Lets not forget Doom3, Todd. That game was crap to begin with and deserved to be pirated

No game *deserves* to be pirated, douchebag. My paycheck comes from game development and it's a very shitty paycheck despite the fact I often work 80+ hours a week with no overtime pay, working my ass off to make content for the games I work on.

I don't live in a mansion, I don't drive a Ferrari, and I can guarantee I make less a year than you do, no matter what you do, unless you work fast food fulltime. 99.999% of game developers are not rich people. I just wanted to clear up that myth.

In reply to the people who think that id software is lying about having to go to consoles because of piracy, you're completely wrong. Here is a lesson on how the videogame industry works for a brand new independent developer with just enough kickoff money to get them started:

Publishers (EA, Ubisoft, THQ, Vivendi, Atari, Take Two, etc.) usually take the responsibility of funding the developer's entire development cycle. This is done through royalty advances -- that is, the publisher fronts the developer the money hoping the game sells at least enough copies to pay back the money they invested in the game.

Let's say the game retails @ 50$, the publisher put up 5 million dollars to fund the team of 50 people plus outsourcing costs for two years, and they sell 90,000 copies of the game. 90,000 copies is only 4.5 million dollars of revenue. After distribution, marketing, and manufacturing, the publisher will probably make back about 3 million. So the publisher lost 2 million dollars and the development team gets no money. What happens when there’s no more money coming into a business for months at a time? People get laid off.

Not only that, but the publisher is now saying "guys how come this wasn't a blockbuster we put a lot of money behind this" and they might be reluctant to work with the developer again in the future.

So then the development company has to try and find another publisher to fund its next game, only now the publishers will be wary because their last publisher took a loss by working with them.

Let's assume it's a really good game but lots of people on forums say that the ending sucks and even though it was a good game it probably could have been better because <reason X> blah blah. This gives people pause and they say "well it looks good but I wanna be sure I don't waste my money."

So they download a copy, play the game through, enjoy it, but now they have no incentive to go out and buy the game because they beat it and maybe the multiplayer mode is limited.

Let's also assume that 40,000 people downloaded it that had the means to buy it otherwise. If those 40,000 had bought the game that would have made 130,000 copies sold which pays back what it cost to make the game with no money left to keep the developer alive while they try to get another deal.

So even though the developer (the people who actually have the talent to make the game (remember to distinguish between developer and publisher)) didn't make a profit on the game, they at least sold enough copies so that the publisher didn't lose money, and therefore they’ll probably work with them again and they gain the reputation of being a reliable, moneymaking developer.

The above example illustrates the difference that 40,000 copies can make. It’s the difference between a studio living and dying and a publisher making a profit and taking a loss.

If you think 40,000 sounds high for the amount of people who could afford to buy a game but pirate it instead, 50 million people in the US alone have a broadband connection. Of those, my guess is that 1/10 of those people are smart enough to know how to pirate a game. So there’s 5 million “savvy” broadband users right there.

Why would I bother to type out such a long-winded post on Bluesnews? Because Bluesnews is a PC gaming website. I love PC gaming. I work for a developer who has made nothing but PC games. PC gamers are smarter and we get deeper games made for our platform. We read the text adventures and we played the point and clicks because they were deep, intelligent games made for deep, intelligent PC gamers.

The consequence of piracy savvy broadband users is that developers have to make cross platform games. This means no good strategy games and no good FPS games. You get weak, watered down pieces of garbage that the general public will buy anyway because they don’t know what a good FPS or strategy game is.

It’s already too late to be honest. id software is making a console game. Franchises keep getting dragged up and remade because the publishers think that name recognition is the only way to keep PC gaming alive. Think I’m lying? You’re going to laugh at how many more sequels, franchises and remakes are being made out of PC-only games from the past few years. Except they won’t be PC only this time around. We’re basically at the end of the road for new IP and franchises being made for the PC. Yes, companies like EA will occasionally throw you a new IP in the coming years, but for the most part, enjoy playing the 9th version of the game you first loved in 1995.

We keep getting rehashes not because the developer wants to do them, but because publishers don’t want to take risks on innovative PC games anymore because they lose money out the ass thanks to the very same people who truly love playing PC games.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was released with no copy protection and it still sold extremely well. If everyone who pirated it and could reasonably afford to buy it actually bought it, it would have probably sold double what it did and PC gaming would have had a truly mega selling game that wasn’t an MMO. We need that kind of thing to happen if you want original PC games to continue. The other alternative is that developers look elsewhere for funding which is already happening. Now you’re going to get your PC games chock full of advertisements. Look at what Threewave is doing with their whole “advergaming” thing. They’re going to make games based entirely around product placement. I don’t blame them though…if you can’t make money any other way, advertising is the last bastion of hope, but it sucks every last ounce of integrity out of the product you’re making.

I have been completely and totally 100% honest in this post, but if you still don’t believe me about the way the industry works, or the hypothetical figures I presented, here is an actual contract between an independent game developer (Spark Unlimited) and a publisher (Activision.)

http://gamasutra.com/features/20070112/spark_01.shtml


It’s very easy to justify stealing a PC game and very easy to do as well. But if you really love fun, original PC games you’re going to stop now. If it keeps up, no developer in their right mind is going to make a PC-focused game, and what a complete god damn shame that would be considering the greatness of PC gaming these past 25+ years.

This comment was edited on Mar 9, 23:25.