93-95% PC piracy

[TomcatViP]

Completely agree with that.

There will be piracy as long as the marketed price doesn't reflect the real value of the tittle. Who has not seen himself with the feeling of being stolen by an editor with a poor quality game just released with no real content (WoP comes into my mind).**

When the industry will understand that they do have to regulate itself then the user will trust what comes out of the box. Instead of that, we have critics (online or n magazine) that acts like marketing agents.

With high prices and such poor experience, I can understand that Piracy is the fastest way to test a title. And then when your pirated copy works, why bother to buy a boxed one?

Cinema have the press. And it's amazing how many people use to read the comments before actually going to see a movie.

It's time for the industry to come out into the bright light.

Why not a 3 weeks full time/100% access for all instead of surfing on paying to get the best weapon/ride/bonus what is the mirrored face of the F2P (RoF comes into my mind now). You know why ? because most of the games can be "ended" in this laps of time.

But it's always easier to found a short term solution and point by the finger some obscure and hardly quantifiable data.

~S

PS: I am not a gamer. Only got FlightSims on my PC. All bought at their time of release. But since 3 or 4 years I can see a marked trend to lower the quality of the content and spend high bucks on marketing. So, for who are the dev working you think ?

**In the 70's a new marketing trend surfaced in the appliance industry: the break time. Products were build by the leaders of this segments with special parts designed to suffer from a mechanical failure within a carefully studied laps of time in order to raise the number of unit sold. before that you could keep your refrigerator, you washing machine or your toaster for years until you decided to buy a new one more fashionable or with improved capacity etc.. What came next ? The unit price went down lower and lower until new low cost leaders surfaced out on this market (Low cost labor countries like China at the time) .

Now, most of this product are only branded by those historic leaders (but not actually built or designed by them) that have now lost most of their market share . You can buy a toaster for such a low price that you don't bother to buy a new one if that one made it's time FAIRLY.

That what has happen here, the game industry sale toaster with no lifetime with the same marketing vision. The only problem is that it's hard for most of the individuals to stole a toaster from the manufacturer. Same vision but a different problems and poor (short term) management. That's all the recipe for another disaster.

[Blackadder]

93 - 95%, but I thought Ubisoft DRM is going so well

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/28/ub...-is-a-success/

or maybe ubisoft just says whatever they want that fits their current agenda rather than worrying about actual facts.

Big drop in sales.....

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/07/op...ath-of-reason/

must be pirates, couldn't possibly be shoddy games or horrible DRM which is giving ubisoft nearly as bad a reputation as EA.


I don't believe it for a second but it is a good line for the chairman to use, it is better to blame pirates for the companies poor performance rather than lacklustre leadership or counterproductive policies.

[WTE_Galway]

The "piracy" figures thrown around assume everyone that has a copy of a game, a song or an album stashed away somewhere would otherwise have gone out and purchased it.

If that were true my daughter way back when when she was 14 would have apparently spent in excess of $20,000 on music. In fact most of what she had collected was never even listened to once, it was just there to impress her friends or make it easy to check out a band if someone talked about it. In reality, despite her huge music "collection" she still went out and bought the CDs of the albums she really liked.

The other issue that is missed is that some of the biggest complainers in the media industry are the biggest pirates hiding behind corporate lawyers and money. Many recent movies are direct ripoffs of foriegn films with no royalty payed. A case in point is the 2010 movie "Book of Eli" which is an almost word for word copy of an Australian film from 15 years early.

In another example I know of people in the tabletop gaming industry that have released WWII armor rules etc only to have them stolen by major publishers and included in books and game packages. In one case the culprit was Penguin books, who when contacted told the author "If you think you can take on a multinational corporation in court go for it".

[Rattlehead]

Originally Posted by TomcatViP

Completely agree with that.

There will be piracy as long as the marketed price doesn't reflect the real value of the tittle. Who has not seen himself with the feeling of being stolen by an editor with a poor quality game just released with no real content (WoP comes into my mind).**

When the industry will understand that they do have to regulate itself then the user will trust what comes out of the box. Instead of that, we have critics (online or n magazine) that acts like marketing agents.

With high prices and such poor experience, I can understand that Piracy is the fastest way to test a title. And then when your pirated copy works, why bother to buy a boxed one?

It is up to everyone to do research for himself on a game, and to decide whether or not to buy a title. Whether or not that title is 'worth' the money is actually completely irrelevant because it's highly subjective.

A game is put on a shelf, or available for download via Steam. There is a asking price. You decide whether or not the title is worth buying for the price.
If it is, you buy it. If not, you don't. It does not entitle anyone to help themselves to a pirate version simply because they feel the asking price is too high. Gaming is a luxury, not a right.
Wait for the title to drop in price or whatever. Or just don't buy it.