Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

[Monkeyman O'Brien]

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.

Just do what I do. Write it off as just another propaganda spewing corporate puppet no different than Fox News. Its accurate and it will help your health by not raising your blood pressure getting angry at these corporate mouth pieces.
Besides, Jim Sterlings current pieces on this very site blow Andys "That's not opinion, that's fact." arguments right outta the water.
I do still believe that these pieces should be offically removed from the News room. If he wants to spout opinion pieces let him do so in the regular off topic sections.

 

[Aprilgold]

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.

 

[Sleipnir]

I like to call Piracy a "try before you buy" deal, I wouldn't have bought half the games I own if it wasn't for some form of piracy. Hell I wouldn't have played most of them due to being unsure in the store. It's like a shiftier version of playing a game at a mate's house to me, you play the game, you go "actually, I quite like this game," so you save up and buy an actual copy, and sometimes you even get a collector's edition.

I'm with Neil Gaiman, piracy is free publicity.

You're not losing sales by getting stuff out there. When I do a big talk now on these kinds of subjects and people ask "What about the sales you are losing by having stuff floating out there?" I started asking the audience to raise their hands for one question -- Do you have a favorite author? And they say yes and I say good. What I want is for everybody who discovered their favorite author by being lent a book put up your hand. Then anybody who discovered their favorite author by walking into a book story and buying a book. And it's probably about 5-10%, if that, of the people who discovered their favorite author who is the person they buy everything of and they buy the hardbacks. And they treasure the fact they've got this author. Very few of them bought the book. They were lent it. They were given it. They did not pay for it. That's how they found their favorite author. And that's really all this is; it's people lending books.

It's about books, but it counts.

 

[Treblaine]

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!

 

[Krantos]

Titan Quest? Really?

You're basing this off the fact Titan Quest didn't do that well? Maybe the reason it didn't do that well was that it was a slow plodding Diablo clone. Hm... My friend bought that for me as a gift on Steam and I literally put about 5 hours into and was so bored I had to rearrange my sock drawer.

As to the piracy thing? No opinion. I think it definitely hurts, but whether that's the big reason, I won't really put much weight on it until some actual studies are done.

Also consoles have to fight used game sales (something PC doesn't) so, yeah, not really buying it.

 

[Treblaine]

I like to call Piracy a "try before you buy" deal, I wouldn't have bought half the games I own if it wasn't for some form of piracy. Hell I wouldn't have played most of them due to being unsure in the store. It's like a shiftier version of playing a game at a mate's house to me, you play the game, you go "actually, I quite like this game," so you save up and buy an actual copy, and sometimes you even get a collector's edition.

The problem with "piracy as demo" is if you don't like the game, then statistically that is INDISTINGUISHABLE from you simply pirating and playing through the game INSTEAD of buying it. Piracy-demoing is indistinguishable from lost sales.

Even if you buy the game how do they know you bought it from the piracy of demo and that they won't reasonably consider "well if they pirated the game, and they have the full game, why would they hand over their cash for the DRM infested version?"

Not every publisher is as smart as Neil Gaiman to see free copies of their products being distributed without any control as free publicity. Especially if the publisher ALREADY dropped several million dollars on their own publicity/marketing campaign through traditional means as every version played must be paid for. Also, Neil Gaiman is one man who put all the effort into a book. But games are made my dozens if not hundreds of people investing a lot of effort and money. And Mr Gaiman is a pretty clued in sort of block who is quite thoughtful and self-critical.

Hence, I don't pirate. Not because it is that bad, but because of how it is perceived. I am not the sort of person to keep doing a troubling thing just because I think they are being ignorant about it.

 

[Tanksenior]

(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!

Agree wholeheartedly, I used to pirate almost everything. Then I got a job and an income and now I've bought most games I have ever pirated + a nice collection of games on steam.

Also the dev whining about the release of Titan Quest is pretty sad, I bought it a few months ago when it was on sale and it's STILL pretty damn buggy. It's a fun game but you kind of have to install a big fan-made patch to get rid of most of the bugs.

 

[Dertdood]

I'm sorry but if you legitimately think Piracy is okay you are an idiot.
Let's say I pirate a large console release because I'm not sure if I'll like it or I can't afford it.

Right off the bat the game store has just lost a sale, since I didn't buy the game from them.

If more people think the same way as me the game store wont be able to sell all their copies of the game

So now the distributor is losing money because the shops wont want to restock

If the distributor can't shift the copies then the publisher is going to lose money

When the publisher loses money all the investors lose money

So now the publisher and investors are not very happy

Who are they going to blame?
The artist of course.

So then they might hand the artist's IP to someone else, or tell the artist that they can't make any more of these games

So then the artist either loses their IP or buys it back, which will lose them money. They may have already started on a sequel or an expansion and are now being told that it isn't wanted.

Piracy hurts the whole industry, it doesn't just make a rich man have $40 less than he would

 

[lancar]

It seems to me that Titan Quest failed because, as the article plainly said, its --> DRM <-- stirred up discontent and bad press.
What a shocker!!
I mean, seriously, stay with me for a sec... try to _avoid_ doing that.

I'm willing to bet that bad press & rumors will hurt you a LOT more than piracy ever can.
Why? Because there's no ambiguity to rumours of buggy-ness. If people think your game is buggy, less will buy it. Seriously, that's what will happen, I guarantee it! This is not rocket surgery!

Piracy, however, IS. Despite it being a constant phenomenon in pretty much every game on every platform ever, we STILL don't know all of all the implications it brings.

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.

And if you don't care for my "news" - quote unquote - stay away from it.

This reminds me of a motto I read somewhere:
"My mind is made up, don't confuse me with fact!"

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

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.

And if you don't care for my "news" - quote unquote - stay away from it.

You read this by Larian Studios founder and CEO Swen Vincke?
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/swen-vincke-confesses-i-wouldn%E2%80%99t-be-in-this-industry-if-i-hadnt-pirated-a-couple-of-games/

"I think I probably played a couple of thousands of games illegally, and so I?d be quite a hypocrite if I?d condemn something I?ve been doing myself for years. I now make enough money to buy all my games, and I do, but I didn?t back then and to be frank, I also didn?t really think about the people making those games and the impact of my piracy actions on them. I even cracked some games or fixed some bad cracks when I discovered that my gameplay experience was being disturbed by some fancy copy protection."

I'd bet if they'd be honest about it a lot of devs could likely say the same, I'm pretty sure certain companies like CDProjekt or GSC would likely not have even existed without it, when people are young and love something but don't have the money, be it devs or musicians or similar they look for other ways and they might even pursue a certain career because of that, not to say that in the time of the ZX Spectrum "piracy" or making things like mixtapes wasn't exactly considered to be some sort of deadly sin.

See? Piracy is a more complex issue than the pro-piracy or anti-piracy camps care to admit. It can have negative effects in some cases and have positive effects in others.

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.

And if you don't care for my "news" - quote unquote - stay away from it.

I like how you talk about wanting to have a serious discussion on piracy and then open with rhetoric.

 

[LorienvArden]

Says the relatively unknown person who ignores things like Minecraft. And Super MeatBoy. And that console piracy does exist. And that sometimes games fail because...they fail.

Could it be that Titan Quest, despite being good, was really just Mythical Diablo?

Super Meat Boy wasn't an PC exclusive and Minecraft is an indi title, both which don't fall into the "expensive big PC exclusives" they talk about.

TitanQuest wasn't all that similar to Diablo. It had a unique character creation and differentiated itself from diablo by haveing a really good graphics engine and a good level design. It didn't have random levels though, which might have been a nice plus.

The level editor from TQ was so well documented and easy to use that it was a beauty to behold. It only comes second to the galaxyeditor of Starcraft inmo.

What I find interesting in this article is that when Iron Lore initially closed down, they didn't place the blame soly on piracy, but also inaccurate and faulty reviews of the game. Some of the bad press that TQ got wasn't because pirates complained about it, but because some dingbat that was supposed to review the game had no clue how to play it and marked it down for not having an easy way to get back to town - despite a blatantly obvious townportal button on the skillbar.

Also, why should I care if a game also is released on a console ? Do any of the BF3 fans care if somebody can play a hacked down,poorly rendering version on a 360 ?

 

[bit_crusherrr]

Titan Quest was crap. Maybe that's why it didn't sell? StarCraft 2 was top of the charts in the UK when that came out. If you make a good game people will buy it.

 

[Daverson]

And the fact console games can sell for an extra £20 in some cases, yet are actually cheaper to make than PC games has absolutely nothing to do with this, I'm sure.

(Publishers not doing PC exclusives, that is, not piracy. Though I'm sure it is a major factor in console piracy)

 

[Treblaine]

The whole concept of exclusives is completely outdated relic of licencing model that doesn't work any more in world where consoles are too similar to PCs.

Well it's harder to get a game on console than mere technical spec comparisons (and PS3 is very different from common PC structure). For one xbox 360 have many many demands for any game you want to release on their system, beyond achievements but so many exclusivity conditions in licencing.

Listen to what the indie community has to say about Xbox Live Arcade even XBL Indie it is not very friendly to them.

Then of course there is quite how underpowered the Xbox 360 is compared to even the most basic of modern PCs. Only 512Mb of memory between the Graphics Core AND the CPU! Half a gig! In a day when 1GB of dedicated high-speed, on-chip video memory is the standard on PC and you'll struggle to find a laptop selling with less than 4GB of dedicated system RAM.

Minecraft is a game that gobbles up huge amounts of system RAM that PCs have that Xbox 360 simply doesn't have.

The key with Xbox 360 (and its like) is to build games WITHIN these limitations and take advantage of how standardised it all is and work right up to every limit. This is very hard but can deliver great bang-per-buck but only if you are very much in Microsoft's development umbrella. They provide many services and programes that can optimise DEVELOPING a game for xbox 360. But porting it, well you almost have to take all the game assets (every weapon/item model + animation) and reconstruct it from there.

A game made on Xbox 360 is easy to port from 360 to PC, but going the other way, it's like a large peg into a smaller hole. Not impossible, but it does take a lot of time and extra effort and inevitably some compromises.

 

[minimacker]

Convenience & Available service = Less Piracy.

More DRM, mazing updates and Keys to enter? = Moar Piracy.

Every fucker on the planet knows it. Yet, the publishers don't. Are they stationed on Mars or something?


You could argue that Indie games don't have the DRM bullshit that the larger publishers have! And they have just as high of pirates stealing their shit!

True. But Indie games often don't have the money that larger publishers have. An indie game is almost bound to be spread through word-of-mouth (Figuratively speaking) and not through commercials or advertisements because it's too expensive.

Getting hold of that game could also be difficult. You don't find Indie games in retail stores, for example. Thus, more piracy.

Large publishers DO have that money. So they can effectively pull it off.
But they don't.

 

[Quesa]

As much as I'd like to ram every pirate in the world onto the end of a flag pole a month for every pirated title for the damage they do... yeah, no, I'm going to say the legions of casual gamers with their thumb-driven controllers on their closed*, proprietary thin client PCs with hilariously low standards for content hour per dollar are the reason developers generally don't care about the PC anymore. Sorry Ian.

* As much as I hate the 360 and PS3 for MS and Sony's evilness and controlling, I'd be all for an open source console that kept hardware standards completely static for 5 years at a time; c'mon Google, where's that Chrome gaming OS.

 

[goliath6711]

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

I have never ever bought this argument. The fact that you want a game bad enough to pirate/steal it makes you a potential customer. It's just a matter of finding out what incentive it would take to make you want to buy it. The only people that aren't considered "lost sales" are those that never wanted to get it under any circumstances, even if they gave it away for free.

I mean think about it. People only steal something because they either want it for themselves or they want to give it to someone else who wants it in exchange for something that other person has that they want. Would you really bother stealing something that neither you nor anybody else wanted?