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."
The last PC game I bought was Supreme Commander. I tried FOR EVER to get a friggin DEMO of this game before I went out to buy it. I really wanted to try it but ALL of these gamer download sites are such a pain in the ass to use. After you click on about a half dozen links, THEN you can start it's trickle download after waiting "in line" for a half hour.
Fileplanet, filemirrors.com.. etc all are so cumbersome to use, when just downloading something LEGAL, as opposed to using Bit Torrent, or gnutila (limewire, bareshare, etc) to get it much faster. Hell I tried to use bit-torrent to download the SupCom demo and it was a BAD FILE! What a waste of time.
Also to touch on another point I just read. You can't return opened PC games, due to piracy. But every other forms of media, which is EXTREMELY much easier to make copies of (DVDs, CDs) can be freely returned for a refund even if it's been opend and used. And guess what it's not hard to copy console games too!
But there is a trick to returning PC games. You can often get it exchanged for a new copy of it, which will be unopened. Then just return that new unopened copy for a refund!
__ FRAGaLOT
http://home.comcast.net/~zalle2/blog.htm
Fileplanet, filemirrors.com.. etc all are so cumbersome to use, when just downloading something LEGAL, as opposed to using Bit Torrent, or gnutila (limewire, bareshare, etc) to get it much faster. Hell I tried to use bit-torrent to download the SupCom demo and it was a BAD FILE! What a waste of time.
Also to touch on another point I just read. You can't return opened PC games, due to piracy. But every other forms of media, which is EXTREMELY much easier to make copies of (DVDs, CDs) can be freely returned for a refund even if it's been opend and used. And guess what it's not hard to copy console games too!
But there is a trick to returning PC games. You can often get it exchanged for a new copy of it, which will be unopened. Then just return that new unopened copy for a refund!
__ FRAGaLOT
http://home.comcast.net/~zalle2/blog.htm
__ FRAGaLOT
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