Modern Warfare 2 is Most Pirated Game of 2009

[spindoctor]

The gaming industry doesn't sit and count every download as a lost sale. They don't care about the semantics between stealing and 'copyright infringement'. This is the statistic that matters to them... on consoles, the game sold 8 million copies and got pirated a million times. On the PC, it got pirated 4 million times and sold a million at most? And then indignant, 'hardcore' PC gamers wonder why the entire industry has turned towards consoles, and why we only get console ports and they abuse developers for 'turning their backs on the people who made them who they are'. Fact is, they have no more turned their backs on PC gamers as we have turned our backs on them. And by 'we', I refer to the PC gaming collective, which, like it or not, includes everyone, whether they bought the game, refrained from buying or pirating it, and even those who stole it (or should I say, infringed upon it's copyright?)

 

[wolfen22]

The gaming industry doesn't sit and count every download as a lost sale. They don't care about the semantics between stealing and 'copyright infringement'. This is the statistic that matters to them... on consoles, the game sold 8 million copies and got pirated a million times. On the PC, it got pirated 4 million times and sold a million at most? And then indignant, 'hardcore' PC gamers wonder why the entire industry has turned towards consoles, and why we only get console ports and they abuse developers for 'turning their backs on the people who made them who they are'. Fact is, they have no more turned their backs on PC gamers as we have turned our backs on them. And by 'we', I refer to the PC gaming collective, which, like it or not, includes everyone, whether they bought the game, refrained from buying or pirating it, and even those who stole it (or should I say, infringed upon it's copyright?)

or perhaps they should realize that they should put a bit of effort into their game and make it a fully-fledged PC version, instead of a direct port.

It's been pirated so much because people just want to play the incredibly short single player. If people actually wanted to play the multiplayer, they would buy it. But Infinity Ward sort of screwed that part up, and it's costing them sales.

L4D2 pissed a lot of people off, but at the end of the day, it's a good game, and people are buying it, and you don't see Valve sitting around, blaming their customers for not buying it.

 

[spindoctor]

or perhaps they should realize that they should put a bit of effort into their game and make it a fully-fledged PC version, instead of a direct port.

It's been pirated so much because people just want to play the incredibly short single player. If people actually wanted to play the multiplayer, they would buy it. But Infinity Ward sort of screwed that part up, and it's costing them sales.

L4D2 pissed a lot of people off, but at the end of the day, it's a good game, and people are buying it, and you don't see Valve sitting around, blaming their customers for not buying it.

What would you recommend they should do to turn it around and get 4 million sales and only 1 million pirated copies? Because, trust me, every single publisher and developer will listen to your master plan

You can blame the quality of MW2 all you want, but the fact is, every single PC game gets pirated more than it sells. That list of the top 5 pirated games includes 'good' games as well. Pick your favorite PC game of the year and I guarantee you it got pirated more than it sold. The same cannot be said for console games.

Like it or not, this is the reason PC gaming gets the stepchild treatment.

And yea, for every Valve or Blizzard, there are 20 other developers who have turned their backs on PC gaming. I love the games these companies put out, but lets not pretend they aren't the exception here.

 

[krameriffic]

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.

These whiny gamers come from an era in PC gaming when dropping $50 on a game was worth tens, hundreds or even thousands of hours of gameplay. The vocal minorities tend to be very atypical gamers in that sense. Even if they could, most people wouldn't drop that kind of time on a video game. We have a different philosophy of gaming as a whole forged out of the time we spent playing games like Starcraft, Diablo, Quake and others in the earlier days of gaming.

 

[wolfen22]

What would you recommend they should do to turn it around and get 4 million sales and only 1 million pirated copies? Because, trust me, every single publisher and developer will listen to your master plan

You can blame the quality of MW2 all you want, but the fact is, every single PC game gets pirated more than it sells. That list of the top 5 pirated games includes 'good' games as well. Pick your favorite PC game of the year and I guarantee you it got pirated more than it sold. The same cannot be said for console games.

Like it or not, this is the reason PC gaming gets the stepchild treatment.

And yea, for every Valve or Blizzard, there are 20 other developers who have turned their backs on PC gaming. I love the games these companies put out, but lets not pretend they aren't the exception here.

The PC is by far the easiest platform to pirate for, and that's probably the biggest reason you see so much PC piracy. If other platforms were so easy, you'd probably see more piracy going on there.

But who's fault is it? well, no one's, really. The PC just isn't a very secure platform. There's still money to be made on it, but yes, it's more difficult.

I think that these days, to really make it rich on the PC market, you HAVE to include a multiplayer. And one that people actually want to play. MW2 failed to deliver on that and in turn everyone just pirated it for the single player.

I think that Blizzard and Valve are so successful because all of their games are usually multi-player focused, so pirating it is useless.

 

[Starcrossed]

Pirates have mediocre taste, I suppose.

 

[spindoctor]

The PC is by far the easiest platform to pirate for, and that's probably the biggest reason you see so much PC piracy. If other platforms were so easy, you'd probably see more piracy going on there.

But who's fault is it? well, no one's, really. The PC just isn't a very secure platform. There's still money to be made on it, but yes, it's more difficult.

The PC might not be a secure platform, but at the end of the day, there is someone sitting at the PC who made the conscious decision to pirate something. And like others have already pointed out earlier in these kinds of threads (when it suited their argument), consoles are pretty easy to pirate for as well.

In any case, coming back to the point, console games outsell their PC counterparts by a factor of 10 or 20 or even more. While PC piracy outnumbers console piracy by similarly alarming ratios.

It's not just a handful of developers or publishers who complain about piracy. Almost the entire industry does, and their chosen course of action is to focus on consoles. And can you really blame them? That's where their money comes from. The PC is obviously still viable as a platform because they do release their games here, but you can't be surprised when they care very little about it because of these kinds of statistics.

I think that these days, to really make it rich on the PC market, you HAVE to include a multiplayer. And one that people actually want to play. MW2 failed to deliver on that and in turn everyone just pirated it for the single player.

I think that Blizzard and Valve are so successful because all of their games are usually multi-player focused, so pirating it is useless.

Actually, single player or otherwise, every game just gets pirated to hell and back. Tell me the last good/popular multiplayer game that you played that didn't get pirated in crazy proportions? You keep mentioning Valve and Blizzard when you have to know they are the exceptions to the general trend. But even so, I'm pretty sure Starcraft, Diablo and Counter Strike are among the most heavily pirated games of all time. You'll probably find more hacked servers for Counter Strike than any other shooter in the world. Likewise, apps that create a VLAN over internet connections so that games can be played were probably created for and used most by players of Blizzard games. The only real difference is that both these companies so far have not abandoned the PC platform yet. I hope we never have to see the day that they do.

 

[Droc]

SEED! SEED!

 

[Everett1]

Pirates have mediocre taste, I suppose.

lol

 

[wolfen22]

Spindoctor, I don't know where you're getting your numbers, but CS, Starcraft, and Diablo are some of the most profitable games for the PC ever made, and people playing them on "hacked" servers are by FAR the minority. I've never even personally heard of anyone playing a pirated copy of any Blizzard or Valve game, because they all want to play on Steam or Battle.net

Also, World of Warcraft isn't really pirate-able since it's an MMO. You can play on terrible "free servers", but again, it's a tiny, tiny minority.

Blizzard and Valve are really the only people left making PC exclusives, and I think they're the only ones who still know how to sell games on the PC. Blizzard has not made a single player only game since Diablo 1, and it's no coincidence that they rake in money. Same with Valve.

Honestly though, I do think PC gaming is dying. If it wasn't for these 2 companies, PC gaming would be done for. And no, I don't blame developers. I wouldn't develop a PC game today myself. But I don't think piracy is the whole reason, it may be part of it, but consoles have just taken over since the 360 was released, and I think it's going to stay that way.

 

[akotlar]

MW2 didn't sell well on PC!? NO WAY! I'm sure it will take Infinity Ward & Co about 10 COD games to figure out why.

 

[spindoctor]

Spindoctor, I don't know where you're getting your numbers, but CS, Starcraft, and Diablo are some of the most profitable games for the PC ever made, and people playing them on "hacked" servers are by FAR the minority. I've never even personally heard of anyone playing a pirated copy of any Blizzard or Valve game, because they all want to play on Steam or Battle.net

Also, World of Warcraft isn't really pirate-able since it's an MMO. You can play on terrible "free servers", but again, it's a tiny, tiny minority.

Blizzard and Valve are really the only people left making PC exclusives, and I think they're the only ones who still know how to sell games on the PC. Blizzard has not made a single player only game since Diablo 1, and it's no coincidence that they rake in money. Same with Valve.

Honestly though, I do think PC gaming is dying. If it wasn't for these 2 companies, PC gaming would be done for.

While CS, Starcraft and Diablo might be amongst the most profitable games on the PC, they are also going to be amongst the most pirated. Seeing as how they're all 10 years old or so, it would be extremely difficult to get any sort of statistics on sales or piracy of the titles, but you have to be extremely naive to believe that people only play them on Steam/BNET. Services like Garena and Hamachi serve millions upon millions of games of Warcraft 3, DOTA etc. and they are mostly on pirated copies. Similarly, 'no steam' versions of CS have lots of servers around the world as well. You can google them if you want. If you insist on believing that only legit copies of these games are played online, then I can't say much except that you are sadly mistaken.

I don't share your opinion that PC gaming is dying though. Gaming itself is evolving, and the PC is moving along just like the other platforms. A lot of people complain that PC gaming isn't how it used to be and the fact is, it's never going back to 'how it used to be'. For people like us, for whom gaming is a hobby or a passion, what are the options? One can either accept that things are changing and perhaps try to see positives, or one can complain about it day in and day out and generally feel unhappy or one can just give up on gaming altogether.

 

[ikarinokami]

Spindoctor, I don't know where you're getting your numbers, but CS, Starcraft, and Diablo are some of the most profitable games for the PC ever made, and people playing them on "hacked" servers are by FAR the minority. I've never even personally heard of anyone playing a pirated copy of any Blizzard or Valve game, because they all want to play on Steam or Battle.net

Also, World of Warcraft isn't really pirate-able since it's an MMO. You can play on terrible "free servers", but again, it's a tiny, tiny minority.

Blizzard and Valve are really the only people left making PC exclusives, and I think they're the only ones who still know how to sell games on the PC. Blizzard has not made a single player only game since Diablo 1, and it's no coincidence that they rake in money. Same with Valve.

Honestly though, I do think PC gaming is dying. If it wasn't for these 2 companies, PC gaming would be done for. And no, I don't blame developers. I wouldn't develop a PC game today myself. But I don't think piracy is the whole reason, it may be part of it, but consoles have just taken over since the 360 was released, and I think it's going to stay that way.

I'm going to blame piracy, because the pc market used to be large. Alot of companies use to do quite well. half life sold a shit load of copies, so did unreal, and duke nukem and alot of other games did quite well, before the word "torrent" became part of the vernicular, maybe they weren't alot 5 million sellers, but they were alot of certifiable hits that went platinium.

The sims 3 to me is the perfect example of why the pc industry is in trouble, that game should have been a monster hit, but who is going to buy the game, when they can just steal it. over 3 million copies downloaded. no is downloading the sims 3 just try it, you know what exactly what kind of game is it going in.

I think PC gaming can be the great thing it once was, once they somehow figure a way lower the incidence of piracy.

The last thing i want is the pc game dominated by low budget fare from stardock, i love the company, i love thier games, but they aren't a main attraction for me, but rather a nice side show to be enjoyed from time to time.

 

[akotlar]

I'm going to blame piracy, because the pc market used to be large. Alot of companies use to do quite well. half life sold a shit load of copies, so did unreal, and duke nukem and alot of other games did quite well, before the word "torrent" became part of the vernicular, maybe they weren't alot 5 million sellers, but they were alot of certifiable hits that went platinium.

The sims 3 to me is the perfect example of why the pc industry is in trouble, that game should have been a monster hit, but who is going to buy the game, when they can just steal it. over 3 million copies downloaded. no is downloading the sims 3 just try it, you know what exactly what kind of game is it going in.

I think PC gaming can be the great thing it once was, once they somehow figure a way lower the incidence of piracy.

The last thing i want is the pc game dominated by low budget fare from stardock, i love the company, i love thier games, but they aren't a main attraction for me, but rather a nice side show to be enjoyed from time to time.

Piracy was arguably more rampant in the past, because the market was smaller and people shared quite readily, with no real restrictions. You didn't have a compelling reason not to, no restrictions on activations, no real multiplayer features (at least on most titles). I really don't see the ground you're trying to stand on here. Heck I remember playing Counterstrike .6 with my buddy using the same copy of Half Life. Diablo I & II i got off him, Warcraft II, Starcraft, heck man most titles were shared at school. The PC market has expanded maybe 100 fold since 1995. I really don't see piracy as getting worse. Maybe you have access to information that I don't, so why don't you post that. The only correlation between decline in PC sales and time is directly correlated with console popularity. Not with piracy. What you wrote is pretty unsubstantiated.

And your "good examples" are jokes right. Comeon you can't believe that what you wrote spins a convincing argument in support of "piracy=sales death"? It's like 1 sentence saying, "Oh look who would buy Sims 3 if they can steal it!". When I was at boarding school one person would get a copy of a game, say Ghost Recon (popular in 2001), and then share it with the other 37 kids in the dorm. Then we had the school network and literally 1100 kids had access to any games they wanted. That's not new. A decade before that it was even easier, with the only restriction being that you had to lend them the CD for an hour. Again since the market was far smaller, physical sharing was presumably much more rampant in terms of % share-through. As for consoles, the exact same thing was going on. Dreamcast is an easy example, but PS1 owners I knew all had mountains of CD-R games. PS2 owners too. N64 people just didn't buy games and rented. Again with consoles its not so important to steal games, because most of those people are just going to rent if piracy is made sufficiently unnatractive. With the PC, once you "abolish" piracy, sales will still be low because those people won't suddenly decide that they have extra cash sitting around. So instead of having "4M bootleggers and 500 thousand legitimate customers!" you'll have "Only 500 thousand customers!". Get it?

 

[Wenglish]

Earlier in this thread, someone said (and I paraphrase):

If IW went out and made a proper PC version of this game--and hell, as a "Sorry for fucking up earlier," included a DX11 mode and a few bonuses--would you go out and buy it?

I can say that I would. I have no interest in playing the game as is, but if I received a game that at least had the feature-set of MW1, I could justify owning a copy of this.

As it is, there's no reason to download MW2, much less buy it.

 

[wolfen22]

Where is the PC moving along to? My PC has been collecting dust pretty much this entire year, as there's hardly any exclusives or non-half-assed ports coming out anymore. I bought a PS3 and it's been getting way more use than my PC has been.

Go to any high school or college across the U.S. And ask the people there what they're gaming on. It's not the PC. It's the consoles.

All throughout my entire high school and now college career, PC gaming has always been a niche activity. The new generation of consoles is probably the last kick in the balls for the ol' PC.

Oh, and I'm not talking about 10 years ago. I'm only 20. I'm talking about the current situation, which is the one that actually matters.

 

[akotlar]

Earlier in this thread, someone said (and I paraphrase):

If IW went out and made a proper PC version of this game--and hell, as a "Sorry for fucking up earlier," included a DX11 mode and a few bonuses--would you go out and buy it?

I can say that I would. I have no interest in playing the game as is, but if I received a game that at least had the feature-set of MW1, I could justify owning a copy of this.

As it is, there's no reason to download MW2, much less buy it.

If they did that and made their single player campaign 12 hours long, kept lean, gave you full fucking use of your keyboard for christ sakes, and had enhanced graphics I'd buy it. Right now I wouldn't want it on my hard drive even if I had to steal it, which I won't partially because I don't need to waste 4 hours on Human Transformers, and partially because it'd be nice for devs to stop blaming piracy for lost sales, sad puppies, evil liberals, pollution, etc.

 

[wolfen22]

If they did that and made their single player campaign 12 hours long, kept lean, gave you full fucking use of your keyboard for christ sakes, and had enhanced graphics I'd buy it. Right now I wouldn't want it on my hard drive even if I had to steal it, which I won't partially because I don't need to waste 4 hours on Human Transformers, and partially because it'd be nice for devs to stop blaming piracy for lost sales, sad puppies, evil liberals, pollution, etc.

Yes, well, it's the common theme now for devs to just straight port games to the PC without changing them at all. Which is why spending all this money on gaming PC hardware seems... silly.

 

[ikarinokami]

Piracy was arguably more rampant in the past, because the market was smaller and people shared quite readily, with no real restrictions. You didn't have a compelling reason not to, no restrictions on activations, no real multiplayer features (at least on most titles). I really don't see the ground you're trying to stand on here. Heck I remember playing Counterstrike .6 with my buddy using the same copy of Half Life. Diablo I & II i got off him, Warcraft II, Starcraft, heck man most titles were shared at school. The PC market has expanded maybe 100 fold since 1995. I really don't see piracy as getting worse. Maybe you have access to information that I don't, so why don't you post that. The only correlation between decline in PC sales and time is directly correlated with console popularity. Not with piracy. What you wrote is pretty unsubstantiated.

And your "good examples" are jokes right. Comeon you can't believe that what you wrote spins a convincing argument in support of "piracy=sales death"? It's like 1 sentence saying, "Oh look who would buy Sims 3 if they can steal it!". When I was at boarding school one person would get a copy of a game, say Ghost Recon (popular in 2001), and then share it with the other 37 kids in the dorm. Then we had the school network and literally 1100 kids had access to any games they wanted. That's not new. A decade before that it was even easier, with the only restriction being that you had to lend them the CD for an hour. Again since the market was far smaller, physical sharing was presumably much more rampant in terms of % share-through. As for consoles, the exact same thing was going on. Dreamcast is an easy example, but PS1 owners I knew all had mountains of CD-R games. PS2 owners too. N64 people just didn't buy games and rented. Again with consoles its not so important to steal games, because most of those people are just going to rent if piracy is made sufficiently unnatractive. With the PC, once you "abolish" piracy, sales will still be low because those people won't suddenly decide that they have extra cash sitting around. So instead of having "4M bootleggers and 500 thousand legitimate customers!" you'll have "Only 500 thousand customers!". Get it?

The pc market is not smaller, There are more pc capable game playing than consoles. What smaller is the actual amount of games sold. The same number of people played MW2 for the pc as the xbox360, the difference is that the xbox360 people brought thier copies and the pc gamers stole thiers.

I have pc gaming since the early 80's, and yes there was always piracy, omg it is nothing like it was now. Even when people used nero, someone still had to buy a legit copy. Torrent/seeds have altered the lanscape of pc piracy. it's an order of magnitude different. Did you look at the piracy numbers, they are stunning, 4 million, 3 million, 2 million.

 

[wolfen22]

The pc market is not smaller, There are more pc capable game playing than consoles. What smaller is the actual amount of games sold. The same number of people played MW2 for the pc as the xbox360, the difference is that the xbox360 people brought thier copies and the pc gamers stole thiers.

I have pc gaming since the early 80's, and yes there was always piracy, omg it is nothing like it was now. Even when people used nero, someone still had to buy a legit copy. Torrent/seeds have altered the lanscape of pc piracy. it's an order of magnitude different. Did you look at the piracy numbers, they are stunning, 4 million, 3 million, 2 million.

More PC's that are capable of playing games than consoles? are you joking? most people have terrible computers.

Not to mention most people my age today don't even KNOW that there's such a thing as "PC gaming"

 

[akotlar]

The pc market is not smaller, There are more pc capable game playing than consoles. What smaller is the actual amount of games sold. The same number of people played MW2 for the pc as the xbox360, the difference is that the xbox360 people brought thier copies and the pc gamers stole thiers.

I have pc gaming since the early 80's, and yes there was always piracy, omg it is nothing like it was now. Even when people used nero, someone still had to buy a legit copy. Torrent/seeds have altered the lanscape of pc piracy. it's an order of magnitude different. Did you look at the piracy numbers, they are stunning, 4 million, 3 million, 2 million.

I said it was smaller 20 years ago. Please throw your reading glasses on. I'm sorry to use such harsh language, but its hard to spend time coming up with a position only to have someone respond with this crass confidence based on the .2 seconds the spent attempting to comprehend what I wrote. Comeon...

And the "PC GAMING, CONSOLE PERFORMANCE +" market IS smaller (for games like MW2 and other console level graphics games) than the console market for any title requiring above IGP level graphics (and very low end discreete solutions). That's something I touched upon like 3 pages ago, and has nothing to do with what you're responding to. You have 1.3B PC users, including laptops and nettops, and maybe something like 90% of them are using integrated graphics or below. And to assume that the other 100M are interested in gaming is pretty maroonish of you because that figure includes a shit ton of work PC's, like graphics industry users. A lot of those systems are being used for productivity work and not gaming. On the other hand you have 100M dedicated Xbox360 + PS3 by the end of 2011.

Here, to make the reading portion easier: Overall global graphics market share: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/3d-gaming-on-intel-integrated-graphics/

To break this down for you: 50% use intel integrated parts, the rest split between VIA, SIS, nvidia, ati. Nvidia and ATI control 30% of that. That means the other 50% uses Via & Sis, on whose hardware modern games are unplayable.

And the other 30% of the market, which ATI & Nvidia split, contains maybe 33% discrete parts high end enough to meet the "recommended spec" for MW2 (or come within say a resolution step of). These are ooold cards, or very low spec. This is "Steam Statistics 2009". We can assume that the majority of "Console Level" PC gamers have Steam installed: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ (roughly 35% of GPU's in the survey are above min spec). So that make 1/9th of the ATI + nVidia market being possibly able to run the game.

So that you don't have to spend too much time reading: About 20% use anything in the GT200 category (including all G92, G94 based parts) + the 4800 category. 13% use 8800 level cards. Anything below that is pretty much unplayable. So roughly 1/3 of "hardcore gamers" have anything capable of running the game.

Out of that tiny portion of users who have a PC capable of running MW2 or any other "high-end" game, only a fraction, most likely far less than 1/3rd are using their hardware to play videogames. A lot of these people have some kind of discreete graphics card installed for work. So you have maybe 1/3rd of 1/9th of desktop users (those with somewhat capable graphics cards) being in the market of MW2. Maybe 650M desktop PC users in the world. Do the math. Ok I'll do it for you: About 23M gamers.

Although my figures are made to try to strengthen your case. They are most likely inflated. The seem to over-inflate the actual number of "Console Level PC Gamers" by about 50%, going on the assumption that most gamers have steam installed.

If you read one thing: Steam only has ~13M users total! The majority of "hardcore" pc gamers use steam. Even if you say that 50% of all "hardcore PC gamers" do not have steam installed, which is ludicrous, that means 26 million PC gamers in the MW2 market total. OUT OF THAT FIGURE ONLY ABOUT 1/3 HAVE PC'S THAT FALL ABOVE MINIMUM SPEC FOR A GAME LIKE MW2, which puts the number of potential buyers of MW2 at about 10 million, with allowances for rough figures. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

edit: If you want to go by the statistic that Gamesutra gives you, and make that 20M Steam users, even making a gross allowance of 50% for hardcore gamers who do not have steam accounts, that makes the total market for MW2 about 13 to 14 million.

 

[horse]

Modern Warfare 2 is so gay, I'm not even interested in pirating the fucking piece of shit game!

 

[Zellio2010]

You're an idiot right?

If you read one thing: STEAM ONLY HAS 13MILLION USERS TOTAL!

Here's a tip akotlar, don't insult others when you don't know what the hell your're talking about, otherwise that makes you the idiot:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22378

Steam currently boasts 20 million users and 350 games – and the service is seeing consistent year-on-year growth of 100 percent.

And that was very early this year.

 

[akotlar]

Unless Valve got it wrong Gamesutra's figures are wrong

This is from the "about Steam" page on steampowered.com : "Now you can stay connected to friends while you play. The Steam Community is your destination to check in with friends, see who’s playing, start or join a game, or just hang out and chat. With more than 13 million Steam users worldwide, it’s easy to meet new people and group"

I'd double check your sources. Besides it doesn't really matter. I accounted for up to 2x the market. Even if we go to 50M PC gamers, which would be 2.5x the amount of gamers who have steam accounts, which is ludicrous, it still won't change the fact that the PC market has far fewer gamers with machines capable of running this software. Like maybe by a factor of 5 even if we can find 50M PC gamers (only 33-35% of their hardware can run anything above 2004 level graphics at anything above ~1024). Nice try though.

And yeah, the post was a bit harsh, I edited out the nasty parts

 

[Zellio2010]

Unless Valve got it wrong Gamesutra's figures are wrong

This is from the "about Steam" page on steampowered.com : "Now you can stay connected to friends while you play. The Steam Community is your destination to check in with friends, see who’s playing, start or join a game, or just hang out and chat. With more than 13 million Steam users worldwide, it’s easy to meet new people and group"

I'd double check your sources. Nice try!

And yeah, the post was a bit harsh, I edited out the nasty parts

Valve doesn't update their steampowered site on steam users. Here is another link showing Valve has 20 million users, from Steam news:

http://store.steampowered.com/news/3285/

Steam is a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC games with over 20 million accounts worldwide and over 1,000 games. For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com

 

[akotlar]

Valve doesn't update their steampowered site on steam users. Here is another link showing Valve has 20 million users, from Steam news:

http://store.steampowered.com/news/3285/

Thanks. If we count on Steam having the lions share of PC gamers, meaning >50%, that puts the number of potential buyers for MW2 between about 7 million and 13.3 million, based on the hardware that the 2009 steam hardware survey gives us (13.3% 8800 class, 11% 4800 class, about 10% GT200 class including all the low end configs such as GTS250,240, and some outliers of maybe 2-3% that could possibly run the game at very low settings which I'm not including but would not affect numbers much).

This is obviously far less than even Xbox360's market share alone. So the idea that somehow the PC market is larger than the console market for these kinds of "hardcore" or rather moderately graphics-intensive games is ridiculous. Off by a factor of maybe 9 at this point.

 

[akotlar]

Consider the sales of something like "Orange Box" for PS3 & 360. This is a game that offers far more for the money than MW2, and had far greater acclaim, but like MW2 was not catered for those customers' platform. It was perceived as being a "PC-port" and even had some performance issues, especially on PS3. It was gimped for the console platform. How many units did it sell? About 1.5M units for both X360 and PS3 (500k on PS3) by February of 2008. PC? About 3.5M according to Lombardi. That's 3.5M sales on a platform that had, meaning approximately 1/4 to an extremity of 1/5 of all PC gamers capable of running the game. Even if that number was closer to 1/3, allowing for generations old hardware (and we have to admit that % of people owning mid to high end hardware stays roughly the same each generation), that's a better sell through than MW2, by a significant amount.

Now look at MW2. Very bad perception issues with the PC version. A whole lot of middle fingers thrown by the developers at the PC community. And very few sales. MW2 on PC actually had MORE sales % wise than PS3 or Xbox 360, even COMBINED than those platforms did for Orange Box. This doesn't take into account things like hype and marketing, but considering the great press that OB had, and the great reviews it had (at least on PC, remember MW2 reviews on PC weren't very good, especially community reviews), it is at least a point of consideration.

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/3...illion-Console-Sales-Significantly-More-On-PC

Discounting factors like poor PC distribution models, complete lack of rental system, complete lack of resale system, it seems like high profile PC games sell in very high figures, with very high attach rates, comparable to consoles. Remember that in the PC gaming market, many of these high profile games target a relatively small portion of all PC users, except for the outlier PC owners that buy high-end games and play them on IGP solutions. That's something I didn't account for, but it's also something that most likely won't skew the numbers to any significant degree.

Heck, Half Life 2, without taking into account Steam sales or Orange Box, Episode 1, 2, sold about 6.5 million by 2008, with the Xbox version accounting for a maximum of ~1.5M. Taking into account Half Life 2 sales with Steam should double that figure, to about 10M, and Orange Box would raise that to about 16M (because retail sales on PC were ~3M according to Lombardi, and Steam sales outpaced retail sales, giving a lower limit of 16M). That's more than COD4 sold through today by about 5M, and we're talking sales figures a year old. That's not something that indicates to me that piracy is killing PC gaming. It seems the Steam distribution model works, and it seems like really quality PC games are sold in HUGE attachment rates (if we have 7-13M PC gamers capable of running HL2 each generation thats a rough 37% attachment rate over 2 generations for just HL2...however most likely many of those PC gamers merely upgraded their hardware, meaning that figure relates closer to a 7-13M base than 14-26M base. If we count ~ 10M PC HL2 sales (without Orange Box, accounting for 1.5M xbox HL2 sales http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/t...ve_reveals_lifetime_retail_sales_figures.html), that's an insane attachment rate, greater than that of MW2 (by about 6x if we assume 9 million sales for 60M total consoles, and 10M sales for 15M HL2 ready PC's..only 15 because this would give some overlap to those gamers upgrading their high end part, and those staying...if you wish, we can increase that to maybe 20M potential HL2 gamers based on hardware requirements over roughly 2 generations, which would still give you a ~50% attachment vs ~15% for MW2 today) .

This indicates to me that it is possible that for well-perceived titles, PC gamers are actually more loyal, and more adamant, than their console brethren.

 

[krayz]

Thanks for the posts akotlar. It's rare reading a well thought out discussion on game piracy on any forum.

Some of you other guys need to take things a little less personally. He's trying to do research and thought exercises to validate his point, not killing your firstborn and raping your wife.

 

[akotlar]

Thanks for the posts akotlar. It's rare reading a well thought out discussion on game piracy on any forum.

Some of you other guys need to take things a little less personally. He's trying to do research and thought exercises to validate his point, not killing your firstborn and raping your wife.

happy new year.

 

[ikarinokami]

I didn't read your whole post, once i saw you actually used steam to represent the pc market. steam is fine for U.S customers, but it is rarely if ever used by foriegn markets since they end up paying an incredible large premium because steam does not take into account exchange rates. This fact undermines any arguement you wish to make.

 

[defiant007]

I didn't read your whole post, once i saw you actually used steam to represent the pc market. steam is fine for U.S customers, but it is rarely if ever used by foriegn markets since they end up paying an incredible large premium because steam does not take into account exchange rates. This fact undermines any arguement you wish to make.

Have you looked at the USD lately? It's worth fuck all thanks to the US government's fantastic monetary policy. Maybe you should do some research before making sweeping unsubstantiated generalizations which actually detract from your arguments. Steam presently provides immensely good value for people in Europe, South East Asia and Australia thanks to the falling USD.

Edit: and further to that point, Steam is so popular in Australia that most of the major ISP's in fact mirror steam content for download.

 

[ikarinokami]

you are the one who should do your resarch, if you did, you would know steam doesn't charge usd to forigeners which is way they get screwed. they get charged the same amound in euro as usd enough usd is valued less, european and autralian owners end up paying more even though the price is the "same" because they are paying thier native dollers.

 

[WarriorX]

you are the one who should do your resarch, if you did, you would know steam doesn't charge usd to forigeners which is way they get screwed. they get charged the same amound in euro as usd enough usd is valued less, european and autralian owners end up paying more even though the price is the "same" because they are paying thier native dollers.

Do the prices include VAT or is that extra?

 

[Tudz]

you are the one who should do your resarch, if you did, you would know steam doesn't charge usd to forigeners which is way they get screwed. they get charged the same amound in euro as usd enough usd is valued less, european and autralian owners end up paying more even though the price is the "same" because they are paying thier native dollers.

Actually, they dont, maybe you should do your own research In Australia we get charged USD on steam, so the game prices vary daily depending on exchange rates. SOME games are adjusted according to the exchange rate (MW2 is $90USD on steam, which brings it close to the AUD$100RRP in stores, though most stores sell it for less than AUD$80) but most games we pay the same as you guys pay in the US, and we pay them in USD, which makes most games far cheaper on steam than in stores. The few games that do get adjusted for exchange rate (like MW2) I usually buy in retail stores rather than on steam.

 

[phide]

What would you recommend they should do to turn it around and get 4 million sales and only 1 million pirated copies?

Lowering the price, for starters. Enthusiasts like us seek value in our purchases, and this extends to hardware purchases as well. If we don't see value in a potential game purchase, we generally won't bother. L4D2 is a perfect example this: the majority of us didn't see the value in having a sequel that seemed so similar to the first game, so quite a number of people boycotted the game. When it became more evident that L4D2 did offer what represented to be a good value, we started to see much more interest in the game itself, and that led to a large number of purchases.

I don't think what MW2 offers represents a good value to us, which is one reason why the piracy rate is so atypically high. People want to experience part of the game, but they don't want to spend $60 doing it (and there's no demo -- why no demo, exactly?). Thus, they resort to piracy. As Gabe Newell's said, pirates are simply unserved customers.

You can blame the quality of MW2 all you want, but the fact is, every single PC game gets pirated more than it sells.

Blatantly false.

The PC is by far the easiest platform to pirate for, and that's probably the biggest reason you see so much PC piracy. If other platforms were so easy, you'd probably see more piracy going on there.

Basically.

Blizzard and Valve are really the only people left making PC exclusives, and I think they're the only ones who still know how to sell games on the PC.

Well, technically, Valve no longer does PC-exclusive development, though they do still have a very good approach to cross-platform development. Valve's games are great on both the PC and the X360 (PS3...not so much), as they take the path of scaling down PC-focused titles to play well on the X360 rather than vice versa.

If IW went out and made a proper PC version of this game--and hell, as a "Sorry for fucking up earlier," included a DX11 mode and a few bonuses--would you go out and buy it? I can say that I would.

Same. I'm not a huge fan of the Call of Duty games, but if they had released a game that truly interested me, I'd be very likely to buy it. I spend at least some time each month seeing what games are just around the corner and seeing whether they're worth my interest or not. MW2 simply never captured my attention, so I had no intention of opening my wallet for it.

 

[Soggy_Popcorn]

Alright, here's a real simple example for all the dense witch-hunters out there who get their games with mommy's money: I originally pirated Rome: TW, to see if I enjoyed it. I did enjoy it.

So do you know what I did on Steam's Christmas sale? I bought it. This is because it's a quality game, and was offered at a low price.

Do you know what else I pirated? MW2. Why? I wanted to play the pathetic SP, so I could see if my friends were hallucinating its quality. They were. I promptly deleted the crap heap, and will never pay a dime for it.

You know what I would have done were pirating not possible? NOT buy it. I would have borrowed the console version from a friend, experienced its hideousness, and given it back.

Obviously, if MW2 were a GOOD pc game, I would have bought it legitimately, especially for its multiplayer. Just like I did for EVERY SINGLE OTHER Infinity Ward CoD.

Morons.

 

[Zellio2010]

Alright, here's a real simple example for all the dense witch-hunters out there who get their games with mommy's money: I originally pirated Rome: TW, to see if I enjoyed it. I did enjoy it.

So do you know what I did on Steam's Christmas sale? I bought it. This is because it's a quality game, and was offered at a low price.

Do you know what else I pirated? MW2. Why? I wanted to play the pathetic SP, so I could see if my friends were hallucinating its quality. They were. I promptly deleted the crap heap, and will never pay a dime for it.

You know what I would have done were pirating not possible? NOT buy it. I would have borrowed the console version from a friend, experienced its hideousness, and given it back.

Obviously, if MW2 were a GOOD pc game, I would have bought it legitimately, especially for its multiplayer. Just like I did for EVERY SINGLE OTHER Infinity Ward CoD.

Morons.

Witch hunters buying games with mommy's money eh? With comments like that, I have the feeling the games you don't steal are paid for using mommy's money.

At 30, I don't buy games using mommy's money. Nor do I witch hunt using mommy's money. Instead, I have this thing called respect for societies laws.

 

[Lames.]

Alright, here's a real simple example for all the dense witch-hunters out there who get their games with mommy's money: I originally pirated Rome: TW, to see if I enjoyed it. I did enjoy it.

So do you know what I did on Steam's Christmas sale? I bought it. This is because it's a quality game, and was offered at a low price.

Do you know what else I pirated? MW2. Why? I wanted to play the pathetic SP, so I could see if my friends were hallucinating its quality. They were. I promptly deleted the crap heap, and will never pay a dime for it.

You know what I would have done were pirating not possible? NOT buy it. I would have borrowed the console version from a friend, experienced its hideousness, and given it back.

Obviously, if MW2 were a GOOD pc game, I would have bought it legitimately, especially for its multiplayer. Just like I did for EVERY SINGLE OTHER Infinity Ward CoD.

Morons.

SO admitting to pirating games makes you look cool? You are just as big of a tool as the rest of the pirating community is.

 

[Krenum]

I don't blame them. Who wants to pay 60 dollars for this piece of crap anyways.

 

[TheCommander]

All these lame excuses for piracy- it costs too much, it has DRM, it doesn't have all the features that someone wanted, etc....

Steam, Impulse,D2D, already offer great deals throughout the year but maybe steam should try a "rental" system like others have said. Then I wonder what the new excuse will be for pirating games.