech forums, the devs answer that they decided to not support mobility GPU's in the full game. Sorry. You're fucked, but thanks for your money. No warning, no mention prior to launch, no nothing. By your "rule", if I had test-pirated the game to make sure it runs before buying it, I would be a douchebag. Well, no, I wouldn't be. You know who is the douchebag? Developers that fuck their customers over for no reason.

 

[Kermi]

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.

Sometimes that's true, sometimes it isn't. You can't safely generalise either way.

 

[PotluckBrigand]

Serious discussions do happen - on this very site. But not as a result of your 'news'.

Piracy is douchebag behaviour. That's not opinion, that's fact. It's a sense of entitlement run wild: I can't afford this game, or I'm not sure if I'll like this game, or I don't know if it's worth the money, BUT I have some god-given right to play it, so I'll take it without paying for it.

Serious conversations come from serious people who are willing to think and speak seriously. People who opt for silly rationalizations get what they get.

People who opt for silly generalizations get what they get too. Let's see an example where your generalization that "piracy is douchebag behavior, that's fact" does not apply. I was interested in Heroes of Might and Magic 6. A week before its release, I downloaded the demo on my gaming laptop, which is my only gaming PC, and played it perfectly. One week later, the game is released, I instantly buy it off Steam and it refuses to run. After hundreds of people report the same on the game's tech forums, the devs answer that they decided to not support mobility GPU's in the full game. Sorry. You're fucked. No warning, no mention prior to launch, no nothing. By your "rule", if I had test-pirated the game to make sure it runs before buying it, I would be a douchebag. Well, no, I wouldn't be. You know who is the douchebag? Developers that fuck their customers over for no reason.

Ubisoft is a whole 'nother kind of dick though. They have been remarkably blase the last couple of years regarding their PC customers to the point that I don't know why they even MAKE PC games anymore... they seem to have such utter ambivalence and even contempt for us.

Their tech support tried to tell me that I stole my copy of Might and Magic VI when I gave them the CD-Key that wasn't working. I had bought it on Steam. PRE-Purchased it, even, but still they told me "That is a pirated key. It will not work. You need to buy the game if you want to play it." and then they never got back to me after that.

(Footnote: I did eventually fix the problem I was having, but I did so through user forums, not Ubisoft. They could not have given less of a fuck that I was a paying customer. In the end, I didn't even enjoy HoMMVI very much, but I don't know if it was the game or just me knowing that it had been made by a team of multicultural jag-offs with various idiosyncrasies and dicketry.)

Their attitude may be the most extremely anti-PC of late, but they aren't alone in their apparent dismissal. These are dark times, indeed.

 

[AhumbleKnight]

-Valve's games have been so unique-

I'm sorry but Valve's "game list" consists of the following:

Half-Life
Portal
TF2
L4D
Alien Swarm
Dota 2 (Soon (tm))

The only games on those list that they've actually made themselves are the first two, the rest are quite literally a former Half-Life mod, a former Counterstrike mod, a former UT2004 mod and a rip-off of the Dota map from Warcraft III.

If any other studio were to do even a quarter of this Earth's Atmosphere would probably become about 95% complaints and lawsuits.

Yet all these former modders now work for Valve. Thus making them vavle employees. I like how Valve hires the talented people that mod games.

A games company doesn't have to be just about making games. There can be a heavy focus on Engine development and sale too. iD software was doing that very successfully for a number of years. Valve have been doing that too. Including valves own games there are over 30 games out there that have used valves souce engine.

 

[Rastrelly]

The whole reason is: shitty games don't sell on PC. Period.

 

[Rad Party God]

Are we still at this...?

You know what I read on Forbes this morning?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/02/03/you-will-never-kill-piracy-and-piracy-will-never-kill-you/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/02/03/how-the-entertainment-industry-can-beat-internet-piracy/

I foresee that things will change.

Great read. Shame so many people that frequent this very website, even it's very own news posters, are quite a bit close minded to realize this.

 

[Treblaine]

-Valve's games have been so unique-

I'm sorry but Valve's "game list" consists of the following:

Half-Life series (HL1, HL Opposing Force, HL Blue Shift, HL2, HL2 Episode 1, HL2 Episode 2, Half Life Deathmatch)
Portal series
TF2 & Classic
L4D 1 & 2
Alien Swarm
Dota 2 (Soon (tm))
Day of Defeat (you forgot)
Counterstrike (also forgot)

The only games on those list that they've actually made themselves are the first two, the rest are quite literally a former Half-Life mod, a former Counterstrike mod, a former UT2004 mod and a rip-off of the Dota map from Warcraft III.

If any other studio were to do even a quarter of this Earth's Atmosphere would probably become about 95% complaints and lawsuits.

17 games in 13 years. Pretty good for one studio.

"The only games on those list that they've actually made themselves are the first two"

Incorrect, all of those are developed by people employed in and integrated with Valve. If you are employed by valve and you make a game for them... that makes it a Valve game. Without any ambiguity. It's a blatant falsehood to state otherwise.

Valve don't steal ideas from modders THEY HIRE THE MODDERS! That is the RIGHT THING TO DO! Hire the talent and employ their good ideas into a game more refined that would be reasonably practical as a mod made in spare time distributed for free.

Activision did the same thing, they hired the developers who made Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, who would go on to form Infinity Ward and make the Call of Duty series. No one objected to Activision doing that. They objected to other things activision did, but not that.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

I don't even want to talk about the written law, 'cause that can be changed and is just a matter of definition.
Even if we call it "copyright infridgement", i always saw it as theft. Not in terms of: 1 physical copy left. It's takin' something without paying. That is, how i define theft.
Taking something, which doesnt belong to you, without asking/paying.

And even if you call it consensual sex, I always saw it as rape.

You calling it theft, and feeling that it is theft does not make it so.
What you choose to define it as is irrelevant, the law says otherwise and in the end that is what matters.

I also cringe at the "just a matter of definition" part of your argument.
A matter of definition is the difference between manslaughter and murder.

The argument: It doesnt equal one less product sold is also wrong, because if piracy is to easy, alot of people who'd buy the game otherwise, will pirate it and use the money to go out for dinner.
A small percentage of die hard pirates, will always exist, but to the extent right now?

It's just another small evidence, that nowadays alot of people lack education/manners.

That is not a "small evidence", as you so elegantly put it, it is merely your personal speculation.
The only experiment I can remember, but which I sadly cannot find at the moment, showed a piracy to real sale conversion of 0.1% (i.e. 1 in 1000).
The article was here on the Escapist though, so it should be possible to find it.

1. It somehow slipped my mind to write, that i wanted to talk about the moral aspect not the current definition by law.

2. With "matter of definition" i meant, that if the "Piracy = Theft" would get acknowledged by the majority, the laws simply would change, so the basics of our laws are our morals and our views/values of how we want to live together. And these values can and do change.

3. Maybe it's irrelevant what you believe in your country, but i live in a state with semi-direct democracy and what the people believe is important, because we can change stuff overhere. So jeah, if alot of people think A is bullshit and should be changed to B, it's probably gonna happen.
I agree though, that with me stating my opinion on this forum will not result in any change.

4. Of course it's my personal speculation, for pete's sake, we're on a forum board discussing. If i can't state my opinions in a discussion, why do we even post here?
I just got told once, that taking something someone is selling wihtout paying isn't right. They put alot of effort/manpower/money into making a game, and want to sell it to their audience.

If i don't like the game, or cannot afford it, then i'll either safe my money or won't buy it at all - but nowadays i assume the "More, more, more" or "Mine, mine, mine" mentalitiy is very common. And i blame lack of education/manners for it. It just fits my puzzle of alot of modern world problems we have.

5. I gonna look for that experiment, if you find it please link it to me That stuff is always of interest to me. Though i believe these 0.1% can't be true, when certain game like the Goo game has around 90% pirated copies and the Witcher was also higher than 50% iirc.

Anyway: Tl;dr
I only stated my opinion and said i won't talk about the written law, because we can't change it here, all we can do is talkin about the moral, the reasons and the consequences.

PS: Captcha wants me to go to the "Oesoria Office", can anyone tell me where that is?

Edit:
Dota 2 a ripoff of Warcrafts Dota? What?
No, Dota 2 is Icefrogs - The current holder of the map, before him were Guinsoo and Eul's. And Guinsoo made League of Legends - chance to make DotA it's own game.
It's not a ripoff, its the actual game freed from the limits of a mere map editor tool.

 

[Exterminas]

So there are no big-budget PC-Exclusives these day?

Oh god... I think I am hallucinating again. You mean The Old Republic isn't real? Oh god...

 

[PotluckBrigand]

So there are no big-budget PC-Exclusives these day?

Oh god... I think I am hallucinating again. You mean The Old Republic isn't real? Oh god...

Old what? What are you even talking about? You can't come into a board dedicated to quilting and just start spouting off nonsense about REPUBLIC this and STAR TREK that!

TAKE YOUR MEDICINE.

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

Seems legit,

Or not

I know a lot of people who buy something when it's worth it, if they have the money

Yes, generally when the two criteria of A) something being worth it and B) being affordable are fulfilled, people will purchase something. Good work, detective.

Those people sometimes however do not have so much money to spend, so they try things, then buy, or try things like them and then buy an afterproduct

Yes, because there are LEGITIMATE ways to try something before buying it. Pirating a game is not a legitimate way of "trying before buying". It's a scapegoat excuse used by most pirates to defend their piracy and seems to be the consistent "white-knight" defense from people who claim they want to try it before buying it.

See the thing is, you can't try a lot of things anymore, because nobody seems to care enough to release proper demo's

Boo-fucking-hoo. Cry me a river. And when you're done, maybe you'll realize that's still not justification enough to pirate.

See if it were about boosting sales with being nice to your customer and not trying to screw him over then yes, you might have a point.
Now it's about grabbing money where you can, even if you don't deserve it

It's not your fucking job to decide what's worth money to a developer. If you don't want it, or have a problem with it, you don't buy it/pirate it. You leave it the fuck alone and watch it die. You as a consumer are not entitled to anything. You don't deserve anything especially if you have no intention for paying for it.

Take for example Assassins creed, We had


Assassin's Creed
Assassin's Creed II
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Assassin's Creed: Revelations
Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles
Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines
Assassin's Creed II: Discovery
Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy
Assassin's Creed: Lost Legacy (cancelled apparently)
Assassin's Creed: Multiplayer Rearmed
Anyway the franchise has been around since november 2007, it's now 2012 and the last game was released in november 2011

For those counting that means 1 a year for the main games and lots of portable and Ios ports between those

Anyway maybe I pirated assassins creed 2, I got interested and bought 1 in the bargain bin
Having become a fan I saved up my money for brotherhood,
Short on money I borrowed a copy of one of the DS versions of the game and tried it out
I didn't like it , tough luck for the handheld versions
Then I saw revelations coming and I was overjoyed, I saved up all my money and bought the collectors edition

Oh, well shit, you bought it out of the bargain bin (which probably didn't give a cent to the devs anyway) after pirating. I guess that redeems you. /sarcasm

People do that, you can't just say "All pirates are bad and immoral"

Yes, he can. You were the one who couldn't pony up the $20 it would have taken to have grabbed AC2, you're the immoral guy for being so cheap. Please stop trying to convince yourself otherwise.

That's discriminating, that's the same as saying All black people steal and all white people are racists

No, that's actually the same as someone saying it's fucking immoral to experience something paid without paying for it. It has nothing to do with racism, it's just within your overly scapegoating/pirate apologist mind that you think otherwise. I can't fucking believe you just tried to compare piracy with racism.

Now for a new tough challenging point that this thread is bugging me for

Oh this should be good.

People do not only pirate on the pc, yet I never hear any developer complain about console pirating (Bar microsoft, they shut up about it but they crackdown hard on that)

Oh. So you're not the only one to do it, therefore it's ok. Got it. Also, console piracy, at least on the 360, is much riskier because of how internet-based the games are these days and how easy it is to get banned.

Seeing as piracy is platform wide, actually it's invested in every form of media.

You mean seeing as you just made up a fact with no proof whatsoever, you don't actually know that it's invested in anything.

This is why I argue against this kind of bullshit because either these developers are incredibly adept at satire, or they're greedy moneysucking people

Such a fucking self-entitled attitude, I can't even believe I'm hearing this. People don't like their hard work being taken for granted. Oh no, MONEYSUCKING GREED CORPORATIONS THE MAN OMG OMG OMG.

A final fact : if a game such as crysis or assassins creed, or CoD . is so heavily struck by piracy

A fact! How cheeky of you to call it that.

How come they're such big moneymaking franchises? where is the Gaming crisis, where are all the programmers getting fired .

Newsflash - mainstream games are way more popular than other games, and because of that, their piracy will rise with their popularity. The point is that they could have made a hell of a lot more than they already have if it weren't for the piracy. It doesn't matter if you think they are greedy, they are a business, and maximized profits is their ultimate goal.

The only programmers that get fired are those working for small studios with relative okay fanbases, being overshadowed by triple A titles constantly

Oh no! The evil popular kids are overshadowing the shy meek guys. How sad.

And you know who's complaining about piracy? the triple A developer, the little small dev that's going to be a bum in the morning, you don't hear him ranting about people stealing his game,

Yes, because an indie developer can afford to complain about piracy and indie dev stories ALWAYS reach the mainstream news sites.

he's happy he created some great intellectual property, shite life that he's losing his job though, but that's not due to piracy and you won't hear him blaming it on piracy.

Yes, those inferior indie game devs. How DARE they think they are worth anything more than the dirt stuck to our shoes. They should be scrounging for anything they can possibly find. I like how you casually shrug off the fact that "he's losing his job". I guess that goes to show how disposable you feel game devs are.

Sorry for my indiscretion and lack of intense grammar checking but I'm getting tired of all the "Heads stuck up arse" business that people portray on this site from time to time.

*looks at your entire post again*
*looks at your last few words*

Heads stuck up ass business, huh? Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

you just blatantly denied that people pirate movies , books or music

I stopped reading and caring about your post right there

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

so if I am poor and couldn't buy the game anyway

And I pirate the game, and play it, and enjoy it, and am possibly motivated to save up for the sequel because its such a good IP

My Morality is f**ed up

Yes, it is. Video games are a luxury item and not necessary to survive. Not being able to afford something isn't grounds for obtaining it illegally, and sugarcoating it with "oh, but I MIGHT buy it later down the line anyway!!!!11" is such horseshit.

You do know.... that most pirates... actually buy the games they really really want right?

You do know.....that you have absolutely jack-shit to prove that statement? You want to believe it, you want to believe it SO hard that you won't even find evidence for it. (Which is impossible to find, because the pirate defense mechanism would kick in if you went around asking and all the pirates would say they buy it anyway).

Also, you do realize that buying just the games they really want is not any better? I don't go eating the first 5 cookies in a freshly baked batch without paying and then take the 6th one saying that it was the one I really wanted. I experienced (I hesitate to use the word "took" lest all the pedantic idiots with the 'piracy is not stealing' bullshit start hounding me) 5 cookies without paying at all; even though the baker has an unlimited amount of cookies, he still deserved to be paid for the ones I had.

or another fucked up pirate mentality :
Fixing broken games

Pirates are so "Terrible" they dig into a games source from time to time to fix things that the publishers take months to fix

Terrible people yeah, I see

I see that proving your claims is not your strong point. So those "time from time" incidents make up for it all, does it? When are you going to stop sounding like you're apologizing for piracy or making excuses for it and just admit that you want free shit because like the rest of us, you're cheap?

When did it become so difficult for a pirate to admit that and just be done with it?

sure enough, here I'll prove some worth to the claims devs make

or try

Me in theory pirating your game is you losing a sale

well
that argument is based on jackshit, because if I have 50 euros, and I want to buy 2 games
and 1 game costs me 50 euros

and the other I can't buy

then well I didn't buy that other game

then you didn't lose a sale, to me but it goes to the competitor

If I have no money whatsoever, then I would not have been able to buy your game anyway, so no sale was lost


See what you seem to be forgetting is that when I take 1 cookies out of that batch, the cookie dissapears for good, for 1 copy of a game I pirate, I do not go into a store to smash a copy
Someone else will buy the copy I might have bought in my local store.

Why? because the game remains on the shelve till someone buys it.

And if it is a first hand sale then a margin still goes to the dev

 

[Treblaine]

snip

The discussion is about whether or not piracy is causing the downfall of pc gaming is it not? If you even deny the reality of pc gaming decline, then theres no way to have a rational argument about its decline with you, for a rational argument to happen, there must be at least some kind of basic understanding for the conditions of the argument.

Uh yeah I don't accept your illogical assertion that PC's downfall, especially considering:
-there is no evidence of this downfall
-there is evidence I HAVE SHOWN YOU that contradicts any downfall.

You can't just throw in words like "reality" to give you baseless assertions fake credibility.

You want rationality. Try this:

Valve's profitability:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0228/technology-gabe-newell-videogames-valve-online-mayhem.html

PC exclusives 2012:
-ARMA 3
-Blacklight Retribution
-Diablo 3
-Trackmania 2
-Firefall
-Grim Dawn (from lion's share of Titan Quest's developers, to spite Frazier's minority claims they still make PC exclusives)
-Mechwarrior Online
-Shootmania
-Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm
-Hawken
-Neverwinter
-Fray
-Interstellar Marines
-Depth
-Natural Selection II
-Torchlight 2
-Cobalt
-Dota 2
-Guild Wars 2
-Jagged Alliance: Back in action
-Planetside 2
-Scrolls
-Tera
-The Secret World
-Tribes: Ascend

In comparisons to Xbox 360 exclusives 2012:
-Halo 4
-Kinect Star Wars
-Steel Battalion Kinect
-Fable: the Journey (more Kinect)

_EA investing majorly in PC gaming with their Origin service as well as On-Live totally depending on their being games be released for PC.

Thing is PC gaming is NOT dying, here is so much evidence that it is going strong with several big companies hugely invested and reinvested in it.

So - now you know - who is in denial about what decline?