This week, Crytek president Cevat Yerli, mastermind of the next-gen blockbuster Crysis, mentioned in an interview that his company will no longer produce PC-exclusive games, asserting that piracy has become so rampant on the PC that making exclusive games for the platform is too risky. Right on the heels of this disconcerting interview, EA Sports president Peter Moore explained the company's decision not to bring future iterations of Madden to the PC, again citing piracy as a central issue.
Yerli and Moore are certainly not the first to express such concerns. John Carmack, who for the entirety of his career developed next-generation technology exclusively for the PC, has stated that his new "Tech 5" engine is being developed with a multiplatform focus. Epic, the company that makes the Unreal engine and the games of its titular kin, has stated that its engine development is tied to console cycles. In both cases, piracy was cited as a major problem on the PC. Not too long ago, an Activision employee stated that piracy of Call of Duty 4 was rampant. More and more we are seeing long-time PC-centric companies shift their focus to a more multiplatform focus, because there's just too much risk involved with PC-exclusive development due to rampant piracy.
Gamers may rightly point out that consoles have had their share of piracy issues as well; it's arguable for example that Mircosoft suffered significant sales loss due to the rampant and easy modding of the original XBox console. However, downloading pirated PC games is much easier than modding a console to play pirated games. Like pirating music, pirating games can be so easy and convenient that it's all too easy to forget that it's theft, a despicable act that robs hardworking developers of their right to be paid for their hard work.
PC piracy has become so rampant that it's clearly beginning to take a significant toll on the industry. Developers are regular people with bills to pay just like everyone else, and when hundreds of thousands or even millions of gamers are stealing games instead of buying them, making PC games simply becomes too unprofitable to sustain. Money does not grow on trees, and game development is a long and costly process.
If you can afford a PC that is powerful enough to play modern games, if you can afford to pay for high-speed internet access that would allow you to download such massive files, and if you can afford to spend many hours of your week relaxing in front of a good videogame—you can afford the meager $50 it costs to buy a new PC game. Game pirates come up with all kinds of rationalizations, from gripes about copy protection to the quality of the games themselves. But playing videogames is a privilege, not a right, and no one is entitled to excuse themselves from paying for a game simply because they don't like the way certain elements of it might be handled.
Does this mean the end of PC gaming as we know it? What kinds of solutions are there to piracy?
Many PC gamers feel that games developed exclusively for the PC tend to offer an experience that is superior to anything available on consoles. Recently, Crysis reinforced this notion with cutting-edge gameplay and graphics, and Cevat Yerli proudly stated that the game could not be ported to consoles due to its highly advanced technology.
Personally, I believe this to be somewhat of a fallacy. I don't buy Yerli's line that Crysis could not be ported to consoles, particularly because it scales well to lower-end PCs that are not even as powerful as modern consoles. This is not to mention the fact that Yerli also stated that Crysis would utilize quad-core processors to great advantage and be faster in DirectX 10, neither of which has held true. And we've seen with titles like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Grand Theft Auto IV that large, open-ended worlds with complex physics and artificial intelligence are indeed possible on consoles. Even in the previous generation of consoles, we saw a faithful port of the venerable Half-Life 2 to the XBox, with the only concessions being low-res visuals. Indeed, it seems that with today's engine technology, PC gaming's benefits are primarily aesthetic—the ability to play games in much higher resolutions and with greater graphical fidelity than consoles.
As a life-long console gamer, I made the switch to PCs primarily because of the superior graphics, controls, and mod communities—as well as to branch into some new genres that rarely see the light of day on consoles, such as RTS games and MMORPGs. Nearly every major PC game has been ported to consoles successfully, and as consoles have evolved I feel the technological differences are less important from a programming perspective, since modern game engines are designed to be scalable across a variety of platforms. Thus I tend not to believe that PC gaming is suffering because of the increasing focus on multiplatform games. Consoles themselves have far fewer exclusives than in the past, because game development has become too costly in most cases for developers to focus only on one platform. I will be intently watching games like Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 later this year to see what kind of impact multiplatform development really has. I suspect enthusiast-level PC gamers' fears will be largely unfounded.
However, there is no denying that PC gaming has in the past always set the pace for gaming technology, and it would be disheartening to see that trend come to an end. And if piracy continues unencumbered, we may see not just fewer and fewer PC exclusives, but fewer multiplatform titles and ports as well; indeed, the entire quality and quantity of PC games could suffer greatly. What can be done?
It seems that as long as torrents are a reality (and they will not be going away anytime soon), piracy will always be a threat. Game developers are forced to create more stringent anti-piracy measures, but these measures have been known to cause problems for some users—some who use this as justification for more piracy! Fortunately, there are a few beacons of hope on the horizon. Mircosoft, nVida, Intel, AMD and others have formed the PC Gaming Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to solving many of the problems PC gaming is facing. Valve, developer of the Half-Life series and the Steam digital distribution platform, has released a set of developer tools called Steamworks that is designed to help developers combat piracy, and indeed a DRM service that functions as a community and distribution service may be the only viable long-term solution to combating piracy; it may not be long before we see an end to retail-box PC games. Certainly the bandwidth of sending a game across the internet is cheaper than manufacturing, packaging and shipping games across the country. With digital distribution, there are no unplayed copies collecting dust on store shelves. Combining the cost-saving measures of digital distribution with better publisher control over DRM and encryption may be PC gaming's best hope.
Ultimately, there will always be some schmucks out there who for some reason feel justified in stealing software. They've done great damage to the PC gaming industry, but the nail is not in the coffin—not by a long shot. On the contrary, there are many in the industry who are not about to take it lying down or fold over like clean laundry. Instead, they are looking for innovative solutions to combat piracy and reinvigorate PC gaming. I'm confident that there are enough people passionate about PC gaming to crush the rampant spread of piracy and breathe new life into the market. Crysis, I think, will not be the last game of its kind.
- Demo roundup — Batman: Arkham Asylum, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Dawn of War II, Darkest of Days - August 18, 2009
- Why isn’t PC gaming pushing technological boundaries? - July 23, 2009
- ARMA II quick impressions: I’m really trying! - July 3, 2009
[quote=Anonymous]Wow, necrothread and caps-lock. Since you brought it up, I’ll add to the conversation. Anyway, as an anonymous game developer, I always love the cognitive dissonance required to believe both that “a pirated copy isn’t a lost sale because the person wouldn’t have bought it anyway” and “a pirated copy is good because the person who wouldn’t pay for the first game might buy the next one!” If you stole my first game, then I have a hard time believing you’re going to fork over money for the next one. If you like my games, then you should have the… Read more »
Wow, necrothread and caps-lock. Since you brought it up, I’ll add to the conversation. Anyway, as an anonymous game developer, I always love the cognitive dissonance required to believe both that “a pirated copy isn’t a lost sale because the person wouldn’t have bought it anyway” and “a pirated copy is good because the person who wouldn’t pay for the first game might buy the next one!” If you stole my first game, then I have a hard time believing you’re going to fork over money for the next one. If you like my games, then you should have the… Read more »
GAME PIRACY DOES NOT HURT SALES AND GAME COMPANIES KNOW IT! This is closely related to the DRM issue. I look at the piracy issue this way and I believe companies do too but they won’t admit this to you: Piracy doesn’t hurt companies one bit and they know it. If they make 1 million copies of a game at a set price and they send to market all 1 million, they figure how much cash they stand to make on those games. If they reach their target number of sales, the company considers that game a success for them.… Read more »
[quote=Jay]One final thing, maybe bring down the prices of your products to make them more consumer friendly. $50-70 for a potential piece of crap is more than most people who are struggling to get by can afford. (Why shouldn’t everyone be able to relax with some play time). The $30-40 price range might be incentive to some to purchase rather than pirate, and overall have a larger population doing the honest thing.[/quote]
That would be a good start indeed.
I have to agree with Mike. Good games sell, bad games don’t. I’ve been playing PC games back since the 4mhz, 2-4 colors, days (not quite as far back as punch cards). The games may have been simpler in graphics and gameplay, but they were original and fun. I was happy to spend my dough on something like Space Quest, even just for the humour. So many games that come out now are reguritated forms of predeccessors. ID and EA definitely, few and far between with their ‘hits’. (The new Bionic Commando does look like it’s gonna be good btw)… Read more »
“Your PC will not run this game. Go get 2 8800 GTX running in SLI mode, a 800watt power supply, a Quad Core proc water cooled and over clocked to 6ghz and 4 GB of ram then MAYBE the game will run at 35fps and won’t crash too much.” Does nobody else remember this? If you can afford a PC that is powerful enough to play modern games, if you can afford to pay for high-speed internet access that would allow you to download such massive files, and if you can afford to spend many hours of your week relaxing… Read more »
Hello again. I wanted to comment on our Pakistani PC gamer’s last post: I’m sure all posters would agree with me, but I don’t think you’ve offended anyone here as I’m sure most people are aware that living standards in a country like Pakistan are not really comparable to that of your “average” western country. This time speaking for myself, I have to confess that I was speaking from a European perspective, and this site being American I believe, and forgetting that this is the internet, I wrongly assumed most commentators here were your average developped country dude. Still, I… Read more »
When crippled economy IS the root of all evils then ignoring it is a great folly. Your description of your restricted budget life is impressive but compared to what millions of people are sacrificing in this part of the world thats child’s play(forgive me if I offended you). Also the difference between your currency and mine is vast, if suppose you earn 20$(if you earn in dollars) per month which,in your eyes,is low then the value of this “measly” amount if we do the following conversion: 1$=65 Pakistani Rupees 20$=1300 Pakistani Rupees So if a game cost 50$ then the… Read more »
“There have been over 40 million attempts to illegally download Unreal Tournament 3.” Would you say that less people playing it online at any given time than UT Classic is purely due to pirates sticking to single player, then? “It would be ludicrous to assume that these numbers do not translate to significant lost sales.” You base that on what, exactly? People that didn’t deem the game to be worth 50$ would do a complete reversal if only they couldn’t torrent it or borrow it from someone else? Not to mention that if, going by Reflexive’s data, casual gamers have… Read more »
Not to mention the intellectual property that was stolen from Crytek which indeed does constitute theft.
It amazes me how people think it’s not stealing. I guess when someone breaks in your home why bother calling the cops because they had their reasons for stealing your stuff.
BTW, I was mentionning you Someone Blue when talking about distribution. It was almost midnight and I couldn’t remember your name, took some time to write the post and I was too lazy to check it back :DDD Anyway, I’ve yet to try D2D or Steam, but, living in Europe too and while trying to buy F.E.A.R., I’ve tried on Sierra’s online distribution service but… couldn’t because they said my IP was from Europe so access was denied… First time I wanted to try to use my credit card online and I’m thrown off by internet racism, what a world… Read more »
I agree with much of what you say. It’s been voiced before and the voices are becoming louder.
… but where do you get the idea from that almost every major PC game has been successfully been ported to the console? There isn’t a single strategy game that did well on the consoles and many RPGs failed completely.
Point I wanted to make is that not everyone is happy running around brick-and-mortar stores looking for games… and as the guy above mentioned.. not all people are ready to use digital services yet to the fullest.. At the end of the day Retail still is the king of sales. I need to look into other digital services u mentioned, as i currently only use steam. Fact is there are lot of the new games missing from it.. Being Europe I don’t get any good stuff from Ubisoft that I was so looking forward… not to mention Crysis PS. I… Read more »
[quote=Someone blue] All the stores I have been to lately, they have a small shelf, max two dedicated to PC with rest of the store for consoles. And this this shelf or two you will find only the games that sell such as Counter Strike and some other big names… Clearly this forces PC gamers online for other games and there is lack of legal, easily obtainable content for PC the only therefore, convenient solution remains to pirate the game.. [/quote] I don’t buy this for two seconds. First, if you can’t find a game at a brick-and-mortar store, there… Read more »
Well well, lots of comments, hello everyone 😉 Hey dsmart[3000ad], “Mother nature didn’t make the rules about who can drive a Ferrari and who gets to ride a bus.” You mean, there’s enough for everybody but it’s up to us to move our ass and fill our brains with knowledge and know-how in order to have a better situation as say a better job (more interresting, with more responsibilities, a better salary)? As in it’s up to us, no matter the odds against us, to drive forward and upwards? Like a cliche example: Mr X was born in the ghettos,… Read more »
[quote=JoeZ]In the comments area for that article people again mentioned stardock. If piracy is so terrible then again how can people explain the business success of Stardock? [/quote] There is nothing to explain. And to those of us in the business, the “success” is understandable. Its simple really. Small team. Small dev costs. Low overhead. With that, even if you sold 50% of your projections, when you only needed 25% to be profitable, you’re still on top. In fact, it is that same model that everyone in the industry uses. Why? Because we all take piracy (an acceptable risk) into… Read more »
Reading through all the comments I am surprised that ome of the most obvious problems that drive users to piracy is not mentioned anywhere… Problem is that people have found Piracy suddenly to be the scapegoat and blame it all on piracy cause PC gaming is not experiencing growth it used to have. Only games I have payed for, I own on Steam.. for 2 reasons.. I couldn’t be fucked to crack CS:S so i had to start using Steam and because I live in 2 countries ATM Steam allows me to play all the games I want on all… Read more »
In the comments area for that article people again mentioned stardock. If piracy is so terrible then again how can people explain the business success of Stardock? Also for Cyrsis its not 40 million lost sales. As usual the author has no clue. How many of those attempts are from the same users using bots to try and get a working key? Loads, and these ample evidence that this is the case if you do a little searching. Look at steam? Its a nice setup and Crytek could use steam instead of complain. Also how many lost sales did Crytek… Read more »
To give you guys an idea of the severity of PC piracy, here’s a new story: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/37203/98/ There have been over 40 million attempts to illegally download Unreal Tournament 3. Now obviously it’s unlikely that 40 million people tried to download it, but even if each person tried 40 times and was successful once, you’re still looking at a million illegal downloads. The actual number is probably somewhere in between. Crytek is looking at the same numbers. It would be ludicrous to assume that these numbers do not translate to significant lost sales. I also do not see how any… Read more »
I look at comments from these guys as somewhat disingenuous. Look at Stardocks latest game, Sins of a Solar Empire which has no copy protection at all. Like Gal Civ 1 and 2 before it, which also had no copy protection, it is selling very well. For March it was one of the top selling PC games. There are many people who appreciate this faith in the consumer buy the game maker and pay close attention when a game like this comes out. I bought Sins as soon as it came out. I will support companies who want to support… Read more »
[quote=chilloowARPC]: You are making good points, and I wouldn’t disagree. What I’m saying is… why can’t we all enjoy things we want to, to their full extent? Be it graphics wise or other? Mother Nature provides with ample resources to nourish ourserlves and live a happy life. Expect we don’t, and supposedly, we are the most intelligent species on earth. Even for a mundane thing as playing a game, some people will pay 50$ and get it all maxed out, most others will pay the same price, but have in all tuned down. Why should there be this difference? Stealing… Read more »
how about thieving little pricks like you grow up and stop blaming the companies who ACTUALLY MAKE THE FUCKING GAMES.
nobody is forcing scum like you to help yourself to other peoples hard work.
prick.
“Copying a computer game is NOT theft”?? Huh. I guess my three years of law school and 10 years putting people in jail as a District Attorney was wrought with “mis-information”. You have quoted from some basic theft statute (in California, the pertinent sections are Penal Code Section 484 et. seq.) and ignored the plethora of state and federal laws specifically aimed at copyright theft and infringment. As a life-time PC gamer, I am saddened by this type of attitude. The truth is that piracy is rampant in the PC world; whether it be via torrent, ftp or Usenet and… Read more »
dsmart[3000ad]: You are making good points, and I wouldn’t disagree. What I’m saying is… why can’t we all enjoy things we want to, to their full extent? Be it graphics wise or other? Mother Nature provides with ample resources to nourish ourserlves and live a happy life. Expect we don’t, and supposedly, we are the most intelligent species on earth. Even for a mundane thing as playing a game, some people will pay 50$ and get it all maxed out, most others will pay the same price, but have in all tuned down. Why should there be this difference? Stealing… Read more »
[quote=Anonymous]”Like pirating music, pirating games can be so easy and convenient that it’s all too easy to forget that it’s theft, ” You were actually doing really well until I saw this little bit of mis-information. Copying a computer game is NOT theft. a: the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b: an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property No property was “taken” from Crytek since, apparently they’re still able to sell their game at Wal-mart. Although to most people, there is no real difference, there is… Read more »
Piracy, I love it, they are sounding just like the RIAA and MPAA, I mean DVD and Cinema sales are doing really well, why, CAUSE THE CONTENT IS GOOD, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean, great films. UT3 didn’t sell very well, cause it wasn’t very good, and as for Crysis, most people that I know didn’t buy it, because it wasn’t going to run on their pc’s like all the screen shots that have are on the Internet. There are plenty of games that do well on PC, Like WOW, Guild Wars, Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2. WHY, because… Read more »
[quote]Valve’s so called “perfect” steam content delivery system has been cracked since HL2 came out. There are piracy groups that specialize in hacking/cracking steam and creating custom clients that allow the user too download games from valve without paying a cent. it’s amazing how ignorant valve has been towards this matter, and the irony is that they’re encouraging other developers to utilize steam technology.[/quote] That may be, but any copy protection scheme is doomed to failure anyway. The thing with Steam is that it’s convenient, just like downloading unauthorized copies of games is – even more so, since you don’t… Read more »
Why are PC’s so expensive? They can do more? Sure, but in that case, why do I need to buy a graphics card in the at least 300$ to 500$ range when a console that does it all is the same price? Cuz after that graph card I need a processor, a mobo, some RAM etc…. The highest res that you can do on consoles is either 720p (1280×720) or 1080p (1920×1080) and pseudo (like Halo 3) resolutions in-between. Every game – including Crysis – can be run at 720p and with the minimal settings. Even at 1080p if you… Read more »
“This week, Crytek president Cevat Yerli, mastermind of the next-gen blockbuster Crysis, mentioned in an interview that his company will no longer produce PC-exclusive games, asserting that piracy has become so rampant on the PC that making exclusive games for the platform is too risky.” Yeah, I bet the guys at Blizzard are shaking in their pants with the huge risks they’re taking developing PC exclusives. *cough* As for Crysis: blaming piracy for Crysis “only” selling a million copies instead of five seems like a huge exaggeration. It’s a small step up from Far Cry in terms of gameplay, and… Read more »
[quote=Mike Doolittle] Numbers for PC piracy can be measure by the amount of illegal keys being used on multiplayer servers as well as looking a torrent traffic. The numbers on either are disturbing to say the least. [/quote] I don’t think it’s that easy. There is no way of knowing how many of those who download torrents were planning to actually buy the game and my uneducated guess is that a fair number download titles out of curiosity and because it’s possible to do so. How many of those represent actual lost sales is impossible to tell. Illegal keys in… Read more »
Hi everyone, Numbers for PC piracy can be measure by the amount of illegal keys being used on multiplayer servers as well as looking a torrent traffic. The numbers on either are disturbing to say the least. I don’t think anyone in the PC gaming industry realistically expects piracy to be wiped out. It’s a continual struggle and will always be an issue. The focus really needs to be on delaying cracking of the game as long as possible after release, particularly during the first few months of sales. And finally, before anyone starts talking about gloom and doom sales,… Read more »
[quote=Mike Doolittle]Measure, Piracy has always been there, sure. But it’s never been so incredibly easy. Hundreds of thousands, even millions of users can and do simply hop on a torrent and download the file.[/quote] Yes, this is what devs and corporations say, but is it really true? There is and has always been a tendency to blame everything on faceless pirates, but never any actual facts to back it up. Good games sell, bad games don’t. IMO, it is as simple as that. Crysis, while having pretty graphics, was the same tired old FPS formula we’ve seen regurgitated countless times.… Read more »
Valve’s so called “perfect” steam content delivery system has been cracked since HL2 came out. There are piracy groups that specialize in hacking/cracking steam and creating custom clients that allow the user too download games from valve without paying a cent. it’s amazing how ignorant valve has been towards this matter, and the irony is that they’re encouraging other developers to utilize steam technology. Another fact is that no matter how advanced DRM technology gets and new content distribution protocols are advised, pirates will eventually find a way to circumvent it, DRM & game developers aren’t the only ones with… Read more »
Hello..I am an average net explorer who stumbled on this article (and this website) and after reading it and the comments written by other people none of them were able to tell the main reason of piracy…its poverty. You sir has shown your concern about the hardworking people at the gaming industry being “robbed” of their money due to piracy while failing to acknowledge that there are like many people especially in the developing countries(Pakistan,Bud an,India e.t.c) who still now having a hard time getting even basic commodities.I mean that for them it is a curse but for the underprivileged… Read more »
[quote=Ventry]
The current bitch about piracy is about nothing but GREED.
[/quote]
Well since you don’t need money how about sending me a nice check? Or are you too GREEDY to share?
Lame excuses…the poster above you was right.
[quote=chilloowARPC]There is never any justification, but just excuses we make to lie, cheat or steal… [/quote] You don’t think the gaming companies lie, cheat or steal?? Bloody oath they do. They LIE about minimum system specs needed to run the game. They CHEAT by releasing games with known bugs just so they can get it out for the Christmas sales. (we’ll just patch it later) They STEAL your money when there is NO refund on games that have been purchased that don’t work dispite the fact that your machine covers the required specs.(case in point Bioshock. STILL people who can’t… Read more »
I bet these people who say piracy is not a big deal are themselves pirates trying to justify their immmorality. People I know who pirate games have all kinds of excuses: i’ll stop when i get a better job, i’m just one person, i wouldn’t buy it anyway, I’m just trying before I buy, etc ,etc. They feel they are entitled to just about anything because they are ‘clever’ enough to download a torrent or apply a crack. Piracy isn’t as big a deal as publishers make it out to be either, since those people probably wouldn’t pay for every… Read more »
It is extremely easy to fight the majority of multi-player game piracy:
1) One CD Key per registered account. Must have an account to log in and play. Novalogic has done it this way to great success for a long time.
2) Block Hamachi. Pretty easy since from what I recall all Hamachi traffic is over 5.x.x.x
Whoops, I called you Brad in my first post, sorry Mike ;), my bad… I think I was reading one of Brad’s article just before lol… “PCs aren’t that expensive, especially when you consider than any current card from ATI or nVidia, even something like a cheap 9600GT, will positively crush consoles in terms of processing power. ” All I’m saying is I hope the 8800GT 512MB is if not a bit better than at least as good as a PS3 or a 360 ;P No, seriously, it’s an open question but is the 9600GT really better than those latest… Read more »
[quote=chilloowARPC]Why are PC’s so expensive? They can do more? Sure, but in that case, why do I need to buy a graphics card in the at least 300$ to 500$ range when a console that does it all is the same price? Cuz after that graph card I need a processor, a mobo, some RAM etc….[/quote] PCs aren’t that expensive, especially when you consider than any current card from ATI or nVidia, even something like a cheap 9600GT, will positively crush consoles in terms of processing power. You must also realize that PC games are played in much higher resolution… Read more »
One thing I don’t understand Power is should that system be implemented, what would it change? I mean you’re talking about a payable service right? Maybe some dudes out there just don’t care to spend ANY amount of money and just want to have all they can grab for free…
How do these companies measure the amount of pirated copies? What indicators do they have that their sales are indeed dropping because of piracy, and not because of something else? What really happens is, that a lot of gamers are disappointed by current games. It’s really rare that a game just works out of the box. Usually, you have to update your system first (drivers, directx, .Net, whatnot), then install the latest patch, and maybe even fiddle with some cryptic configuration files. But gameplay will most of the times still not be flawless. Save game corruption, gameplay-destroying graphical oddities, bugs… Read more »
theres one easy fix to end pretty much all piracy on the pc……digital distribution and some sort of multi player or online upgrading system. valves been doing it for years and it seems to be treating them well, many others like EA are falling in line as well. I think rather than developers bitching about piracy (witch most do just to appease their ceo when he asks why their sales are so weak, crytek for example) they need to put their heads together and come up with a universal digital distribution system and seriously consider some type of interactive update… Read more »
… there was another reason? A lot of people complain that in order to play a PC game like COD4 or Bioshock, or any other recent game with all “special effects” set to max, with AA and AF on, even to the max (say 4*AA and 16*AF) with at least an 19″ screen’s worth of resolution = 1280*1024 and a reasonable framerate… one needs to buy a PC(if buying an entire system if one’s PC’s too old to be upgraded) in the 1500 dollars spot… even 1000 to 1200 is a bit tight. The most expensive console right now is… Read more »
PC game piracy has been running rampant since C64 days. It is not something new. Despite the constant, rampant piracy of PC games since PC gaming’s inception, the market has grown quite large. The issue that developers are facing is the larger profits available from sales on closed, pirate-resistant systems such as game consoles. Piracy, since it has been there from the beginning, has never had a breakthrough year where it suddeny sucked profits from PC developers, it’s been a constant, which PC developers could mostly ignore… until Consoles became so profitable that it made more sense to release games… Read more »
“Like pirating music, pirating games can be so easy and convenient that it’s all too easy to forget that it’s theft, ” You were actually doing really well until I saw this little bit of mis-information. Copying a computer game is NOT theft. a: the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b: an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property No property was “taken” from Crytek since, apparently they’re still able to sell their game at Wal-mart. Although to most people, there is no real difference, there is… Read more »
Measure, Piracy has always been there, sure. But it’s never been so incredibly easy. Hundreds of thousands, even millions of users can and do simply hop on a torrent and download the file. There’s no complicated hacking or cracking. It’s just as easy as pirating music, and it’s comparable to copying old cassette tapes versus illegally distributing a song to millions of people over the internet. Anonymous, Feel free to dodge the issue with semantics; the fact is that you don’t have a “right” to own the software; you are simply paying for the privilege of using it. Nobody loses… Read more »