StarCraft 2 Sets New Mark for Piracy

[PrimoThePro]

Of course, he-who-must-not-be-named will probably read this, figure that obviously if they had locked up Starcraft a little tighter on the DRM side of things all these downloads would magically turn into sales and so I'm going to have to confirm my copy of Heart of The Swarm is legal every 10 seconds or Blizzard will kill my family.

I'm not gonna lie, I lol'd. Hahaha. I mean we laugh, but let's be real for a moment, they will break into your house and tear your wife in half.
OT:Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. Sorry about the swears, I'm just a little peeved. Waiting for the Battle Chest to come out is one thing, but now that they are totally just going to put some crazy amount of locks on it, I am not so tempted to do so. Fucking pirates. A little of this is okay, as long as you supplement it with buying the real product, but blatantly doing this to such a degree is... awful. Nothing good will come from this.

 

[Snotnarok]

I bet that 50% of these downloads are so they can play lan without having to hook their PCs up to a network and deal with all that nonsense

 

[Weaver]

This article assumes Blizzard had a note worthy loss to begin with. SC2 was the fastest selling RTS in history, is that not good enough or something?

 

[Tetranitrophenol]

Why would you want to play Starcraft single player?

Starcraft has single player?!

Havent played the multiplayer yet and I got it since launch >.>

 

[cainx10a]

Why would you want to play Starcraft single player?

Starcraft has single player?!

Havent played the multiplayer yet and I got it since launch >.>

Same. Never been much of a competitive RTS player, but have to admit, the campaign is probably one of the best I have played in an RTS since Company of Heroes.

 

[Delusibeta]

Not having to buy multiple copies for LAN play. Which isn't illegal otherwise I would be breaking the law by using a single copy of Age III, Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, etc.. to play over LAN with my family.

Do you think I should have to buy three copies to play over LAN with my family?

By the letter of the law, you are breaking the law, it is illegal and technically you should buy three copies. You've undermined your own arguement, there.

 

[Busdriver580]

Yup, piracy is definitely an industry-killer.

If a lesser known game got pirated half as much, then it would have failed. Blizzard can absorb the loss thanks to South Korea alone.

A legitimate company has never failed as a direct result of piracy, Please try again

 

[loc978]

as someone who pre-ordered and legitimately purchased this game... and was very disappointed to find absolutely no LAN support... and a practically unusable new Battle.net interface... I would just like to say:
BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

[kouriichi]

Hey, no multiplayer. Thats like the biggest part of starcraft.
Its pretty much perchase the game or miss out on a massive portion of the game.

 

[Squigie]

*snip*

TorrentFreak also pointed out that while 15.77 petas is a pile, Blizzard's own BitTorrent system may have actually moved more data through the distribution of legitimate copies of the game, although numbers to confirm that speculation aren't made available to the public.

Blizzard out-torrents the Torrentz! Now that's a headline. It's like you guys aren't even trying, too concerned with "confirmation" and "facts".

 

[Lillowh]

This is the reason that PC gaming is not as legitimate of a market compared to consoles because on PC piracy is just too easy and too prevalent.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Clearly those 2 million people who downloaded the game were guaranteed to actually buy the game had piracy not existed. I don't see how else you could sum up those numbers as "losses".

I want to include a zinger about how Andy had to look up what a petabyte is, but I'm sure he deserves better than that.

Let's look at this rationally: Every single illegal download is something of a loss. True, some of them might not have bought the game at full price, but there comes a point at which they'd have said "Okay, sure." $30? $20? $10? $5? $1?

Every pirated copy is not a loss of a full-price sale, no. But it is almost always something of a loss.

But if it's not being offered for those amounts, then it cannot be claimed as a loss. The comparison is between people buying it legally and not buying it but downloading it. If "Okay, sure" is less than the retail price, the download has no economic impact. You don't get money if people would buy something but the price is too high: that is, unfortunately, just not how business works.

 

[warprincenataku]

Off Topic: Anyone else here shocked and/or appalled by the number of suspensions due to this thread, where those responses are not 'ban-worthy'.

Secondly, I remember reading an article about how a few developers aren't publishing for the PC solely because of piracy. Yeah it's on other platforms too, but not to the extent it is on the PC. Cliffy B said that that the type of person who has a computer able to play the newest games is closely related to the type of person who knows how to download them illegally.

Great post btw. Poor moderation.

 

[arbiter592]

Yes but these people wont be able to play via battle net on-line im guessing?

That's correct.

Which, frankly, I'm perfectly okay with. You don't pay, you shouldn't get to play online with everyone else.

I'm sorry, when did pirates ever get to play on Battle.net?

Yes but these people wont be able to play via battle net on-line im guessing?

That's correct.

Which, frankly, I'm perfectly okay with. You don't pay, you shouldn't get to play online with everyone else.

I'm sorry, when did pirates ever get to play on Battle.net?

I have a copy of Starcraft 1 and Brood War on my flash drive and I can play on Battlenet.

 

[Xocrates]

-Having bad AI and good mission design is like putting a bunch of the hobos into the Louvre Art Gallery. The paintings are great, shame about everything else. If the AI is awful, then the mission isn't going to be good to play. Good on paper, but that's it.

What the hell are you talking about? In pretty much every RTS in the last decade the campaign AI has either been heavily scripted and/or intentionally tuned to meet the difficulty requirements for the level, often being all but passive, including in (both) DoW and Supcom. Comparing campaign AI, to skirmish AI is silly. Looking at skirmish AI as more than training bots to get the hang of the game is equally silly. SC2's AI is more than adequate to its job, it's not better because it doesn't need to be better.

-The first SC was not cheesy, nor was their any romance between Kerragan and Raynor. They just crapped on the story and made some cliché dribble instead. Certainly not worth £35 in that aspect.

I suggest you replay the game. It probably takes itself more seriously than SC2, but it's still pretty cheesy. Also, there was clear romantic subtext between Raynor and Kerrigan (particularly noticeable at the start of the 9th mission in the terran campaign), Sc2 just focused more on it.

 

[Zer_]

I, too, am confused why a game that requires an ACTIVE BATTLE.NET ACCOUNT is such a popular piracy target. I guess it's possible that it's so thoroughly hacked that you can connect to other pirated copies through LAN or the web? That actually made me wonder enough to google it, and apparently that's not (yet) the case, so all these pirated copies can only play single player. When you could argue that's MAYBE half the game. I love the lore and the campaign modes, but Blizzard has not exactly been subtle with their E-sport mantra.

Sidestepping the whole DRM vs piracy issue... why even pirate in the first place? Did that many people really not already know if they'd enjoy friggin Starcraft 2 before buying it?

Yes, they weren't sure. Didn't you realize the whole controversy about how SC2 is just SC1 with a new graphics engine, and that it's 1/3rd of a full game? (It isn't by the way, the most you could say is that it's 1 part of a 3 part trilogy, and if you just don't like trilogies, then that's personal taste). If there was a viable way to find out how many of those pirates ended up buying the game afterwards, then I'd be willing to bet my 2 week pay that at LEAST 40% of those who downloaded the game ended up buying it at some point later...

 

[poiuppx]

So... it's one of the best selling games unique to the PC in ages, it's making money hand over fist, it's gotten amazing marks from reviewers and the common rabble... and the arguements I've seen in here for pirating are 'I want LAN support', 'It's not that good of a game', and 'No, seriously, I want LAN support'.

Pirates, just give it up. You're not somehow morally in the right here. It's a good game by all accounts, and all you're really doing- given the sales are already amazing, so you can't even pretend you're sticking it to the man -is preventing yourself from enjoying the full multiplayer experience. Just suck it up and spend the cash. The only exception I could see at this stage would be folks waiting for a complete trillogy pack, and even then, it doesn't EXCUSE piracy, it just means some folks are willing to wait. Y'know, instead of torrenting and acting like they're noble knights errant. While playing alone.