For the love of PC games....STOP PIRATING!

The Game Room
1

I used to pirate…when I was a poorly paid teacher, I justified it as they OWE me cuz I am paid so poorly doing a public good. I justified it as it was so unfair that I was paid so little so why should the unfairness just go one way?

I was scum.

To some credit to me, I realized I was scum and stopped. It has been something like 15 years since I last pirated a game, and I will never do so again.

Now, some might call it ethics…and that may be true…but the MAIN reason everyone should STOP freakin pirating is for their own self interest.

This post is brought on by a conversation I had last night with my son.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but PC games are DYING! PC used to be king with many different types of games…and was the source of innovative/unique games. Console games were all the same twitch games over and over and over.

Look in the store lately for PC games? They used to cover shelves and shelves. Now it is so paltry compared to what it used to be and much of it is crap imported from console games. CONSOLE GAMES! That is not the way it should be! Console games should be poor copies of the real meaty PC game.

Recently, I thought…ok PC is dying…I don’t want to be and old fuddy-duddy…adapt. So I looked at console games with my daughter. Same old crap. I did se a few like Oblivion…but DAMNED few that even looked somewhat interesting…that relied on strategy rather than twitch button pushing…

So…why is PC dying? Is the world moving on?

Maybe…

But I think it is piracy. I think over half of all PC games are not paid for. Heck maybe 3 in 4 or more. What is a developer to do?

PAY FOR THE DAMN GAME! You are driving people out of the business! You are killing PC games. My gut tells me that piracy is the #1 problem.

STOP PIRATING! Or, if you have to pirate, if you actually play the game and like it, go out and buy a real copy so that the developer is rewarded and will make more.

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This post is in dire need of supporting data.

-FrL-

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I think it’s more an audience thing–if you look at the sales numbers, you see that the niches of games enjoyed on the PC primarily are boiling down to just FPS and RTS style games, and sims and turn-based strategy and WRPGs are disappearing slowly–hell, name me a decent realistic flight sim since IL-2.

If you look at the pirate bay or other torrent sites, on the other hand, SOMEONE is pirating one heck of a lot of console games for any consoles that can read DVDs.

Essentially it probably boils down to convenience–most of the gamers I know these days fall into two groups:

  1. I want to put in a CD and go, play for 30 min or an hour, and stop.
  2. MMORPG players.
4

Seconded.

There are certainly a LOT of pirated images for consoles and PC alike. I don’t think pirating is killing PC games.

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IMHO, PC games are languishing because consoles have arguably caught up in terms of graphics and audio. The XBOX 360 and PS3 both do 1080p and 5.1 surround sound. PC graphics are a step above that, but not a huge one, and who can tell the difference in many cases?

If you want to get into keyboard+mouse vs console controller, I know that PC gamers are pretty passionate about the former, and they have a pretty good point.

But I don’t think people really want to build PC gamer rigs any more; the vast majority just want to plug something into their living room TV, and have done with it. Consoles are good at doing that. PCs are not.

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I would dispute that it’s even the case that PC games are dying - first in my PC store there are as many shelves devoted to PC games as there are to each console platform. Does the PC section need to be as big as the ENTIRE console section for the PC genre to be deemed as alive? Come on.

Second, there is an extremely healthy trade going on in digital download of games - Valve’s steam service is the primary example of this but there are others too (including casual gaming sites like Popcap). Also the volume of niche games that don’t really cross the threshold of stores is not necessarily small - games like Galactic Civilisations 2 and Sins of a Solar Empire have sold large numbers of units (the former especially) whilst not having a big physical presence in stores.

The death of PC gaming has been predicted every year since roughly the year 2000 - eight years later and I see no sign of it happening.

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No, PC games are languishing because there’s so much more money in making console games than there ever was in making PC games. The console market is huge, bigger than the PC market ever was. There’s a variety of reasons for that: ease of use, entry price, standards of quality, and so forth, but the end result is that, while the PC game market has grown slowly, the console game market has exploded. Considering the relative size of the markets, it’s simply a no-brainer for any company to make their games for console first, and then port to the PC. Or just ignore the PC altogether.

That’s not to say that piracy isn’t an issue, but it’s at least as much of a concern for consoles as it ever was for PCs.

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Pc games are not dying. the platform is still going strong, but it has been experiencing a decline lately.

The PC CAN be the dominating platform. Very easily. But it will require a partnership between software and hardware companies.

Almost EVERYONE has a PC, unfortunately most PC’s sold are simply not able to run any type of modern game. This is where partnerships are needed.

IF developers create games that do a good job of scaling with current hardware (good: Sins of a solar empire, World of Warcraft, Half-life 2, Call of duty 4. Bad: Crysis, NWN 2, Oblivion) AND (and this is very important) hardware and specially system vendors make sure that EVERY PC is capable of being a gaming platform (no extremely low powered built in video, instead actually capable hardware. Doesn’t have to perform like a top of the line rig, but should be able to play games at lower resolutions) Then the Pc will continue to see growth.

Until that happens, the PC market will continue to be here for a logn time to come, but it will continue to shrink and we’ll continue to see more and more console ports.

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I think this post by a game developer is relevant.

I agree with a lot of what the developer says in that article. I think bad design decisions, too many bugs, and too much copy protection has more to do with any problems the PC gaming market might be suffering from than piracy.

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I have a, uh, friend who pirates games. He’s always said that if he didn’t pirate games, he’d have quit playing PCs games altogether a long time ago, because the games you buy out of the box are simply UNFINISHED. It’s one thing to waste a few hours to download a game, find it is nearly unplayable due to bugs or missing content, and then uninstall it. It’s another thing to fork over $50 for a game, find it’s unplayable, and then force yourself through hell to justify forking over your $50.

I suppose a solution to this argument is to buy games that have been out for a while and, thus, are playable when patched. As a bonus, you get to pay $5 for a game instead of $50. But at that point, isn’t the difference negligible to the developer? If a game flops, but then sells well at the bargain bin level, no one is going to be left at the developer to notice.

That’s not to say that if companies started to release finished games, piracy would decrease and PC sales would increase. But unfinished products sure as shit aren’t helping.

It seems the game developer article linked above says that if you build it, where it = a good game, they will come. Can’t say I disagree with that.

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I just knew that would be Brad Wardell. He speaks much sense.

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You are right in that games now a days pretty much require a day one patch. But thankfully most companies now have one ready on release day.

There is also the problem that pirates will end up with borked copies of games and then flood forum boards claiming the game is buggy. This happenned recently, I forget with which game, but it turns out everyone complained that the game crashed in a particular spot. The same spot. Turns out this was the copy protection, pirated copies were booting people off the game in that spot. Unfortunately the game ended up with the underserved stigma of being buggy all due to pirates.

If developers and hardware vendors make sure that game engine scale, that even low-end PC’s ship with SOME 3D game capability, and if copy protection stops being taken to ridiculous heights, PC gaming could and would be bigger than console gaming.

When it comes to copy protection I think the devs of Sins of a solar empire have it right: Zero disc protection and the game does not require the disc in the drive to play (YAY!), instead you have a serial number and you use that to activate your game (via internet) which is the only way you can download updates. That’s the way it should be done.

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Well, the release day patch is most often necessary but not sufficient. Plus, it does very little to help those who (a) don’t read game sites and thus might not know a patch has been released or (b) have limited Internet access. Game patches sometimes weigh in at hundreds of MBs, and they’re not going to start shrinking in size anytime soon (read: ever).

I’d be interested to hear which game this is. I’m not calling you a liar! I’d just be genuinely curious to hear which game this is. But I am confused – wouldn’t that only color the perception of those who either downloaded the pirated game or read a pirate-friendly board? Joe EBGames isn’t going to know anything.

Besides, there are games where the “legitimate” copy protection causes problems for those who bought the game. Starforce protection is notorious for causing incompatibilities. In these cases, cracks or other piracy methods that remove the CP actually help increase a game’s audience. My, er, friend’s introduction into piracy was through the realm of no-CD cracks, which work by removing at least some of the copy protection.

I’m no hacker, but unless the game is a MMORPG, the scheme you describe will be cracked. Even for multiplayer-enabled games (but not true MMORPGs like World of Warcraft), servers are set up where pirates can play online without needing any sort of serial number (or needing a serial number that can be freely passed around).

Like I said, I’m no expert, but from my experience, there hasn’t been a copy protection invented yet that has not been circumvented.

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Titan Quest from the recently defunct Iron Lore. You can read his post about this issue here. Personally im on the side of the stardock guys, no copy protection + not designing games that will run on 1% of computers = profit, pirates be damned. One of the biggest reasons World of Warcraft was such a smashing success was that it runs on your grandmas computer, not just on the latest greatest 5 grand gig.

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It doesn’t seem ranty enough for the Pit, and since the focus is on PC games, I’ll go ahead and move it out of Cafe Society and into The Game Room.

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I recently discovered there are people who have never played an fps with a keyboard/mouse combo and who think that would be to confusing…I get the feeling that the massive amount of consoles out there might just be having some effect.

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All the PC Gamers I know of wonder why people think consoles are easier to game on. “To play Crysis on high settings,” they say, “all you need is a $500 setup! I have the article right here.”

Meanwhile, even 6 months ago that same amount would get you a backwards-compatible PS3, which is just as powerful and also a self-updating Bluray player.

Anyway, I’m not totally sold on the idea that PC gaming is dying due to bittorrent, but I’m also not totally dismissive of it, either. It’s hard not to be suspicious when you see games that should be completely easy to port to PC, such as Halo, Mass Effect, and Gears of War, coming out months early on consoles and only then being released on the platform where copy protection is more like a speedbump than a system-bricking DRM exchange.

I also have to say I don’t think there will ever be reliable stats on this factor.

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Tycoon City: New York had this situation.

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I personally think it’s a combination of piracy, or rather the producers’ overreaction to it, and improved console technology.

Consoles have an extraordinarily low entry barrier. They’re easier to hook up and get running, and I’d wager more people are familiar with their entertainment center than a computer. A console only requires that you pop the disk or cartridge in and hit play. PCs used to dominate the graphical side of things, but not any more, as HD and large flat screen TVs become more common. They’re pretty, the games are solid, and they require little to no maintenance. Computers just don’t cut it any more if you’re a straight-up gamer.

The corporate response to piracy has also really hurt things. Take Bioshock. I could pop the game into the X-Box 360 and be playing merrily along, or I could download it from Steam and have to deal with DRM bullshit that tells me I can only install the game twice and will more than likely hurt my system’s performance. That pissed a lot of people off, I can tell you. Console games are harder to pirate, particularly now that the technology has advanced sufficiently. It’s still a difficult issue with computer games, as the games are meant to be run on the very machine that can break the DRM. In the meantime, the DRM crap hurts legit users by making the gaming experience more painful.

The strongest evidence for this that I see is that the biggest PC gaming market right now is MMOs. Sure, consoles have exploded, but you’re not going to find World of Warcraft on the 360. The latest generation of consoles have done some impressive things for online gaming, but PCs are hard to beat in that area, particularly for games which require typing skills. Sony Online Entertainment and Squeenix made an attempt at console MMORPGs with FFXI and a fairly ingenious communication system, but in the US the game was a moderate success at best.

It’s not just the online component that makes MMOGs a PC favorite, though; they’re the one genre that is nigh-on impossible to rip off, especially the ones with subscription models. There, it’s expected that you’ll need to give the company personal information to be linked to your account, since you’ll need to pay via credit card or Paypal. It’s extremely difficult to pirate such a game, and so MMOGs continue to thrive on PCs. If MMOG piracy became more common, and the developers lost customers due to the implemented DRM software, I think there’d be an even stronger effort to get such games onto consoles than there is now, both because they’re safer from a corporate POV and they’re less hassle from a player POV.

The above is all personal, rambling, speculation, and I’m not going to try to find corroborating cites since it’s so very late. But it seems sensible enough to me, as someone who’s followed the industry with great zeal since the early 90s.

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I am very reluctant to buy computer games for several of the reasons listed above. Most of all, though, it’s the fact that I’m gonna have to look for and download a patch, and then I’m probably going to have to figure out how to install the damned patch. And then MAYBE my game will work. Sure, I have a reasonably up-to-date computer, but I don’t want to be on the cutting edge. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper to be on the still-sharp-but-not-bleeding edge. I do not get any joy from doing any of this. With my PS2, I just open the case, pop in the disc, and glance at the instructions. Quick gratification. I’m playing something within 5 minutes, instead of 2 hours.