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."
... would you suggest? One filled with FACTS maybe? Yeah, I bet you'd like that!"
Sorry, I just had to quote Will Ferrell as Bush here, because it is sooo fitting the pathetic pirates logic, which is ignoring any factual data you can easily gather on the topic of software piracy.
Let me first recap the most stressed justifications of the pirates in this thread for stealing the software before (eventually) buying it:
A) Game doesn't have a demo.
B) Game doesn't have reliable reviews (yet).
C) Game is too expensive too warrant a risky "blind purchase".
Ok, so I did a quick torrent search for Doom 3 (as it has been a game refered to from both sides in this thread), resulting in a list of more than a dozen active torrents, with thousands of people leeching the game IN THIS VERY MINUTE. Given that downloading such a game takes around 2 days in total on broadband, that's probably 10.000 full downloads per week, for YEARS (some of these torrents are active for over a year already, and I'm only counting the ones my initial search listed up). Ok, comparing that to the above list, this tells me the following:
A) Doom 3 has a demo (others don't, I know). You think any of these current leechers bothers to play the demo instead of stealing the full game? You know the answer.
B) Doom 3 is out for 3 years now, you can probably find comments about every single virtual inch of it around the web and build yourself a rock solid oppinion. I don't think the leechers care for any of that information though.
C) Doom 3 goes for 8,- EUR here in Germany (app. 10 bucks). Given how easy it is nowadays for everyone to find out beforehand that D3 as a whole is underwhelming, those $10 shouldn't be all that much of a risk anymore.
But still thousands of people are currently pirating the game, 3 years after its release. What does this say about a pirate's mentality? Try before you buy? Bullshit. None of the people currently dl'ing Doom 3 (or Half-Life 2, or Quake 4, or any title of the Splinter Cell series, to name just a few AAA titles from the past years which are still heavily pirated as we speak) will ever shell out a single buck for a game which they download years after it's initial release. Heck, I even found a couple working Half-Life 1 (!) torrents... and that game is almost 10 years old! So you're saying these people download HL, a game which sells for $10 (with all expansions included!) and being rated as the #1 FPS of all time by most media, because they first want to make up their mind if it's worth the risk of investing their money? Riiiight.
Would all you piracy-justifying clowns in this thread please spare us your twisted bullshit talk about "rights to testdrive software" and other nonsense? While this might even apply for you personally in your twisted world, you as a whole are the absolute minority (probably less than 1% ) in software piracy. So your personal justifications and philosophical BS doesn't add a single bit to the topic because it's just fluctuation noise in the giant field of software piracy.
This comment was edited on Mar 10, 16:01.
Sorry, I just had to quote Will Ferrell as Bush here, because it is sooo fitting the pathetic pirates logic, which is ignoring any factual data you can easily gather on the topic of software piracy.
Let me first recap the most stressed justifications of the pirates in this thread for stealing the software before (eventually) buying it:
A) Game doesn't have a demo.
B) Game doesn't have reliable reviews (yet).
C) Game is too expensive too warrant a risky "blind purchase".
Ok, so I did a quick torrent search for Doom 3 (as it has been a game refered to from both sides in this thread), resulting in a list of more than a dozen active torrents, with thousands of people leeching the game IN THIS VERY MINUTE. Given that downloading such a game takes around 2 days in total on broadband, that's probably 10.000 full downloads per week, for YEARS (some of these torrents are active for over a year already, and I'm only counting the ones my initial search listed up). Ok, comparing that to the above list, this tells me the following:
A) Doom 3 has a demo (others don't, I know). You think any of these current leechers bothers to play the demo instead of stealing the full game? You know the answer.
B) Doom 3 is out for 3 years now, you can probably find comments about every single virtual inch of it around the web and build yourself a rock solid oppinion. I don't think the leechers care for any of that information though.
C) Doom 3 goes for 8,- EUR here in Germany (app. 10 bucks). Given how easy it is nowadays for everyone to find out beforehand that D3 as a whole is underwhelming, those $10 shouldn't be all that much of a risk anymore.
But still thousands of people are currently pirating the game, 3 years after its release. What does this say about a pirate's mentality? Try before you buy? Bullshit. None of the people currently dl'ing Doom 3 (or Half-Life 2, or Quake 4, or any title of the Splinter Cell series, to name just a few AAA titles from the past years which are still heavily pirated as we speak) will ever shell out a single buck for a game which they download years after it's initial release. Heck, I even found a couple working Half-Life 1 (!) torrents... and that game is almost 10 years old! So you're saying these people download HL, a game which sells for $10 (with all expansions included!) and being rated as the #1 FPS of all time by most media, because they first want to make up their mind if it's worth the risk of investing their money? Riiiight.
Would all you piracy-justifying clowns in this thread please spare us your twisted bullshit talk about "rights to testdrive software" and other nonsense? While this might even apply for you personally in your twisted world, you as a whole are the absolute minority (probably less than 1% ) in software piracy. So your personal justifications and philosophical BS doesn't add a single bit to the topic because it's just fluctuation noise in the giant field of software piracy.
This comment was edited on Mar 10, 16:01.
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