The Dude said:
Sometimes you are an idiot Xi. One guy posts some data from a patching service and draws conclusions from it. Another guy makes some random comment on how that guy is full of shit and how devs are gods knowing everything about the sales/piracy for their game. Yeah, both are as valid.
So we agree that it's all just opinions? Good, because I was being attacked for lacking
factual evidence. My point was that there is no reason to believe either side, which is why I brought up the most relevant point. What kind of sales difference would there be if piracy was at a 0:1 ratio. Obviously we can't know for sure, but it makes me chuckle every time someone
believes that nothing would change. Maybe it would not be as significant as some would like, but lets not pretend that 0:1 would have no effect. It would!
The Dude said:
FYI, there is NO fucking way of knowing the actual number of pirated copies. The channels are too many, the data sources too diverse. Sure, you can check a few and pad this and that together, but the number would at most be a very weak estimate. I find i likely that the 15:1 just is something the Crytek dude pulled out of his ass, since he has an interest in making the "failure"
lol
of his game blameable on something else rather than the actual game itself.
It's a statistic that is highly interpretable, but even if the numbers were 5:1 it's quite staggering. Then if we take this 5:1 ratio and break it down to a 1.5:1 ratio it's still quite staggering. There is an effect, and this is the undebatable point.
As for the CEO interpreting the numbers as to promote his personal agenda, you're probably right, but that doesn't mean he's completely wrong. Again, imagine a 0:1 ratio and think about how the environment would change.
People tend to purchase more if they
have to. It's not the other way around, as in, if people are able to steal more it wouldn't affect sales.
Are we also to believe that more people wouldn't physically steal if there were less enforceable laws preventing it? No, instead they save up the money and buy what they want. Thus is the way the system works, and is why piracy causes a break down.
(Insert Random - Capitalism is the root of all evil HERE)
As always, my point is that there are other, better ways to increase the quality of games being made. Instead of attacking it from these angles, instead most of you resort to digital theft. How does the theft of games increase the likely hood that they will make something you like? They have no guarantee that you will ever purchase, so why take the risk? Then we see how they simply aren't taking the risk anymore. They're moving to the target audiences that
do purchase and all we get is shiny turds.
What if it is later determined that piracy
was the cause of the decline in gaming quality? As in, developers started focusing on the audience that was most likely to purchase, utterly removing all aspects of game design the pirates like, because the pirates are too daft to purchase them anyway. Then we get this vicious cycle of games degenerating into an even worse state, not a better one as some may believe, because now everything is designed to be highly marketable instead of highly desirable.
We could probably look at this from different angles, but this is just one suggestion, and I may be wrong. I will give you that.
that'll be a fitting punishment for maxis for hyping such a crappy game
