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."
Perhaps that's true - I'll assume that it is since I don't follow it much. Still, whether they're worried or not, they're doing it the right way - going on faith that they made a good product and allowing their good product to sell itself. I hope it pays off for them, but I'd honestly be surprised if it didn't work. Piracy is just not as rampant as every chanter wants us all to believe, and if you make a product worth buying, people buy it. And on the other side of the coin, if you make a terrible product and saddle it with DRM schemes to hinder resale as much as possible, any semi-intelligent person knows they're taking a huge risk buying that title because it probably does suck and that's why it's so DRM-laden - they don't want the secret to get out until people pay to learn it. I always wind up citing the Hulk movie (I think Ang Lee directed it?) as an example of the real reason the industry fears piracy. In the industry's eye, piracy killed that movie. In everyone else's eyes, that movie was awful and the unusually early pirated release let people learn that before they put money down on it, money they probably would never have gotten back. In other words, piracy let the industry's dirty secret out of the bag. And who did the industry blame for that movie's failure? Certainly not the "talented" writers and staff that made that movie. Imagine if Ed Wood blamed piracy for the failures of his movies.
In the game industry it's even worse. At least at a movie theater they might give me a refund... with a video game, as soon as it's open you can't return it. Couple that with how very few games have demos anymore, and you're practically taking a leap of faith with your $50 because if that game sucks, it's gonna collect dust on your shelf and you're never gonna see that $50 again, especially if the industry keeps restricting its titles more and more to try to cut out GameStop and the like.
This comment was edited on Oct 8, 2008, 11:44.
In the game industry it's even worse. At least at a movie theater they might give me a refund... with a video game, as soon as it's open you can't return it. Couple that with how very few games have demos anymore, and you're practically taking a leap of faith with your $50 because if that game sucks, it's gonna collect dust on your shelf and you're never gonna see that $50 again, especially if the industry keeps restricting its titles more and more to try to cut out GameStop and the like.
This comment was edited on Oct 8, 2008, 11:44.
Huh? I'm sorry, I was thinking about cake.
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