Where has the legitimate stuff gotten to?

[CrystalShadow]

Heh. I couldn't decide whether to put this is in the gaming forum or not... So, I decided to err on the side of caution and put it here.

Now, what is this about, you ask?

Well, have you ever had something like this happen to you?

I have an interest in a niche gaming genre, namely, train simulations.
While looking for content for a game I recently got, I stumbled upon an entirely different game with a lot of content that I thought sounded pretty good.

Now, the site I was looking at was selling it, but I wanted some more information about what, precisely, this game contained, and what it was like (compared to other games of it's kind. - Train simulations are a bit of an acquired taste really.)

So, what do you do on the internet when you need more information?

Right. I googled it.

Imagine my surprise then, when every. single. link returned in the search results was an illegal torrent.

Of the top 30 returned results, not a single one had anything to do with the legitimate product.

No online retailers. No official website. No reviews. No pictures. No videos.

Just link after link of illegal torrents.

OK, I admit, the game appears to be German, and I probably more or less limited my searches to English results...

But even so, that's quite an extreme outcome.

You'd think there'd be something, anything at all, that was vaguely legitimate...

Anyway, I've never seen anything quite that bad before on google.

Have you ever come across this?

 

[Skorpyo]

Try finding a legitimate copy of "System Shock 2" outside of (the rather expensive) Amazon.com.

I'll wait.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Try finding a legitimate copy of "System Shock 2" outside of (the rather expensive) Amazon.com.

I'll wait.

Really? I seem to get a listing fort £15

But that's not really what I was referring to.

The search results I get on google for System shock 2 are:

1. Wikipedia entry.
2 - Some kind of community website
3 - shopping results
4 - image results
5 - Gamespot review
6 - Amazon
7 - IGN review

And so on. They're all legitimate sites. Granted, google suggests a torrent search as an alternative, but just the game title itself doesn't immediately lead to torrents.

Now contrast this to the game I'm referring to: (It's Protrain perfect 2 if you want to know.)

The google search results are as follows:
OK, I'll admit, my memory is playing tricks on me here, based on redoing the search:

1. - Official site (in german)

result 2 to 11 - torrent / illegal download links.

result 12 - youtube video


Pretty much all the search results are torrent/download/keygen, whatever.

It's not even an old game. (released this year if I have it right).

You literally struggle to find any mention of it besides torrent links.

 

[CrystalShadow]

There's a very good reason why online retailers don't stock your game of choice. Who the flying fuck plays Train simulators? i'm not trolling, but how can you expect there to be a community of people that would actually pay money to play train simulators. its extremely niche.

You're still missing the point. It isn't about selling it or not (I can find boxed copies of it - It's the only reason I know it exists at all). It's about the the overwhelming lack of any legitimate links if you google the game.

I mean, the odd torrent link is one thing, but litterally 95%+ of all search results are torrents.

Apparently, it's popular enough to get pirated, but not popular enough for anyone to so much as even mention it on a blog?