I’m going to write more on this later when I’m not so annoyed but I’m REALLY getting tired hearing from game developers who blame piracy for their game’s poor sales.
If you make a game for the console demographic, don’t expect to make huge PC sales, okay? Oh, and if you make your game require hardware that only a couple million users have, guess what? You’re not going to sell a lot of units.
More later.
here, here
no fear of pirates here
just look what we do to them in the Sins game
burn'em
A-flipping-men to THAT! I'd still be playing the next versions of Splinter Cell if UbiSoft didn't require a major hardware upgrade with every new release. That and adding StarForce "protection" but that's another topic.
I loved this article on this other site by somebody by a different handle who is definately not you or your views on the matter.
You've talked about this before, but it's been a little while since the last time you did so. I take it something in particular has gotten your dander up (again)? Do tell!
I have followed the link http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/303512/Piracy_PC_Gaming
And it is a post made by Draginol. And for the unawares , Draginol = Frogboy = Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock
"If you make a game for the console demographic, don’t expect to make huge PC sales, okay?
This. Champions Online. My WoW guild was tired of WoW. We heard about CO. We were all drooling; waiting; longing for it to come out. Most every person in my guild was thinking of going over to it when it came out.
I've played Champions since the 80s, so I could'nt wait either. I decided to be the "test dumby" by getting the game and playing it first. It was obvious withint a couple hours they made it so it would work on a console. Dumbed down. Simplified. Controls that just felt mega-odd on a keyboard. A "hello-kitty" like crafting/economey (I have not had to use the bank or auction house once in 30 levels).
So, although I had dozens of people ready to leap on this game, they are still playing WoW, because if they had actually made CO for a PC, and the PC MMO types, it may have been great and kept us playing for years. But it's really just a console game made to work on a PC too when you really get into it. They have already lowered the price of CO greatly; added extra free months; and are offering free weekends and bonuses for those that recruit friends in order to keep people from leaving. Sad, sad, sad.
I hope to see a good article, not some none-fact bull.
Another way to fight piracy, is to bring more games to Impulse, like Torchlight
Arrgh!!!! Avast Ye Mateys! I come to drink yer blood and rape yer wimin!
Sorry, I just could not help but remember the "scientific" study you did equating the falling of piracy to AGW. It is a classic.
Not only that, but some of the devs that seem to bitch the most about "poor PC sales" aren't just making a console game that's a crap port, but they are releasing it for the console long before the PC! News flash: Many people have a PC AND a console, sometimes more than one! As such, if you release on a console first and a PC much later, well expect your PC sales to be weaker than your console sales by a large margin. This isn't because the PC users are being evil pirates, it is because many of them already got it on the console. They aren't going to go buy it again for the PC just to make you happy.
I too get really annoyed with all the piracy bitching. Ok, if it is such a big problem, then how come so damn much money is being made on PC games? The PC is still the biggest platform, bigger than any of the consoles in terms of game revenues. They over all console market is bigger, of course, but that's three platforms against one.
It is just whining and trying to deflect responsability for making a poor product. Goes double since it isn't as though console piracy is non existant. You fire up your favourite torrent site and oh look, there's an Xbox 360 category, a PS3 category, a Wii category.
I really think more often than not it is their weak attempt to explain to shareholders why their game isn't doing well. They don't want ot admit it isn't good, instead they'll try and blame people downloading it.
Later was like a long time ago. Still annoyed?
Just like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, was made with consoles in mind, PC gamers were "Left 4 Dead" (pun intended) as console games are less likely to be pirated since not only will the game itself need to be copies correctly but the cosoles themselves need to be altered in order to make the games work as oppose to alterring the game itself.
My fellow online group also had plans on getting COD MW2 but instead opted to get L4D 2 and Bad Company 2 since Activision decided to screw us. Although something tells me they will eventually come around since it's been pulished that Activision and Infinity Ward did not leave dedicated servers out of the game but simply blocked them. Basically they left themselves the option of doing a patch to added the dedicated servers at any time by simply releasing this block and giving more console access.
Epic is the all-time champion of this nonsense. Gears of War PC did badly. Why? Because the multiplayer reliability and interface was ass, and while it might have been a 10/10 GOTY on Xbox it is merely average in the large pool of AAA PC FPS'. Epic: OMG piracy is causing these poor sales!
Unreal Tournament 3. Widly regarded as a downgrade from UT2004, was clearly consolized, and very foolishly released at the same time as the blockbuster Orange Box. Epic: That's it with these pirates giving us bad sales! We're abandoning all PC development from here on!
Meanwhile, it did just as poorly on the PS3....
Don't let the door hit you on the way out of the PC market Epic.
That's a shame really. Epic used to be one of the good ones. They would eventually release a patch that would remove the the need to have the CD in the tray. The original UT could be copied and moved any dang place you wanted but I bought the game in several editions because I liked it so much.
I aboslutely hate, hate how some developer, or more often the publisher, puts out some watered down console port to the PC and then sits back and pretty such says the game didn't sell because the PC isn't vialable anymore. Hey, there might be some fans out there willing to throw out their money for anything the minute it hits the shelves, but the rest of us generally don't buy watered down ports. Hey top of th line graphics aren't high on my list of must haves, but if i sit down and play game that feels like a port... <growl>.
I hated the camera in CO. UT 3 was a bargain bin title when I picked it up, even though i really enjoyed 2004, and even then mapmixer was required for me to get the game to do what i want. Now, anytime i see a game released for the 360 and the PC and the PS3, I have to wade through pages and pages of text looking for feedback about how screwed the PC version is (ghostbusters).
The industry created a nice ripe breeding ground for pirates by releasing substandard games with little or no support, no ability to get a refund when you wind up with total crap, this ridiculous hardware race to the latest and greatest graphics (often leaving gameplay behind) and throwing heavy handed DRM on top of that. It's nice to see someone in the industry (again) acknowledge a couple of reasos PC gamers legitmately reject games without claiming PC games are a dying breed.
That's like saying kids are violent because of violent movies/games....people just got that reflex to quickly search for a patsy and put the blame on others rather than having a good look at themselves and do a serious moral inventory of themselves.
I've been computer gaming since Doom, Doom II, Duke Nukem. We have a LAN group that goes back to those days. We almost always have somebody who's downloaded an 'evaluation' copy of almost any game published. Most of the group will buy retail copies of any of the games we like and play consistently. We all upgrade our computers regularly, and most of us build our own machines. I would have to believe that our group is pretty much a 'hard core' gaming group.
All that being said, I really am discouraged by the shrinking pc gaming market. Maybe 1 shelf at Best Buy instead of the 3 we used to have points out what we've come down to. We still get some incredible games, but console ports like Modern Warefare2 and the 4 player limit on Left for Dead, or Rainbow 6 really leave a lot of potential unrealized, stopping at the console limits, rather than using the full PC potential.
With Impulse, Steam, and other distribution that helps eliminate pirates, I can't believe EA has eliminated PC versions of Madden and NCAA football. If you do a 360 version, it can't be that tough to make a PC version. And that's $100 per year that they would get from me and some of my PC buddies. Don't blame piracy for not making the game for PC. Use Steam as a guideline to get your games out there 'unpirated'.
With pc games, requiring the registration code for patches and online play (especially if the game is online based) goes a long way to preventing piracy on their own. And like mikhail says making better games that take advantage of pc's and their much looser hardware restrictions would be a huge boon for the pc gaming market.
It doesn't matter. Piracy is just a scape goat. It is the one excuse the lazy exec can use to say "I can't be responsible for this".
Bad design? Bad market plan? buggy code? No target audience? Lack of innovation? Anything else then the exec has to answer for.
How many privately held companies are giving the piracy excuse?
yep now time to go pirate demigod >.>
jk
Right on, Brad. Well said indeed.
the game came out on just the PC with a 4 player limit. I am fairly shure that the game machanics would not scale well to an 8 player per side limit. its much more social puging with 3 other players, 4 players a side makes the game good it does not limit it. Suvivors would become imposible to finish off.
I though they wanted everyone to buy MW2 on the console not the PC. They produced worrying play test previews (overpowered and complex kill streaks, a fun but not essentail game mechanic) that would dicouaged people to preorder it. And then overpiced it, and released it with the worst mutiplayer funtionality of any (good) game in some time (and no way to change the game, no moding). They could not possibly have expected this game to sell to PUG and (semi) compeditive players. Leaving just the people who would pay more than 50USD for a 6 hour campain (not a lot). PC games with money are just not that stupid, i would like to think.
Co-op was the selling point for me, not vs.
No kidding. GTA4 and Saint's Row 2 are good examples of decent games with atrocious PC ports. No real attempt was made to patch them either. Not to mention PC ports often come 6 months (or more!) after the initial release; at which point initial interested has died down and most people who really wanted to play it have already played it. Resident Evil 5 and SF4 PC didn't sell that well Capcom? Gee, I can't imagine why people didn't rush out to buy games most people have already played through on a friend's console (or their own). Unsurprisingly, I imagine a lot of people pirated them to see what the PC version was like, rather than pay $50 for a game they've already played. In fairness, it may not have been Capcom's choice to delay them like that; but you can bet some executive blamed the 'weak' PC market for the low sales, and not the poor timing.
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