Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

[Treblaine]

Your posts are nothing more than advertisements for Valve games based on what's obviously your loyalty to the dev. I'm actually done arguing with you. This is just circular reasoning. Each time you just try and get more granular about the differences in the games and I'm just going in the opposite direction.

Have fun playing Half Life.

Also, if you're going to put me on your ignore list, actually do it this time, kay? Cool.

-I do not remember saying I intend to put you on any ignore list
-I do not advertise for Valve nor anyone, my motivation is countering untruths
-I am not unduly loyal to any video game company.
-I have not been making granular if differentiations, I have presented facts of the large and fundamental differences

OK? What you've said about Valve is incorrect. And I've proven that you are wrong on this matter using facts.

I hope you can accept the facts of the matter and lets try to not make this personal.

As I said before, your posts about Valve games are just broken-record advertisements that appear to be taken from a combination of an undying love for the games (which I respect) and the tagline that is given to entice people into buying the games. Fundamentally, they look, feel, (and with the exception of portal) play the same; no amount of granular detail from you will change that. You are not countering untruths, and you have no "proven" anything. You are simply attempting to counter the only fact that has been stated during this entire conversation; With the exception of few, every single game Valve makes is a variation of HL or HL2. It's just what the facts are. It's not a huge problem, and it's nothing to be ashamed about (although you seem to be), but trying to deny it, rationalize it, compare it to other game engines, or anything else you've tried is just sad.

Like I said, I'm done talking to you about it. If you really feel the need to fit in another "last-word" post to satisfy your ego, so be it.

I'm sorry, you don't seem to understand what a "fact" is. You can't just say it is so and therefore it is a fact, where is YOUR evidence?

I give facts, evidence, solid and objective proof. What have you given other than repeat the same assertions? You say I'm a broken record when you've repeated the "advertising" accusation in the first sentence twice in a row now.

It is simply not true that Valve games play any more similarly to Half Life 2 to any other than other FPS game. Similarities between say L4D and HL2 are also seen between Half Life 2 and F.E.A.R. And I don't know if you really fail to comprehend or your are deliberately refusing to recognise the purpose of the Unreal 3 engine comparison.

I've deal with people like you before, how you will seemingly ignore and deny all evidence, it's quite extraordinary. Also common is the casual reference to vile acts like killing my children and defecating on them. WTF dude, where the hell did that come from?!? And don't try to deny you went there, you did. And littered with so many petty personal insults speculating that I am ashamed and outright calling me sad and pathetic and of course starting it all off with some good old Godwin's law style fascism labelling.

Do you think this is acceptable?

I'd like you to have the last word explaining your conduct.

 

[AhumbleKnight]

--snip --

Yes it was my list. Yep, fair enough assumption.
I stand by my point that 'they' should be trying to make things easyer for the customer, not harder for the pirate. Because harder for the pirate = harder for the customer as well.

I agree with that sentiment, but surely you can also agree that it goes both ways; the easier it is for the consumer, the easier it is for the pirate. I suppose it just depends on your outlook of it all.

I can agree that it does go both ways. It really does depend on your outlook. It being a choice for the company to take a customer centric business model or a profit centric business model. These are not mutually exclusive. One will see less profits in the short term while receiving a higher rate of repeat custom and customer loyalty. The other will see higher profits in the short term and a reduced rate in customer loyalty. There are great examples of game dev's/publishers that fit snugly in both categories (Valve and EA respectively). If I was the CEO of an entertainment company I would be pushing for the former, not the latter.

 

[AhumbleKnight]

I am sorry I can't respond to each and everyone of you who replied to me earlier but that is just to much work.

You all seem to think I am somehow defending piracy and am also a pirate just because I am stating a fact. Some pirated games are equal to a lost sale but not 100% and it is certainly not what is "killing" the pc exclusive.

So if piracy isn't killing the PC exclusive what is?
(And don't say DRM because Steam is the most prevalent DRM around and most people are willing to bend over and take it, while singing Valve's praises)

I'm honestly tired of pro-piracy arguments, like:
1. Not every download is a lost sale because some people would never have bought it
2. Some people who pirate the game buy it later
3. etcetera

What about the opposite
1. Some downloads ARE a lost sale
2. Many people who pirate and play a game DO NOT buy it later


No one ever mentions that side of the equation do they. Gee I wonder why.

Those pro-piracy arguments you mention are also anti-anti-piracy. That is to say, people mention them because they are sick of hearing about the anti-piracy aguments stating that all downloads are a lost sale etc.
And people do mention the opposite. Infact:
'Not every download is a lost sale because some people would never have bought it' = 'Some downloads ARE a lost sale'

If you read through every page of this thread you will find posts mentioning everything you said 'no one ever mentions'. A lot of people are starting to get shitty with all the absolutes flying around in this debate and feel the need to point out that things are not absolute and any claims as to numbers/percentages/odds/etc are mearly guesswork. The DRM vs piracy argument is (hopefully) finally starting to shift away from absolutes and into customer vs dev/publisher vs pirate.

 

[Hisher]

So if piracy isn't killing the PC exclusive what is?
(And don't say DRM because Steam is the most prevalent DRM around and most people are willing to bend over and take it, while singing Valve's praises)

I'm honestly tired of pro-piracy arguments, like:
1. Not every download is a lost sale because some people would never have bought it
2. Some people who pirate the game buy it later
3. etcetera

What about the opposite
1. Some downloads ARE a lost sale
2. Many people who pirate and play a game DO NOT buy it later


No one ever mentions that side of the equation do they. Gee I wonder why.

No that's the only side of the argument that ever gets mentioned and every time someone like me comes around we get labeled as pro piracy.

Shitty DRM is certainly a problem there are quite a few games me and many others won't touch because of it. Steam may be DRM but it doesn't stop me from playing my games or limit how many times I can install or for how long.

And a partial quote of myself from earlier.

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.

 

[Hisher]

Shitty DRM is certainly a problem there are quite a few games me and many others won't touch because of it. Steam may be DRM but it doesn't stop me from playing my games or limit how many times I can install or for how long.

Unless you don't have an internet connection in which case you cannot play your store-bought game at all. Which is damnable in my opinion. No company should ever put a box in a store that contains 95% of a game. If it's not playable out of the box, as is, it's a broken and incomplete product.

And a partial quote of myself from earlier.

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.

The thing is, if I were to ask you to qualify some of those points you would probably point to recent practices. But the decline of the PC is not a recent event, it's one that's been ongoing for years now. One has to wonder whether those points, even if valid today, were valid years ago when this decline started to happen.

DRM back in the day used to just be a code you put in. It used to be keeping the disc in the drive while you play the game. These are hardly "horrible" measures by any stretch. It's only compartively recently that we've seen nonsense like ubisoft's "always on" DRM and the like.


If I were to hazard a guess, I would suspect that the decline of the PC exclusive can be linked to the prevalence and speed of the internet. That being, the convenience of downloading content over previous years. And if that suspicion is indeed the case then the obvious correlation to the decline of the exclusive and PC gaming in general is piracy, because with increased download speeds and greater freedom comes greater accesibility.

If you don't have an internet connection all you have to do is start steam in offline mode anything that hinders gameplay after that is not the fault of steam but of whatever DRM was packaged with it by the developer or publisher and that I agree is damnable.

To be completely honest I don't believe PC exclusives are really in decline at all it just seems so because consoles are a much bigger share of the market and that is the main focus of the industry right now.

Edit: If there is a decline of anything it is in game quality which in my opinion is being caused by to much focus on graphical capability and trying to make games appeal to a wider audience or more accessible.

 

[Hisher]

If you don't have an internet connection all you have to do is start steam in offline mode anything that hinders gameplay after that is not the fault of steam but of whatever DRM was packaged with it by the developer or publisher and that I agree is damnable.

Um, incorrect. I bought the Half Life 1 collection for example, I think that's the first time I actually started using Steam. The box I bought didn't include the full game, only about 95% of it, if I hadn't had an internet connnection, I would've been unable to get the final 5% and play the game. While it is true that Steam allow you to play games offline, you do at some point need to be online to get the game running at all.

Okay I see what you are saying now. With physical media you should definitely not be forced to connect to the internet at all to play your game the one time activation included with the disk was a much better solution and having to download the last part or activate it online with even something like project ten dollar should be frowned upon. For digital distribution I still don't think it gets much better than steam.

 

[Legit101]

................

 

[LiquidSolstice]

Well if the game is shit, I don't blame the piracy.
If they pirate the game and it's shit, it's not a lost sale since they'd probably return the game if they could.

You don't know that. That's the whole point. You don't know whether they would have bought the game or returned it.

The only thing you do know is that they are experiencing the game without compensating the developer for it at all. This isn't rocket science, but it appears to be an absolute playground for people to come out and play with the swingsets of rationalization and justification based on nothing more than assumptions.

 

[grigjd3]

When your game just isn't that interesting and it doesn't sell well, blame piracy!

 

[hooksashands]

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?

Titan Quest was a good game. And pirates all but literally gutted it.

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=42663

I was in the "good games sell, bad games don't" camp too for awhile. But then I realized that same argument can be flipped on its head. If a game you think is awful sells a bajillion copies on release day, it's still 'bad', which contradicts the notion that only 'good' games sell. And voila, we arrive at the reason this statement is a logical fallacy: Success and popularity =/= Quality and craftsmanship.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

Kinda sounds like the ultimate irony.

The PC elites who so fuss about the decline of the PC games are the ones causing it with their piracy.

And then they defend their piracy too. Can't have it both ways.

 

[Treblaine]

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?

Titan Quest was a good game. And pirates all but literally gutted it.

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=42663

I was in the "good games sell, bad games don't" camp too for awhile. But then I realized that same argument can be flipped on its head. If a game you think is awful sells a bajillion copies on release day, it's still 'bad', which contradicts the notion that only 'good' games sell. And voila, we arrive at the reason this statement is a logical fallacy: Success and popularity =/= Quality and craftsmanship.

The pirates didn't give it a 77% metascore rating (professional reviewers review legit copies), nor reputation as a generic Diablo clone at a time when Diablo 2 was still so highly lauded, nor the extreme lack of marketing. Nor did piracy cause them to spend a lot of money developing a sequel that they didn't release which was ultimately what caused the company to default.

Titan Quest may have been a good game, but back in 2006 to much of the market looking to buy the game it did NOT look like a safe bet.

 

[hooksashands]

The pirates didn't give it a 77% metascore rating (professional reviewers review legit copies), nor reputation as a generic Diablo clone at a time when Diablo 2 was still so highly lauded, nor the extreme lack of marketing. Nor did piracy cause them to spend a lot of money developing a sequel that they didn't release which was ultimately what caused the company to default.

Titan Quest may have been a good game, but back in 2006 to much of the market looking to buy the game it did NOT look like a safe bet.

Describe 77% to me. What does that even MEAN? If they need a percentile rating system to tell them whether or not they're allowed to enjoy a game, then I weep for humanity. And how is the lack of marketing their fault? They can only hype their game as much as their publishers can afford, and since a pitiful amount of people actually bought TQ, the reason they couldn't push their product is because everyone fucking stole it, not because they were working on a sequel. I'm sorry, but I really can't find fault with a studio making a follow-up before their first game has even had time to crash and burn. If anything, that just shows how hard they're willing to work and how dedicated they are as a creative team despite the atmosphere of utter hopelessness. If your first game is stillborn and the second one is a miscarriage, you better believe you're still gonna remember it when making the third.

 

[Treblaine]

The pirates didn't give it a 77% metascore rating (professional reviewers review legit copies), nor reputation as a generic Diablo clone at a time when Diablo 2 was still so highly lauded, nor the extreme lack of marketing. Nor did piracy cause them to spend a lot of money developing a sequel that they didn't release which was ultimately what caused the company to default.

Titan Quest may have been a good game, but back in 2006 to much of the market looking to buy the game it did NOT look like a safe bet.

Describe 77% to me. What does that even MEAN? If they need a percentile rating system to tell them whether or not they're allowed to enjoy a game, then I weep for humanity. And how is the lack of marketing their fault? They can only hype their game as much as their publishers can afford, and since a pitiful amount of people actually bought TQ, the reason they couldn't push their product is because everyone fucking stole it, not because they were working on a sequel. I'm sorry, but I really can't find fault with a studio making a follow-up before their first game has even had time to crash and burn. If anything, that just shows how hard they're willing to work and how dedicated they are as a creative team despite the atmosphere of utter hopelessness. If your first game is stillborn and the second one is a miscarriage, you better believe you're still gonna remember it when making the third.

77% doesn't mean anything about the game itself.

It just doesn't look very good to people who HAVEN'T tried the game, it doesn't mean the game is ACTUALLY bad, it just means on average the critics were pretty harsh on it. It already looks like a Diablo clone, and metascore just means on average the critics were harsher to it.

I recommend Titan Quest, but you can see why a lot of people might have skipped it.

It's not their "fault" they have a lack of marketing, but is IS a factor.

 

[Doom972]

It seems companies like Valve, CD Projekt (I'd mention Blizzard but they do run an MMO) and many indie developers manage just fine even with the piracy.
If you make a good game, people will buy it. If you just make a clone of another successful game (like Titan Quest), don't expect too many people to buy it. Especially if you include annoying DRM.
Yes, the PC does have a piracy problem, but it's not big enough to make developing for it not worth it.

Clearly, developers disagree. See also; Crysis. People are more likely to pirate popular/good games, not less, DRM or not (The Witcher 2). DRM's actual effect is negligible, and no one is responsible for people choosing to pirate their game. That's he equivalent of "She was asking for it, your Honor!"

Crysis 2 was a short, and not very innovative. Some people won't buy a game for 6 hours of single player (remember when demos were as long as that?), but would still like to give it a go.
Witcher 2 was very successful. CDP said that about for every 1 copy sold 2 were pirated IIRC - but I think they took into account countries where where you can almost only get pirated copies (There's an excellent article about such a situation in Brazil, here on the Escapist). Anyway, the game still was a big commercial success.
You can't deny games of good quality (long playing time, replayability, immesion, storytelling, etc) that appeal to the PC audience do become commercial successes.