why people don't make PC games any more

evil-xxx

evil-xxx

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Infinity Ward's community manager muses, "they wonder why people don't make PC games any more."

"We pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing [Call of Duty 4] Multiplayer (which was fantastic)," writes Robert Bowling, on the game's community blog. "What wasn't fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game."

"The amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding," he added. "It blows me away that people are willing to steal games (or anything) simply because it's not physical or it's on the safety of the internet to do."

PC games sales have decreased in recent years due to rampant piracy of software and other digital goods over internet sharing sites.
 
Piracy has always existed, it's quite easy to blame it for bad times.. But think about this. If piracy is so prevalent in PC gaming, then it is ever so much more in TV shows and Movies. Have these faltered and fallen? Not yet, at least.

It's also easy to blame the current boom of PC piracy on the severe lack of innovation in the PC gaming world. But what doesn't fit is that when a polished gem is released, it is pirated in the same numbers as all other games, and likely even ignored by the masses. Such an easy way to get games, as piracy is, means that these games are being played by more people than ever, and of course means that the developers are not being paid all they should.

The move to consoles, which is where pc devs are going if not to the grave, is but an alleviation of this, it's also a ticket to more bad times, if you're a indy, abstract or creative developer. Console developers don't perish if their game is pirated, they perish if they fail to capture the fickle audience. One that is weened on madden, GTA, halo, etc. Okami failed. Beyond good and evil failed. Shadow of the Colossus failed. Some of the best games consoles have to offer, and they failed because, in general, the consumer doesn't care about good games, they care about the conventional and the expected.

One hell of an industry to another. They're never going to leave the frying pan.
 
Basicly what's going on is the more these f*#kwits keep pirating PC games the less large game company's will want to endorse the platform.

Kent.
 
Don't console games get pirated as well? I remember having a friend who had a chipped ps2. No idea about the "this generation" consoles though.
 
XRT said:
Basicly what's going on is the more these f*#kwits keep pirating PC games the less large game company's will want to endorse the platform.

Kent.
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people will continue to download illegal until these games developers,Music artists etc stop been greedy.

i mean its like £39 a pc game now which imo is just a ripoff.
DVDs are around £10,for some people they could get 5 pirated dvds for that or even free so why the hell would they pay more for the same product. :cool:
 
i'm pretty confident that if the gaming industry lower their prices, more people would buy original copies of their products. heck, you can't get online with fake ones. you'd have to go through that whole process of cracking/mounting or what not, i don't know just to install it. lol. even though games here are a bit overpriced, i still go for the original. ;)
 
The main difference is that console piracy is not as rampant as PC piracy. Chalk this up to whatever you'd like, PC owners being smarter technically, the ease of downloading, applying cracks and mounting on a virtual drive (not hard at all btw, like buttering toast), where consoles DVD images may need to be burned to dvd before use (might not be like this anymore with the net accessible, HDD and OS capable PS3 and 360), whatever. Console piracy is not going to stay a bug on the horizon, it will not stay manageable. Everybody, PC and console devs and publishers alike, is going to be using Piracy as a justifiable scapegoat soon enough.

Not that it doesn't deserve it. But like the others said, this is the effect of several large issues, rather than just one alone. I don't personally know about lowering prices.. It's the age old question of whether games cost too much or whether the gamers themselves are just too cheap. :D A sucky game is not worth $50.. but then you shouldn't buy a sucky game! Good games can provide enjoyment for weeks, MP months maybe, $50 doesn't sound like too much in these cases.
 
I agree with some of you. Piracy has always existed since internet came to an existence. "Rules are meant to be Broken"

Guys if you think the game is 50$ and you don't like it then don't buy it. No one is putting a gun through your head or anything like that.
 
But how would you know if you liked the game without buying it? There is so many crap games out there... I choose not to buy or download anymore.. dont game..
 
But how would you know if you liked the game without buying it? There is so many crap games out there...
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This is true, so many games don't have demos or anything anymore. You have to go by what other people say about them and so many games today are complete trash.

I think Piracy is also why so many games are now going to be MMOs, they are all fairly popular and even if you download the game you can't play it unless you pay for it.
 
Piracy is a dual edged sword, and there is a definite duality to it. For one, if your product is being pirated a ton and used a ton, then you know its a good product, however you need to market it right to get your money. Steam, while I hate how steam crashes on my computer almost every time I get a stupid ass steam update message and sometimes it straight up locks my system, it does have its pluses. For one, I register all my games with steam and I never have to use a CD again. I can simply download and install the steam client and then go to town, and let it download and install all my games owned by steam. I need more HD space, I can uninstall and then use steam later on to reinstall if I want to play again. I think that will be the future of gaming, that and paying monthly service fees to play. Which is the trend of the MMO, and why some companies like Blizzard and Sony for example have made 100s of millions simply off subscription fees.

There is also a gray moral line of piracy and I will give a few examples of where I think it is OK.

1) I own 250ish vinyl records, and it would take me a really really long time to download and rip all of those to my computer. I already paid for the record and I already own it, so I don't always feel bad downloading someone else's rip. It saves me the time of doing it myself. Yes bands still sell records, and yes I still buy them - I am a music geek like that

2) When licensing becomes a hassle. I once spent hours and hours on end setting up a license server and a network deployable image of Autodesk software, which could only be authenticated online and only with IE. It got so damned annoying that my organization spent around $30k in software licenses and I had to jump through flaming hoops to get their licensing software to work right so it could verify it wasn't pirated. For grins I scoured the torrent sites and found every single app we just paid $30k for, cracked and hacked and ready to install with no hassles. If they were to audit us and find out I had a crack running, I could simply show them the factory sealed software on the shelf with the PO saying they invoiced us for $30k. They go to all this trouble to stop piracy and really they just make their product harder to support. That is just one example

3) When you are a consultant, and you need to show your client how things work on a grander scale you can not do so with demo versions of software, nor can you afford to pay the $50k for an enterprise site licesnse of the product. however, you do want to sell them the product because it fits the needs and gets the job done. So, as a consultant you will turn to a pirated version that way everyone wins - A) the consultant doesn't pay out of pocket for a full functional software package B) The client gets a full hands on demo of the product being pitched and likes it and buys it C) that software company gets their money from the consultant suggesting the product and client purchasing it - Win - Win - Win situation (office reference).

Piracy is bad if you are just plain out stealing. I will download music for free and if I truly like the band I go buy their CD/record from them directly off their website and not through a retail chain or through the record label because that way they get all that revenue them self. If I don't really like it, I delete it and move on. I am a big fan of try before you buy, but I actually go out and buy. My friend who is in a band and helps manage a independent record label has had this discussion with me numerous times. I always told him that I download it first for free and if its awesome I go buy it. I like have the album, the album cover and the insert and I like having a copy on vinyl and I keep my digital copy for CDs and portable MP3 players.
 
Thats why developers should switch to an online only type of distribution, such as Steam, as it's much harder to pirate those games.
 
I don't know if this ha sbene said but it is slightly more pricey to keep up on computers unless you are savvy. Also, piracy is more of an issue on computers. I think it is that simple but I hope they stick around I am a PC gamer now exclusively and i would like to stay that way.

I agree with the Steam solution as far as piracy is concerned. Solid mid range graphics cards and the futher de-mystifaction of computers I think will bring PC gaming back soon enough.

Ending the myth that it is rediculously expensive too, but it is in part due to the (over)enthusiasts who tout 4000.00 gaming rigs that sustain this myth, and especially those that make them and sell them as opposed ot individuals making them.
 
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I have to say,in my place,in Asia,you can see many people use piracy.most of us cant afford the price.
for example,Autocad costs about $1000 while most people cant even earn the same monthly pay.
 
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vonfeldt7 said:
If they can "detect" who's using pirated copies and who's not, why don't they stop the people who are using pirated copies?
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They can't with any certainty to numbers or identity, not from fallible studies at least. If they pulled IP's from those pirate servers, they'd still be stuck; subpoena isp's send warnings, drastic action, all require large amount of resources. For the larger picture, They could stalked out a popular BT tracker and record all the IP's that came and went, then subpoena like crazy, and get a note sent out to individuals telling them to stop it, scare tactics are surprisingly effective. But they'd have to stalk out every tracker public or private, monitor file hosting sites (impossible) usenets (impossible) IRC channels (ha! impossible) to get anything near definitive numbers.

I think they're grasping in the dark. Maybe even inflating the issue, given the small amount of factual intelligence they have. But to be serious, factual schmactual. I've done it, trizoy's done it, lark's done it, evils done it. Even if it's morally correct, and assumes prior or current ownership in different form, the industry labels you a pirate. So it's huge. Maybe that's all they know for certain.
 
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lets face it, 75% or more of PC games that have ever been sold are complete crap. complete and utter crap. an honest man would have to spend a lot of money sorting through the crap in order to find a product that is worth buying. demos help, but more often than not, there isnt a demo available. a pirater on the other hand, can download as many games as he wants for absolutely nothing. i myself have no problem paying for quality products, but i refuse to buy things unless i know what im getting myself into. and since most games dont have demos, and almost all stores dont allow returns of opened software, i either have to a) download the game illegally or b) buy the game and cross my fingers that it doesnt completely suck. if someone were to give me a pirated copy of cod4 i would honestly go out and buy it after i played it, because the game is quality and the devs deserve to be well paid for making such a great game. i dont mind spending 50 dollars in order to ensure quality games will always be available, because i dont plan on stopping PC gaming anytime soon, and id rather have a lemon juice colonic than switch to consoles.
 
I like EA's idea of the next battlefield game they want to release (Battlefield: Heroes). the game is supposed to be free to download, and the monney is supposed to come from add's on the site etc. I'm actually curious how that works out, could be a nice idea (or a combination of retail price and the site where you activate it having add's)

A game over here (new release) costs 60 euro's, thats $90! (a tad more atm even) talk about prices beeing nuts. (the reason why I havnt bought CoD4 yet is because I heard the single player is rather short, and I'm not willing to dish that kind of money out for a short game :) )
I dont use pirated software myself tough (tried it once, didnt got it working, and I dont feel like getting grey hair before my 25th birthday :P so i gave up on it) All games I have are legal, some were a waste of money, most wernt. :D

I for one, am certain that if the games would get cheaper (on release) more people would buy them. (tomb raider: anniversary for example, 45euro on release, easy to run on a pc while looking great! :) why not make more games like that? would also bring down the prices of high end grafic's cards (the 8800ULTRA is between 530 and 600 euro's here,.. I mean, thats completely wonko )
 
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