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."
I'm not saying piracy doesn't exist, and in poorer countries it certainly is rampant. But not here, not in the US. If the industry wants to make a dent in piracy, maybe they could start with the corner-stores in Russia and China that sell nothing but pirated goods. I agree with you on pricing though. $50 is a lot to pay for something when if I want a manual or reference card to use alongside the game, I've got to print it or write it myself. I'm not trying to say piracy is OK, not by any means. Developers who make good games deserve to be made rich by their sales. I'm just saying... the developers that complain the loudest about piracy almost always happen to be the ones releasing the sub-par games. It is disgusting that every developer thinks they deserve to be rich just because they released a video game. It just doesn't work that way. If you want to get rich you've got to make something people feel is worth buying. Hell, not even that is a guarantee, if games like Deus Ex are any indication. But getting rich off a shitty game is pure luck, and rarely happens twice.
Edit: That is also a good point. If I'm defending anyone, I'm defending people that pirate because there's no demo. Pirating a game, playing it all the way through once, or maybe even two or three times, that's not cool unless you do actually buy it in a timely fashion. Support the developers that give you good games. But again, I'm not defending pirates at all. However, what other option is there anymore? All people can do is sink that $50 and pray to whatever god that it wasn't a waste of their hard-earned money. I just give it a pass myself and wait for the word of mouth to spread around, but that's really not a fair way because I'm making my purchase decisions based on the information from people who did get screwed. I just hate that the industry is out to screw the honest customer and then have the audacity to insult and berate them for it.
This comment was edited on Oct 8, 2008, 12:06.
Edit: That is also a good point. If I'm defending anyone, I'm defending people that pirate because there's no demo. Pirating a game, playing it all the way through once, or maybe even two or three times, that's not cool unless you do actually buy it in a timely fashion. Support the developers that give you good games. But again, I'm not defending pirates at all. However, what other option is there anymore? All people can do is sink that $50 and pray to whatever god that it wasn't a waste of their hard-earned money. I just give it a pass myself and wait for the word of mouth to spread around, but that's really not a fair way because I'm making my purchase decisions based on the information from people who did get screwed. I just hate that the industry is out to screw the honest customer and then have the audacity to insult and berate them for it.
This comment was edited on Oct 8, 2008, 12:06.
Huh? I'm sorry, I was thinking about cake.
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