Piracy versus PC Gaming [Mar 09, 2007, 8:23 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Next Generation recaps a GDC talk titled "The Videogame Piracy Problem:
Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest" by id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead about the
impact of piracy on the game industry. They outline how Mr. Hollenshead says the
estimated $3 billion economic loss caused by piracy in 2004 does not include
piracy that takes place on the Internet. There is also an article about this
talk on
Joystiq that focuses on the statement that piracy is a factor in id's
embrace of consoles, quoting Todd as saying "Piracy has pushed id as being
multiplatform." On a related note,
Can PC
Gaming Survive in a Console World (thanks
Digg) recaps a panel discussion on the topic that brought up a similar
point:
Part of the problem is piracy. Big titles get stolen by cyber thieves, and it hurts revenue. "The market," said Capps, "that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works."
Does that mean casual games, which exponentially outsell what PC gaming traditionalists think of as A-list titles, will one day rule? Hilleman made a point: casual is a poor choice of words. The average player on EA's Pogo "casual" game network plays "for 24 hours a week. There's nothing casual about that."
There is some light in the PC gaming world. World of Warcraft, for instance, is a massive hit, and the upcoming Spore looks not only creative and different, but promising. The MMO and other social networking games could become the norm for PC gaming, with big-ticket titles growing rarer with each passing year. Johnson added that MMOs are "successful because you can't pirate WoW. You cannot pirate an MMO. Period." Therefore, he said, "game design on the PC is going to bend toward persistence."
I would like to point out three examples to Todd that go against his argument:
1. Company of Heroes
2. Oblivion
3. Galactic Civilizations II
What do these three titles have in common? They all have no copy protection on them whatsoever and all sold very well and made tons of money. Oblivion does require that the disc be in the drive, but you can make a normal 1:1 copy of the disc and it'll work. What does this mean? It means that if you put out a good game that's worth playing and paying for, people will pay for it. I bought all three of these games and consider them money well spent.
As many people stated here, people who pirate games wouldn't have bought them anyway so there's no lost revenue or at least not very much. Copy protection adds to the cost of developing the game and they can all be cracked in a matter of hours. People buy what they think is worth buying and saying that piracy is why id is embracing consoles is stupid. I can't pirate games on my 360 and wouldn't even if I could. You know what I do with the games I want to play but don't want to shell out $70 for? I rent them, beat them in an afternoon and return them. I didn't buy the game but I also didn't pirate it. Yet the fact that said copy of the game can be played and beaten by many people also counts as a loss of revenue that falls into the same context as piracy.
The industry doesn't want to admit that a lot of what they release is stuff that many people don't want to buy. But the fact is you can't stop piracy and even if they could, I don't think they'd see much of an increase in their business. The problem is that they are too arrogant to admit that a lot of what gets released is considered by many to be not worth the price of admission. But the three titles I mentioned above prove that piracy isn't the problem and people will pay for quality products. That's where their effort should be going.
Parallax Abstraction
Ottawa, Canada
Help Fix The Broken Xbox Live Marketplace: http://brokenxblm.blogspot.com
1. Company of Heroes
2. Oblivion
3. Galactic Civilizations II
What do these three titles have in common? They all have no copy protection on them whatsoever and all sold very well and made tons of money. Oblivion does require that the disc be in the drive, but you can make a normal 1:1 copy of the disc and it'll work. What does this mean? It means that if you put out a good game that's worth playing and paying for, people will pay for it. I bought all three of these games and consider them money well spent.
As many people stated here, people who pirate games wouldn't have bought them anyway so there's no lost revenue or at least not very much. Copy protection adds to the cost of developing the game and they can all be cracked in a matter of hours. People buy what they think is worth buying and saying that piracy is why id is embracing consoles is stupid. I can't pirate games on my 360 and wouldn't even if I could. You know what I do with the games I want to play but don't want to shell out $70 for? I rent them, beat them in an afternoon and return them. I didn't buy the game but I also didn't pirate it. Yet the fact that said copy of the game can be played and beaten by many people also counts as a loss of revenue that falls into the same context as piracy.
The industry doesn't want to admit that a lot of what they release is stuff that many people don't want to buy. But the fact is you can't stop piracy and even if they could, I don't think they'd see much of an increase in their business. The problem is that they are too arrogant to admit that a lot of what gets released is considered by many to be not worth the price of admission. But the three titles I mentioned above prove that piracy isn't the problem and people will pay for quality products. That's where their effort should be going.
Parallax Abstraction
Ottawa, Canada
Help Fix The Broken Xbox Live Marketplace: http://brokenxblm.blogspot.com
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