Widescreen Gaming Forum

Arrr matey, you decoded me message! Time to put yur boots on and plunder some French Cruise vessels!


:D

Pfft. Maybe if you like peanuts and snails. The real loot is in the Spanish galleons.

Oh shit, you just had to show up....

LOL, yeah,...well,...shit happens doesn't it? And this time I'm not even going to justify his brain picking with any marathon responses. He always thinks he his impenetrably correct, no point talking to a brick wall. :roll:

If you don't want to attack my arguments, ok, but please don't make personal attacks instead. I don't make personal attacks on you, and it reflects badly on me when you do that to me. You wouldn't want me to look bad, would you?

I don't buy the piracy excuse. Sure it happens, but it happens on console titles too

It's absolutely rampant on PCs and barely happens at all on consoles in comparison. The fact that piracy is ridiculously less common on consoles does nothing but validate the excuse.

you know ...
this are personnal impressions, studies & statistics on this kind of thing is really hard to make. Most companies that put out their "pirating figures" don't know a single thing about what they are saying ... Those are just estimates ...

who will say "I am a pirate" ?
this question says it all why statistics are hard to make.

The Big Boss of "Stardock" had quite some good arguments to expose as to why PC sales are generally less than console sales ...

Look at "Crysis" for example, hey so nice but not really in fact...
It's crappy game with crappy gameplay which only runs good on high end hardware owned by less than 5% of PC gamers ... ho yeah we should really blame the pirates in this case ... shouldn't we ?


More generally when Mr or Miss IKnowNothingOfComputers goes out to make a game gift, it's WAY more difficult to buy a PC game than a console game, there's a lot of technical knowledge involved ...
In most stores you can't give back a PC game, unlike console games ...
which can be sold back too...

Sure we can't completely forget about pirates
but copying things not to buy them is NOT something new at all
First Audio Tapes had that problem too
and the Audio industry was like "OMG it's the end of it all, we are doomed!!!"


More developpers & publishers need to rethink their strategy for selling their game. They need to ask themselves "what will make people buy my product?" instead of "what will prevent pirates pirating my game?" which won't improve sales the least bit.



Of course that said you still have to protect your game a bit, but no intrusive protection will ever prevent a pirate to pirate ...

Best show case of this fact are probably "Bleem!" & "Sacred"
Sacred had multiple layers of protection + dozens of updates which made pirating the game difficult, still for the one who looked around there were ways around it ...

And "Bleem!" lol it was a "funny" program aimed at emulating PlayStation Games, yet including heavy protection to prevent pirating :lol: :lol:
The software was a few MB worth yet included a whole CD (with heavy anti CD copy errors on itself) as a key to decrypt & use the software ...... Yet it was still cracked albeit with a bit more time involved and also the fact that a lot of crackers gave up ...
In any case it was probably not worth it.

this are personnal impressions, studies & statistics on this kind of thing is really hard to make. Most companies that put out their "pirating figures" don't know a single thing about what they are saying ... Those are just estimates ...

These estimates are not hard to make at all. Just look at any torrent tracker - try to find any console game that has even 1% as many IP's connected as its PC counterpart. And I think you're underestimating how valid estimates are - practically every study and statistic ever made are "just estimates."

It's crappy game with crappy gameplay which only runs good on high end hardware owned by less than 5% of PC gamers ... ho yeah we should really blame the pirates in this case ... shouldn't we ?

Crysis got overwhelmingly positive reception, lots of awards... and millions of pirates wanted to have the full version of this "crappy game" for some reason, and not just the demo. I don't think it's fair or honest to dismiss it as a bad game solely in order to justify an argument. And like I said earlier, the game runs fine on modest systems as long as you don't crank the settings all the way up.

Sure we can't completely forget about pirates
but copying things not to buy them is NOT something new at all

Making MILLIONS of pirate copies from just one source and distributing them all over the world is quite new. Yes, audio tapes were copied back in the day, but there were limitations. If you wanted to "pirate" an audio tape, you had to personally know someone with a copy and who was willing to make one for you. That's why game piracy is threatening in a way that it never was before.

More developpers & publishers need to rethink their strategy for selling their game. They need to ask themselves "what will make people buy my product?" instead of "what will prevent pirates pirating my game?" which won't improve sales the least bit.

You really think that if millions of pirates were prevented from pirating a game, not a single one of them would choose to purchase instead?

Sure we can't completely forget about pirates
but copying things not to buy them is NOT something new at all

Making MILLIONS of pirate copies from just one source and distributing them all over the world is quite new. Yes, audio tapes were copied back in the day, but there were limitations. If you wanted to "pirate" an audio tape, you had to personally know someone with a copy and who was willing to make one for you. That's why game piracy is threatening in a way that it never was before.

This goes for Music and Movies as well though. Yet each year we keep seeing bigger and bigger titles pulling in more and more money.

More developpers & publishers need to rethink their strategy for selling their game. They need to ask themselves "what will make people buy my product?" instead of "what will prevent pirates pirating my game?" which won't improve sales the least bit.

You really think that if millions of pirates were prevented from pirating a game, not a single one of them would choose to purchase instead?

... What hes getting at is that its physically impossible to prevent pirating. So the only logical thing that they can do is try to sway pirates.

I mean if you know of a way to stop piracy once and for all I am all ears but...

This goes for Music and Movies as well though. Yet each year we keep seeing bigger and bigger titles pulling in more and more money.

Games, especially PC games, are much more of a niche market than music and movies. They can still make a profit off of people who don't really know how to use a computer. And movies still make most of their money through theaters - an experience that downloading can't replicate. The music industry would likely be in serious trouble if it weren't for distribution services like iTunes, which make mp3's an impulse buy. But I would hate to see PC gaming go down the impulse buy route, where each game costs five bucks and lasts about fifteen minutes.

... What hes getting at is that its physically impossible to prevent pirating.

It's definitely possible to reduce it. Four approaches have shown good results so far - focusing on multiplayer, focusing on consoles, focusing on the casual market, and being Valve.

I mean if you know of a way to stop piracy once and for all I am all ears but...

Well you could try fines, or even jailtime in extreme cases.

[quote]I mean if you know of a way to stop piracy once and for all I am all ears but...

Well you could try fines, or even jailtime in extreme cases.
it's already the case in france piracy = counterfeiting
which according to my memory is up to 3 years of prison & 100 000 € fine

this of course doesn't stop anything ...