StarCraft 2 Sets New Mark for Piracy

lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
19,316
0
0
bificommander said:
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.
Well, it had something to do with the "always online" DRM being a FUCKING MYTH.
 

thublihnk

New member
Jul 24, 2009
395
0
0
lacktheknack said:
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".
Right, I guess I didn't really make my point in there-- Piracy doesn't hurt game sales nearly as much as people think, the Ten mil purchases didn't come out of thin air, and the game, again, is insanely easy to pirate.
 

TaboriHK

New member
Sep 15, 2008
811
0
0
thublihnk said:
Yup, piracy is definitely an industry-killer.
Yeah, just that stat alone makes my opinion of pirates sink somehow even lower. Just shameful. If you're a fan of this form of media, show it by not stealing from the people who make it possible.
 

thublihnk

New member
Jul 24, 2009
395
0
0
poiumty said:
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 believe that was part of the point i was making. Starcraft 2 is still mostly easy to pirate, only you can't play online.

Exactly how big was the sales number on Starcraft 1 two months after launch? And those were times where not everyone had the internet and games were pirated with missing stuff in them like movies and music, so they could fit more on a CD. I dare say getting an illegal copy of SC1 was more of a challenge back then than getting an illegal copy of SC2 right now.
Yet SC2 had incredible sales for a PC game. My point is this: sales would have been quite high even without mandatory internet, no doubt. But they wouldn't be anywhere near these if people could just pirate the game and play multiplayer to their heart's content.
Starcraft sold 1.5 million copies in its first year. So I'd say Starcraft 2 will do just fine.
 

deth2munkies

New member
Jan 28, 2009
1,066
0
0
Speaking as a former pirate, there are 2 types of people that pirated this game:

1) Guys that wanted to know whether or not it was worth $60 before they bought it.

2) Guys that wanted to know what the campaign story was/beat it once and forget it, with no desire for multi-player.

I don't really care either way and I honestly doubt Blizzard did either because you have either a potential sale or someone who never would have bought it in the first place, so piracy on THIS type of game would only increase sales due to category 1 rather than cause lost sales.
 

teebeeohh

New member
Jun 17, 2009
2,896
0
0
those numbers are scary, but those are just the people who download the client via torrent, which does not necessarily mean they pirated it. If you don't have your DVDs handy but know your account data and want to install the game i am pretty sure that this is a faster way to get the client than to download it from blizzard
 

Icehearted

New member
Jul 14, 2009
2,081
0
0
Had they chosen not to release, in increments, the entire game, they would have had my money on day 1. Rather they chose instead to divide and trickle what was one game into a "trilogy". I won't justify piracy, my choice is to simply wait for the price to reflect the product (yes yes, hate me for not worshiping the game as much as you if you must), but the drive to do so is not alien or inexplicable, and no, I'm not suggesting this is the exclusive reason behind piracy. Of the people I've seen talking about it that have chosen to pirate this game, it is certainly one of the most prevalent excuses made.

"But if they didn't break it up we wouldn't have seen this game for another decade"

If you genuinely believe that, there's nothing I can say to permeate your logic.
 

lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
19,316
0
0
deth2munkies said:
Speaking as a former pirate, there are 2 types of people that pirated this game:

1) Guys that wanted to know whether or not it was worth $60 before they bought it.

2) Guys that wanted to know what the campaign story was/beat it once and forget it, with no desire for multi-player.

I don't really care either way and I honestly doubt Blizzard did either because you have either a potential sale or someone who never would have bought it in the first place, so piracy on THIS type of game would only increase sales due to category 1 rather than cause lost sales.
You forgot the third type - those who pirated it because they think they're sticking it to the man.

If you don't think anyone did it for that reason, you haven't been on the internet long enough.
 

Asehujiko

New member
Feb 25, 2008
2,119
0
0
Exort said:
Good that there isn't LAN or there will be pirate server already.
No, that's a bad thing, legal customers are loosing out on stuff all in the name of slightly annoying non-customers.
 

lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
19,316
0
0
teebeeohh said:
those numbers are scary, but those are just the people who download the client via torrent, which does not necessarily mean they pirated it. If you don't have your DVDs handy but know your account data and want to install the game i am pretty sure that this is a faster way to get the client than to download it from blizzard
I'm pretty sure that all the counted downloads are from one (illegal) torrent.
 

Xocrates

New member
May 4, 2008
160
0
0
John Funk said:
ciortas1 said:
I'm sorry, when did pirates ever get to play on Battle.net?
Since never. What does that have to do with anything?
Actually, I know people who used to play a pirated copy of Warcraft 3 over battle.net. Since the old battle.net allowed one key to be registered to more than one battle.net account, it wasn't terribly hard to do. It didn't allow the same key to log in several times simultaneously though.
 

Choppaduel

New member
Mar 20, 2009
1,071
0
0
John Funk said:
You don't pay, you shouldn't get to play online with everyone else.
assuming the numbers in the article are correct, you'd only be playing online with about 66% of all other players, the remaining 33% are pirates. Last time I checked a half wasn't a whole.
 

lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
19,316
0
0
Mazty said:
JerrytheBullfrog said:
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.
Don't try patronising me kid =P, I've followed RTS since command and conquer through to today, and can tell you that SC2 is one of the worst RTS' in the last decade because it does nothing new, and is already dated because of that.

Try playing all the RTS' that have been out since SC1 and you'd see what I mean, but with almost all SC2 fans, you haven't touched an RTS for more than 5 minutes that doesn't have the Blizzard logo stamped on it.
I have. And I suck at them all equally.

However, I didn't really like SC1 for one reason and one reason only: Twelve Unit Selection Cap.

Thus, Starcraft II is better than Starcraft.