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."
Agreed 100%. I agree with everything the id guy said. I used to work for lionhead and now I run my own mini-games company, so I have some perspective on this. Lionhead used to be PC-centric too. You don't think they notice all those Black and White torrents? Any surprise that Fable was a console title first? There seem to be a lot of people trotting out excuses to justify big torrent collections of games they got for free.
Most games have demos, you have no excuses. People buy £250,000 houses on the basis of walking around them for an hour, yet somehow won't spend £20 on a game on the same basis. It's bullshit to suggest piracy is justified, people do it because they like free stuff and think they won't get caught. People also generally don't give a fuck about the people who make games for a living. When called out on this, they bleat about how the game they spend 12 hours downlaoding and 3 weeks playing 'sucked' anyway, and wasmn't worth the money.
If I had access to it, I'd make an MMo or a console game tommorow. Purely because there is no piracy (don't make me laugh talking about pirate servers, thats a trivial number of geeks who all hack and cheat on a server that has no moderation. yay!)
Unless any of you have worked for 2 years on something working long hours and putting tons of effort in, just to see some 9yo git dsitruibuting it for free, you really have no idea how that feels, or the real impact it has.
I know one warez forum with 230,000 registered users. Yeah, piracy isn't a big deal. Riiighhhhhhhht.
Most games have demos, you have no excuses. People buy £250,000 houses on the basis of walking around them for an hour, yet somehow won't spend £20 on a game on the same basis. It's bullshit to suggest piracy is justified, people do it because they like free stuff and think they won't get caught. People also generally don't give a fuck about the people who make games for a living. When called out on this, they bleat about how the game they spend 12 hours downlaoding and 3 weeks playing 'sucked' anyway, and wasmn't worth the money.
If I had access to it, I'd make an MMo or a console game tommorow. Purely because there is no piracy (don't make me laugh talking about pirate servers, thats a trivial number of geeks who all hack and cheat on a server that has no moderation. yay!)
Unless any of you have worked for 2 years on something working long hours and putting tons of effort in, just to see some 9yo git dsitruibuting it for free, you really have no idea how that feels, or the real impact it has.
I know one warez forum with 230,000 registered users. Yeah, piracy isn't a big deal. Riiighhhhhhhht.
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