Great job, Bioware!

[Vault Dweller]

Wasn't there an Arcanum demo? Maybe people simply didn't like Arcanum enough. The game did sell very well for that type of game.

It's a fact that the game pirated a lot. Are you saying that the pirates tried it but because it sucked they decided not to buy a copy?

I mean you can't press a key to skip the intro movie and all the other bugs and problems the game had.

An invitation to steal it, I agree.

Any my explicit implication is that most of the retards that pirate mainstream AAA games really like the games they pirate, and wish the developer to make more of these kind of games so they can pirate them.

And the obvious answer is back it up.

CoD4, a very popular game, sold 383k on PC and over 6.5 mil on consoles. The conclusions should be rather obvious, no?

 

[DefJam101]

Seems to be that if you are never going to purchase the game either way, pirating the game has no direct effect on the developers/publishers. However, several other secondary effects can occur:

Before we discuss the secondary effect I'd like to say that assuming that most pirates would have never bought games they steal is a HUGE assumption. It's quite possible that that's what you do, for example, but overall, I'd say that most people steal stuff, including games, for 2 reasons: a) because they can and b) because getting stuff for free is ALWAYS better than paying for it. That's a universal wisdom (take that, Kant!)

So, while in theory nobody suffers because pirates wouldn't buy it anyway, that's simply not true.

Oh, I should be more specific.

I do think that the vast majority of people pirate for reasons similar to what you just said; I'm just ignoring that for the time being to focus on something else. I noticed people throwing comments around about pirating being morally wrong and that it's better off just not buying, and I wondered why. Whether or not this is true has little to do with the overall problem of piracy, since it only applies to a certain group of pirates.

1) As you and I have said, pirating the game may encourage others to do it who would have, under normal circumstances, purchased the game. There are and will always be people out there who simply do not want to pay for games, if you pirate the game you indirectly support those people and encourage that type of behavior. Unfortunately, is is almost impossible to measure the statistics of this... You can't exactly keep track of all the 'potential' customers, apply "pirate influences" to them and then see if they pirate or not. It's impossible.

Well, that Reflexive quote about piracy, anti-piracy measures and outcomes was very interesting.

I remember seeing that quote, but I'm still not sure if you can take that without a fair amount of reasonable doubt... Unfortunately I know very little about the game, so I can't give you anything accurate. I need a second to look back at it..

edit:
Looking back I do see a few things that create reasonable doubt in those statistics, the easiest one is the nature of the game itself. Ricochet Infinity is an extremely small game, no more than 20-30 megs. The creates a very easy way of downloading that may lead to increased piracy. Just speculation, of course, but people might be more compelled to pirate something if they can download it off of Rapidshare in 30 seconds.

Does this matter? Maybe. I can't tell you for sure. I'm not really talking about the total effects of piracy, rather the different 'types' of pirates and how much some of them really effect the market.


The most interesting part of the quote I found was this:

As we believe that we are decreasing the number of pirates downloading the game with our DRM fixes, combining the increased sales number together with the decreased downloads, we find 1 additional sale for every 1,000 less pirated downloads. Put another way, for every 1,000 pirated copies we eliminated, we created 1 additional sale.

This could very well be a coincidence, but 1 additional sale for every thousand pirates seems to support the 'some of them wouldn't have bought it anyways' theory. Hell, maybe even the 'most of them wouldn't have even bought it anyways' theory. Of course, as stated above, this is not very trustworthy since the game is only 20-30 megabytes and can't be properly compared to AAA blockbusters.




Question to VD the developer, not VD the gamer:

Purely hypothetical..

Would you rather have someone pirate and play your game than not play it at all, if they went around and told their friends about the game (who may, in turn, buy the game)?

 

[Hamster]

CoD4, a very popular game, sold 383k on PC and over 6.5 mil on consoles.?

Aren't Xbox torrents even more popular than pc ones?
This seems like a more convincing example:

Instead, the Playstation 3 version of UT3 almost tripled the PC number selling 86,633 copies in its first month, despite the console's small install base.

Worst selling console with controls unsuitable for UT3 , but protected fom piracy, outsold PC? Now thats an argument.

 

[WalterKinde]

UT3 PC version according to most of the online community was a let down, ut2k4 i believe had p2p versions as well yet sold well.
Bought my collector's ed of ut2k4 after playing the demo version with friends across all 3 Operating systems.
UT3 didn't have either a linux or mac client version this time around so that was one black mark against it in my book and also after reading reviews both professional and from others users didn't seem worth a buy.

 

[pkt-zer0]

because getting stuff for free is ALWAYS better than paying for it.

As illustrated by Troika going under due to insufficient sales? Yeah, it's ALWAYS better.
I would think it's in the interest of the consumer that those developing quality games actually stay in business.

Well, that Reflexive quote about piracy, anti-piracy measures and outcomes was very interesting.

The one that concluded that 999 out of 1000 pirates wouldn't buy the games they pirate, right?

CoD4, a very popular game, sold 383k on PC and over 6.5 mil on consoles. The conclusions should be rather obvious, no?

...Console 'tards buy any shit you throw at them?

 

[elander_]

It's a fact that the game pirated a lot.

I don't know because i haven't seen any fact on this? How can you prove that someone has played a pirated game? If you can then you can also put him in jail.

The fact is some game genres cannot be as easily mainstreamed as other games and that may be one of the reasons for Arcanum not to reach their expectations.

Also this:
http://www.canada.com/topics/technology ... 8d&k=25113

"Call of Duty 4, one of the best-selling games of the year racked up almost 7 million sales accross all platforms, with only 383K of that figure coming from PC."

I guess nobody's playing it on PC and people who pirated it wouldn't have bought it anyway. *rolls eyes*.

CoD4, a very popular game, sold 383k on PC and over 6.5 mil on consoles. The conclusions should be rather obvious, no?

OK that maybe the chinese and the russian. What i don't agree is that i'm a thief because i borrowed or brought a game from a friend to see how it plays because the publisher refused to provide a damn demo. Call me a thief but i have the fucking right as a customer to play a demo of a game that costs 50E or more and unless gives me a good explanation for why they can't offer a demo i don't see any reason to follow the law that only benefits dubious schemes.

Another example, if it wasn't for "abandonware" sites most games would have been lost forever. Judges don't think games are art and couldn't give a damn if games are lost or not. In this situation people have no other choice unless breaking the law to do the "right" thing.

 

[DefJam101]

UT3 PC version according to most of the online community was a let down, ut2k4 i believe had p2p versions as well yet sold well.
Bought my collector's ed of ut2k4 after playing the demo version with friends across all 3 Operating systems.
UT3 didn't have either a linux or mac client version this time around so that was one black mark against it in my book and also after reading reviews both professional and from others users didn't seem worth a buy.

As a Unreal Tournament fan from the beginning, I can say without a shadow of doubt that UT3 was the worst game Epic has ever produced. I am appalled to have payed for that consolized frat-boy piece of shit. The entire UT community that I know of has abandoned the game, what remains are the GoW fanboys as far as I can see. The vast majority of them never even bought it after playing through the pathetic demo. Gears of War was worth my dollar more than UT3 was.

I don't think this is a fair example of pirating destroying a game, because the game was only a disappointment to long-time Unreal Tournamenters. The console 'tards had never even heard of UT, and would buy the game no matter what. It would be just another 'Amry of 2' or 'Uncharted' to them. The PC fans were subjected to 2 years of hype and then having a half-assed POS tossed in their face. Epic literally betrayed their PC fanbase (a very active and dedicated one), and as such, no one on the PC bought their game.

 

[ricolikesrice]

why do you fall for this shit ?

CoD4 only selling 383k on PC is utter bullshit. i m not saying VD is wrong/right in his opinion but he just brought up a VERY questionable source ....

even here on the codex were many threads talking of game sales in 2007 and its pretty common knowledge that CoD4 did indeed sell 7 million units platformwide (though some sources talk of 9 million).... of which roughly half was for PC.... i.e. that canadian website forgot a zero behind their 383.000.

i mean seriously, how can you not even question that ? CoD4 been number 1 on pc sales for weeks/months and still is in the top 10. it beat crysis (which has been confirmed to sell 1 million btw by EA/ crytek) silly in sales charts.

for reference a recent news item in pc gaming was that age of conan sold 400.000 copies in under a week. so if you believe a #1 charts contender like CoD4 couldnt manage to sell more than 383k copies you really need a healthy dose of reality.

then again, i wish those numbers were true, because CoD4 sure is a really unsinspired piece of shit for the mainstream masses......

 

[obediah]

Also this:
http://www.canada.com/topics/technology ... 8d&k=25113

"Call of Duty 4, one of the best-selling games of the year racked up almost 7 million sales accross all platforms, with only 383K of that figure coming from PC."

Take the numbers and twist, twist, twist!

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/50951

7 million global sales, 383K North America PC sales

The NA sales ratio as 10:1 for 360C.

I don't see any evidence to link this to piracy rather than 360 smashing the PC in MP-centric FPS games (which is not new).

Your slanted article found 16k copies on mininova, but failed to check how many 360 copies are available for rental around the world, or sitting on e-bay, or used in game shops. I wouldn't be surprised if 75,000 copies of 360 CoD4 were bought explicitly for rental.

I guess nobody's playing it on PC and people who pirated it wouldn't have bought it anyway. *rolls eyes*.

And if you only made an un-breakable DRM scheme, the 10 million pirates in china and russia that downloaded it would buy it for $50. You think that $500,000,000 reward would see people making better DRM *rolls eyes*.

 

[Brother None]

Any my explicit implication is that most of the retards that pirate mainstream AAA games really like the games they pirate, and wish the developer to make more of these kind of games so they can pirate them.

And the obvious answer is back it up.

Oh, that's easy.

Lumpy's logic is based on a disgruntlement with the industry, a wish to see a guaranteed quality product cycle from a developer that you give money. These cycles do exist, most tellingly in Stardock and certain indie companies, but also in companies like Valve (if I buy Orange Box I know the money will go to making Pink Box or whatever) or Blizzard. It is unknown how much this guaranteed return cycle is actually a part of the relative successes of these companies.

Now, assuming that pirates are not inherently different from other gamers in any other sense than that they don't pay for their games (the fairest assumption of all possible options), their consumer patterns naturally follow those of the industry as a whole. In other words; just like consumer patterns involved the guaranteed return cycle are a vast minority in the paying gaming consumer base, they are a minority in the pirating base.

The only possible way to refute this would be to claim that all pirates are disgruntled consumers. However, if that were the case, why would shitty games be pirated - and pirated en masse? Does not compute. It's a possibility, but it is the least likely possibility.

And yet this is considered thieving too. I don't care if the law says i have to lower my pants and let myself get screwed by the judge whenever he feels like it. The law is to be useful and protect the citizens from schemes that serve no good purpose and not to be blindly followed.

Rule of law functions exactly because individuals do not get to determine when laws are "no good".

I noticed people throwing comments around about pirating being morally wrong and that it's better off just not buying, and I wondered why. Whether or not this is true has little to do with the overall problem of piracy, since it only applies to a certain group of pirates.

Actually, any separation of one form of piracy from another as "part of the problem" is artificial by definition. Once you recognize piracy as a problem, all piracy becomes a problem because it supports the system. That doesn't mean every individual act of piracy should be bible-thumped, but it does mean every individual act of piracy is support for the problem as a whole.

but i have the fucking right as a customer to play a demo of a game

You have no such right. You think such a right exists, but it doesn't. Want to force publishers into conceding these rights? Don't buy or play their games. Pirating just gives them excuses.

i.e. that canadian website forgot a zero behind their 383.000.

The fuck? Those numbers are from NPD, not some Canadian website

Here, Gamasutra. Of all PC titles only Burning Crusade broke 1 million retail NA. That's pathetic.

However, I agree with this piece by Valve that it's not that simple or dramatic, and think Vince is grasping if he really wants to bring up CoD4 as a serious argument. I would say that piracy - much like it did with music - has effectively killed the carrier for PC gaming, with PC gaming retreating from retain shelves and retail sails at an all-around low. Now you can't really do that without hurting sales of PC as a whole, but it's also ridiculous to claim that damage to PC retail equals damage to PC sales as a whole.

 

[wjw]

The one that concluded that 999 out of 1000 pirates wouldn't buy the games they pirate, right?

Since i posted the quote: Put the article in the right perspective. We are not talking about a great AAA game here, but some tiny 20 mb game. Most people never even heard about it, it had no hype, ...

 

[Jaime Lannister]

tldr yet another muthafuckin piracy thread

 

[Jaime Lannister]

same song different chorus (actually same chorus)

 

[Kraszu]

Mainstream title has little appeal to many peaple, enough to take it for free, but not enough to care if new game like that will be produced.

Big part is in the middle pirate some, and buy some.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

omg what will i do when the death of pc gaming comes my hands will never be dirtied by a console controller

 

[Brother None]

tldr yet another muthafuckin piracy thread

oh wow ur coments r so orgnal u must be rly asmrt

 

[Jaime Lannister]

let me show you that game x sold better on consoles, i'd get the data but my internet is busy downloading gears of war

 

[Jaime Lannister]

tldr yet another muthafuckin piracy thread

oh wow ur coments r so orgnal u must be rly asmrt

SPOILER: I am.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

yarr

 

[Jaime Lannister]

yarr

 

[Jaime Lannister]

fuckin

yarr

 

[ricolikesrice]

...

so what if it was outsold 10:1 in NORTH AMERICA

worldwide CoD4 did well on PC selling just as many PC copies as console copies apparently. kinda interesting though that when it comes to CoD4 the US is barely 1/10 of the pc gaming market.
funnily enough CoD5 made by treyarch (which made CoD3... console EXCLUSIVE) is apparently comming for PC, i.e. i guess the pc sales cant have been too bad :p

the article however (and VDs post) made it sound like CoD4 on PC *worldwide* was outsold 10:1 which is utter bullshit and i m merely pointing out linking/posting utter bullshit isnt helpin his case (which i partly agree with)

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Why does it matter that CoD 4 sold well/badly on the PC? You can't pick ONE GAME and use it to gauge the entire PC gaming market, especially when the best-selling PC games have been PC exclusives, and CoD 4 is multi-platform. Even 300K sales on the PC will be enough to make a profit when it's a port, hell, look at the Witcher which sold 600K on PC and was a huge success or something.

 

[Brother None]

Re: ...

worldwide CoD4 did well on PC selling just as many PC copies as console copies apparently.

While I still don't really support the whole CoD4 argument, you're really going to have to source that.

 

[szoreny]

If thinking that our company is greedy for wanting some money in return for you playing a game that cost us a great deal to make... hey, whatever helps you sleep at night.

Me, I wouldn't want to be a thief. But maybe that's just me.

The sooner your publishers realize they're being defrauded outright by the companies that produce their copy-protection schemes the better for all of us.

How much does EA pay SecuROM to dickslap its customers?

Think SecuROM and its ilk preserve your publisher's bottom line?

Look at Stardock. I remember a company post pertaining to Galactic Civilizations 2, where SD discovered that Starforce, still in its glory-days, had posted links on its website that led to pirated versions of Gal Civ2. Starforce was trying to illustrate the horrid fate of un-copy-protected titles....

(OH GOD a game on TORRENTZZ!!! the HORROR! How absolutely fucking UNUSUAL)

Stories like that make this humble poster *extremely* angry. Angry at the lengths copy-protection companies will go to push the lie that their products somehow stop or even discourage piracy.