StarCraft 2 Sets New Mark for Piracy

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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SaturdayS said:
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.
 

Brandon237

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Mar 10, 2010
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icyneesan said:
Why would you want to play Starcraft single player?

Starcraft has single player?!
Yes, the SP campaign is actually damn brilliant. But I spend more time on the multiplayer, even though I'm not good at it, I still spend hours daily there :p

But the SP part is good, very good.
 

clockout

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Because of these sale losses Blizzard won't be able to sniff crushed diamonds off of high class hookers on their solid gold cruise ship, nah I'm kidding they just won't tip the catering staff.
 

sir.rutthed

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Nov 10, 2009
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So why exactly would you pirate a game so you can play only the single player when the single player story is actually pretty bad? Seriously, it's not all that good. But I guess that's why people who aren't in to multiplayer aren't too eager to fork over sixty bucks. Also, ok Blizz your anti-piracy bid failed. Can we pretty please have LAN play back now? Pretty please? Requiring battle.net obviously isn't working, and Korea isn't playing Starcraft II because of a lack of LAN, so give it to us and recoup your losses.
 

JerrytheBullfrog

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Dec 30, 2009
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ciortas1 said:
Delusibeta said:
Well, again, the point I was trying to make was that their day 1 sales appear to have only doubled since the massive amount of popularity, recognition and all those things that WoW brought to them. The last thing anyone with a sane fucking mind would blame for their bigger success with Starcraft 2 than with Warcraft 3 would be the DRM measures or anything else they seem to be all for with B.net 2.0 or SC2 overall. Blizzard has everything they didn't have before now - TV spots, being quoted all the fricking time, advertisements on the plane, and the sales aren't really all that spectacular. Anyways, just rambling now, don't quote this if it (again) sounds stupid.

Your 3.33 million estimation seems right on the money, to be honest. Out of the 20 or so friends that I managed to gather on Starcraft 2, none are playing the damn game, and many of them I've talked to and been agreed with on the shittiness of the game. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if people just aren't interested in it.
Mazty said:
Yes pirating is essentially bad etc etc but to be fair, all these companies are shooting themselves in the foot.
There will always be 'that guy' who is cheap and will pirate because he can, but then there are those who see the absolute horse sh*t that is coming out and frankly, why not pirate? Take Fallout:NV. If you've paid for the third, there is no point paying to play what is essentially the same game, but riddled with bugs. Same with SC2. If you've played 1, 2 is just the same f**king game. And then there is the moralist who will pirate because it is 'the right thing to do' as these corporations are trying to screw people out of money, so have back at the system, as the companies are wanting high prices for games they have put oh so little effort into.

In short, haha Blizzard, frankly you deserve it as SC2 was utter sh*t and it's clear from your price fix you were just trying to make cash and screw over fanboys.
Haha, you antifanboys are just so cute :)

SC2 is fantastic. I can live without Bnet2.0, but I don't have the time to drag my old gaming friends together for LAN parties anymore. It does exactly what I need it to do. could it do more? Sure, but for what I use it for it works perfectly.

Chat systems and a better custom map browser, and I will have no complaints.
 

JerrytheBullfrog

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ciortas1 said:
poiumty said:
How many, two? Anyways, this wasn't about you or your friends. This is about the pure publicity that has increased tenfold over the last few years for them. If we're talking naive, it's naive to think the sales would've suffered by using a business model that was proven to be bestseller effective with a multiple times bigger recognition.
You're failing to take into account the relative waning of the PC as a hardcore gaming platform. This isn't to say PC gaming is dying, because it isn't, but it isn't nearly as prominent as it once was.

Selling 3+ million copies for a PC exclusive in a relatively short amount of time is *very* impressive these days.
 

kasperbbs

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Dec 27, 2009
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I`m starting to doubt that any protection will work ,every game that ever came out has been cracked the next day or 2 weeks tops ,but atleast they wont get to play the multiplayer ,which is the main reason to get the game. Honestly i can`t say when was the last time when someone from my friend circle has bought a game instead of just downloading it from torrents ,and thats sad ,considering how much work people put into them.
Piracy exists not only in PC gaming ,you can see xbox games on the internet days or even weeks before their release date ,ps3 games also starting to shop up on torrent sites.
 

thublihnk

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John Funk said:
SaturdayS said:
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.
While I'd agree some of them are definitely lost sales and honestly there's nothing to be done about that, I think an earlier post of yours highlights how there's a large percentage that aren't lost sales: These people don't have access to the pretty epic fun that is the Battle.Net multiplayer. Starcraft is a game largely based in multiplayer, and I'm sure a huge amount of the torrenters (hell, a few people I know personally) tried out the single player, liked it, and went out to purchase the game so they could duke it out online. Obviously not a factor for some games, but many games have this kind of natural economic scarcity (access to online servers) that piracy can't (easily or equally) recreate.
 

The Lunatic

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Jun 3, 2010
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I'm tempted to say, a lot of these people went on to buy Starcraft 2, if they could.

I mean, if you played it and liked it, you probably did as much to play the multiplayer.
 

lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
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thublihnk said:
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.
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Mazty said:
Yes pirating is essentially bad etc etc but to be fair, all these companies are shooting themselves in the foot.
There will always be 'that guy' who is cheap and will pirate because he can, but then there are those who see the absolute horse sh*t that is coming out and frankly, why not pirate? Take Fallout:NV. If you've paid for the third, there is no point paying to play what is essentially the same game, but riddled with bugs. Same with SC2. If you've played 1, 2 is just the same f**king game. And then there is the moralist who will pirate because it is 'the right thing to do' as these corporations are trying to screw people out of money, so have back at the system, as the companies are wanting high prices for games they have put oh so little effort into.

In short, haha Blizzard, frankly you deserve it as SC2 was utter sh*t and it's clear from your price fix you were just trying to make cash and screw over fanboys.
I played the hell out of SC1. If you think SC2 is the same game, you either don't know RTSes or don't know SC2 half as well as you think you do.
 

Jimmybobjr

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Aug 3, 2010
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See, i would pirate this game instead of pay $100AU+ because i only want to play the campaign.

I dont want to play online, so im not paying for a online game.
 

bificommander

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Apr 19, 2010
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So, that whole fancy DRM-system they bothered me with (always be online, even for singleplayer) didn't hamper the actual pirates? Imagine my suprise.
 

lacktheknack

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thublihnk said:
poiumty said:
ciortas1 said:
poiumty said:
How many, two? Anyways, this wasn't about you or your friends. This is about my uneducated guess about some sales figures which have 10 years of a headstart.
I've already covered this. Read my post again. A business model which offers the consumer a chance to get the product for free will result in poor sales numbers, end of story.

I am not saying everyone who pirated it did so to protest, are you saying none of them did?
I'm pretty sure quite a few did. And by "quite a few" i'm putting the numbers in the hundreds. There is no alternative to battle.net out yet that i know of, and even skirmish mode is off for most people. So if you want to play with ANYONE human, you go buy the game. Boycotting seems foolish at this stage.
Do you have any idea how easy it is to pirate the original Starcraft? Easy as piss is the word you're looking for. I used to play a pirated thinstalled version on school computers, we were doing it so we could play during lunch. And that had a pretty robust LAN based multiplayer that you could use without activation. (I had already bought three copies for me and my friends, so don't go looking down your nose at me)
What the hell did that have to do with anything?
Starcraft I =/= Starcraft II.

Interestingly, the original Starcraft had multiple installations per disk reserved for multi-player only. Making it so that pirates didn't have an excuse to pirate multiple copies "for LAN parties".
 

DTWolfwood

Better than Vash!
Oct 20, 2009
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to be frank Blizzard didn't "lose" money from this, they just didn't "gain" more money from it. Pirates are never going to buy the game to begin with. So they can never be counted as a revenue source.

its this thinking that made the industry punish their paying customers. Devs and publishers assuming they have lost money from pirates. As if any of their "unbreakable" drm have actually given them an increase in sales. <.< But by all means have some form of DRM, just not the ones that punish you (ie. install limits) or require you to be always online, frankly those are things a determined pirate will get pass regardless.

This is where i like how Blizzard is doing things. Having the genuine copy of the game tied to an online account is sweet. I can dl the game anywhere i have an internet connection. Not to mention cloud gaming, save one place and continue in another! Nothing new i know but these are reason y i like Steam as well.

you can have my $200 for the Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void Collector's Edition! just release the game sooner rather than later! please!
 

thublihnk

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lacktheknack said:
thublihnk said:
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.
Not true, the South Korean audience is actually *not* picking up Starcraft 2 in the droves that they played Starcraft in. I doubt sincerely that Starcraft 2 was a 'loss' as you put it, just because people downloaded the game doesn't mean other people didn't buy it. Plenty of people bought it. Those sales figures are in the original post.