93-95% PC piracy

[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.

[Rattlehead]

Originally Posted by Madfish

There is no piracy. You can't steal bytes, you copy them. No one is missing them. And the sales, in 95% of the cases, wouldn't have happened if they had to buy it.

It is a missed sale. What's missing is the revenue generated from legitimate purchases. Game development costs money; a whole lot of money. Programmers, level designers, 3D animators, writers, marketers, distributors etc. need to get paid for the work they've done on the product. They're doing a job, just like you and I.
Essentially, piracy is screwing these guys over, since a missed sale is a lost opportunity to make money on that sale.

John Carmack stated more than once how he felt slapped in the face by the PC community for Doom 3. It was a title that cost a fortune to make, and a hell of a lot of time to develop. The pathetic sales of Doom 3 ensured that id Software migrated to the consoles where piracy is a lot less rife. Now we have to put up with ports like RAGE.
That he's a millionaire is not the point.

I'd also like to know how you can state that 95% of sales would not have happened if people had to buy a game legally. Where is your source? You cannot accuse Guillemot of pulling stats out of his arse and then do the same thing.
Call of Duty 4 had 400,000 legitimate purchases on the PC platform, but had 4.1 million illegal downloads. Are you seriously suggesting that 4 million people would not have bought the game if they could not score it for free?

Originally Posted by Madfish

There are also examples where pirace actually helped games. A games success is NOT just about money.

True, piracy in a sense can help a small indie title get exposure, but I've yet to see a case where piracy helps a widely marketed, heavily promoted AAA title in any way.
And frankly, a game's success is heavily dependent on the revenue it generates. If Clod had sold ten times the figure it did, it would justify a larger development team, a bigger budget for marketing and promotion and it would result an altogether slicker, more polished package.

Conversely, poor sales leads to the publisher getting skittish about funding the developer, or worried about putting that game on a platform like the PC again.


Guys, you can try and justify piracy in any way you like, but at the end of the day, people pirate stuff because they're getting something for nothing. It's about greed and a false sense of entitlement.

Piracy is hurting PC gaming and it's causing us to have to put up with bullshit DRM, which would not exist if piracy didn't exist. DRM exists only because of piracy.
The hilarity of it all is that pirates justify piracy because of DRM, when it's because them that DRM exists in the first place.

[fly_zo]

Originally Posted by Rattlehead

people pirate stuff because they're getting something for nothing. It's about greed and a false sense of entitlement.

well we here in Croatia have nifty little " Intellectual Rights Protection tax" included in price of any sort of blank media ( DVD , CD , Flash-drive) so we pay even if we store our personal stuff ( pics/ data ...) just as we would as we pirated someones work .

so it's not something for nothing ... it's just paying in advance


all rights holder institutions / individuals are very welcome to collect their fee from our government cos as far as i'm concern i have already paid for all my music and stuff .

Z

[tk471138]

honestly games used to be at least good enough to download (pirate?) but now i dont even bother with that...however being able to try a game for free whether its pirated or not, can be a boon for the developers...ARMA2 free edition got me to buy all their arma2 titles...but now MOST games are so crappy like call of duty or the battle field series, that its not even worth it to download the games for free let alone search for them...

i will never NEVER, buy a game with out trying it first and if that means i have to pirate (simply copy) the game then so be it... ( and i dont mean some demo that is highly controlled only showing the user the polished portions of the game think diablo 3, where the users could try the first half of act 1)

also when i pirate a game i dont have to agree to any BS terms or deal with DRM...i dont have to basically agree to a contract that says the developers and publisher can do whatever they want when ever they want how ever they want and the user has zero recourse...yea sorry as long as the terms of games read like that (and they all do) im not going to want to buy them...

[BadAim]

Originally Posted by fly_zo

well we here in Croatia have nifty little " Intellectual Rights Protection tax" included in price of any sort of blank media ( DVD , CD , Flash-drive) so we pay even if we store our personal stuff ( pics/ data ...) just as we would as we pirated someones work .

so it's not something for nothing ... it's just paying in advance


all rights holder institutions / individuals are very welcome to collect their fee from our government cos as far as i'm concern i have already paid for all my music and stuff .

Z

But, Fly you miss the real point. Just because your government steals a given amount of money from you (taxes), does not give you the right to steal from the guy who developed the thing that is stolen.

This whole idea that extra expense and trouble created by thieves is somehow the fault of the person being robbed is bloody ludicrous. Screw all you thieves.

If you want to sit back and do nothing and get the benefit of those who work, you deserve nothing but a slow death by starvation. Period.

[von Pilsner]

Originally Posted by 5./JG27.Farber

93-95% PC piracy?

I must be one of the only people actually buying games then... I dont believe this figure.

I agree with you, the figure is made up.

[ATAG_Doc]

I don't believe these numbers. But if software manufacturers would add a digital thumbprint whereas to only allow one active copy to work and ran a check on the host system to verify it was legit we may get some where.