Video Game Piracy --- A new Look.....

So over the past year or two, you can go to any video game board and hear about how piracy is killing the pc gaming market. I dont dont argue that fact but, in recent weeks i think its fair to say that PC gamers are the only one to blame for piracy. There is a Huge push of console pirating that largely goes unnoticed by Companys in the business. Heres some examples:

Fallout 3 = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC - not Pirated...yet

Dead Sapce = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC - not Pirated...yet

Fable 2 = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC - not Pirated...yet

Saints Row 2 = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC -not Pirated...yet.

These games are to be the "biggest Sellers of there year" and im sure they will get pirated on PC at some point but Companays never mention the rampant Piracy on consoles. The Funny thing about this whole thing is that for the most part , if you Pirated a game for your PC, you knew you were only getting half of the game, as you couldnt go online at all. But when you Pirate a copy of an XBOX360 game, Not only do you get the game for free but you get all the online play as well. Maybe they should start putting in CD key Checks in Console games just like PC games, it obvious that MS LIVE doesnt catch them!

thanks for taking the time to read me rants..feel free to flame me....

"but Companays never mention the rampant Piracy on consoles."

Becuase those games will still sell like hotcakes on the consoles...and they still will make tons of profit. The console market is so huge that piracy has little effect on overall sales...that's not true of the PC market.

100,000 copies lost to piracy can make or break a developer in the pc world...

I think the reason the PC game world is doing so poor right now is due to several reasons.

1. Consoles are standardized. Each console is exactly the same. No PC is exactly the same and so developing games that will run well across the board is difficult. You have to include multiple settings and things that will allow for performance. Obviously everyone wants to run on maximum and people whine they can't. That puts a strain on things. Because of this, devs often put too high or too low graphics and detail into the game and either make the game unplayable by the majority (Crysis) or ridiculously cheesy and unnoticed.

2. There are far fewer games that come to the PC in general. The vast majority of games that do come to the PC are generally sub-par. Even games that do well don't do as well as they do on consoles. Sins of a Solar Empire, for example, did awesome on the PC and had no piracy protection. None. They originally went with a "Well, you have to have a cd key and register the game to get updates" but those were leaked within days of the game being released. Yet the game still did well. This is because it was a GOOD game instead of some sub-par game with high graphics that no one can run and those who can think it sucks.

3. When a game fails, it's immediately blamed on pirates. This is untrue. A major portion of pirates won't buy the game even if they couldn't get it for free. If the game sucks, why dump money on it? I've been recently burnt by games and I fear wasting money on games that do poor, so I just don't buy PC games anymore with the exceptions of ones I've been allowed to test (say, at a friend's house or as a demo or something). After Hellgate and Universe At War both being a complete and utter waste because of bugs (despite their fairly high ratings), I just can't take the monetary loss for something I know I won't spend my time on.

4. People are poor. The economy sucks. Games aren't going to do as well. Yeah, a lot of console games are expensive and sell like mad. People also dump months and months of money into WoW and similar PC games. PC has its strong games. Consoles have their strong games. Devs need to look at themselves as the reason why they're games are failing, not pirates.

4. People are poor. The economy sucks. Games aren't going to do as well. Yeah, a lot of console games are expensive and sell like mad. People also dump months and months of money into WoW and similar PC games. PC has its strong games. Consoles have their strong games. Devs need to look at themselves as the reason why they're games are failing, not pirates.

AustXilo

Allow me to rephrase.

The economy is not doing well. This causes fewer games, overall, to be sold. For those of you who wish to respond with, "Madden sold 1.2 million copies in the first two weeks" you are correct. There are games that are going to do well on the console. There are games that are going to do well on the PC (such as WoW). However, as a whole, game sales, console sales, etc, are going to be down due to recent market crashes. People can't afford to spend their money as thoughtlessly as they have in the past. I, for example, just bought Fable II. Can I really afford to buy games that cost $70 (I got the LE)? No. But I did. There are a lot of people in the same situation as myself who won't pay for the game because of the lack of money. The decision of whether to buy a game or not comes down to hype and how well the game is made. I know Fable will be great, so I opted for it. The devs are what make or break games, not pirates.

x360 wii ps2 psx xbox and pc can be pirated and belive years now console piracy is a lot higher so stop with pc piracy crap because

easy: to make changes to your console to play pirated copies

medium: to apply cracks for pc that disable the drm and securom

hard : to convince the drm and securom that you are not a pirate

A lot harder: to make sure that the crack works properly!

hmm the easiest is to be a console pirate from my point of view, its consoles are like pc pirating, download from the internet but without cracks basicly its the same thing pc pirate= console pirate=movies pirating=music pirating, all high very high... so people should stop blaming pc piracy!

You think it's harder to replace an exe file with a crack then it is to modify your console's hardware in order to play burned disks?

Really?

Some of the things people say really boggles the mind...

Piracy doesn't exist in a bubble. It's not piracy, the end. It's piracy relative to sales.

Let's say a console game sells four million units and is pirated eight million times. If the dev is getting 30% of each sale, they're up $72m by the time it hits 4m units. That's the next two projects bought and payed for.

The same game on the PC sells a million five and is pirated two million times. If the dev is getting 40% of each sale, they're up... $30m by the time it hits 1.5m units. That's the next one project bought and payed for.

I'm just fudging the hell out of these numbers for the sake of argument, but I think they ring true. It doesn't matter how much a game is pirated if it also sees healthy sales. It's when a game isn't seeing quite such healthy sales that those piracy figures, even if they're far lower than on the consoles, start to matter a lot.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying PC games are pirated less often than console games. I'm just saying that even if they were pirated much less, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference because the console developers still get more money becase they simply tend to sell more.

Piracy does not exist in a bubble. There's piracy and sales to consider. Just looking at one or the other is pointless when discussing this topic.

Piracy doesn't exist in a bubble. It's not piracy, the end. It's piracy relative to sales.

Let's say a console game sells four million units and is pirated eight million times. If the dev is getting 30% of each sale, they're up $72m by the time it hits 4m units. That's the next two projects bought and payed for.

The same game on the PC sells a million five and is pirated two million times. If the dev is getting 40% of each sale, they're up... $30m by the time it hits 1.5m units. That's the next one project bought and payed for.

I'm just fudging the hell out of these numbers for the sake of argument, but I think they ring true. It doesn't matter how much a game is pirated if it also sees healthy sales. It's when a game isn't seeing quite such healthy sales that those piracy figures, even if they're far lower than on the consoles, start to matter a lot.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying PC games are pirated less often than console games. I'm just saying that even if they were pirated much less, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference because the console developers still get more money becase they simply tend to sell more.

Piracy does not exist in a bubble. There's piracy and sales to consider. Just looking at one or the other is pointless when discussing this topic.

fatshodan

Very very well said.

Piracy doesn't affect sales that much. Pirates won't buy game anyway.

Fallout 3 = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC - not Pirated...yetrevdirty

Dead Space = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC - not Pirated...yetrevdirty

Fable 2 = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC - not Pirated...yetrevdirty

Saints Row 2 = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC -not Pirated...yet.revdirty

1.-I know how companies can avoid pirating. They can upload their games to torrent servers a week before the game gets released. then they place a file on it that automatically sends them the downloaders ip, instantly tracking their home address. If they live in the continental U.S, they can be fined accordingly.

2.-If that doesnt work, than another idea is to place special files inside every game, such as the ones you buy at the store. If somebody wants to rip it, fine, let them do that. But as soon as the DVD detects a reverse engineering program (to rip the game), it will place malicious files in the rip. I don't mean a virus, I mean something like half of the screen is missing in the game, or you cannot use the keyboard in game.

The people who purchase the game wont notice a thing, however, piraters will be awstruck when their game has half of a screen, or their keyboards and mouse do not function in-game.

You figured it all out...now go make a million dollars lol...

1.-I know how companies can avoid pirating. They can upload their games to torrent servers a week before the game gets released. then they place a file on it that automatically sends them the downloaders ip, instantly tracking their home address. If they live in the continental U.S, they can be fined accordingly.Gamerkat

Fable 2 = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC - not Pirated...yetrevdirty

your right, no tsure why i put that in there. But 1000's will be playing it tonight and 10's of 1000s by weekend and its that many ppl that wont be buying it, minus the few true fans that will play it this week end and still buy it for the devs.

Saints Row 2 = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC -not Pirated...yet.revdirty

It does exsit on pc just not released yet, getting released in Nov

You guys are limiting yourself to torrent downloads for xbox360 etc.

Many people just rent from blockbuster or rogers or w/e game rental store, burn the game and play it on a modded xbox360.

That's a huge part in piracy as well, on top of bit torrent sales, though no one ever seems to include that.

So over the past year or two, you can go to any video game board and hear about how piracy is killing the pc gaming market. I dont dont argue that fact but, in recent weeks i think its fair to say that PC gamers are the only one to blame for piracy. There is a Huge push of console pirating that largely goes unnoticed by Companys in the business. Heres some examples:

Fallout 3 = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC - not Pirated...yet

Dead Sapce = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC - not Pirated...yet

Fable 2 = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC - not Pirated...yet

Saints Row 2 = on Xbox360- pirated = on PC -not Pirated...yet.

These games are to be the "biggest Sellers of there year" and im sure they will get pirated on PC at some point but Companays never mention the rampant Piracy on consoles. The Funny thing about this whole thing is that for the most part , if you Pirated a game for your PC, you knew you were only getting half of the game, as you couldnt go online at all. But when you Pirate a copy of an XBOX360 game, Not only do you get the game for free but you get all the online play as well. Maybe they should start putting in CD key Checks in Console games just like PC games, it obvious that MS LIVE doesnt catch them!

thanks for taking the time to read me rants..feel free to flame me....

revdirty

The reason for this is that all of these games are coming out for 360 before PC. It has nothing to do with piracy being more rampant on the 360, because it isn't.

1.-I know how companies can avoid pirating. They can upload their games to torrent servers a week before the game gets released. then they place a file on it that automatically sends them the downloaders ip, instantly tracking their home address. If they live in the continental U.S, they can be fined accordingly.

Gamerkat

You don't need to place any file anywhere. Torrenting is Peer2Peer. I can directly view the IPs of everyone downloading any game without even having to download the files themselves.

It does exsit on pc just not released yet, getting released in Novrevdirty

2.-If that doesnt work, than another idea is to place special files inside every game, such as the ones you buy at the store. If somebody wants to rip it, fine, let them do that. But as soon as the DVD detects a reverse engineering program (to rip the game), it will place malicious files in the rip. I don't mean a virus, I mean something like half of the screen is missing in the game, or you cannot use the keyboard in game.

The people who purchase the game wont notice a thing, however, piraters will be awstruck when their game has half of a screen, or their keyboards and mouse do not function in-game.

Gamerkat

[QUOTE="Gamerkat"]

2.-If that doesnt work, than another idea is to place special files inside every game, such as the ones you buy at the store. If somebody wants to rip it, fine, let them do that. But as soon as the DVD detects a reverse engineering program (to rip the game), it will place malicious files in the rip. I don't mean a virus, I mean something like half of the screen is missing in the game, or you cannot use the keyboard in game.

The people who purchase the game wont notice a thing, however, piraters will be awstruck when their game has half of a screen, or their keyboards and mouse do not function in-game.

NamelessPlayer

I would think if people couldn't steal pc games either way, then they would buy it. You have to understand that people who paid $1000 on their computer would likely start to buy pc games for their computer if they couldnt pirate. The thing I mean is that only the pirated copies are affected by files in the game. It would be alot better if like 200,000 people bought a game instead of 100,000 people. Sooner or later people will learn that the only way to play pc games is to buy them.

[QUOTE="Gamerkat"]

2.-If that doesnt work, than another idea is to place special files inside every game, such as the ones you buy at the store. If somebody wants to rip it, fine, let them do that. But as soon as the DVD detects a reverse engineering program (to rip the game), it will place malicious files in the rip. I don't mean a virus, I mean something like half of the screen is missing in the game, or you cannot use the keyboard in game.

The people who purchase the game wont notice a thing, however, piraters will be awstruck when their game has half of a screen, or their keyboards and mouse do not function in-game.

NamelessPlayer

The same companies moving off the PC because of piracy will learn, if they havent already, the #1 rule of piracy....

...Go where the games are.

If you move all your games to a platform with little/no piracy, that is where the pirates will migrate to. Go where the action is. It's rule #1. A pretty simple rule.

The same companies moving off the PC because of piracy will learn, if they havent already, the #1 rule of piracy....

...Go where the games are.

If you move all your games to a platform with little/no piracy, that is where the pirates will migrate to. Go where the action is. It's rule #1. A pretty simple rule.

TeamR

If, say... the next gen of consoles switched to a locked-down digital distribution format with no 'dvd' to play from, or some kind of horrifically expensive format like the PS3's current Blu-Ray, that does a pretty good job of shooting piracy in the foot. It's enough of a pain to download an entire 50gb bd-rom, and having a burner? lol. it's far more possible on those things though, because they basically ARE drm machines, and are far more so when online connectivity figures largely into the picture and they can ban you / your account.Makari

We'd have to see. It's not as if any of that has totally stopped pirates before, and it's doubltful to stop them in the future. Hinder, sure...but stop completely? Nah.

As far as the ps3 blueray, I think if there was enough demand, someome somwehre would find an easier solution. PS3 backups exist but why bother when you can get 99% of the games for xbox? If the ps3 was the only option, whos to say the pirates wouldnt be running games off large cheap hard drives or stripping unneeded data out of blueray rips? Who knows.

The proof is in the pudding right now, though. Game devs are mostly operating on consoles now, and look at all the big realeases this season....console versions pirated and released early. Just like GTA4 earlier this year and Halo3 last year.

The same companies moving off the PC because of piracy will learn, if they havent already, the #1 rule of piracy....

...Go where the games are.

If you move all your games to a platform with little/no piracy, that is where the pirates will migrate to. Go where the action is. It's rule #1. A pretty simple rule.

TeamR

lol, so true man, so true

The same companies moving off the PC because of piracy will learn, if they havent already, the #1 rule of piracy....

...Go where the games are.

If you move all your games to a platform with little/no piracy, that is where the pirates will migrate to. Go where the action is. It's rule #1. A pretty simple rule.

TeamR

Beautifully said; it's the exact same issue with all of the shady tech related activities we hear large companies cry wolf about - Windows is targetted by virus writers more often because of a higher prevalence of Windows based systems floating around in the wild (though that's not to say there aren't other motives).

It takes relatively no effort to pirate a PC game, whereas a fair bit of planning and modifications have to go into pirating 360 games. I don't know anybody that has a modded 360 out of fear of getting the three-red-lights and having no warranty to fall back on, but almost all the PC gamers I know pirate games regularly - usually just to rebel against the likes of DRM-toting developers.