An Open Letter to the Gaming Community from CD Projekt RED

[hiver]

I dont have edginess, thats just how you think about it because youre stupid.
It comes from having a big turd in your skull.

 

[Forgotten Friend]

Volourn is that you?

 

[sser]

Companies don't translate piracy directly into lost sales because that is, as you say, impossible; they typically just ballpark it instead. And they usually do that at fairly low percentages. Say 10% of 4.5m pirates "would have" bought it. That 10% is still a lot of cash.

I know the average consumer will look upon a company with derision and automatically assume everything they do is through pure greed, but people should keep a more open mind. Cynicism doesn't have to be so sharp. There is a reason the Asian market is literally nothing but MMO's and awful micro-transaction services only. That is a direct result of piracy, because it is a region where legitimate purchases are almost nonexistent. You can see small elements of this seeping into the American markets every day. Some companies are simply looking for ways to offset the cost of piracy and there is a wide enough scope of complaints (from uber-companies to indies) that I think it's kind of ignorant to scoff at it. I mean, piracy was literally the reason Crytek had to branch off into consoles. They looked at the piracy of Crysis and accounting basically told them, "We can't survive this again." And Crysis 2 being multi-platform pretty much saved them -- 15:1 pirate: purchase on the PC, if they are to be believed, some say 20:1. That's pretty staggering and even if you cut down "who would've actually purchased it" by X-% you are still sure to land on an extraordinary loss of revenue. Scoff at this if you want, but it is an issue, and it looks so much worse when there's a console control that shows loads more of consistent, steady revenue.

I do believe a good number of pirates are selfish, self-entitled assholes. No doubt about it and my view on that really can't be changed. But I'm not utterly against piracy or anything like that and I have pirated some crap m'self just like everyone else (I just see my actions in a different light, obviously). I don't condone DRM or even the wider, national measures. I just think piracy is a legitimate issue for all entertainment forms and that the companies are in the right to complain. I'm mystified as to how PC gamers think nothing wrong has come of their actions when PC gaming has been shelved as a 2nd-rate release platform even though this generation's consoles are so mediocre. I truly believe that the next-gen consoles will have the potential to seriously fuck PC gaming up -- RTS, that indie shit we're seeing, all of it. And you know PC gaming is already weak as is when one of its few strengths, Steam, is full of 2nd-rate console ports.

 

[Pelvis Knot]

I mean, piracy was literally the reason Crytek had to branch off into consoles. They looked at the piracy of Crysis and accounting basically told them, "We can't survive this again."

Again this. I just don't get it.

(obviously all numbers are imaginary) Let's say Crysis sold 1 million copies. Say they earned 20 million $ out of that. Given their expenses of 18.3 million, they recouped their losses and earned a bit.

But, the evil pirates pirated 2 million copies, taking all of their profit and plunging them into 20 million $ debt, which they barely crawled out of due to success on the consoles.



Why is it important how much you DIDN'T sell? The only thing that matters is the number of sold copies and whether that puts you above your expenses.

 

[Forgotten Friend]

I mean, piracy was literally the reason Crytek had to branch off into consoles. They looked at the piracy of Crysis and accounting basically told them, "We can't survive this again."

Again this. I just don't get it.

(obviously all numbers are imaginary) Let's say Crysis sold 1 million copies. Say they earned 20 million $ out of that. Given their expenses of 18.3 million, they recouped their losses and earned a bit.

But, the evil pirates pirated 2 million copies, taking all of their profit and plunging them into 20 million $ debt, which they barely crawled out of due to success on the consoles.



Why is it important how much you DIDN'T sell? The only thing that matters is the number of sold copies and whether that puts you above your expenses.

Because of competition with other products?

If you make 20 million in sales and the guys making halo make 200 million in sales then you go to a publisher to get funding to make more games what happens?

Sorry crytek, you guys are shit. That's what they will say.

But they would go to console anyway because even if the comparison were 100 millon versus 200 million they can't afford to make so much less if they want to get funding. But if they made any money at all on PC then they might at least cater to PC gamers a little bit. Make a decent interface and maybe even produce slightly less retarded games.

TLDR; Arguing with pirates is a waste of time, but pirates rationalizing and bullshitting is an even bigger waste of time and doesn't fool anyone.

 

[Shannow]

Companies don't translate piracy directly into lost sales because that is, as you say, impossible; they typically just ballpark it instead. And they usually do that at fairly low percentages. Say 10% of 4.5m pirates "would have" bought it. That 10% is still a lot of cash.

1. The industry does tend to equate 1 pirated copy = 1 lost sale. Just because you are slowly seeing the light, doesn't mean the industry does. And if not 1 = 1 then some other ridiculous overestimation. (Through granted, there are exceptions.)
2. Though I'd also estimate the average loss due to piracy, of the average game at around 10 - 15%, that number is still just pulled out of the ass and will wildly differ from game to game, with the actual possibilty of piracy really increasing sales. Though I know of no example for games, Monthy Python dvd sales on amazon rose 26000% once they allowed their sketches to be freely accessible on youtube, or Neil Gaiman who increased sales via piracy.

I know the average consumer will look upon a company with derision and automatically assume everything they do is through pure greed, but people should keep a more open mind. Cynicism doesn't have to be so sharp. There is a reason the Asian market is literally nothing but MMO's and awful micro-transaction services only. That is a direct result of piracy, because it is a region where legitimate purchases are almost nonexistent. You can see small elements of this seeping into the American markets every day.

What you are ignoring is that income in those countries was abyssmal and is still very low, while the demand for games is present anyway. Also many Asian players actually "worked" in their mmos. They tried to use them as a source of income, selling gold and items to westeners who actually had money. Micro-transactions are the only payment form poor addicts can afford. Make the price of games affordable in those regions or reduce profit margins for the Ipad from 60% to 30% and pay the Foxconn workers salaries that they can live of and watch game sales rise...

Some companies are simply looking for ways to offset the cost of piracy and there is a wide enough scope of complaints (from uber-companies to indies) that I think it's kind of ignorant to scoff at it. I mean, piracy was literally the reason Crytek had to branch off into consoles. They looked at the piracy of Crysis and accounting basically told them, "We can't survive this again."

There is no "cost" of piracy apart from what companies pay for DRM
The Crytek people did not consider the Crysis sales to be good enough. In their minds they didn't sell enough. Period. Not selling enough copies was the reason they decided to branch off into consoles and thus open up a bigger market (that is just as plagued by piracy as the PC market, especially in poorer countries).

And Crysis 2 being multi-platform pretty much saved them

...because they got access to a larger market.

-- 15:1 pirate: purchase on the PC, if they are to be believed, some say 20:1. That's pretty staggering and even if you cut down "who would've actually purchased it" by X-% you are still sure to land on an extraordinary loss of revenue. Scoff at this if you want, but it is an issue, and it looks so much worse when there's a console control that shows loads more of consistent, steady revenue.

And it looks much better if you actually consider the game we are talking about:
Crysis: Word of mouth was that you'd need a NASA computer to run it on full settings. A game that also needed Vista and a dx10 capable GPU to run with full settings. At a time when XP was the most used OS. Perhaps 5 - 10% of gamers actually had the hardware/OS to run the game at high(est) settings. Plus there was a lot of bad will due to the whole XP-Vista-dx9-dx10-shenannigans. A game marketed at the crowd that simply "needs" to play its games on max settings with 60+ fps. A market share that is relatively small to begin with. And you really wonder why many (the numbers you give are again pulled out of asses, it's simply impossible to measure) decided they'd try how well their systems could run Crysis before a purchase?
Crysis 2 sold better (if it actually did) due to a much larger market (consoles + any PC that can run console games). If I may pull numbers out of my ass I'd estimate that people who could actually play the game on high settings was suddenly 20-40% of PC players instead of the 5-10% of Crysis 1 days.

I do believe a good number of pirates are selfish, self-entitled assholes. No doubt about it and my view on that really can't be changed.

Yep.

I don't condone DRM or even the wider, national measures. I just think piracy is a legitimate issue for all entertainment forms and that the companies are in the right to complain.

Yep...but they should complain truthfully. They hardly ever do. Complaining about piracy is like complaining about natural desasters. They're not nice, but you have to expect them, plan with them and try to reduce their impact. A company that builds a factory on a tectonic fault line, doesn't insure it, doesn't secure it agains earthquakes and then whines that it is ruined because they didn't expect such strong earthquakes simply doesn't get any sympathy from me.

I'm mystified as to how PC gamers think nothing wrong has come of their actions when PC gaming has been shelved as a 2nd-rate release platform even though this generation's consoles are so mediocre.

1. PC gamers didn't move to consoles, devs/publishers did.
2. (Since you're trying to pin the movement on piracy) THERE IS PIRACY ON CONSOLES! IT IS JUST AS EASY AS FOR THE PC! BUT THE MARKET AS A WHOLE IS LARGER FOR MULTIPLATFORM GAMES!

I truly believe that the next-gen consoles will have the potential to seriously fuck PC gaming up -- RTS, that indie shit we're seeing, all of it. And you know PC gaming is already weak as is when one of its few strengths, Steam, is full of 2nd-rate console ports.

The difference for the last 5 - 10 years has been controls and gameplay. It's not like there has been a whole slew of games that really made use of the PC's superior power (incidentally, Crysis is the only one I can think of), so I don't see what should change simply by the next console generation catching up a little in computing power (and then falling back again as the years go on, same as with the last console generation). But we already have a thread about where we see gaming in 5 years time
Trying to pin consolification on pirates is just a (not so) new attempt to villify them. Same as with the whole "stealing" nonsense. Both probably thought up in some PR firm. And both probably part of the problem why many pirates get pushed into "ridiculous claims, selfish, self-entitled and moral-high-ground"-crowd.

 

[Pelvis Knot]

Sorry crytek, you guys are shit. That's what they will say.

Basically, what you're arguing is this:
If a game sells 1 million copies, with 10 percent profit, the devs will get funding for their next game.
But, if a game sells 1 million copies, with 10 percent profit, and also gets pirated 2 million times, the devs will NOT get funding for their next game.

Elaborate please.

TLDR; Arguing with pirates is a waste of time, but pirates rationalizing and bullshitting is an even bigger waste of time and doesn't fool anyone.

I used to pirate illegally acquire copies of games, and due to not having money for buying them, not a single company ever lost a single sale on me.
Since I have disposable income now, I buy games. If I wasn't exposed to pirated illegally acquired games before, the industry would've actually gotten nothing from me. So there, piracy increases sales and profit.

 

[spectre]

Crysis: Word of mouth was that you'd need a NASA computer to run it on full settings. A game that also needed Vista and a dx10 capable GPU to run with full settings. At a time when XP was the most used OS. Perhaps 5 - 10% of gamers actually had the hardware/OS to run the game at high(est) settings. Plus there was a lot of bad will due to the whole XP-Vista-dx9-dx10-shenannigans. A game marketed at the crowd that simply "needs" to play its games on max settings with 60+ fps. A market share that is relatively small to begin with. And you really wonder why many (the numbers you give are again pulled out of asses, it's simply impossible to measure) decided they'd try how well their systems could run Crysis before a purchase?

I think that's the gist of the Crysis problem. They basically shot themselves in the foot with the required specs.
I actually hadn't pirated Crysis until 2011, because earlier I didn'y have the rig to run it. Or more specifically, I assumed my rig isn't going to run it, so I never bothered.
Then I realized the the WOW graffix factor aside, the game proved to be pretty repetitive and boring, I finished it in like 10 hours, rushing through the second part of the game (and that's a good thing, if it were any longer, I probably would have ditched it halfway).

So, while the engine was, indeed, a respectable piece of work, the game was pretty shit - no lasting appeal, basically.
What does Crytek do then? Blame their shoddy design work on the pirates. Good plan.

 

[Forgotten Friend]

Basically, what you're arguing is this:
If a game sells 1 million copies, with 10 percent profit, the devs will get funding for their next game.
But, if a game sells 1 million copies, with 10 percent profit, and also gets pirated 2 million times, the devs will NOT get funding for their next game.
Elaborate please.
.

No that's your straw man.

The real situation is this.

PC only game 1 million sales.

Console only game
5 million sales on console.

They go into office and say they want to make a new game and need funding. Publisher says they have 1/5th the sales they need to get the project approved.

next game is console only or it's PC + console with a heavy emphasis on the importance of consoles.

And 1+1=2. But I suspect your argument is intentionally obtuse.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Consider this:

The developers invested money and publishers invested money to make and publish the game. For the sake of SIMPLICITY LETS IGNORE THE ADVERT COSTS (ALSO BECAUSE THEY ARE STUPID IN SOME BUT NOT ALL SENSE).

If EVERYBODY pirated the game, would it be stealing or not?

 

[Pelvis Knot]

Basically, what you're arguing is this:
If a game sells 1 million copies, with 10 percent profit, the devs will get funding for their next game.
But, if a game sells 1 million copies, with 10 percent profit, and also gets pirated 2 million times, the devs will NOT get funding for their next game.
Elaborate please.
.

No that's your straw man.

The real situation is this.

PC only game 1 million sales.

Console only game
5 million sales on console.

They go into office and say they want to make a new game and need funding. Publisher says they have 1/5th the sales they need to get the project approved.

next game is console only or it's PC + console with a heavy emphasis on the importance of consoles.

And 1+1=2. But I suspect your argument is intentionally obtuse.

I didn't know we were talking about console vs. PC. I figured this was about piracy, and my point is if you make a profit, what does it matter if your game was pirated 1232456 trillion times. Publishers should only care about selling more, not how many times the game was pirate, it's like judging Messi by the number of shots he missed.

 

[sser]

Developers, for the most part, are already paid when a game is shipped and they have little control over what happens to their game once it's out the door (which is why you get "GameStop/Amazon/Steam" exclusives and other crazy shit that seem so cheap). As Forgotten stated, it is the publishers who will come knocking when sales aren't met. A publisher like EA is not okay with a next-gen game like Crysis just meeting the point of profitability when a cheap Modern Warfare can land on consoles and leave a formidable crater of sales numbers. This is what I mean when I say pirates do not understand the business aspect of gaming. It is such a frail existence for developers which is why you see so many get torpedoed at their first mistake regardless of the quality of their products. EA is not going to look at a 15:1 piracy ratio and greenlight another PC-only project. They'll instead turn to consoles. Where they will sell more. And did. Yes, piracy exists on consoles, but it is not remotely comparable to PC gaming. If you look at a super-hit like Super Mario Galaxy, its piracy numbers are totally stomped out by legit purchases -- when does that ever happen on PC? The ease of success on consoles is very subtly becoming the staple. Outside of a strategy title, how many games are there made just for PC, or with the PC in mind? Very, very few. And I'm rather wary when I see the gradual, more successful application of the RTS to the console... And this overall transition applies to any number of companies. Even the Amnesia-guys said their product was pirated pre-release and now they are looking toward making their next game with consoles in mind, for one example... I'm not saying piracy is a big bad boogey man responsible for all things wrong. Or even that it's all unjustified (I understand issues of distribution, though issues of income, to me anyway, are not okay as we are talking about a luxury, a form of entertainment). But piracy does have a huge influence on how business is done, good or bad. When I see such extraordinary efforts put in to combat piracy, like the American SOPA build, I laugh at it. It's extreme. Way overboard. And yet, acknowledging these are greedy companies, they probably have a point to be made somewhere in that mess.

 

[hiver]

 

[Infinitron]

Piracy and consolization are two separate phenomenon, IMO.

Consolization happened chiefly because the incredible dominance of the NES and SNES in the early 90's in America left a massive demographic of players who knew only consoles. As soon as development tools became good enough to support going multiplatform, it was simply inevitable that it would occur.

 

[Pelvis Knot]

consoles

I don't care about consoles, I don't know whether you'll believe me but I never saw anything other than PSX and fake Nintendo 64 in person.



Okay, it seems I used wrong numbers so you don't get my point.

Say GAME X sold 10 million copies, earning 200 million dollars, on expenses of 100 million, leaving 100 million profit.
GAME Y sold 10 million copies, earning 200 million dollars, on expenses of 100 million, leaving 100 million profit, BUT it was also pirated 5 million times.

What's the difference, the profit is the same. If anything, if I was a publisher I'd rather take the second company, as it looks they have some untapped potential.

 

[Jasede]

A game has to make a lot of money to even just pay for the production costs, let alone ensure that a company gets another shot at a future publishing deal.

It doesn't happen like that, Pelvis Knot.
Game Y would have sold much less than 10 million copies if there were 5 million people who pirated it, by sheer virtue of virtually no pirate actually buying the game once he has it (why bother?), and of course the sheer ease of which piracy is possible.

I support the developers I like.



Well, can't say I am doing a lot of supporting anymore these days.


Unfortunately, it doesn't work this way. You really support publishers, but you need publishers to support the developers you like. If you pirate a game from a company you like you're telling the publisher "Hm, not worth publishing another game for them." - and the company will dissipate or be bought out.

The only solution I can see is if developers didn't need publishers, and even then, piracy would naturally hurt them quite a lot.

 

[Davaris]

Pelvis Knot
Investors look at two things: Risk and return on their investment. They want to minimize risk and maximize returns.

If you have money to invest and you are looking at two prospects, both of equal risk, you are not going to invest in something with a 10% return, if you can invest in something that can get you a 20% return. Also if console games can demonstrate a history of generating a better return than PC games, then the risk of investing in them is lower.

Not only that, consoles are easier and cheaper to develop for as well. What works on the consoles in the studios, will work on all of the players machines out in the real world. So again the risk is lower.

It is sad, but for the big money investor, consoles are the logical choice.

 

[Forgotten Friend]

Hey guys the game took in a million bucks and only cost a million bucks to make what's the problem.

 

[Pelvis Knot]

I'm repeating myself, but I'll try one more time.I'm not arguing against consoles, it's obviously much larger market with more sales potential.

Now with even more exaggerated numbers.

Game A sells 1 million copies for 10 million $ profit, and due to perfect uncrackable DRM not a single copy is pirated.
Game B sells 100 million copies, for 1000 million $ profit BUT it is pirated 6.9 billion times.

Which is better and why?

 

[Pelvis Knot]

...

This is my Steam profile
My Gog shelf

 

[Forgotten Friend]

I'm repeating myself, but I'll try one more time.I'm not arguing against consoles, it's obviously much larger market with more sales potential.

Is it, though? Or is it just that console kiddies can't pirate without getting a hardware hack most people won't bother with and because in general they are probably technophobes.

Maybe market is much bigger, somewhere in between all guys who pirate a game and none the truth lies. If PC market was a little bigger then it might get more attention.

In reality since publishers fund everything and since it's nearly impossible to make a console game that isn't braindead it's not likely to matter much, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't matter at all. At this point the bitches at bethesda don't even bother to click optimize for the windows build. They probably would rather just kill off the PC platform completely.

Now with even more exaggerated numbers.

Game A sells 1 million copies for 10 million $ profit, and due to perfect uncrackable DRM not a single copy is pirated.
Game B sells 100 million copies, for 1000 million $ profit BUT it is pirated 6.9 billion times.

Which is better and why?

When did DRM suddenly come into it?

There's no effective DRM for PC because it would have to be built into the hardware or into the infrastructure and laws of the internetz. Sadly they are working hard to make this happen and it's coming closer every day.

But you don't seem to get the idea of competition. If game B sells one copy more it gets funded and the other doesn't. Anything that's not a smash success gets killed off, they can just pump that money into the other title's budget and get even more awesome to happen when the user clicks a button.

 

[Davaris]

Game A sells 1 million copies for 10 million $ profit, and due to perfect uncrackable DRM not a single copy is pirated.
Game B sells 100 million copies, for 1000 million $ profit BUT it is pirated 6.9 billion times.

Which is better and why?

Such an example only makes sense, if you have a time machine.

Investors can only guess at future trends, by looking at what has happened in the recent past. Which has a better record of profit? PC or consoles? Which is easier to produce games for?

If PC games were more profitable than consoles, it would be wall to wall PC games, in the computer game stores, like it was in the old days. The investors only care about maximizing profits.

 

[Pelvis Knot]

If PC games were more profitable than consoles, it would be wall to wall PC games, in the computer game stores, like it was in the old days. The investors only care about maximizing profits.

My starting point in this thread was when sser stated that pirated copies constitute losses. I argued that it's not important how much copies were pirated, but how much the game sold, and that is all. I never mentioned consoles. I don't care about consoles.

Is it, though? Or is it just that console kiddies can't pirate without getting a hardware hack most people won't bother with and because in general they are probably technophobes.

I said I saw only a few consoles IRL, but the games played on them were invariably pirated.

When did DRM suddenly come into it?

There's no effective DRM for PC because it would have to be built into the hardware or into the infrastructure and laws of the internetz. Sadly they are working hard to make this happen and it's coming closer every day.

But you don't seem to get the idea of competition. If game B sells one copy more it gets funded and the other doesn't. Anything that's not a smash success gets killed off, they can just pump that money into the other title's budget and get even more awesome to happen when the user clicks a button.

I shouldn't have mentioned DRM, unimportant for the point I'm trying to make.
For the rest, same answer as above

 

[Davaris]

My starting point in this thread was when sser stated that pirated copies constitute losses. I argued that it's not important how much copies were pirated, but how much the game sold, and that is all. I never mentioned consoles. I don't care about consoles.

Consoles have been around longer than PCs, but for some reason, PC gaming (which was king), died around the same time, all those PCs started hooking up to the Internet.

So I can see why you don't want to talk about consoles, because their profitability and the added difficulty in sharing games on them, shoots your point down in flames.

Taking your point to the extreme, if no one buys a game, yet thousands of people are playing pirated copies of that game, you are saying it does not constitute a loss, for the company that made it.

That is a silly point and you know it. lol

Not that I care about Piracy. I accept it as a fact of life. Due to zero law enforcement, more and more people think paying for things online, is optional and obviously (DUH...) that means less sales.

 

[Infinitron]

My starting point in this thread was when sser stated that pirated copies constitute losses. I argued that it's not important how much copies were pirated, but how much the game sold, and that is all. I never mentioned consoles. I don't care about consoles.

Consoles have been around longer than PCs, but for some reason, PC gaming (which was king), died around the same time, all those PCs started hooking up to the Internet.

As long as we're talking about the United States, I dispute that PC gaming was ever 'king'. There was certainly a time when PC gaming was the coolest and trendiest - the golden age of Doom/Quake/Unreal before first person shooters were successfully migrated to consoles - but demographically, you still had hordes of NES/SNES/PSX gamers for whom PC gaming was an alien thing.

Again, development tools matter and technology matters. As soon as it became technologically feasible to move towards multiplatform, it was inevitable that it would happen.

What we should be mad about is that nobody tried to "educate" console gamers into using a mouse or at least a trackball. If there was ever a killer game that shifted console standards towards use of mice, we could have at least avoided consolization of UI and controls in PC ports.