Ubisoft: EndWar PC Impacted by Piracy [Oct 08, 2008, 09:31 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Videogaming247 quotes Ubisoft Shanghai creative director Michael de Plater
on how piracy is a reason Tom Clancy's EndWar is appearing on consoles
first, with plans for a PC edition remaining vague (story). He
says this of a PC version of the voice-controlled RTS game: "To be honest, if PC
wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the
same day as the other two," also saying: "You know, the level of piracy that you
get with the PC just cannibalizes the others, because people just steal that
version." He goes on to agree with dire predictions about the impact of piracy
on PC gaming: "But at the moment, if you release the PC version, essentially
what you’re doing is letting people have a free version that they rip off
instead of a purchased version. Piracy’s basically killing PC."
If a game is popular enough, there will be ways to play multiplayer with copies. And digital distribution has done nothing to prevent "piracy". For example, every Steam exclusive game was available on release date as a non-steamed copy.
There's a big difference between playing on a cracked server(of which there aren't many to begin with) and played it legitimately. Hardcore pirates will find a way around everything but that's not what we were talking about. There are WoW private servers out there too but millions still pay for the legit experience because it can't be duplicated and because thats where their friends are. As for "Steam exclusive games" being cracked on release day, that's a pretty big catchall and I'm sure it isn't true.
As for digital distribution not helping, I disagree. The easier and less hoops you give your customer to run through, the more likely they will be to make a purchase. With Steam I literally just click and get my game. Doesn't really get more convenient than that.
I wish, pusblishers would simply stop caring about those copies and concentrate on making a good game, which will, surprise, surprise, sell well enough, because people WANT TO BUY IT. But fear and paranoia are hard to overcome ...
They are doing that, they're just doing it for consoles instead now. Why put up with the hassle in the first place when you could move to another platform, make more money and not really worry about piracy? They probably make more money with a mediocre console game than with a PC title they spent 4 years making. It's a business unfortunately and they will make business decisions related to their games. Making a better game that had it's previous version stolen a lot is a business risk. It might seem like common sense to you but you don't have millions of dollars riding on the decision so you don't exactly have the same scope they do.
Anyways, I thought this game would be kind of neat - macro your base with voice commands and micro your units in battle at the same time. Hopefully they release it at some point.
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