TorrentFreak Reveals Top Pirated Games of 2011

Pandabearparade

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EtherealBeaver said:
I have yet to see any proof that 1 download equals 1 lost sale.
You never will see that proof, because that isn't true.

That doesn't make piracy legally or morally acceptable, but people need to get the fuck off of this 'it's -stealing-!' line.

No, it's not, it can be wrong without being the same as swiping an ipod from Best Buy.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

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Sep 8, 2011
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Deegamah said:
Hmm... I'm noticing a distinct lack of 4.5 million Witcher 2 downloads.
That wasn't actually an accurate number, just a developer estimation.

I see that most pirated PC games are the ones that aren't really worth playing in the first place. Portal 2 excluded of course.

Why would anyone pirate Portal 2? If anyone deserves your money it's Valve. Are people trying to say that they can shell out $500 or more for a PC but they can't spend $40 on Portal 2?
 

Macrobstar

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BoogieManFL said:
I'd also venture a guess that the numbers have something to do with far more people having computers than consoles.

Also, lack of demos. I firmly believe not having a demo for your game greatly increases how much it's pirated.
I think its more to do with the fact that its far easier to pirate on a PC, although more people do own PCs yes
 

Frostbite3789

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saregos said:
1) Most pirates, if they like the game, will purchase it at some point in the future. Oftentimes the pirated copy is treated as a glorified demo (and I'll note, by the way, that none of the games called out above have demos), as that particular bit of customer service has fallen by the wayside in the interest of bigger margins.

2) Of those pirates who don't buy the game, the vast majority would not have bought it even if a pirated version wasn't available.
For one, Battlefield 3 had a beta that was essentially a demo. That's not an excuse. It wouldn't be anyways, as most pirates don't buy the games. Look, I can say things as if they're fact too.

To point 2, I wouldn't have bought that candy bar if I couldn't have stolen it. Herp derp.
 

Wolfram23

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Just a few things to consider.

You can't rent PC games.

You can't resell PC games (though you can trade on Steam, now).

You can't return PC games (even if they're unplayable).

When buying a game becomes a gamble, and finances are tight, I think there's an obvious solution to the problem. Not saying it's right, but there is a lot of motivation to pirate.
 

Atmos Duality

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saregos said:
1) Most pirates, if they like the game, will purchase it at some point in the future.
I have spent over 15 years in hardcore PC gaming; pretty much the instant I had full reign over a computer.

In all of that time, I have met dozens of gamers personally, a great many of whom pirated like you couldn't believe and were only too happy to say as such.

Many of my former colleagues in college and high school chief among them. For every PC game they bought legitimately, I estimate (from memory) that they pirated around 30, and that's a conservative estimate.

I don't buy that into that "try before buy" pirate argument one bit.
In fact, if piracy were not so nebulous and widespread, I'd call that argument an outright lie. But for fairness sake, I must accept reasonable doubt for the sake of argumentation.

All of my experiences in reality directly contradicts that hearsay, and it isn't a trend limited to just my region circle of friends. I see this all over the place at tech conventions, online and even in public.

I have seen entire binders full of DVDs/CDs with illicit software from the beta of Vista to the entire EA collection. When I asked why they don't just support the developers of the software they like, they shrug or maintain the "Because I can" attitude.
 

Mantonio

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Why on earth would you pirate Portal 2? What have Valve done to incur this?

Or is it just people anal anguished about the idea of completely optional, next to no point since it's cosmetic for the co-op skins being sold? Or that you can buy the unlockable gestures early?
 

Fappy

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Jan 4, 2010
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Mike Kayatta said:
Irridium said:
People pirated Crysis 2 the most?

...

Why?

Also, do they have numbers for how much Witcher 2 was pirated? I believe pretty much everyone, including the developers, thought that it was 4.5 million or more. Would be nice to know the actual area of the numbers. Since it's obviously not that much, otherwise it'd be on the list.
I think that Crysis is known as a bit of a benchmark, so many people likely downloaded it to see how it would run on their rigs. Notice that the console version of game wasn't on the top five of the other list. That may point to a PC-specific reason deeper than gamers just "wanting that game the most." That's just my personal speculation, though.
Sounds reasonable enough. It definitely is the best game for such a test out right now.
 

Ashendarei

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Feb 10, 2009
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I'm a bit confused by the amount of console rips. Is it that easy to rip a console game now?
 

Jegsimmons

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Tubez said:
Meh I really do not care, and in no way is a download a lost sale. Just look at studies done on this.

But I cannot believe that people have downloaded fifa 3.4 millions times on pc...
i cant believe people play FIFA....are people fucking retarded? its a sports game! not even a good sport! its soccer! SOCCER! you can play it with a coconut and 8 sticks to mark the goals and boundaries!
 

Loonyyy

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Mike Kayatta said:
saregos said:
Mike Kayatta said:
saregos said:
Pirated games
1) Provide a try-before-you-buy opportunity. I.e. the ability to try that $60 game before you make a $60 commitment.
2) Tend not to have the unskippable "this company made this game!" crap at the beginning.
3) Aren't as restricted (DRM and install limit wise)
4) In some cases, provide additional features. For example, LAN play or local multiplayer.

Purchased games
1) Treat you like a criminal.

So... which product would you prefer to have?
Yes, aren't they great!? We don't have to read about the thousands of people who labored for years to make something! We don't have to pay! We get unlimited demos! OF COURSE this is better; who wouldn't want this superior product? You've completely made me rethink my position. If only I'd considered how totally awesome it is to take someone's product from them and alter it however you'd like without paying them for it before writing this article! Games are like some sort of magical fruit that the universe randomly blips into creation. We should be free to take them and enjoy them whenever and however we want because clearly the universe will just magically continue to create more of them for us to take. And you know why? Because we're entitled to them. Never forget that!
Uh... what? Did you read anything I said? Or are you just going to attack me (and a pretty little straw-man you set up for the purpose) for disagreeing with you?

Once more - Pirates currently provide a better product. Because they're more in-tune with what the customer wants. So maybe, instead of attacking the pirates (and while you're at it, anyone who disagrees with you, or points out flaws in your reasoning) you should concentrate on how to make the legitimate product better than the pirated one?

But no, instead you'll completely misinterpret everything I said. I would have expected better, but that's all too common.

Enjoy your high horse. But it's attitudes precisely like yours that drive piracy in the first place.

By the way, thanks so much for editing out the part where I pointed out that this is a failure in customer service. Probably because you can't address that?
Whoops, sorry. When you said: "Tend not to have the unskippable 'this company made this game!' crap at the beginning," I thought you meant you didn't want to see the logos of those who made the games. When you said: "Aren't as restricted (DRM and install limit wise)" and "In some cases, provide additional features. For example, LAN play or local multiplayer," I thought you meant that you wanted altered versions of people's products. When you said: "Provide a try-before-you-buy opportunity. I.e. the ability to try that $60 game before you make a $60 commitment," I thought you meant taking someone's product without paying them. Sorry, I guess I really did misinterpret you, huh. Won't happen again.

And since I want to stop "driving people to piracy" with my attitude, I suppose I'll start advocating the practice in order to quell it ... because that makes sense. Thanks for the tip. Either way, I've got to stop replying to comments and get back to my high horse. He's likely got the munchies by now.
That's not what he means. Both of you have gotten into a pointless argument. A severe issue is that Pirates offer a better service. They offer games before release, at zero cost, with little threat of legal rammification, and don't punish the customer.

Meanwhile, publishers make their service worse, Ubisofts DRM, One-time passes, etc, and increase the prices of their games. This makes the piracy seem like a better deal. It is. It's also wrong, but the customer cares about the customer. The publisher should pay attention to this. Always on DRM? Not helpful, and it makes piracy better (Assassins Creed 2 is a game I am yet to finish due to that). Expensive DLC, and shorter games? Makes me able to buy less games, and makes the pirated copy even less of a hassle by comparison.

In contrast, Steam, is always on DRM, BUT, it offers social networking, game sales, VOIP, special deals, cloud storage, and unlimited downloads. See, if more took a leaf from Valve's book, and improved the service (And Steam is booming), rather than punishing the customer, then they'd be more likely to get sales. Reducing the stupid prices wouldn't go astray either.

If the pirates can offer a better service, then people will have no reason to buy games properly. Which is a terrible shame, because that hurts games in general.
 

lord.jeff

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Oct 27, 2010
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saregos said:
maninahat said:
The dealer is obviously still out of pocket by one car.

...

I find it hard to believe that most pirates would buy all the games they stole and liked.

...

if someone is willing to steal something in the first place

...

If a business went to the expense of making a car, advertising it and putting it in a show room, only to have it stolen anyway, they basically wasted all the money invested in providing that vehicle.
You're missing (deliberately, I think) one very important point:
PIRACY IS NOT THEFT
If I steal your car, you are indeed out a car. If I copy your book, you still have your book. It's disingenuous in the extreme (and debunked many, many times, not that it stops people from making the comparison) to pretend that pirating a game and stealing something are equivalent.
That game has a price tag, you illegally didn't pay that price that's theft plain and simple.
 

saregos

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Jul 7, 2009
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lord.jeff said:
saregos said:
That game has a price tag, you illegally didn't pay that price that's theft plain and simple.
No, it's not.

Let's try this again -
If I steal something from you, then you no longer have it.
If I copy something of yours, you haven't been deprived of any physical property.

How is that so hard to understand?

You are legally, factually and conceptually WRONG in the assertion that "piracy is theft".
 

Wolfram23

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Mar 23, 2004
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Kwil said:
Wolfram01 said:
Just a few things to consider.

You can't rent PC games.
Wrong. http://www.direct2drive.com/

You can't resell PC games (though you can trade on Steam, now).
Wrong. http://www.ebay.com/

You can't return PC games (even if they're unplayable).
Wrong. http://www.ebgames.com/gs/help/Returns.aspx

When buying a game becomes a gamble, and finances are tight, I think there's an obvious solution to the problem. Not saying it's right, but there is a lot of motivation to pirate.
There is no motivation to pirate other than being an elitist prick that thinks your personal convenience/desires/financial situation outweighs those of the people who actually did the work and built the game.
Most games have this little thing called DRM that doesn't let you reactivate it to a different account.

EB games sells 2 PC games - Starcraft and Warcraft.

I didn't know D2D does rentals now, so that's great. But that's only 1 service.

Regardless, pirating the game can serve the same purpose and if used for that purpose it helps the industry exactly as much as the former methods - exactly not at all. The big problem is abusing it - pirating all your games and never putting down cash.

Anyway try not to be suck a dick with your replies. I wasn't getting on some grand stand promoting pirating, just pointing out some fairly significant issues with PC gaming in general. I suppose you thought it went "unsaid" that I pirate for those reasons... actually, I don't. Those are just possible reasons why it's 3x worse than on consoles, on top of what many people say about buying pirated hard disks for consoles instead of downloading themselves, and games rarely having demos.

I pirate to piss people like you off.
[small]Just joking[/small]
 

saregos

the undying
Jul 7, 2009
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Loonyyy said:
That's not what he means. Both of you have gotten into a pointless argument. A severe issue is that Pirates offer a better service. They offer games before release, at zero cost, with little threat of legal rammification, and don't punish the customer.

Meanwhile, publishers make their service worse, Ubisofts DRM, One-time passes, etc, and increase the prices of their games. This makes the piracy seem like a better deal. It is. It's also wrong, but the customer cares about the customer. The publisher should pay attention to this. Always on DRM? Not helpful, and it makes piracy better (Assassins Creed 2 is a game I am yet to finish due to that). Expensive DLC, and shorter games? Makes me able to buy less games, and makes the pirated copy even less of a hassle by comparison.

In contrast, Steam, is always on DRM, BUT, it offers social networking, game sales, VOIP, special deals, cloud storage, and unlimited downloads. See, if more took a leaf from Valve's book, and improved the service (And Steam is booming), rather than punishing the customer, then they'd be more likely to get sales. Reducing the stupid prices wouldn't go astray either.

If the pirates can offer a better service, then people will have no reason to buy games properly. Which is a terrible shame, because that hurts games in general.
Thank you. I am not, and never have, advocated piracy. But it's a symptom of the larger problem you describe above.
 

BoredRolePlayer

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Nov 9, 2010
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Deus Ex HR was leaked and pirated and guess what pre-orders shot through the roof when fans saw how it was going to play. Yeah pirates ruin everything.