Modern Warfare 2 is Most Pirated Game of 2009

[akotlar]

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.

Um are you really trying to argue that everyone who defends the ambiguity regarding piracy's correlation with lost sales is themselves a pirate? Hey McCarthy let's boogey like its 1952!

 

[TheCommander]

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.

Piracy will do nothing to make them change their ways. That is another pathetic excuse by people who just want to pirate games. Do you really think IW cares what PC gamers think or want? They found their cash cow in consoles and anything PC related is just second for them now.

 

[Spewn]

prototype, street fighter 4, need speed shift, based the total number of sales,

You could say, based on the number of total sales, that those games sold exactly as many copies as anyone should have expected them to. Go ahead, bring up a list of the top 100 PC games ever released. How many fighters are on the list? Arcade racers? Free-roaming...uh...GTA-like games?

Where anyone gets the idea that all they have to do to make a best-seller on the PC platform is do a really good job on their console port is beyond me. But gg for trying I guess.

 

[ikarinokami]

You could say, based on the number of total sales, that those games sold exactly as many copies as anyone should have expected them to. Go ahead, bring up a list of the top 100 PC games ever released. How many fighters are on the list? Arcade racers? Free-roaming...uh...GTA-like games?

Where anyone gets the idea that all they have to do to make a best-seller on the PC platform is do a really good job on their console port is beyond me. But gg for trying I guess.

you response does not address the fact that the game was pirated 2 million times, that the company had limited drm, did a perfect pc edition yet people more the most part still choose to pirate it rather than buy it. need for speed shift is not an arcade racer, if you played the game you would know that, it takes the game back to it's pc roots.

The whole point that all the these excuses people give are bs, because when publishers do exactly what pc gamers want, a lower price, a port that takes advantage of the pc, a game that is more pc style, pc gamers would still rather pirate it than buy it.

The only silver lining, to me was the fact that dragon age was not on that list, there would have been no words to express my utter disappointment.

 

[akotlar]

you response does not address the fact that the game was pirated 2 million times, that the company had limited drm, did a perfect pc edition yet people more the most part still choose to pirate it rather than buy it. need for speed shift is not an arcade racer, if you played the game you would know that, it takes the game back to it's pc roots.

The whole point that all the these excuses people give are bs, because when publishers do exactly what pc gamers want, a lower price, a port that takes advantage of the pc, a game that is more pc style, pc gamers would still rather pirate it than buy it.

The only silver lining, to me was the fact that dragon age was not on that list, there would have been no words to express my utter disappointment.

I'm not sure what you're reading, but this game has unequivocally been panned as a weak PC release, despite the merits of the game itself (which beyond multiplayer are dubious). A few years ago, when games were being released that only ran 8-10 hours SP, were called out for being a poor value to the dollar. Heck, Half Life 2 Episode 1 had about as much SP play time as MW2, and yet for $20 it was raked through the mud as being a poor value.

This is not a strong PC release. Heck it isn't even a weak PC release. This just isn't a PC release at all: this is something that takes the code they used to develop the game, and adds text chat. When PC gamers are hearing that text input is a "feature" they should be happy about, that's where the line should be drawn. This is an embarrassment. I've heard the game has some merits, that it is super flashy and a couple hours of fun in a porno kind of way, but I'm not sure when that kind of B entertainment became the gold standard for the platform that hosted the releases of pivotal titles like System Shock 2, Half Life, Doom, Quake, Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, Stalker, Flight Sim, MechWarrior 2, and many others. This game is just total dogshit beyond the fake tit 4 hour entertainment, and the strangely popular multiplayer (owing without doubt largely to the stronger multiplayer of COD4).

 

[Dew]

the problem is pervasiveness, sure homicdes exists in every country, but i'm pretty sure you would rather live in america than columbia.

Well, Columbia is a city in South Carolina. So no, I wouldn't want to live there.

Colombia is a country in South America. I'm not sure if I want to live there or not, but I will sure as hell be visiting Colombia for a few weeks this summer!

 

[Spewn]

you response does not address the fact that the game was pirated 2 million times, that the company had limited drm, did a perfect pc edition yet people more the most part still choose to pirate it rather than buy it. need for speed shift is not an arcade racer, if you played the game you would know that, it takes the game back to it's pc roots.

No, because it's irrelevant. What *is* relevant(insofar as it can be managed and understood) is sales numbers. Historically speaking, fighting games have never been popular on PC. It stands to reason that Street Fighter IV should not have been popular on PC. Why should it matter that the PC edition is good, or that the game has no DRM(Something that shouldn't be a bonus but rather the inclusion of DRM should be a negative)? If the market doesn't want it, you're not going to sell it.

As for NFS: Shift; Show me where NFS sold millions of copies in the past on PC such that anyone should have expected such sales performance from NFS: Shift? How about *any* racing game on PC? Let me know when you find one with over a million units sold. It might be a while, since you'll have to make it yourself, there not being one and all.

You're so caught up in piracy figures that you're ignoring sales figures. I bet it wouldn't matter to you if MW2 had sold 50 million copies but still been pirated the same amount.

 

[Spewn]

I'm not sure what you're reading, but this game has unequivocally been panned as a weak PC release, despite the merits of the game itself (which beyond multiplayer are dubious). A few years ago, when games were being released that only ran 8-10 hours SP, were called out for being a poor value to the dollar. Heck, Half Life 2 Episode 1 had about as much SP play time as MW2, and yet for $20 it was raked through the mud as being a poor value.

I believe he's referring to either NFS: Shift, Street Fighter IV, or Prototype.

 

[kledar586]

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.

I'm seeing a lot of probably and majority and phrases like tipping point, mind posting some links as to where we can all see the facts to support these assertions. And i've never defended piracy. All I've added to this thread was that IW didn't have piracy as the primary concern when they removed the dedicated servers, its so they can maximize profit in a subscription based system.
And what is moral high ground BS, if they somehow were to stifle the piracy on the PC, the pirates would move toward the path of least resistance and that would be one of the consoles. I know a few people that bought bootleg games for consoles, hell I was watching someone play Bayonetta on a xbox360 over thanksgiving and correct me if I'm wrong but that game wssn't released then right? I'm somehow suppose to be less of a person because I'm a PC gamer primarily and some people I've never met pirated games, yea I feel so bad.

 

[J Macker]

All I can say, is that I will not be supporting MW2. I love good games and have purchased many this year. But MW2 is one game I will skip. Perhaps I'll install CoD 2.

I've heard the campaign is way too short, and that'd be my main reason for playing.

 

[Forceman]

...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"

Interesting point there - a lot of console gamers might be more inclined to pirate if they didn't have the option to rent (or buy and second-hand sell) the game. Given the complete lack of a PC rental market, and the restricted second-hand sales market, and I think a lot of pirate downloads could/would be avoided with a rental option. The fact that people are pirating games means that there is a market that is not being served in the current system - whether that market would be served by a rental option is up for debate, but I'd bet at least some downloads would be avoided in that way. Hell, look how much volume Steam is pushing with their big winter sale (and their previous L4D sale) - pretty much shows that there is a market for $20 games. You're never going to eliminate PC pirating, but you could probably put a dent in it, if you were willing to shake up your existing publication/distribution model.

 

[spindoctor]

The only silver lining, to me was the fact that dragon age was not on that list, there would have been no words to express my utter disappointment.

That's probably because the list is limited to the top 5. If it were the top 10, I'm sure great games like Dragon Age and Batman would have made it too

 

[Betauser]

They should just use steam exclusively to sell games and would prevent piracy a little since you need to use steam and online connection to play the game, yet some gamers would still bitch about it because you just can't make everyone happy. /sigh

 

[ikarinokami]

I'm seeing a lot of probably and majority and phrases like tipping point, mind posting some links as to where we can all see the facts to support these assertions. And i've never defended piracy. All I've added to this thread was that IW didn't have piracy as the primary concern when they removed the dedicated servers, its so they can maximize profit in a subscription based system.
And what is moral high ground BS, if they somehow were to stifle the piracy on the PC, the pirates would move toward the path of least resistance and that would be one of the consoles. I know a few people that bought bootleg games for consoles, hell I was watching someone play Bayonetta on a xbox360 over thanksgiving and correct me if I'm wrong but that game wssn't released then right? I'm somehow suppose to be less of a person because I'm a PC gamer primarily and some people I've never met pirated games, yea I feel so bad.

again people say this, mw2 was pirated 900k on the xbox360 but brought 4millon times. the numbers are there, it is a fact that demi-god was pirated far more than it was purchased, for for every single other game on that list, so to say that the majority most of pc gamers are pirates, is based soley on those numbers, or as we say in court, facts.

The whole point is which seems lost on you, is not the fact that piracy exists, but to the degree it happens. on the pc games are pirated on a ratio of thousandths of pirated copies to legimate ones, there is no comparison. it's like comparing the grey market in america to somewhere like china.

I am pc gamer, but that is most pc gamers are pirates and the numbers support that fact, and the bottom line is ultimately something akin to the free rider problem is going to happen, where it is no longer econically feasible to make pc gamers, because person's like myself are going to be dwarf by thieves.

I'm not sure if people understand that our entire econmics system for the last 200 hundred years is based on profit maximzing and rational self interest. and in areas where profit maximizing would be counter-productive the government steps in.

The issue is not a moral one, is an economic one, at some point based upon opportunity cost, companies will cease making pc games. Microsoft because it makes more money than the average developers on xbox360 games sold as already reached that plateau.

However at the insane rates that piracy is increasing alot of other publishers are going to reach that conclusion. less than a year ago spore was the most pirated game ever at 2 million, did you see the numbers on the list. not over were they all close to 2 million they span a diverse a genre as you could get, that list is just one giant economic red flag.

I am annoyed becuase these thieves are so busy justifying thier actions that they don't see they are going to cause pc games to die.

if you will notice, the ps3 remains unhackable, would do you think is going to happen in the future, when all consoles become similairly hack proof? do you think developers are going to put thier precious ip's on a system, where pirates currently far out number legitmate users?

 

[akotlar]

again people say this, mw2 was pirated 900k on the xbox360 but brought 4millon times. the numbers are there, it is a fact that demi-god was pirated far more than it was purchased, for for every single other game on that list, so to say that the majority most of pc gamers are pirates, is based soley on those numbers, or as we say in court, facts.

You think it is such a fact? Here is the CEO of OnLive, who is coming up with the first novel distribution system since Steam/D2D, discussing piracy: http://tv.seas.columbia.edu/videos/545/60/79?file=1&autostart=true (skip to 29:54). This is a guy who has struck deals with publishers like EA. HE admits in this presentation that the "lost sales" from piracy uses dubious accounting (that it is hard to quantify the portion that were lost sales). I doubt you'll find as much unequivocal support as you assume.

The whole point is which seems lost on you, is not the fact that piracy exists, but to the degree it happens. on the pc games are pirated on a ratio of thousandths of pirated copies to legimate ones, there is no comparison. it's like comparing the grey market in america to somewhere like china.

I am pc gamer, but that is most pc gamers are pirates and the numbers support that fact, and the bottom line is ultimately something akin to the free rider problem is going to happen, where it is no longer econically feasible to make pc gamers, because person's like myself are going to be dwarf by thieves.

This is a statistical misrepresentation. There are maybe 1.3B PC users, depending on the statistic you use. Between .1 and maybe 5% of those users play video games like this, but tallying up the total sales + pirated copies gives us a figure of about .4%. http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/worldwide_pc_adoption_forecast,_2007_to_2015/q/id/42496/t/2. PC gamers are already being drowned out by ~ 1.2 billion PC general computing users.

Saying that, "4million people downloaded the game, and only 400,000 bought it, and therefore most PC gamers are pirates," is an incorrect conclusion, because the major premise you're starting with is that the total group represents "PC gamers willing to purchase this title". What you're missing is that that total group represents "PC users" and that is a very different group.

You cannot extrapolate from those figures anything other than that more people downloaded the game than bought it. When you're dealing with an open platform, and a ever-shifting user base (PC "hardcore" gamers), you can't reach the same statistical conclusions that you can with console owners. A lot of those pirates could have been people interested in tasting the game, people not sure if they wanted to get into PC "hardcore" gamin, people checking out to see if the title was better on PC or consoles... The list goes on. That group is most certainly a diverse one.

I guarantee you that many games, especially prior to multiplayer focus, were/are rented a significant portion of the time. However, you cannot count those as "lost sales" because most likely those people were not going to purchase the game to begin with, before trying it. Similarly in the PC space, the total set of "piraters" may or may not include legitimate buyers, but there are some indicators out there that point to "PC game pirated copies" as not being a great indicator of missing sales, just like unsolicited music downloads cannot be counted as "lost sales", though of course it is possible with a better sales model. But that's an expected economic function, and has nothing exclusively to do with "pirating".

The issue is not a moral one, is an economic one, at some point based upon opportunity cost, companies will cease making pc games. Microsoft because it makes more money than the average developers on xbox360 games sold as already reached that plateau.
However at the insane rates that piracy is increasing alot of other publishers are going to reach that conclusion. less than a year ago spore was the most pirated game ever at 2 million, did you see the numbers on the list. not over were they all close to 2 million they span a diverse a genre as you could get, that list is just one giant economic red flag.
If they reach the conclusion you stated, they are morons. I'm guessing they are not reaching that conclusion, because it would be the incorrect conclusion, and over time they will see that, if they do not wholly now.

Spore did not sell well because it wasn't an interesting game. It was very hyped, but a very new concept. These kinds of games are ALWAYS rented first. No rental model exists on PC's. When you're stuck with a choice between buying a title that you're unsure about, or downloading it to see if you like it, I'd download it. Why the hell am I going to pay for content I'm not sure I want? It is not a "cheap entertainment" like a $6 matinee or a $2 coffee. It's something that is supposed to provide long-term entertainment, at a high cost. That's the wrong kind of market to have a buy-only model.


Have you seen what happens when games are reasonably priced? When Valve sets off these title sales, their sales go up by up to 2000% for a given title. You think that is a mistake? Content is too expensive right now. Most of the time that I purchase a $50-60 title, I do not feel that it was worthwhile. If I had the opportunity to rent, and try the title before I bought, it would be a different story. Valve has caught on this idea with its "free weekend" service. However that is not predictable, and therefore isn't what we need. If they made a rental service, where you pay $5-7 a month for having one game "out", with the ability to save to a cloud, that would put money in everyone's pockets.

 

[akotlar]

Interesting point there - a lot of console gamers might be more inclined to pirate if they didn't have the option to rent (or buy and second-hand sell) the game. Given the complete lack of a PC rental market, and the restricted second-hand sales market, and I think a lot of pirate downloads could/would be avoided with a rental option. The fact that people are pirating games means that there is a market that is not being served in the current system - whether that market would be served by a rental option is up for debate, but I'd bet at least some downloads would be avoided in that way. Hell, look how much volume Steam is pushing with their big winter sale (and their previous L4D sale) - pretty much shows that there is a market for $20 games. You're never going to eliminate PC pirating, but you could probably put a dent in it, if you were willing to shake up your existing publication/distribution model.

Yes, a rental market must be created for PC gamers, unless everything moves to an "OnLive" rental model, where you pay for play time, not individual titles (I'm assuming this will be one of their distribution models at this point). Have a rental service where you can download and keep a game for a month, for 7 dollars a month, and make it a really user friendly experience, and piracy will drop to console levels. There is no reason it wouldn't. There isn't a larger impetus to pirate on PC's, other than the fact that you can't rent titles, and there is no resale system. In fact, if you've invested in the console hardware, and feel that you cannot purchase a title due to economic reasons, you are more compelled to pirate, since most [irrational] consumers will attempt to amortize sunk costs (hence phenomena of acquiring as many titles as financially possible to justify hardware expenditure). Of course most console gamers will simply rent the game, since that is a safer, morally friendly alternative. Nothing like this exists for PC's, as you pointed out.

The sales model that PC publishers are using is outdated, and is clearly not effective, as witnessed by the response of the customer base. In a "vote with your dollar" economic system, PC users are voting "no".

Blaming PC users for being moral deviants is ridiculous. There are statistically as many "morally unfastidious" owners of PC's as of consoles. The reason you're seeing higher pirating rates on PC's is not because these people exist in greater numbers there. It's because the sales models being offered them don't work. Just like during prohibition, you had a mis-understood statistical increase in crime rates, in drinking rates, which were due solely to a poorly implemented legal framework. More "moral dissidents" didn't suddenly appear: it was due to the imposition of socially unacceptable framework, and these levels dropped again as soon as the correct rule set was re-instated. Publishers and salesman aren't the ones that can dictate sales models. A truly successful business looks at what the natural model is, and sees how it can innovate from that base. The wrong way is to push a conceited customer-averse system, where most of your dollars are going into feature lockdown & marketing, and blaming the customer for not buying it.

 

[wolfen22]

Yes, I rent 9/10 games for my PS3, and I find it way more cost effective than buying every game, even if you only buy used.

The PC has no way to test a game, or only play the part of the game you want, without buying the entire thing. They hardly even release demos anymore.

Oh, and you can't resell PC games if you don't like it, like you can do on consoles.

I think the combination of these things leads people to download games. Some do actually end up buying the game, some don't. But someone has to come up with a PC rental/resale system because buying a PC game these days is a risky endeavor.

 

[akotlar]

Yes, I rent 9/10 games for my PS3, and I find it way more cost effective than buying every game, even if you only buy used.

The PC has no way to test a game, or only play the part of the game you want, without buying the entire thing. They hardly even release demos anymore.

Oh, and you can't resell PC games if you don't like it, like you can do on consoles.

I think the combination of these things leads people to download games. Some do actually end up buying the game, some don't. But someone has to come up with a PC rental/resale system because buying a PC game these days is a risky endeavor.

Right, now if a publisher wanted to claim justification for increased console game prices, he could claim that he is losing 9/10ths of his sales to customers like you. That in fact has been tried with the attempted abolition of used game sales. These businesses are not our friends. Cannibalizing PC users, claiming that these businesses are entitled to every dollar they wish, is not the right way to get the changes you want enacted.

 

[Tudz]

But someone has to come up with a PC rental/resale system because buying a PC game these days is a risky endeavor.

I think that's a good point. I haven't bought a lot of games that I considered buying because I didn't want to waste my money to find out it was crap. On console though, you can buy a game and recoup some of you losses if you want to get rid of it. I was in a games shop a week or so after MW2 came out and the PS3 section already had half a dozen traded in copies of it (not sure if they had more behind the counter as well). If someone buys those traded in copies instead of the new copies then its just as much a loss for the developer as it would have been if someone pirated it on PC (they get no money from a traded game either). The only one making money out of that is the gaming store.

 

[phide]

Yes, a rental market must be created for PC gamers

I don't doubt that Valve is working on this. Steam is already infrastructually-equipped to handle rentals (the free preview weekends are simply free rentals, after all), but I'd imagine publishers are or will be very strongly against it. They want you to slam down $50-60 and they don't want you to have any recourse should you not like their product. They also don't want to offer a distribution that has the potential of being cracked, which is a potential issue with Steam. So, it's going to be a tough fight.

I won't claim that the pirate-before-you-buy approach is legitimate or particularly moral, but it does become fairly morally ambiguous if you do actually and buy the game after having pirated it. Legally, it's still a large offense, but the concept itself is pretty innocuous. Until we get a good, reasonable rental system, though, piracy will continue at its current rate (and keep climbing, as some of the data suggests).

 

[heatlesssun]

Until we get a good, reasonable rental system, though, piracy will continue at its current rate (and keep climbing, as some of the data suggests).

I agree with most of this. But then there's something like OnLive and that may be a game changer, no pun intended. Hard to pirate something that never gets released except to a few servers.

The cloud really can end piracy as we know it by simply never distributing code. And it solves the try before you by issue. But if you think MW2 was locked down and consolized, well you ain't seen nothing yet.

 

[wolfen22]

I agree with most of this. But then there's something like OnLive and that may be a game changer, no pun intended. Hard to pirate something that never gets released except to a few servers.

The cloud really can end piracy as we know it by simply never distributing code. And it solves the try before you by issue. But if you think MW2 was locked down and consolized, well you ain't seen nothing yet.

I honestly don't think OnLive will go anywhere. They've already missed their "Winter 2009" release date and the website hasn't been updated in a while.

 

[akotlar]

I don't doubt that Valve is working on this. Steam is already infrastructually-equipped to handle rentals (the free preview weekends are simply free rentals, after all), but I'd imagine publishers are or will be very strongly against it. They want you to slam down $50-60 and they don't want you to have any recourse should you not like their product. They also don't want to offer a distribution that has the potential of being cracked, which is a potential issue with Steam. So, it's going to be a tough fight.

I won't claim that the pirate-before-you-buy approach is legitimate or particularly moral, but it does become fairly morally ambiguous if you do actually and buy the game after having pirated it. Legally, it's still a large offense, but the concept itself is pretty innocuous. Until we get a good, reasonable rental system, though, piracy will continue at its current rate (and keep climbing, as some of the data suggests).

I fully agree. I mentioned their free weekends 2 posts ago, but I have pretty dense posts. Yes it will be a tough fight, and the fact that it will be a tough fight is the problem. These publishers are both creating the issue and complaining about it. What stuns me is that the people they are fucking support them. Stockholm syndrome applies to more than just kidnapping folks. I'm from Ukraine, where people once loved Stalin, while in the same breath despaired as their friends were departed to Kolyma. This is both obviously similar in theme and uncomparable in tragedy. PC piracy is a consumer solution to a bad sales model. I'm not saying that there aren't thieves among us, who, no matter the objective fairness of the sales model will pirate their products, but I'm saying that there aren't MORE of these people than with any other platform, consoles included (in fact potentially less because of the irrational sunk cost amortization I mentioned above).

It is a red-herring strategy for publishers to claim that they are dumping PC gaming because of these kinds of pirates. If that were really the case they would be jumping out of the console market too. It is a completely inefficient use of your resources to try to prevent the maybe 10% sales loss (it is very doubtful it is actually this much) in a $20 billion a year market. You'll spend 90% of your resources to stop the 10% loss (this is a common rule...that 90% of your effort goes into solving the final 10% of the problem). A much better use of your resources is to invest in the right sales model, cut spending on inefficient advertising, and think of new strategies to make compelling products. Of course that's far too reasonable a course of action for the Rambo intellectuals that run some of these businesses (not all...OnLive seems to be on point, Crytek seems to be on point, and others).

Treating every customer like a potential criminal is clearly not the right strategy, and indicates to me that there is something wrong with your growth model.

 

[heatlesssun]

What stuns me is that the people they are fucking support them.

This REALLY is the crux of the matter. I'm not so sure that this is true. I probably buy more games than even the average [H] and I just don't feel like I'm getting fucked. If I don't like a game I find something else. Hell, I'm a sucky gamer but I love games and I buy ALL of mine and I don't complain. Maybe I'm rare but I think its people like me that spend the money and don't really care so much about modding and what not. I just want to play games here and there and I'm spend good coin to do it.

So maybe I'm a fool, but you'd LOVE to have someone like me as a customer. I'm VERY low maintenance.

I mean people bitch and moan about $60 being to much for a game that give the average person about 5 hours of SP time. $60 barely buys a dinner for two at a half decent chain restaurant anymore.

I think the ones that fell like they are getting fucked are hell of a lot better gamers than me, but are far too caring and discriminating about EVERY little thing. Sure they are a great fan club and good for word of mouth advertising but I tend to wonder just how good of paying customers they REALLY are.

I think these companies overall have a pretty good idea who buys their stuff and who doesn't. The day they piss of people like me, they're toast cause I'll just by games and not even play them 70% of the time anyway.

 

[wolfen22]

This REALLY is the crux of the matter. I'm not so sure that this is true. I probably buy more games than even the average [H] and I just don't feel like I'm getting fucked. If I don't like a game I find something else. Hell, I'm a sucky gamer but I love games and I buy ALL of mine and I don't complain. Maybe I'm rare but I think its people like me that spend the money and don't really care so much about modding and what not. I just want to play games here and there and I'm spend good coin to do it.

So maybe I'm a fool, but you'd LOVE to have someone like me as a customer. I'm VERY low maintenance.

I mean people bitch and moan about $60 being to much for a game that give the average person about 5 hours of SP time. $60 barely buys a dinner for two at a half decent chain restaurant anymore.

I think the ones that fell like they are getting fucked are hell of a lot better gamers than me, but are far too caring and discriminating about EVERY little thing. Sure they are a great fan club and good for word of mouth advertising but I tend to wonder just how good of paying customers they REALLY are.

I think these companies overall have a pretty good idea who buys their stuff and who doesn't. The day they piss of people like me, they're toast cause I'll just by games and not even play them 70% of the time anyway.

Thing is, this is how every company wants you to be. They want you to buy the game, then figure out if you like it later. They don't really care as they already have your money and you can't get it back. There is no way at all to get your money back for a PC game.

On consoles, you can just return the game, resell it, whatever. They have incentive to make sure you actually KEEP the game. If you resell it, it costs them another sale.

On the PC, they don't care. They have your money.

The only thing coming out on the PC these days seems to be console ports and Valve games. If it wasn't for Blizzard and Valve, I'd probably just say forget it and quit PC gaming altogether.

 

[Kowan]

I don't have the game choosing not to support them. I don't feel any sympathy for them either.

 

[Tudz]

I mean people bitch and moan about $60 being to much for a game that give the average person about 5 hours of SP time. $60 barely buys a dinner for two at a half decent chain restaurant anymore.

That entirely depends on whether or not you are trying to sleep with the person Not sure how much food costs in the states, but for the $100AUD cost of a game out here you could get 3 dinners for 2 if you went to a decent priced restaurant.

 

[akotlar]

That entirely depends on whether or not you are trying to sleep with the person Not sure how much food costs in the states, but for the $100AUD cost of a game out here you could get 3 dinners for 2 if you went to a decent priced restaurant.

that guy needs to read The Game

 

[ikarinokami]

total bs by everyone again. If you do your research you will find that games are cheaper than they have ever been when adjusted for inflation. i paid $90 dollar for phantasy star 2 back in the 80's.

People keep talking about piracy on consoles but miss the obvious, people on consoles BUY thier games. $ 5 million bought mw2.

The same amount of people stole prototype on the pc bought it for the xbox360.

street fighter was $20 dollers cheaper on the pc and it still got pirated almost 2 million times, and still more people bought in the consoles even though it cost $20 dollars more.

So please stop with the excuses, every example wether it's price, game style, developer interest, drm is dispprove by that list, pc games are stolen because of large portion of pc gamers are thieves, period.

 

[phide]

But then there's something like OnLive and that may be a game changer, no pun intended. Hard to pirate something that never gets released except to a few servers.

OnLive will be a good solution for a lot of people, but not for everyone. Broadband in the U.S. is still horrendous compared to many other nations, so there will still be reliance on traditional distribution for a long time to come. I'm also fairly skeptical about OnLive from a technological standpoint, even on extremely fast, low-latency broadband connections.

People keep talking about piracy on consoles but miss the obvious, people on consoles BUY thier games.

So do PC gamers. And console gamers also pirate games. You're making a sweeping (and totally false) generalization here.

 

[Spewn]

total bs by everyone again. If you do your research you will find that games are cheaper than they have ever been when adjusted for inflation. i paid $90 dollar for phantasy star 2 back in the 80's.

And if you did yours, you'd see the real story told by sales numbers historically. Stop bringing up the fact that a fighting game, a type of game which has NEVER sold exceptionally well on PC, didn't sell well. Are you SURPRISED that SFIV did exactly what anyone who understands the market could have predicted it would do? You ought not to be, if you think you know enough about the subject to even be involved in this discussion.

 

[wfalcon]

Um are you really trying to argue that everyone who defends the ambiguity regarding piracy's correlation with lost sales is themselves a pirate? Hey McCarthy let's boogey like its 1952!

Why else would anyone vehemently defend the sense of entitlement pirates have? I bought all my games with my hard-earned cash - they can too. If they don't have the cash, then tough shit - playing games is not a right.

 

[Spewn]

Why else would anyone vehemently defend the sense of entitlement pirates have?

There's a difference between defending what they do and suggesting that it doesn't impact sales as much as some people seem to think.

 

[J Macker]

Have a rental service where you can download and keep a game for a month, for 7 dollars a month, and make it a really user friendly experience, and piracy will drop to console levels. There is no reason it wouldn't. There isn't a larger impetus to pirate on PC's, other than the fact that you can't rent titles, and there is no resale system.

The wrong way is to push a conceited customer-averse system, where most of your dollars are going into feature lockdown & marketing, and blaming the customer for not buying it.

QFT. I try to stick to used games, but even then I feel like I'm not "supporting" the developer because they already made the sale. You just can't argue the low resell value of PC games and there's no way to rent them.

And console games are WAY too expensive to rent or to buy. 8-10 hours of play for Uncharted 2 for $60? Get real. Even for a $7 rental for 3-5 days that's pretty steep since I don't have the time to play through it in 3-5 consecutive days. 2 hours/day gaming and I can't play games every day.

Buying used console games a few weeks after they come out for $45 or so and then try to play it as fast as I can and try to sell it on Craigslist for $35-40. ~$5-10 rental for 3 weeks.

Steam Holiday Sale FTW.

 

[nullzero]

If the game is made well and priced right it will discourage pirating. They should just get on with it and make all PC games digital distribution only and price them at $30 or under. Going full digital reduces costs for the gaming studio since they don't need to split profits with a crappy publisher like EA.

 

[akotlar]

As the guys above me wrote, there's a difference between defending piracy and bringing to question its causes and effects. DRM advocates like to whitewash everything, and just state that piracy is rampant on the pc, that pc users are somehow "different" and this quality - which something like that of a moral misanthropes - leads them to steal, and therefore they need to be overcharged, and therefore they need to be corralled by suspicion and DRM.

That's pretty much analagous to correlations Generalizers have historically made between crime and race, or intelligence and gender (and race as well). They try to fix the broken bone by applying aspirin. They want to give chemotherapy to the miscreant cells. They therefore must treat all of their target customers as potential tumors, and hope that through the DRM therapy, throughs appeals to their 'moral nature', through education about why we must pay their asking price, and finally by punishing us by restricting content for our 'safety' they plan to heal us. This is a ridiculous approach. The consumer cannot be to blame, unless he is somehow different from the 95% average socially concious consumer that lines the pocket of every other company. We are just not stupid. The value proposition is not there for many gamers. Not all of course, but many would changetheir spending habits if they had the option to rent or return games.

To the poster remarking on inflation. Yes, it is true that the dollar has technically inflated since say 1998. But that is not really how inflation works on local scales. It is calculated against the price of all goods, on average, compared to money supply. Just because we say that the dollar has "inflated" or lost some value, doesn't somehow change the fact that people are earning the same relative salaries and paying something like 20% more (say from 50 to 60) for sometimes dramatically less gameplay length (single player.

This is before you consider the roughly 10 years of recession (if counting tech market recession). So no, games are not cheaper these days. They were also about 50% cheaper to rent 10 years ago. An very few games cost 90 dollars ( you obviously paid for the bundle with the modem) unless you are talking about n64 games, which almos universally sold poorly because of their ridiculous price tags (I owned one and bought 3 games total for example).

Sorry for any grammatical errors, posting this on my mobile phone

 

[pigwalk]

The best thing MW2 did, was make us forget how mad at Valve for L4D2 we were!

 

[ikarinokami]

And if you did yours, you'd see the real story told by sales numbers historically. Stop bringing up the fact that a fighting game, a type of game which has NEVER sold exceptionally well on PC, didn't sell well. Are you SURPRISED that SFIV did exactly what anyone who understands the market could have predicted it would do? You ought not to be, if you think you know enough about the subject to even be involved in this discussion.

the fact that it did not sell well is not even the issue, the fact that it was PIRATED/STOLEN by nearly 2 MILLION people is.

What was their excuse? the game was priced incredibly cheap, the drm was minimal, the game took advantage of the pc power, YET it was STILL stolen nearly 2 million times.

The point of street fight 4 is that there is nothing any publisher can do, that even IF you gave people everything they say they want, less drm, lower price, advantage of the pc power, they are still going to steal your game, that's the point. PC pirates, thieves, and they steal because they want to, and all thier excuses are b.s because even a publisher does everything right by them, they still steal the game.

 

[wolfen22]

Like he said, people don't really play fighters on the PC.

I'm guessing most of those people just downloaded it because.. well, they download EVERYTHING that's free.

 

[phide]

Going full digital reduces costs for the gaming studio since they don't need to split profits with a crappy publisher like EA.

Publishers still fund the majority of development, however (in most cases). Only independent studios like Valve can realistically afford to develop with their own resources. That's why EA formed EA Partners, which acts as a distributor for independent studios.

The best thing MW2 did, was make us forget how mad at Valve for L4D2 we were!

And now nobody's mad at Valve as it turns out L4D2 kicks quite a bit of ass