Piracy is killing PC Gaming? Nooooo..

[TetsuoShima]

Seriously, no!

 

1. The presented figures are a gross misrepresentation of reality. (kinda lost the article where they show the figures, but they were showing a steady decline in spending)

2. Microsoft is doing its part in killing pc gaming. (Less than 10% of gamers have a dx10 capable platform. Blame MS! Tell you what, I don't have one either, in fact, I've never gamed less than since MS started selling Vista (coincidence?))

3. CASUAL pc gaming is bigger than ever. I'm talking huge here, like a few hundred times bigger than 'real gaming'. It's not just on pc either, consoles are the same, though the difference between 'casual' and 'real' is way smaller, since even most casual games cost money on consoles. (Guess which gaming platform MS thinks doesn't matter... :cyclops: Only the one that sells like 2 times better than XBOX360 and PS3 combined.)

4. Most people who pirate games wouldn't buy them if they weren't 'freely' available. Why? They simply can't afford to buy as many as they pirate and don't care enough about them to buy 'em. :D

 

And then I'm not even talking about useless DRM which only annoys the 'honest buyers', since the pirates simply strip the drm out of the executable and are done with it, in fact, I know from personal experience that many people simply buy a game for real, only to replace the exe with a cracked version simply to get rid of all the useless drm. There have been games (the latest well known release was less than a year ago) with no copy protection at all, that became a huge hit and sold many more copies than all those drm filled games.

 

Conclusion, piracy isn't killing pc gaming, The pc gaming market is larger than ever and the 'high end' pc gaming industry is killing itself, by imposing standards people don't want/need and ignoring the largest part of the games market, thus shrinking their own market share all by themselves.

 

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14743

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

 

(there are plenty more articles detailing this position, but there are the latest 2 I ran into)

 

ed. fixed horrible their spelling O_O

[Finabair]

"Back in the day" (before batteries and RGB graphics were invented), I was an avid PC gamer. Matter of fact, I still am and constantly go on quests for good quality, story-filled PC adventure games. I was "there" when Pong was invented but it never quite caught my eye. I was always being chided for playing text-based adventure games a la Zork and Colossal Cave by my Apple-owner friends who were playing Zelda. "Why don't you join the 20th Century and buy an Apple?" they'd ask. I was a child of radio stories like "Fibber McGee and Molly" and enjoyed painting my own imagery. So it was natural that text-based adventures would interest me: I could imagine the scenery and what NPCs looked like. In other words, I was hooked.

 

Then I finally broke down and bought a PCAT with ugly cyan/white/blue graphics and played my first graphic adventure: Loom. Man...it was great! I thought this would be the only computer I'd ever need to play these cool graphic adventures. Unfortunately, the computer industry had other plans and started cranking out multi-colored, high-end computers with, of all things 5-1/4" floppy drives. Horrors! Now my 8" floppies were dinosaurs (I still have them, though...love to blow the kid's mind with how huge and unwieldy they were) and unusable. Time to upgrade...again, and again, and again as computers became monstrously powerful and the gaming companies followed suit to garner the newer computer buyers.

 

The last upgrade I went through was just a month or so ago. I received "Overlord" (the sequel, sort of, to Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2) and my computer couldn't run it. Graphics card wasn't powerful enough, RAM wasn't large enough, processor wasn't fast enough. You get the picture. So, in order to play a game that cost $59.95, I had to spend a grand on a computer upgrade.

 

Why is there so much PC game piracy? Well, first off, it's a ego-booster. ("Look what I can do!") Second, it's a great way for a teen to supplement his allowance. ("Psst, want to buy a copy of 'Doom' for $5?") And third, who wants to spend the kind of money game companies charge to buy a PC game that may not work on their system only to find it's unreturnable because the seal's been broken?

 

Microsoft? Naw. I don't blame them. Vista? Just downgrade your new computer to XP. Who is to blame, then? I blame the software producers kowtowing to the hardware industry. Free enterprise, yeah, that's the demon. Kind of like how attorneys stay in business: they pander to each other by writing contracts that only other attorneys can properly interpret.

 

That's my opinion and I'm stickin' to it.

[Tenebrae]

Preaching to the choir, old boy.

 

It's just the industry playing the victim card... I imagine the companies that churn out the utterly useless DRM software are doing their best to whip up a frenzy.

 

Also - casual gamers are scum, subhuman scum.

[Ulysses]

Is Piracy killing PC Gaming .....no not at all...its more like Games consoles that damaging the PC gaming, as the software companies know they can rip off people alot more as the market is bigger.

 

If anything trying to crack a new pc games is alot harder than it used to be, at one time all you needed was a cd cracl patch....now its much harder.

[Finabair]

Also - casual gamers are scum, subhuman scum.

 

Indeed, they are! When I fork over the cash to buy a PC game, I play the heck out of it. I fiddle with it, try different things to catch any "Easter eggs," and receive no end of pleasure from it.

 

Following a tip I read online, I managed to play "Myst" (the first episode) in only three moves! Well, that was cool, but I'm glad I didn't read about it until I'd played it several score times. B)

[hayden]

The whole PC-Gaming market is fairly unreliable imo. On a console you know what your buying, your not going to get home and find out that your Console is to ancient to play this totally awesome game you just brought. Why? Because its made for that hardware.

 

i think this would deter people from buying a PC game and may even lead to this person having to download a pirate copy. However most PC games these days on playable on-line and can offer much more interactivity in doing so.. This kind of feature has intense security and would be extremely difficult if not impossible to get around on a large scale.. And in the end this would lead people to purchase the game in the end anyways.

 

I don't know how they could possibly say that piracy is killing gaming as its still in its infancy, hardcore gaming cafes and LAN parties and even MMORPG's are still brand new in the grand scheme of things.

How long have people been playing soccer for?

 

Also - casual gamers are scum, subhuman scum.

 

Indeed, they are! When I fork over the cash to buy a PC game, I play the heck out of it. I fiddle with it, try different things to catch any "Easter eggs," and receive no end of pleasure from it.

 

Following a tip I read online, I managed to play "Myst" (the first episode) in only three moves! Well, that was cool, but I'm glad I didn't read about it until I'd played it several score times. B)

 

Where is this tip?? i would like to see this in action.

[Amnot Borg]

when I can afford software/pc games I often just read the box to see if my system can handle it. no big deal. I have sampled some games before buying them just to test my system out for problems before paying for something I can't use.

[TetsuoShima]

The whole PC-Gaming market is fairly unreliable imo. On a console you know what your buying, your not going to get home and find out that your Console is to ancient to play this totally awesome game you just brought. Why? Because its made for that hardware.

 

I take it you haven't heard of the GTA IV problems on the PS3? :p

[Finabair]

Where is this tip?? i would like to see this in action.

 

This is the closest I can find, Hayden. This one looks like it will take you about 5 minutes to finish the game. I'll pop my Myst back onto my (new-fast) computer and see if I can recreate what I did. Seriously, it was about three moves and game finito!

 

http://cheats.ign.com/ob2/068/000/000622.html

[hayden]

The whole PC-Gaming market is fairly unreliable imo. On a console you know what your buying, your not going to get home and find out that your Console is to ancient to play this totally awesome game you just brought. Why? Because its made for that hardware.

 

I take it you haven't heard of the GTA IV problems on the PS3? :p

 

I think i know what you mean, i didn't know they were wide spread though. But still its on Rockstar's interests to correct the situation for users.

And all i have to do press a button when the release information for the update is sent to me. There were similar problems on cod4.  :-\

Where is this tip?? i would like to see this in action.

 

This is the closest I can find, Hayden. This one looks like it will take you about 5 minutes to finish the game. I'll pop my Myst back onto my (new-fast) computer and see if I can recreate what I did. Seriously, it was about three moves and game finito!

 

http://cheats.ign.com/ob2/068/000/000622.html

 

Hahaha, never knew that. What a silly game that was.. Did you ever get the other ones? I got Riven but none after that. they kept looking better and better though.

[bbbb]

Piracy, yeah that's the reason the industry is shelling out crappy games that you play once and then discard...

 

The gaming industry needs to stop blaming its customers. If it weren't for us buying their games they would have taken up electrical engineering instead of computer gaming by now. A lot of the games being made nowadays are nothing more than eye candy. They offer no real gameplay and leave the gamer wishing he had kept his 60 dollars.

 

Star Trek games could be filling this void but with the amazing creative talent at Bethesda and the guys making star trek online, the fans have been left with nothing. I think it's up to us to make the games we want to play. Any of you got programming skill? If so you probably have what it takes to make a star trek game.

 

Microsoft has nothing to brag about when it comes to PC games. They need to finally connect with their customers and make good games.

[Finabair]

Myst...Riven...Exile...yes, I bought them all -- even the URU offshoots. One look at Myst's graphics and I was hooked. I even went so far as to buy and play Pyst, the parody game. Ah, but that was another lifetime, when my wallet was fatter  :P

[Guest]

Myst...Riven...Exile...yes, I bought them all -- even the URU offshoots. One look at Myst's graphics and I was hooked. I even went so far as to buy and play Pyst, the parody game. Ah, but that was another lifetime, when my wallet was fatter  :P

 

 

Ahaa, i remember that one..

 

But i must agree with you, the graphics of these games at the time was far superior than nearly anything else on the market.

[USWhoFan]

I saw a TV show yesterday called The Unauthorized History of Video Games on CNN and they said that when Myst came out it was the first time that something other than a board game was the best selling game of the year. (Maybe it was Christmas)

[vystral]

Then you have games that defy reason. Case in point: Sins of a Solar Empire.

 

Sins is an amazing strategy game of unrivaled depth and scale. The interface is beautiful and the learning curve is an easy one. Sins brings elements from RTS and turn-based strategy games together in one incredible product.

 

Why does it defy reason? The game has no copy protection. None. Not a serial or activation anywhere to be found.

[Killeravocado]

Then you have games that defy reason. Case in point: Sins of a Solar Empire.

 

Sins is an amazing strategy game of unrivaled depth and scale. The interface is beautiful and the learning curve is an easy one. Sins brings elements from RTS and turn-based strategy games together in one incredible product.

 

Why does it defy reason? The game has no copy protection. None. Not a serial or activation anywhere to be found.

 

I loved that game... I saw it in Gamestop, relized that my computer could handle it... Then went to a priate website to get it. There really wasn't any serials or DRM or anything... The priated version even played online... via Ironclad... The game was so great that I went out to purchase it, just so I could add the game to my collection... When I opened the box, there was no DVD. When I bought it, the seal wasn't broken. I don't know what happened. But I vowed never to buy a game agian.

[Guest]

Then you have games that defy reason. Case in point: Sins of a Solar Empire.

 

Sins is an amazing strategy game of unrivaled depth and scale. The interface is beautiful and the learning curve is an easy one. Sins brings elements from RTS and turn-based strategy games together in one incredible product.

 

Why does it defy reason? The game has no copy protection. None. Not a serial or activation anywhere to be found.

 

I loved that game... I saw it in Gamestop, relized that my computer could handle it... Then went to a priate website to get it. There really wasn't any serials or DRM or anything... The priated version even played online... via Ironclad... The game was so great that I went out to purchase it, just so I could add the game to my collection... When I opened the box, there was no DVD. When I bought it, the seal wasn't broken. I don't know what happened. But I vowed never to buy a game agian.

Then you have games that defy reason. Case in point: Sins of a Solar Empire.

 

Sins is an amazing strategy game of unrivaled depth and scale. The interface is beautiful and the learning curve is an easy one. Sins brings elements from RTS and turn-based strategy games together in one incredible product.

 

Why does it defy reason? The game has no copy protection. None. Not a serial or activation anywhere to be found.

 

I loved that game... I saw it in Gamestop, relized that my computer could handle it... Then went to a priate website to get it. There really wasn't any serials or DRM or anything... The priated version even played online... via Ironclad... The game was so great that I went out to purchase it, just so I could add the game to my collection... When I opened the box, there was no DVD. When I bought it, the seal wasn't broken. I don't know what happened. But I vowed never to buy a game agian.

 

haha, i think its funny how you finally decided.. hey i'm going to buy one for a change and their wasn't even a game in the case.. And they say Piracy is a crime. HA, what would they know.

[bbbb]

That case is really shocking to me. As a paying consumer I expect all games to be sold with the game in the case! Otherwise it, as said above, will simply drive people to pirate and download games more often. To me it's simple, really. It should be just as simple for the industry. Serving the customers-good. not serving the customers-bad!

 

EDIT: Ok after seeing this post I really had to come back and say that I am not trying to oversimplify anything for the industry. I am simply voicing my frustrations over this situation.

[Guest]

Amen, I think we all need to vent frustration over this topic.. The way i see it is, if its on the internet it should be free. simple as that. :P

[Ulysses]

Its not bloody Piracy thats killing PC gaming but more like the developers and publishers either more bothered about the console market than the pc market.  Look at games like Call Of Duty 2 & 4, they release the game and then you have to patch it several times to iron out the bugs in the game, I think Cod2 had 4 patches in total and already with Cod 4 we are already up to patch 1.3.

 

On about the same game, Infinity Ward have already released a new map pack for the consoles and us pc owners are still awaiting for the pc version of this map pack, they claim it has been delayed due to technical problems which I find hard to beleieve, more like they will make more money with the consoles map packs than the pc version (which will be free).

 

On this note it is also worth mentioning that the pc games do have one massive advantage over the consoles and thats the community of map makers/level makers.

 

The other side of this also is that for a really good gfx card you can spend over £250 on some cards which puts people off.

 

Piracy has always occurred within gaming even way back in the days of the C64, I always remembering having a C64 backup board plugged in which allowed you to connect 2 C2N cassette recorders and record one tape onto another, and to this day consoles are also effected by piracy so its not just the pc market!