you are absolutely correct sir
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Modern Warfare 2 is Most Pirated Game of 2009
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.SicKlown42012
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I completely agree with you. If my statement sounded like I was advocating piracy, then I'm sorry. I can't stand pirates. Especially when it comes to games. If you have the money to spend for hardware, then there is no excuse to pirate a game.
For the poster talking about Left for Dead 2, it didn't have nearly as much hype outside of a relatively small community(I don't remember seeing any TV ads, or see any News channels reporting about it). That, and since it's all about multiplayer, it makes no sense to pirate it. As short as it it, Modern Warfare 2 does have a singleplayer component.
TheCommander
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It would still be heavily pirated. IW not including some features or whatever someone wanted is just a weak excuse for someone to pirate the game. Regardless of all that, the game was heavily hyped and marketed so I'm not surprised by the numbers and even if it did include dedicated servers and mods, the numbers would still be very high. If people really wanted to "boycott" the game for there being no dedicated servers, they would not get it in any way- buying, pirating, etc....
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TheCommander
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That's what I was thinking. The huge majority of PC games are pretty cheap and people still pirate the heck out of them.
I'm kinda indifferent about this. Normally I dislike it when people pirate games, but IW were morons for getting rid of dedicated servers and deserve some sort of backlash from it.
But I haven't pirated it, nor will I buy it. The only thing I liked about COD games was the multiplayer, and I'm not gonna pay full price for it and by the time its cheap I'm guessing no one will be playing it anymore.
But I haven't pirated it, nor will I buy it. The only thing I liked about COD games was the multiplayer, and I'm not gonna pay full price for it and by the time its cheap I'm guessing no one will be playing it anymore.
agree with this guy. This is so they can move toward a subscription based product with the DLCs, its to maximize profit, I doubt piracy was ever a primary concern for them when they made this move.
heatlesssun
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Have to disagree. People keep forgetting that an Xbox is just basically a Windows PC and porting from the Xbox to the PC isn't a big deal usually. So make the console versions, port the Xbox version to PC which costs you very little and make $60 million dollars (assuming that 1 million purchased copies of MW2 @ $60).
THIS is why the PC version was basically a straight port. Why the fuck would you put resources into the PC version if all people are going to do is make up any damn excuse they want to steal?
"Gee, the box is too brown, what a piece of crap port! IW's not getting my money! " So then they go steal.
That said, assuming the PC wasn't a lot of work and apparently it wasn't, IW still makes millions.
I don't care for consoles but without the Xbox we wouldn't see AAA titles on the PC. And the Xbox is probably saving PC gaming.
defiant007
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Yes no hype at all, only sold 2 million copies in two weeks
Unless L4D2 is somehow different to L4D1, there is still a SP campaign that people can play. And just like MW2, it is a shallow mediocre experience designed to familiarize people with the aspects of MP. I.e. there is no reason why MW2 would have been pirated any more than L4D2, except for the fact that infinity ward and activision went out of their way to fuck over PC users.
heatlesssun
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I'll never get this logic. So you're a PC gamer, and somehow you feel screwed because a product, THAT YOU NEVER PAID A DIME FOR, doesn't live up to you expectations and you feel wronged? And so the way to get revenge is to steal?
spindoctor
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The people justifying the piracy here are the same ones who complain and wonder why a new game is consolized or how the pc version is delayed and what not... and I think they actually believe that there is no correlation between the 2 things.
It is not even worth my time to download for free
QFT.
defiant007
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I feel wronged because infinity ward BRAZENLY LIED to the entire PC community without even a hint of regret, and still blatantly disseminate PR bullshit which every PC user knows or ought to know are complete fabrications. I feel wronged because what they are attempting to do can potentially destroy the strengths and advantages of the PC online gaming experience if other major publishers and developers follow suit. I feel wronged as a consumer because what was delivered to the PC community was an inferior product which cannot be returned or refunded upon opening of the product.
And so the way to get revenge is to steal?
MW2, let alone any other Activision product, is not worth the space on my HDD nor the bandwidth required to download them. However, I have no sympathy whatsoever for Activision because they have reaped what they sowed. Irrespective of the moralities of piracy, they know full well the consequences of what will ensue by fucking with their core user bases. EA learned this important less fairly quickly after the spore debacle, and as a result I was happy to begin purchasing their games again.
Until activision learn their lesson they will be on my shit-list indefinitely.
heatlesssun
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So you feel wronged, fair enough. And what about the 4,000,000 million illegal copies of MW2? That's somehow right? Because they made a product that one didn't like. Gee I don't like your (not you personally) money. I think I'll take it.
So IW looks at this and then says "Gosh we made mistake, let's put back all the PC stuff back (dedicated servers, etc), make the price $50 again and heck let's do a DX 11 version for the PC. We owe PC gamers for our blunder" And so IW goes off and creates another best in history selling title that's just phenomenal. Do you HONESTLY think that version won't get jacked 6 or 7 millions times? Cause that's EXACTLY what would happen because people would STILL be thinking about MW2 and how wronged they were then.
Thieves tend to rationalize everything they do. Nothing they do is wrong and it gives them a moral basis to do the immoral.
heatlesssun
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defiant007
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Again, I don't care about the moralities of piracy because irrespective of whether it is right or wrong it still happens, but the extent to which it happens is directly attributable to IW's and activision's behavior. In this case, they have done a ratner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner). Saying "gee that is not right at all" is not going to change the reality of the situation, the fact of the matter is that IW and Activision could have easily ameliorated the problem, and could have even converted numerous pirates to actual paying customers if they had not been pig headed lying bastards.
And resorting to hyperbole does not make your argument anymore forceful or convincing. With any statistic, the lack of information concerning the context or basis for the figure undermines its usefulness. How many of those 4 million downloads occurred in China, Russia or eastern block European countries where the population pirates EVERYTHING?
Really your problem is that you have the same mentality as these short sighted publishers, i.e focusing on number of downloads as lost sales and preventing those downloads, versus focusing on sales and increasing those sales. They are not completely divorced from each other, but at the same time are not perfectly correlated. Whilst you may speculate that an improved version would "get jacked 6 or 7 millions times", I would be prepared to bet that the same version would sell 3 - 4 times as many copies. Just by doing the right thing, IW could have made significantly more money. From a business perspective, you would think that these suits would be more concerned with actual realized revenue as opposed to hypothetical lost sales. The gaming industry is no different to any other industry which experiences shrinkage in one form or another. As the old saying goes, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
And lets be realistic here, what the pirates got was a crappy 4 hour campaign hardly worth the time and effort to download. If those 4 million people had complete access to MP then IW would have a reason to complain, but the fact remains that a large part of the game remains inaccessible to people who do not pay for it. This was also the position with MW1, except now a significant number of consumers consider the MP in MW2 not worth paying for.
In this context, the appropriate terminology is "infringe upon copyright". Four million illegal downloads is not equatable to four million acts of theft.
The Xbox is still too dissimilar from the PC to allow for essentially straight ports (the ports end up being pretty awful -- see Lost Planet). As I see it, the Xbox is not saving PC gaming: it's merely occupying a portion of the market that would probably otherwise be occupied by gaming PCs.
People will utter nonsense if it suits their argument, regardless of how ridiculous it makes themselves look, no matter what the debate pertains to.
As I've said on the subject before, the number of illegal downloads is interesting but quite meaningless. It's impossible to determine, and erroneous to assume, what was done with those four million downloads, if anything.
I assume very little of what was done with those four million downloads, and everyone else here would do well to do the same.
Fixed. Again, I think we should be placing more strict attention to appropriate word usage in such a delicate discussion like this rather than spuriously choosing words for their potential emotional impact.
Simpson5774
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You guys are over thinking this, "its illegal, it doesn't matter what activision or IW does to reduce the value of their product, piracy is simply immoral and illegal" Okay, so what you holier than thou guys suggest an honest pc gamer to do to try to stop the bullshit that IW does, or attempt to get them to change they're minds on stripping the game of features which pc gamers demand? I mean IW has made it CLEAR that they don't listen to people on their forums, and even lock posts to that end, they didn't give a fuck. 200k people including me signed a petition, they didn't even respond to it, because they knew what they were doing pc gamers wouldn't like it, so the only logical explanation for that was, there intent was to give pc gamers less, to deliberately fuck them over for lack of more savory words. What is someone to do in order to "combat" this. Keep in mind that customers are their own island, sure they can sign a petition in mass, or write emails in mass, but in the end, people can only make decisions for themselves, and one person not buying a game DOES NOT, cancel out the one person who does buy the game.
Full disclosure, I have never played this game except for 5 minutes on an x360, and watching someone else play it for an hour, I have never pirated this game, but I have pirated many other games in my long past, but this game wont be one of them, and I wouldn't touch it if it were free and legal. I feel as a "hardcore" pc gamer, this game is beneath me and its a slap in the face to anyone who takes they're gaming seriously.
Full disclosure, I have never played this game except for 5 minutes on an x360, and watching someone else play it for an hour, I have never pirated this game, but I have pirated many other games in my long past, but this game wont be one of them, and I wouldn't touch it if it were free and legal. I feel as a "hardcore" pc gamer, this game is beneath me and its a slap in the face to anyone who takes they're gaming seriously.
I'm sure that play into it, that developers plan on this 90% piracy rate on the PC expecting that to limit the number of sales (Not that all pirated copies equate to lost sales, but some do and if for every copy you sell, 5, 10, 20 copies are being pirated, that still can have a major impact on the total sales).
But the biggest reason for the console centric development in larger games is simply that no one platform will support the $200+ million dollars (development + marketing) that a game like Modern Warfare 2 costs. An with or without piracy, the console market dwarfs the PC market. As long as that is true, and the control interfaces are radically different, the PC will be a second class citizen when you have that kind of budget.
The biggest, simplest, clearest protest you can make is and always has been your money.
Support the games that support PC gamers. Don't simply boycott Modern Warfare 2, they don't care, they don't need the PC money, take that $60 and support a game you want to play on the PC.
Is the desire to change Infinity Ward's mind that you don't think there are shooters on the PC right now that you want to play, or is it simply a 'me too' mentality to be playing one of the biggest (selling for sure, if nothing else) games of the year?
(That's an honest question, if the tone is: there isn't a PC shooter that does what I want, then your post is a very different tone than: I want to play Modern Warfare 2 but can't / won't because they stripped out what makes a PC game work on the PC).
Simpson5774
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There in-lies the problem, and where piracy is the ONLY means one has to try to get them to change they're ways. I can go spend 60 dollars on other games, and I can be happy with those decisions, but activison isn't going to see that, they aren't going to see a "lost" sale, and they have no idea how much money I do have to spend on games, and that money isn't going to them, they only see the money they do have and not money they dont. There is kind of an envy factor of MW2 if for nothing else, its popular, and the online PC gaming community needs more "popular" games to keep itself afloat. But IW and many other developers fall in the trap of, "this game sold 2 million copies for the PC, + 4 million more pirated this game" this must be what gamers want, lets keep giving them this", and they do this without listening to the criticisms. But really what its proof of, is that they're marketing worked. I have friends who i can not convince them to buy something else other than MW2, and there are other games out there which are better and give you more value for money, because all they see is the marketing and the fact that their friends have this game "so it must be good".
Producing games has always been a for profit endeavor, but developers used to have the mentality of, "this game means something, and I don't want to release this game until I have done everything in my power to make it the best it can possibly be, and I will not put my name in the credits until this has been achieved". Now its simply about the money, without regard to anything or anyone else, or what the end product may be, as long as it can make money, no one cares.
Simpson5774
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Yeah, and this is how the republicans try to shoot down national health care, by changing the meaning of the word, and to create fear based on it.
okay I'm still trying to see where in your post did you disagree and still can't find it.
I think the best way for you to get what you want, a shooter from Infinity Ward that has very PC centric features, is to not buy, and not pirate it.
Piracy very much works against you in this situation because it:
A. reinforces the mentality that people want the game (be that because they've had it marketed to them well or because they know the franchise and want the next iteration) but won't pay for it.
B. That the PC market is filled with piracy and the status-quo of fairly open, unencumbered (DRM wise) games is letting money slip away to pirates and making it a less attractive platform.
The best thing that could have happened to PC gamers would be for Modern Warfare 2 to flop on the PC. It hasn't, and anyone playing it... however they got it is vindicating Infinity Ward / Activision's decisions because they're willing to play it despite removing a number of standard PC features.
ikarinokami
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I wish people would stop with the bs excuses, because that what they are. Street fight 4 got pirated to hell, and that was one of the best efforts on the pc this year, if i were capcom i would never do another game for the pc. they take the time and effort to bring back a STRONG game back to genre that had been dead on the pc for over a decade, and in reward, they get pirated the crap out of.
need for speed shift, it goes back to it's pc roots and gets pirated the crap out of.
prototype, everyone agrees the pc version is the best version, gets pirated the crap out.
developers remove the drm from sims 3, and its pirated more than ever, but the sales didn't increase. people are full of bs.
Pirates are thieves plain and simple, they pirate because they can, and the fact of matter is, by in large the better game, the more they are going to pirate, not out of some sense of principle, but because they can, because they can get away with it, and in the process they are running pc gaming itno ground, period.
If anyone doesn't think this is doing irrepairable harm, I would suggest auditing economics 101.
need for speed shift, it goes back to it's pc roots and gets pirated the crap out of.
prototype, everyone agrees the pc version is the best version, gets pirated the crap out.
developers remove the drm from sims 3, and its pirated more than ever, but the sales didn't increase. people are full of bs.
Pirates are thieves plain and simple, they pirate because they can, and the fact of matter is, by in large the better game, the more they are going to pirate, not out of some sense of principle, but because they can, because they can get away with it, and in the process they are running pc gaming itno ground, period.
If anyone doesn't think this is doing irrepairable harm, I would suggest auditing economics 101.
There is a pretty simple solution to this problem:
If they never released the game then the piracy rate would be zero. Not releasing is always an option and it will eliminate piracy.
FYI, before you accuse me of anything, I own over sixty XBOX360 titles. Hell, I bought an additional eight games in the past two months. (Lips w/2 mics, Force Unleashed, Lego Star Wars, Forza3, MW2, RB AC/DC, Rock Revolution, and SF4)
If they never released the game then the piracy rate would be zero. Not releasing is always an option and it will eliminate piracy.
FYI, before you accuse me of anything, I own over sixty XBOX360 titles. Hell, I bought an additional eight games in the past two months. (Lips w/2 mics, Force Unleashed, Lego Star Wars, Forza3, MW2, RB AC/DC, Rock Revolution, and SF4)
why the fuck do people keep assuming that pirating exist only on the PC, if no one makes any game for the PC then the console games would get pirated. There will always be piracy. Spare me the pirating is running pc gaming into the ground lecture, its bs.
piscian18
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Yeah I sort of wish I could have crashed into IW's office, pirated the game and all their coin, then made away into the crystal waters of the Caribbean. Then no one would complain about the game because the POS wouldn't exist except for on my PScoconut and for better or worse everyone would be happy. This is why we need real pirates and the British are once again to blame for the worlds evils.
While you may be right about there always being pirating going on. But it's pretty well known that PC game pirating is much more rampant that it is on the console., so no it isn't "BS".
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akotlar
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I think many of us feel that way. I'm concerned that these developers are using piracy as a scapegoat, themselves knowing, and admitting in private projections, that it is doubtful that these downloads represent lost sales above and beyond classic "pirating" (sharing cd's, gifting games, borrowing out).
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akotlar
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Yes but you're also dealing with a 10 fold larger install base. It's not trivially easy to pirate a game, and a lot of functionality is lost. In the era of multiplayer games, I'd argue that most people who truly desire the product go out and buy it, if not at full price. There isn't a whole lot of benefit downloading MW2, when 90% of the functionality is in multiplayer. People seem to forget that the PC market has expanded an enormous amount, not only in hardware sales but in software. Game prices have increased, at least perceptually, and content has generally decreased each year, and yet sales keep going up dramatically in spite of a widely recessionary climate: the kind of decrease in revenue that you'd expect if those pirated copies were truly lost sales simply doesn't exist. Blaming PC game piracy for greater than expected lost sales is like blaming nitrogen for taking up your oxygen.
By "pretty well known" you probably mean "commonly assumed". Piracy is used as an umbrella term for all unauthorized distribution. To avoid being hypocrites, the game industry, RIAA, MPAA should term it "piracy" to sell us $60 games with cut content and baiting DLC, $1.30 songs with the feature of "no use breaking DRM", shitty ass DVD's priced at the same level as classics, forcing us to sign up for an online service like Xbox Live and then disabling our hard drive for a USB port modification, etc. Or for giving artists only 30c on the dollar for their music, and for billions in unpaid royalties. Or for going after consumers for damages inflated 10,000 fold. It's truly amazing that any consumer without corporate interests defends these people. Morality is not inherent nor expected in capitalist markets. The "morals" and sales justifications these companies are harping on about is a marketing drive for even greater profits at your expense. How can anyone not see this?
The kind of piracy that goes on with PC games is not what it seems: it is doubtful that it actually creates the problem that some people claim. What it definitely presents is an opportunity for the corporations fucking us to convince us that we should be getting fucked even more.
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yea and what happens when the developer stop making pc games as the other poster suggested, you think the pirates will all go away. The idea to kill pc gaming in order to "save" it. That is what is being suggest when some schmo goes well they shouldn't even make games for the pc then. But back to original topic, MW2 got pirated to hell even without dedicated server that IW had claim would obstruct piracy, oh yea its working out great. now that IS BS.
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akotlar
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Yes this idea that PC devs are somehow "helping" their customers by creating a customer-averse, pay for service-not-product industry is ridiculous. It's smoke and mirrors to eek out greater profits. People seem to think it is ok, or good, for a company to seek ever larger profits. Why is it good? That's not what successful markets run on. Only unsustainable markets, and the person footing the expense for their interest in bigger Bentley's loves the idea. I don't get it. If you truly want better products, why don't you start organizing and demanding oversight. Like making the loyal customers decision makers; over the execs taking massive bonuses and fucking everyone else. I'm sure that if these companies spent less time lining the pockets of the top 5% in the company, dramatically cut their massive advertising allocation, they would have the resources to create worthwhile products. I'm absolutely certain that would increase their sales. They're just not interested in creating a more valuable product, and people seem to agree that this is a good thing. Yeah "fuck the pirates! I want more corporate penis in me!"
Is the fact that MW2 was the most pirated game surprising to anyone? I mean, it was the most widely anticipated game of the year, the most widely hyped, the most highly advertised - of course it was going to be the most pirated. Just like Spore last year - popular games are popular with pirates.
The only way to prevent widespread pirating of popular games is to make the multiplayer component the core of the game, so that a pirated version has no worth, anything else is a band-aid at best. You don't see much talk about WoW being pirated.
I'll go ahead an add my own two cents here as well - I think the more restrictive DRM is, to some extent, increasing piracy because it is eliminating the second-hand market. If my only options are to by the game new (at full price) or pirate it, then the pirate option begins to look better. By taking away the option of buying a legitimate used version of the game the publishers have taken away one outlet for demand. Of course, for publishers a second-hand sale is the same or worse than a pirate sale - the same because both methods yield them no revenue, and worse because pirate downloads can be advertised as "losses" and used to push more restrictions that limit second-hand sales (which I believe is their whole goal).
The only way to prevent widespread pirating of popular games is to make the multiplayer component the core of the game, so that a pirated version has no worth, anything else is a band-aid at best. You don't see much talk about WoW being pirated.
I'll go ahead an add my own two cents here as well - I think the more restrictive DRM is, to some extent, increasing piracy because it is eliminating the second-hand market. If my only options are to by the game new (at full price) or pirate it, then the pirate option begins to look better. By taking away the option of buying a legitimate used version of the game the publishers have taken away one outlet for demand. Of course, for publishers a second-hand sale is the same or worse than a pirate sale - the same because both methods yield them no revenue, and worse because pirate downloads can be advertised as "losses" and used to push more restrictions that limit second-hand sales (which I believe is their whole goal).
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akotlar
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This is already the case. Or to guarantee that people with authentic serial codes will get sustained free content, like L4D promised (...). That's why it is particularly doubtful that many downloaded MW2 except as a "rental thrill". It's a 4 hour single player. If IW really thinks that is worth $60 they should probably rethink their position on these "lost sales"
Nice job - try to derail the topic to something unrelated and plant your political agenda in at the same time. I do believe a democrat once stated "It depends on what your definition of is is."
On topic, these things always turn into flamebait - pirates are always trying to justify owning/having what they have not rightfully paid for by obfuscating things with comparisons to material goods.
ikarinokami
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mw2 was pirated 900k for the xbox360 but 4.2 million people purchased the game.
the same insane ratio was seen in the demi-god fiaso where it was on the order of thousandths to one of legitmate to pirated versions.
the problem is pervasiveness, sure homicdes exists in every country, but i'm pretty sure you would rather live in america than columbia. The order of magnitude of piracy on the pc is reaching a real tipping point.
last year spore sent records being pirated 2 million times. this year nearly 4 games are there already, and mw2 doubled that. Stealing has now become an accepted cultural norm on the pc, and it will not be sustainable.
the drm thing is a bs red herring, the Sims 3 removed drm and got pirated more than it ever was over 3 million, and if mw2 is so far the biggest seller of the year, then it was proabably pirated more than it sold.
I have read pages and pages of people trying to justify thier thieving. People trying to make it out that they are making some kind of political statement, well what's thier excuse for prototype, street fighter 4, need speed shift, based the total number of sales, you could say tha MAJORITY of pc games are thieves. on the other hand, only relatively small percentage of console gamers are, and thats the big difference. esp since it is just as easy to pirate on console, i may give console gamers allot of crap. but at least most of them have the decency to purchase thier games.
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