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."
Even if you pretend todd is correct, (I know its delusional all but bare with me) consoles have a Huge piracy problem, bigger than PC.
Those numbers are not id's losses to internet piracy. That's the entire industry, and those are hard piracy numbers. That's the guys in China who rip a game, press it, and resell it throughout Asia. Traditional "hard" piracy, so that $3B is computed from actual sales that don't go toward the developer and publisher of a game.
Let’s pretend that a nice round number of 10% of PC games are pirated
That may be true in the US, but the numbers in Brazil, or China, or even Russia are significantly higher. For some titles the numbers approach 100% in those areas.
Console piracy on the other hand is almost non-existent in comparison. Certainly far less than 5% and probably significantly less than 0.05%. There just aren't that many people with a mod chip in their PS2, even if you and all your friends have one, there are well over 100,000,000 PS2s out there, and you're suggesting that over 5 million of them are modded. Not a chance.
So minimize the numbers and the effect of piracy all you want if it helps you rationalize your own piracy. But Todd's basically correct, and you're basically wrong.
This comment was edited on Mar 10, 03:27.
Those numbers are not id's losses to internet piracy. That's the entire industry, and those are hard piracy numbers. That's the guys in China who rip a game, press it, and resell it throughout Asia. Traditional "hard" piracy, so that $3B is computed from actual sales that don't go toward the developer and publisher of a game.
Let’s pretend that a nice round number of 10% of PC games are pirated
That may be true in the US, but the numbers in Brazil, or China, or even Russia are significantly higher. For some titles the numbers approach 100% in those areas.
Console piracy on the other hand is almost non-existent in comparison. Certainly far less than 5% and probably significantly less than 0.05%. There just aren't that many people with a mod chip in their PS2, even if you and all your friends have one, there are well over 100,000,000 PS2s out there, and you're suggesting that over 5 million of them are modded. Not a chance.
So minimize the numbers and the effect of piracy all you want if it helps you rationalize your own piracy. But Todd's basically correct, and you're basically wrong.
This comment was edited on Mar 10, 03:27.
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