Modern Warfare 2 is Most Pirated Game of 2009

[wolfen22]

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.

Like I said, the PC platform is just completely insecure. Pirating on it costs you no extra money, no mod chips, no money on blank media, and your system won't get banned for using pirated games.

Pirating is just so easy, maybe easier than buying the game, and it's free. You add those up together and you have the perfect recipe for pirate cake.

 

[heatlesssun]

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.

Some of us "witch hunting morons" have something called a "job".

 

[wolfen22]

Some of us "witch hunting morons" have something called a "job".

You know, most people I know that pirate stuff actually do have jobs. I guess they *could* buy the games, but unless you actually have some kind of moral code, there's no reason to pay for something you can get for free.

Same deal with music, TV shows, movies, etc.

 

[heatlesssun]

Like I said, the PC platform is just completely insecure. Pirating on it costs you no extra money, no mod chips, no money on blank media, and your system won't get banned for using pirated games.

Pirating is just so easy, maybe easier than buying the game, and it's free. You add those up together and you have the perfect recipe for pirate cake.

Good point. Sometimes however pirating can bite you in the ass. I fixed more than one machine where that "free software" was a trojan. YMWV.

 

[heatlesssun]

You know, most people I know that pirate stuff actually do have jobs. I guess they *could* buy the games, but unless you actually have some kind of moral code, there's no reason to pay for something you can get for free.

Same deal with music, TV shows, movies, etc.

You're probably right. It's just that you see that same old argument "you buy your games with mommy's money from pirates. Really. Like $60 is anything.

 

[wolfen22]

Good point. Sometimes however pirating can bite you in the ass. I fixed more than one machine where that "free software" was a trojan. YMWV.

You do have to be careful, but usually a quick reading through comments on a torrent will let you know if the release is clean/legit or not.

And if a torrent has 10,000 people downloading it, it's usually legit.

Most people who pirate PC games are relatively tech savvy so finding the real deal isn't hard for them.

 

[heatlesssun]

You do have to be careful, but usually a quick reading through comments on a torrent will let you know if the release is clean/legit or not.

And if a torrent has 10,000 people downloading it, it's usually legit.

Most people who pirate PC games are relatively tech savvy so finding the real deal isn't hard for them.

I wouldn't say that most people I know that download stuff are particularly tech savvy though it's usually easy enough to not get zapped if you know what you are doing.

 

[akotlar]

Good point. Sometimes however pirating can bite you in the ass. I fixed more than one machine where that "free software" was a trojan. YMWV.

I don't think the average person percieves pirating as safe on the PC. There's a lot of fear about getting fined huge damages, or facing jail time. It's also not something that's looked favorably upon by one's peers. Most self respecting people don't steal because it would alienate them from their group. And the fear of viruses is there.

The final boundary is that the average consumer, let's say 80-90% of people wanting these games don't have the time or desire to figure out how to mount images, find cracks, and in some cases discover obtuse securom work arounds. I'd suggest that the people pirating titles are often times either highly discerning consumers that want to preview before they buy (serious pc enthusiasts), or younger adults & teens who never wanted to spend the money to begin with or just enjoy being social contrarians.

If you get rid of piracy, which is impossible (although with a lot of resources some limited reduction is surely possible), these people would most likely find other ways to get the entertainment, and would in almost all other cases forego it. They won't suddenly "discover" a desire to purchase the product, because the ONLY compulsion to buy in both scenarios is the entertainment value of the game. Right now that is not compelling enough to spend the money, and therefore unless they have reasonbly unlimited disposable income, unless you lower te price to make the compelling factor/product price ratio more attractive, few additional sales will be found. Think about it.

Posting on phone, forgive the grammatical and spellig errors

 

[wolfen22]

It's also not something that's looked favorably upon by one's peers. Most self respecting people don't steal because it would alienate them from their group. And the fear of viruses is there.

huh? my friends pirate *everything* they can. Movies,music, games, Windows, You name it, they pirate it. No one has ever said anything. Most people my age these days really don't make a huge deal about piracy. Everyone pirates things, music, tv, movies, games, windows, etc.

 

[akotlar]

huh? my friends pirate *everything* they can. Movies,music, games, Windows, You name it, they pirate it. No one has ever said anything. Most people my age these days really don't make a huge deal about piracy. Everyone pirates things, music, tv, movies, games, windows, etc.

I saw from another post of yours that you're in college. Read my post more carefully.

Edit: here: "I'd suggest that the people pirating titles are often times either highly discerning consumers that want to preview before they buy (serious pc enthusiasts), or younger adults & teens who never wanted to spend the money to begin with or just enjoy being social contrarians."

again spend a little more time reading the post. The main point is that increasing the barriers to pirate won't lower the barrier to legally use the product, or increase the value of the product, which would compell them to overcome the price barrier.

 

[wolfen22]

I saw from another post of yours that you're in college. Read my post more carefully.

nvm

Honestly the PC has been SO stale this year that no games coming out were really worth purchasing or even pirating. I really use my PC mostly for exclusives, and games that are way way better on the pc (Dragon Age) but this year had only a few titles that I actually wanted to play.

I think I bought Dragon Age, L4D2, and maybe... Torchlight. That's about it.

 

[aFive]

huh? my friends pirate *everything* they can. Movies,music, games, Windows, You name it, they pirate it. No one has ever said anything. Most people my age these days really don't make a huge deal about piracy. Everyone pirates things, music, tv, movies, games, windows, etc.

Unfortunately it is true. I know a lot of people that do, I am not even gonna deny not doing it. It is way easier to pirate then go to the store and get it usually. I know people who torrent hundreds of gigs each month, they have yet to even get a warning. Piracy is easy, and does allow us to have stuff for free.

nvm

Honestly the PC has been SO stale this year that no games coming out were really worth purchasing or even pirating. I really use my PC mostly for exclusives, and games that are way way better on the pc (Dragon Age) but this year had only a few titles that I actually wanted to play.

I think I bought Dragon Age, L4D2, and maybe... Torchlight. That's about it.

That's true, nothing good has been out. I used to have to force myself to wait longer than 6 months to buy new video card as more demanding games kept on coming which I wanted to max out and enjoy.

This past year and a half though, I went from 8800GTX to GTX260 and was only really able to enjoy Crysis and LOTRO on it. Sold it after a year as I really didn't see anything worthwhile on the market, new games were all ports and didn't even make the card twitch. Few months later, got 4890 cheap and haven't even found a new game that could make the card crawl. 58xx came out, didn't even bother looking into them as I really do not have any desire to upgrade to something that's not even going to be needed. BTW, sold my 4890 as I really do not see any games which I am looking forward to in the near future .

 

[mas]

Like I said, the PC platform is just completely insecure. Pirating on it costs you no extra money, no mod chips, no money on blank media, and your system won't get banned for using pirated games.

Pirating is just so easy, maybe easier than buying the game, and it's free. You add those up together and you have the perfect recipe for pirate cake.

so what you're trying to say is, that a simple dvd drive firmware flash (not a "mod chip"), to enable fully featured mp/xbl/update functionality on every game, is more secure than multiple layers of pc drm that needs to be cracked individually for each title

pc multiplayer games, such as the one in the topic of this thread, get cracked with gimped functionality at best. while x360 copies get free reign on xbl identical to the retail release, for the cost of a 50 cent dvd-dl. only the most flagrant obvious piracy, like playing online before street date, wrong region, non-retail versions, etc. have risk of being banned.

now if you take a second to think about it, which "lost sales" are worth more, 1 million fully featured copies, or 4 million demo copies? which one stands a chance of actually making more money for them?