Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

[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.

 

[Farotsu]

Soul Storm was pretty horrid but I really am liking Titan Quest now that the COMMUNITY made a patch for it. Before that it was pretty unbalanced and near unplayable. So I'd say they botched the thing up themselves.

 

[JonnWood]

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.

Most pirates don't buy jack. Piracy isn't wrong primarily because it loses sales, it's wrong primarily because it violates people's rights.

 

[Xanthious]

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.

It must be nice to be able to see the world in absolute shades of black and white. I can only think it has to be enlightening to be able to judge the actions of others, know their reasons for doing said action, and state with total certainty your opinion of their actions as an indisputable fact. We should all be so lucky I guess.

As for the issue at hand you know as well as I do that these forums are not the place you will ever be able to have a fair or serious conversation about piracy due to one side getting slapped with warnings, bans, or suspensions for voicing anything that could even slightly be construed as a pro piracy argument.

It's pretty easy to attack others when those people aren't even allowed to argue their points in response. I would absolutely love to continue this conversation someplace where both sides are free to argue their points equally. Sadly this is not that place.

 

[MrTub]

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.

Yeah serious conversations happens really often, except when a site decides to ban anyone that speaks anything good about one side.

 

[JonnWood]

It sounds a lot like an asshole DRM system was the difference between success and failure for his company....

No PC exclusive games? Relic/THQ, Valve, Blizzard, The Creative Assembly and all the other AAA PC exclusive developers I couldn't spring off the top of my head seem to have missed that memo...

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.

Or there's the other option of wanting to play the game they paid hard earned money for without having to install the unwanted, hindering DRM software bundled......

...But hey, let's not let actual facts get in the way of your outrage, I'm sure that it's just the small group of people that I personally know who have a habit of pirating games after they've paid for a copy of the game are totally unique and that such habits don't exist elsewhere.

In which case they are still taking something they didn't pay for; an extra copy. It's based on exactly the same sense of entitlement.

 

[ph0b0s123]

That's the problem. There's no way of knowing how many sales are lost. Some people say it's the vast majority, which I don't agree with. Some people say it's only a very small number of people who would have bought it without piracy. I don't think that's true either. Neither side can really claim the high ground because neither side knows exactly how many would be lost. I consider that more of a pointless argument then an actual point for either side.

As a general rule of thumb, I think the number is around 15-30% depending on the game (higher for AAA games and lower for indie). That doesn't seem like a lot, but considering how many people pirate games, it could add up to a lot. Of course, that's entirely guesswork and it could easily be higher or lower.

So what is that 15 - 30% of extra sales a games would get to 15 - 30% of piracy could be converted to sales?

If it only resulted in 15% extra sales, would that have been enough to change a games from unsuccessful to successful, the idea the dev in the story is pushing.

The mad, sad rush to declare that piracy is harmless - or even good! - is why it's so frustrating and difficult to have a serious conversation about piracy. You're just as bad as the people on the other side who blame piracy for costing the entertainment industry a hundred trillion gazillion dollars every year.

And claiming that you're square with the universe because now and then you pick up a game you pirated years ago when you see it for five bucks on Steam? Squirrel, please.

So the industry makes highly inflated claims about the cost of piracy, and as a backlash people start to wonder if it is not as bad as they are making out. Wow, that is surprising. Piracy is wrong, that is a given, the question that is more important is how much damage is it actually doing. If the damage is less than the cost of the anti-piracy measures needed to defeat it, I don't see it as unreasonable to ask if it is worth jumping up and down against, even if wrong.

 

[JonnWood]

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.

Thus is the opinion of a person whose entire article is repeating someone else's post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Now, if DRM were illegal,

It's not. People are entitled to protect their creative content.

and copyright were some sane length of time,

Which assumes that it already isn't.

one could easily say that piracy(being defined for my purposes as people reproducing ideas for no tangible renumeration, after all the idiots in the "info wants to be free" camp probably get a mild endorphin rush) is morally wrong.

Piracy is copyright infringement. People reproducing and distributing intellectual property--that is, creative output, not just "ideas"--without permission, against the wishes of the person it belongs to.

I love how you're arguing that piracy being wrong depends, in part, on DRM being illegal. Piracy is wrong because it violates rights.

About on the level as these things go as telling some random stranger who has done nothing at all that impacts you in any way that he's a fucking ****, but still morally wrong. Unfortunately such is not the case, so the moral evil of copyright outweighs any piratical acts.

Yes, a moral evil of giving people the right to sell their stuff. Boo hoo.

And, because I can, I will once again post the words of a man who, 171 years ago, foresaw how this shit would go down if we allowed copyright to be thought of as anything more than a necessary evil, as we in fact have.

I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot...

Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living.

That was Lord Macauley before British Parliament in 1841 btw.

Nice quote. Too bad the vast majority of piracy is from people who are alive. And Lord Macauley was against piracy. He literally says as much. He was arguing against the extension of copyright for sixty years after death. Of course, this was in 1841, in a country where most people didn't have indoor plumbing, and the situation today might just be a tad different.

http://www.baen.com/library/palaver4.htm

He also argued that copyright should extend 42 years from publication instead of the then-standard 28. Not "the creator's life". Under the 48-year terms, To Kill a Mockingbird would've passed into the publc domain four years ago, and Harper Lee is still alive. The lord also argued an extension of copyright for books published in the last 17 years of an author's life, which he says, in general, are when an author writes his most valuable books. Do you support these?

Of course, given that the vast majority of piracy is from people who are still alive, I'm not sure what you're on about. And this is coming from a guy who likes Baen Books.

 

[JonnWood]

The mad, sad rush to declare that piracy is harmless - or even good! - is why it's so frustrating and difficult to have a serious conversation about piracy. You're just as bad as the people on the other side who blame piracy for costing the entertainment industry a hundred trillion gazillion dollars every year.

And claiming that you're square with the universe because now and then you pick up a game you pirated years ago when you see it for five bucks on Steam? Squirrel, please.

So the industry makes highly inflated claims about the cost of piracy, and as a backlash people start to wonder if it is not as bad as they are making out.

Straw man. Chalk is arguing that the "backlash" is to make claims that are just as exaggerated, not to simply wonder.