Quote: Original post by Nytegard
Honestly, I liked what Titan Quest and Batman (along with other games did), by purposely placing in bugs in the game for the pirated versions. But in the end, all that seemed to do was get a ton of people to whine about how the game was buggy, and that spread around the internet (the bugs, although they didn't mention they were pirate bugs) rather than how good the games were.

Lol, I hadn't heard that. I think if people were pirating my game, I'd be tempted to flood the torrents with virus laden copies of it. [evil]

Quote: Original post by Nytegard
I can't really agree with this. I know several people at work who pirated World of Goo for the PC and loved it, only to never buy the real version(despite being on Steam, and despite being only $5 at the time on Steam). Why buy what they've already played and beaten for free was their logic.

That's upsetting. I bought World of Goo and didn't even quite beat it yet. It's a great little puzzle game, and I'm glad I could send the devs a couple bucks.

Quote: Original post by Nytegard
And I know multiple people who use to pirate and don't anymore. What's the difference between the people? It's not that some of them gained a conscience, but that for the group of people who went legitimate, the stuff they got was in college, when it was easy for them to find pirated versions, and now they don't know where to look, whereas the other people still know where to look.

As long as people can acquire items for nothing with realtive ease, they will. Steam and other digital download services won't impact this.

I buy and pay for most everything nowadays. It's not that I've gained a whole lot more conscience (maybe a little), but mostly because I have money now.

When $50 represented a couple days' work, it was a lot tougher to justify buying a video game. Now $50 items are in the category of "stuff I won't buy on a whim more than once a week." So $5 for World of Goo? It was a no-brainer.

Also, I never would have bought it if it weren't available on Steam. Not saying everybody is the same as I am, but I'm sure some are. Just my 2c.

Quote: Original post by BeanDog

Quote: Original post by Nytegard
I can't really agree with this. I know several people at work who pirated World of Goo for the PC and loved it, only to never buy the real version(despite being on Steam, and despite being only $5 at the time on Steam). Why buy what they've already played and beaten for free was their logic.

That's upsetting. I bought World of Goo and didn't even quite beat it yet. It's a great little puzzle game, and I'm glad I could send the devs a couple bucks.

Quote: Original post by Nytegard
And I know multiple people who use to pirate and don't anymore. What's the difference between the people? It's not that some of them gained a conscience, but that for the group of people who went legitimate, the stuff they got was in college, when it was easy for them to find pirated versions, and now they don't know where to look, whereas the other people still know where to look.

As long as people can acquire items for nothing with realtive ease, they will. Steam and other digital download services won't impact this.

I buy and pay for most everything nowadays. It's not that I've gained a whole lot more conscience (maybe a little), but mostly because I have money now.

When $50 represented a couple days' work, it was a lot tougher to justify buying a video game. Now $50 items are in the category of "stuff I won't buy on a whim more than once a week." So $5 for World of Goo? It was a no-brainer.

Also, I never would have bought it if it weren't available on Steam. Not saying everybody is the same as I am, but I'm sure some are. Just my 2c.

Money might be a motivating factor, but it's not really your right to own games. I'd love to own a Ferrari, but I understand I'll never be in that position. Besides, that's what friends who own the game & rentals are for. (Although it's strange in that companies use to consider playing a friends game piracy. And I'm not talking about both playing at the same time, but back before hard drives).

Also, I'm not really a big fan of Steam. I've already stated why in multiple posts in the past. What happens when Steam goes away, etc. And I've already been burned on several occasions with my games I purchased being locked out later on, and having to contact support to help get things working. Besides, I like owning the media. Most of all, I miss games like Ultima from Origin. Back when including tons of junk in the game was just part of the regular $39.99 game and not the $89.99 Collector's Edition.

As far as my other response to the OP, it's because of the nature of the people. Ultima was also a game that always stressed out the latest system. This was also back before the days of graphical options. You purchased the latest one, and even on the latest and greatest systems, it would run horribly. It wasn't until 2-3 years after the game came out that you could play the game the way it was meant to be played. But people in general want to be able to state that they can play everything maxxed out with their new 3 computer built with 3 year old technology. People don't tend to realize what all is going on, and would rather be able to play a low graphical quality Half Life 2 with every option maxxed, rather than a medium quality Crysis with every option on medium, even though Crysis on medium might actually look better than Half Life 2. Even today, people are still pissed that they can't play Crysis with every option maxxed at 60 FPS. And by the time we have cards which will allow it, nobody even cares about the game. This is partially the fault of the company though. If you're going to future proof the game, you need to limit it to what the next generation or two of computers will provide, and not a generation of technology that will be past the lifespan of the community for the game.

Quote: Original post by ChaosEngine

Quote: Original post by Nytegard
Honestly, I liked what Titan Quest and Batman (along with other games did), by purposely placing in bugs in the game for the pirated versions. But in the end, all that seemed to do was get a ton of people to whine about how the game was buggy, and that spread around the internet (the bugs, although they didn't mention they were pirate bugs) rather than how good the games were.

Lol, I hadn't heard that. I think if people were pirating my game, I'd be tempted to flood the torrents with virus laden copies of it. [evil]

Ditto!

Quote: Original post by ChaosEngine

Quote: Original post by Nytegard
Honestly, I liked what Titan Quest and Batman (along with other games did), by purposely placing in bugs in the game for the pirated versions. But in the end, all that seemed to do was get a ton of people to whine about how the game was buggy, and that spread around the internet (the bugs, although they didn't mention they were pirate bugs) rather than how good the games were.

Lol, I hadn't heard that. I think if people were pirating my game, I'd be tempted to flood the torrents with virus laden copies of it. [evil]

The issue with that is no one will download from you unless you've been providing pirate copies of other stuff as you have no rep, and will download the one someone from "the scene" has ripped, so the only way it'll work will be to virus up their copy and hide the virus good.

Quote: Original post by frob
As stated, the problem is that it makes estimating the sales forecast difficult. Good games cost around ten million to make and about the same for post-production like manufacturing, distribution, and marketing.

You are right that piracy makes sales more volatile. Without an accurate sales forecast the studios just have that much additional risk. Companies are risk averse, so they will reduce the game cost by cutting features.

Piracy is manageable through offering the game through online services; see Steam and Impulse as examples. Many people (including me) do not like the software as a service model and only use it when it is the only viable option available.

Thats not the point. The point is that you cant fiddle with the constants of an equation. No point wailing about piracy since you cant do much about it. the companies which cant come up with business models which reduce the weight of piracy in their risk models will disintegrate. This applies to most industries. Not just games.

[Edited by - Daerax on October 3, 2009 5:05:03 AM]

This is just my observation, but the people I know, whom buy and play console games, don't play or buy games for their computers. The problem is PC gaming has less consumers than console games.

I haven't questioned these people, but they may very well come from a view point of 'PCs are more of a hassle than a console'.

'PCs are more of a hassle than a console'.


That's definitely my point of view; I buy a PC game and a) I have to reboot into Windows and b) I have to hope it'll work with my graphics card and then windows wants to spend half an hour installing updates. And then we need two copies to play it together...


I buy a Wii game, it'll work. And we have two controllers. Job done.

Quote: Original post by Edoc
This is just my observation, but the people I know, whom buy and play console games, don't play or buy games for their computers. The problem is PC gaming has less consumers than console games.

I haven't questioned these people, but they may very well come from a view point of 'PCs are more of a hassle than a console'.

This actually is inaccurate. The PC by is not nearly as bad off as many people believe. The difference is though that while consoles might get 100 games a year, the PC gets significantly more. This leads to dilution in the overall sales of any specific product. So overall, the consoles get more users per game, but PC's overall have more customers.

Also, sales of PC's tend to be extremely slanted to retail stores. In 2008, PC games in retail stores sold $701 million. Console games total sold a grand total of 10.96 billion. Then, you have to remember that there are multiple consoles compared to the PC. The Wii, DS, PSP, PS2, PS3, and XBox. According to Famitsu, the leader in software revenue for 2008 was the DS, with 39% of the sales. That's about $4.4 billion.

So, the DS trounces the PC, correct? Well, one thing you have to take into consideration is that the NPD doesn't take into account digital downloads, microtransactions (which can help consoles too), or MMO subscriptions. Unfortunately for us, these numbers are somewhat difficult to find, but last I heard Steam and World of Warcraft weren't exactly scraping buy in revenue.

As far as overall consumer base? The PS2 has sold around 150 million units. Maple Story alone has a player base of 50 million.

Quote: Original post by Katie
'PCs are more of a hassle than a console'.


That's definitely my point of view; I buy a PC game and a) I have to reboot into Windows and b) I have to hope it'll work with my graphics card and then windows wants to spend half an hour installing updates. And then we need two copies to play it together...


I buy a Wii game, it'll work. And we have two controllers. Job done.

This is changing somewhat as consoles and PC's merge. If I buy a PS3 game, there's the mandatory 45 minute install now. And then with XBox and PS3 games, you go through the 10 minutes of downloading patches before you can play a game. And now with Steam, GFWL, etc, I just run check for update, and it updates it similar to how the PS3 and XBox handle it.

This use to be a valid arguement in terms of console ease of use, but it becomes less true as time goes on.