Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

[Treblaine]

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.

Weeell, look at it from the other side, isn't there also a rather lack of games that are exclusive to consoles with no PC release?

Red Dead Redemption was the last BIG third-party title to not get a PC release and that was 2 years ago while Rockstar is now giving Max Payne 3 and GTA-5 a PC release in 2012 as well as the rest of the games made under 2K. I suppose Dark Souls but things may be changing on that, and it's hardly much of a trend.

PC still gets to enjoy all the CoD, Skyrim, Arkham City, LA Noire, Assassin's Creed and so on.

I don't think it's relevant to compare first-party games as of course Sony/Nintendo have a conflict of interest to not release their game on PC regardless of demand as they are using artificial exclusivity to increase sales of their system. This has ALWAYS been the case since the 1980's and before. It's not illustrative of anything that Uncharted is PS3 exclusive. Even Halo's exclusivity can be linked to how Microsoft can simply make more money selling on 360 than on PC hence Halo exclusivity - regardless of the state of piracy.

Halo exclusivity means people buy Xbox 360s then they buy more games for X360 at $12-16 for every game licensed on their system.

And of course there ARE big exclusives for PC that aren't tiny indie titles:
-Dota 2
-Trackmania 2
-Witcher 2 (a year of PC exclusivity)
-Dawn of War II Retribution
-Starcraft II
-Arma III
-Mechwarrior Online
-Blacklight Retribution
-Diablo 3
-Hawken

From just recently and the near future. All those are third-party of course as no one can licence PC programs there is no first-party.

 

[Findlebob]

Dawn Of War's

Their he is wrong.

 

[Vitiositas]

I honestly wouldnt mind if it was true, but its bloody well not. Check the torrent sites, there is already a kingdoms of amalur cracked xbox360 torrent, its been up there for over a week, and yet no pc copy... ye, pc pirating is worse than consoles.... idiot devs.

 

[Robert Ewing]

PC exclusives may be dying out. But every PC exclusive I've known has sold rather well. Half-life 2. Starcraft 2. Both games sold horribly. Oh wait, no they didn't.

Yeah... Piracy is not the same as a lost sale I'm afraid. It just seems that they're using piracy as an excuse for THEIR poor sales and lack of creativity. And consoles have had a part to play to some extent...

 

[goliath6711]

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.

You know, I would completely agree with you except for the fact that he did NOT WRITE THIS IN THE MAIN ARTICLE.

I also hate it when journalists insert their opinions in articles where they're supposed to be just giving facts about a story. One of my local newspapers does that with their front page headlines from time to time, and it makes me not want to read it. If they really want to give their opinions on a particular story, that's what the "editorial" section is there for.

And that's what these forums are basically.

So a journalist is not allowed to onto a page whose sole purpose is for people to write their opinions and give it when asked? Seems to me like you're saying, "Journalists aren't allowed to have opinions, unless they're the same as mine."

 

[wintercoat]

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.

You know, I would completely agree with you except for the fact that he did NOT WRITE THIS IN THE MAIN ARTICLE.

I also hate it when journalists insert their opinions in articles where they're supposed to be just giving facts about a story. One of my local newspapers does that with their front page headlines from time to time, and it makes me not want to read it. If they really want to give their opinions on a particular story, that's what the "editorial" section is there for.

And that's what these forums are basically.

So a journalist is not allowed to onto a page whose sole purpose is for people to write their opinions and give it when asked? Seems to me like you're saying, "Journalists aren't allowed to have opinions, unless they're the same as mine."

When they're responding to a comment to an article that they wrote, a comment calling them out on their bias, by stating that their opinion is fact, yes, I hold them accountable. A journalist is judged based on what they say, and by him stating opinion as fact, that tells me just how much journalistic integrity he has. A journalist can have as much of an opinion as anyone else, but when they start labeling it as fact, it crosses the line.

 

[JonnWood]

Gamers pirate Crysis just to see if their rigs can run it.
Crytek says the game was pirated at a rate of 15 copies to 1 legit one.
Crytek makes Crysis 2 multiplatform.
Gamers complain that Crytek was getting greedy, and that piracy has nothing to do with their decision, despite them specifically saying that they were making the decision because of piracy.
Pirates pirate Crysis 2 specifically because it's multiplatform.
I facepalm.

I have no problem with these claims. Piracy is a blight on gaming, and so are those who attempt to rationalize it.

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

Regular gamer here to point out that he made no such claim, and you're using a reflexive straw man.

Piracy is wrong because it violates rights. Lost sales are secondary. This is a case where a game got in trouble because of a bug in the leaked, pirated version, and people thought it was in the final version.

 

[JonnWood]

PC exclusives may be dying out. But every PC exclusive I've known has sold rather well. Half-life 2. Starcraft 2. Both games sold horribly. Oh wait, no they didn't.

Yeah... Piracy is not the same as a lost sale I'm afraid. It just seems that they're using piracy as an excuse for THEIR poor sales and lack of creativity. And consoles have had a part to play to some extent...

Not an excuse. A reason. The article specifically describes a situation where a good game got screwed because of piracy. And not because people were pirating in lieu of buying; where a glitch in the leaked pirated version, and only the pirated version, was assumed to be indicative of the final game.

Did you actually read the article?

 

[Sovvolf]

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.

Yeah though reading through every news article on this website and beyond regarding piracy... Its never the fault of piracy. It gets annoying to read after a while. Most of it goes through people trying to justify it through arguing semantic and technicalities. I used to try arguing it but whats the point anymore. People will use any excuse to justify not having to pay to play a video game.

 

[JonnWood]

I honestly wouldnt mind if it was true, but its bloody well not. Check the torrent sites, there is already a kingdoms of amalur cracked xbox360 torrent, its been up there for over a week, and yet no pc copy... ye, pc pirating is worse than consoles.... idiot devs.

So you think one example, from a game that's not even released yet, is representative.

Uh huh.

PC games are pirated much more than console games. This is a fact.

 

[JonnWood]

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.

I have to disagree. Plenty of pirates were never going to pay. So aside from the extremely rare people who do actually buy the game because of piracy(which still doesn't justify it), we have lost sales, and then the parasites. It's mostly parasites.

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?

It's not so much that they don't want it, but that they don't want to pay for it. Or to wait a while to get it legit. I've seen people argue their piracy was justified because they couldn't get a show legit on iTunes yet.

 

[Sovvolf]

I honestly wouldnt mind if it was true, but its bloody well not. Check the torrent sites, there is already a kingdoms of amalur cracked xbox360 torrent, its been up there for over a week, and yet no pc copy... ye, pc pirating is worse than consoles.... idiot devs.

So you think one example, from a game that's not even released yet, is representative.

Uh huh.

PC games are pirated much more than console games. This is a fact.

The fact that its hard to get access to xbl and such through pirated games (they can cut your profile and I think your xbox off from live completely if caught) tends to make it a whole lot riskier to play pirated games on that console, so I imagine that cuts down on a lot of it. Course there are some gamers that won't care for xbl at all and will pirate but because that's one of the primary points of the console and selling points of the games, most probably wont see much point in risking pirating.

Not sure what happens with the PS3 though. Perhaps its the same.

 

[JonnWood]

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.

Even big AAA PC-exclusive titles with no DRM like The Witcher 2 have a ton of piracy. The blame is on the pirates, not anyone else.

 

[Sjakie]

Granted, piracy aint a very nice thing to do.
But if everybody stuck to, let's call it 'the moral high ground', and never pirated games they werent sure about, even less sales would be made.
There are quite a few people out there that pirate a game and afterwards go out and purchase it legally because they like what they saw.
Piracy aint good, but it also gives access to a bigger audience that normally would not even think about getting it.

 

[JonnWood]

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)

There's a difference between PC exclusive, console exclusive, and cross-platform. This game is cross-platform. So was another little game you may have heard of called Skyrim.

Any advantage from console games being cheaper to make is wiped out by going cross-platform.