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Epic Blames Pirates For Console-First Development
- Thread starter Zombie James
- Start date
Majima Everywhere System
Member
It's not like consoles get a pass either. Xbox 360 is just as fertile a ground for piracy.
In the end, people will make games for a system that is ripe for pirating (DS) if it is popular enough. The PC is not popular enough. There are many reasons for that.
In the end, people will make games for a system that is ripe for pirating (DS) if it is popular enough. The PC is not popular enough. There are many reasons for that.
I <3 Memes
Member
ymmv said:
You are arguing whether or not piracy is a crime. I agree that it is. It's an extremely minor crime but it is still a crime.
But that has nothing to do with this thread. This thread is about Epic blaming piracy for lost sales (that they never actually lost anyway) and using piracy to justify why they don't sell games on PC anymore. Epics games do not and will not sell on PC for reasons that are entirely related to quality , not piracy.
lsslave said:
What the fuck are you smoking?
#1 You advocate that you determine the terms of obtaining the product. That is simply not how capitalism works. You can sit there and stamp your feet until you're blue in the face, but saying "Oh no, I advocate that people download it to TRY it then buy it" is not your decision to make. Period. If the publisher does not offer a demo up to try, then they don't offer it. You don't get to decide you want one. You can tell them you would like one, and they may listen, but you're talking about circumventing that. In addition, a 'demo' is typically NOT the entire damn game. You telling me you haven't played something short or whatnot and end up beating it then decide 'nah it's short it's not worth the money'....after you've FINISHED the product? Cause that's what happens. People play it, maybe some of them even convince themselves they'll buy it, but once they're finished with it out of sight out of mind. This fallacy that a reasonable amount of pirates turn into legitimate customers is ridiculous. We both know it VERY rarely happens.
If Youtube videos of a game let you make an informed decision, fine. I fail to see how watching a video of a game is the same as buying it. That's like a trailer for a movie, that truly is advertisement, it's giving you an idea, a taste, it's not giving you the product itself at no cost.
Nice try to attack the language though instead of the message behind it. Face it, your argument boils down to "I as a consumer refuse to pay for a game I can't try first" and then if the publisher tells you you can't, you do it anyway? It's a tantrum, straight up. It's the same as your mom telling you when you were little that you couldn't have a piece of candy and you decide to throw down on the floor of the supermarket or whatever.
#2 WHAT. Seriously WHAT? You think piracy makes prices lower? No, Piracy runs developers out of business and discourages them from even bothering. I'd love to see your economic theory on how it lowers prices. All your point boils down to is that you have some innate, irrational distrust and hatred of businesses. THIS IS CAPITALISM. If you think they don't treat you fairly, you don't buy their product. Straight up. Games would not be absurdly priced, because nobody would buy them. Your argument is nobody would buy them because they could steal it? NO. Nobody would buy them because they don't want to pay for it, there's a fundamental difference between being unwilling to pay a price for something, and actively going and stealing it instead. Piracy raises the opportunity cost of making a game, it shrinks your possible market every time someone downloads your product.
You have absolutely no way to justify this practice. Give it up.
I <3 Memes said:
The reasons are not 'entirely related to quality'....Epic isn't talking about THEIR games specifically, they're talking about games in General. The Carmack quote early on sums it up nicely - Can you point to piracy as THE determining factor? No, probably not. Is it *A* large determining factor? Of course. The true factor is simply that profits on PC don't justify it as the lead platform. Games will still come to it, but they'll be up-ported from console specs. Nobody can point to a single root cause because there isn't one, there are several. But the idiots in this thread simply saying "LOL EPIC, UR GAMES SUCK NOT PIRACY, PIRACY IZ COOL YO" are just trying to justify thievery. Epic's quote is completely correct, piracy hurts, their bottom line is better on consoles. Who cares if he says it like a jackass or not? There's nothing to discuss really. acting like piracy is not a factor on the PC is just ignorance, whether you think it's "THE" factor or not.
I <3 Memes said:
Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, whether it is a crime or not is in the letter of the law (and might vary from country to country).
However it is fairly illegal, anyway since it's probably likened to counterfeiting and other real piracy stuffs (and how these more real stuffs could be dealt harshly in the past) it's probably a crime.
now the extent of the punishment that's either for a judge to decide or already in the letter of the law (like it is in the country I'm in)
I <3 Memes said:
Epic would still be a PC-only developer if the PC games market was thriving. The incredible amount of piracy is the reason why the vast majority of PC devs have turned to consoles for added revenues and have now become primarily console developers for who the PC version is an afterthought. The truth is that the market for PC games is languishing compared to a decade ago and that has everything to do with rampant piracy that drove both developers and publishers to consoles. It's staggering how many people in this thread are blind to this fact - or they want to hold onto the "piracy is a victimless crime" fallacy.
Starchasing
Member
Capitalism actually works that way....
when a market does not offer the prices that buyers are willing to pay... then other markets emerge... until all demand is met...
but
if those markets are not LEGAL then it is a black market, but a market anyways
pc game are thriving in places where EPIC has no bussincess... for example facebook or steam
BobsRevenge
I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
Maybe if Epic still made games I wanted to play I'd care about them trolling the PC like this.
Honestly, I haven't really bothered playing any Epic games since UT2k4. I'm sure many paying PC customers of that game are the same way. I played a little Gears of War coop, which I was hyped for, but found it wasn't actually that fun. Played through most of Gears of War 2 coop and played a little online, and it sucked. The entire campaign was so obvious, linear, and completely tacky. Played the UT3 demo and it was a clear step down from UT2k4 with an insulting and offensive GUI.
Hopefully People Can Fly can help Epic finally make something worthy of how awesome they used to be. Come on Epic, show me you've still got it.
Honestly, I haven't really bothered playing any Epic games since UT2k4. I'm sure many paying PC customers of that game are the same way. I played a little Gears of War coop, which I was hyped for, but found it wasn't actually that fun. Played through most of Gears of War 2 coop and played a little online, and it sucked. The entire campaign was so obvious, linear, and completely tacky. Played the UT3 demo and it was a clear step down from UT2k4 with an insulting and offensive GUI.
Hopefully People Can Fly can help Epic finally make something worthy of how awesome they used to be. Come on Epic, show me you've still got it.
Vampire Hunter Vizier
Neo Member
Kobun Heat said:
qft, piracy is a problem but it serves more as an excuse for developers...
Look at crytek for instance, iirc crysis sold around 2~3 millions (they exceeded the 1 million threshold only a few months later it launched) yet they're still developing crysis 2 for consoles.
Sho_Nuff82
Member
HK-47 said:
Haven't Nintendo and Blizzard come out openly against piracy?
Vampire Hunter Vizier said:
Gonna need to see a source for that.
Mael said:
We've already discussed digital vs physical. I've already discussed why I think it's irrelevant to the distinction of theft vs non-theft. The fact that digital goods can be infinitely replicated at no cost doesn't mean everyone has the right to do so and to distribute such replicas, or that it's OK for you to knowingly shortcut the vendor and get your copy from someone else. The end result of taking something you shouldn't is the same, the corruption of the vendor's ability to have exclusive control over the terms of the trade of their software is same, the absence of renumeration to the vendor is the same. These effects are all the same whether you steal from their store, or copy a game from someone else's repository. Hence my personal contention that morally, it's effectively no different to theft. I am perfectly aware that the law treats them differently, and that is fine. I'm not arguing necessarily that it shouldn't be treated differently. What I am arguing about is more my own judgment on it morally. I see lots of thinly veiled self-justification around these points wrt piracy, people persuading themselves they're not doing anything wrong (not HERE necessarily, but they're the same points pirates use) or that they aren't 'stealing'. IMO they should be under no illusions that effectively in terms of what it means for the vendor's control over his goods and the terms of their sale, and in terms of getting something for nothing when you shouldn't, what they're doing differs little from theft, from just taking the game (digitally or physically) from the vendor's own store directly for example.
By your argument that the nature of digital vs physical goods presents the key distinction means that if I could, it'd be ok for me to copy software off of a vendor's server in spite of their terms of sale, to 'steal' a copy from their server just because I'm not decrementing some physical count of goods. That's not the key - the key is whether the vendor allows you to make the copy or not.
To center the argument around this is to argue that the packaged and downloadable software business model is fundamentally flawed. If that is in fact the case, just don't complain when software - and games - turn exclusively into a network service in the future. Which I've no doubt is going to happen.
Mael said:
We also already discussed this, and it's a bullshit argument. You can apply the same argument to theft from a physical store if you want. 'I wouldn't have bought it anyway'.
Mael said:
I'd certainly consider it theft if you are stealing from someone else the exclusive rights over their software or copyrighted material.
BobsRevenge
I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
It kinda makes sense though, doesn't it? I mean, Crysis has been relevant for 3 years now as the game to see what your computer can do with. Its not the kind of game that stops selling after an initial release.Sho_Nuff82 said:
gburgess10
Member
Sho_Nuff82 said:
From http://www.incrysis.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=612:
That was the Q3 2008 news story, so surely it must have gone even higher by now.
Combichristoffersen
Combovers don't work when there is no hair
Draft said:
But what if it is the least successful console exactly because there's no piracy for retail PS3s?
shyamalantwist.jpg
BobsRevenge
I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
Only because its impossible to know the truth.FLEABttn said:
Some dude posted this blog thing in the recent Crysis thread, and I found it interesting so I'll repost:
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy
Sorry to the dude who originally posted it for not giving credit, I forgot who you were.
gofreak said:
That doesn't people that provide counterfeited money or anything thieves, it's wrong on many level to counterfeit money but it's, not now nor ever, stealing.
Counterfeiters are counterfeiters NOT thieves.
gofreak said:
Let's all shoot all corrupted officials because they're doing treason against the state (punished by death in most nations) since they're doing somethign that goes against the state's interest.
Stealing is different in that someone else CANNOT get the good you stole, it's like stealing money and making counterfeited money.
If steal it, the one who was mugged can't use the money, if you make a copy, his money is worth less and as such his money is now LESS valuable.
If you make infinity amount of money the money is actually worthless leaving the wouldbe mugged with useless money => he can't buy anything and as such is in the same (or worse situation) than if he was mugged.
gofreak said:
And you will see all the corrupted officials say they had perfectly valid reasons to do what they did, heck according to most prisoners the prisons are full of innocent people wrongly arrested.
gofreak said:
Well yeah, you're not stealing you're making a copy for your own use.
If you steal the plakes used by the central bank to make yourself some money on your own you didn't steal any money, you actually made more money than should exists.
gofreak said:
They can do whatever the hell they want, however they shouldn't expect the consumers to keep buying their products.
Don't come complaining when you've driven your consumers away when you treat them like shit (which is essentially what all corporations are doing)
gofreak said:
Nope, I'm not saying that AT ALL.
I'm saying that potential money is NOT real money, if you have the perfect idea and someone stole it from you and you have no way of actually making the idea a reality, NOBODY will come and hand you money the other guy made with your idea.
But that's basically delving into patent here.
gofreak said:
That's like saying that making a product without using someones patent is theft, it's not IT's PATENT INFRIGEMENT
BobsRevenge said:
Posted that one on the first page, it really is an interesting read. Be sure to check out this one as well;
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Saving-a-penny----pirating-the-Humble-Indie-Bundle
Even when pirates can pay close to nothing the game will still be pirated, rendering the "Oh it's too expensive" argument useless.
One thing that pisses me off a lot is the fact that people consider all PC gamers to be pirates, I spend tons of money buying games on Steam and retail copys, this whole PC = piracy-land is not entirely true.
I'ld also love to see sales figures from digital distribution etc. AFAIK PC gaming is actually doing pretty good, especially since you can go out and buy a $150 grafics card and play the latest games...
In this case it's just Epic using a lame excuse imho.
BobsRevenge
I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
Yeah, I honestly think the key to squeezing out the potential pirates from the will-always pirates is to best the convenience of piracy. Luckily for PC gamers, Valve really stepped up and did it, then added value ontop of that. And now we have competitors getting in on the market too.koji said:
Starchasing
Member
Our laws and conceptions are based on a finite good world.
In the only world you can make infinite copies without degrading the original. We need to take advantage of a infinite goods economy in a way that creators are compensated through a free market.
In the only world you can make infinite copies without degrading the original. We need to take advantage of a infinite goods economy in a way that creators are compensated through a free market.
Sho_Nuff82
Member
Mael said:
So why are you still dancing around the moral quandry posed by gofreak? Whether it's patent infringement, piracy, counterfeiting, or stealing, at the end of the day you're still acquiring goods/services you didn't legitimately earn or pay for (and you weren't freely given).
I'm sure everyone here has their own personal exceptions as to what is appropriate with regards to DRM, but I'm sure we can at least agree on a definition of "right" and "wrong".
Sho_Nuff82 said:
.Me said:
edit :
seriously if we're arguing that counterfeiting or any other lesser knows things that are illegal are wrong, we're so farther gone than I thought we are.
It's not like we're all 6 and need to be told that that stuffs that are illegal are for a reason.
BobsRevenge
I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
At least its subpar graphics at 1080p with SSAA, anisotropic filtering, and 60 fps.LM4sure said:
edit: I wonder if NVidia or ATI will ever start publishing games. It makes sense, doesn't it? They are going to have to push newer chip designs, since they make a good chunk of change on innovation. So, why not get games out there that can use it better?
charlequin
Banned
I'm really fuckin' lollin' at the idea that the PC platform died from piracy because it was suddenly easy to pirate games in the mid-2000s or something. I mean, definitely there wasn't unbelievably rampant piracy going on when the PC gaming platform was born in the 1980s, and I definitely didn't know anyone who played pirated games when PC gaming was at its absolute creative and commercial apex in the late 90s. Right?
Theft is something specific. Copyright infringement is a completely different thing that is also illegal. Copying Is Not Theft, and in fact even the underlying reasons that the two acts are criminalized are different -- theft is criminal because of the direct harm of loss it causes to the victim, while copyright infringement is illegal (originally) because of the aggregate disincentive it creates for all artists.
When people use this rhetorical device, it's like saying that having your house burgled is actually being raped because you had your privacy disregarded and violated -- it's an inflammatory analogy that does not hold up to even fairly superficial scrutiny and it certainly should not be used as the basis for actual legal reasoning. If you want to argue why copyright infringement is wrong, there are plenty of very good reasons that do not involve fundamentally misrepresenting the action being performed.
This is also why personal copyright infringement continues to be a major issue despite the efforts to brand it as a different crime -- people intuitively understand that it isn't comparable to theft, typically make their first moral judgment on whether it's acceptable based on that knowledge, and so arguments that are obviously inaccurate do little to sway public opinion. (It's like hyperbolic anti-drug ads -- it's good to encourage kids not to use illegal drugs, but many of these ads actually undermine their own purpose by being so obviously full of shit that people disregard their message.)
More specifically, the way PC hardware evolved, off-the-shelf department-store PCs became dramatically worse gaming systems than they had been in the past. In 1994, any sufficiently new off-the-shelf Dell or HP box would play 100% of PC games. In 1999, an off-the-shelf box wouldn't play things as nicely as would be ideal, but at least they'd still play with software rendering. The rise of integrated graphics cards that literally could not be used to play even older games was one of the big factors that killed the casual gaming market and created the false appearance that a gaming PC was inherently a huge investment.
No, simply a statement of facts.
The fact that piracy exists, is widespread, and cannot ever be meaningfully stopped does indeed have victims: the full class of all creators of copyrighted artistic works, who suffer from the uncertainty and the loss of control over their work's distribution that piracy results in; and paying users, who get stuck paying money for something that other people are getting an equal (or even worse, better) experience from after downloading illicitly.
However, in practice, the impact of piracy on the sales of any individual work is much smaller than other factors. BF:BC2's huge piracy numbers have not affected its also huge actual sales numbers; the 360 still sells more software than the PS3 despite the former being completely piratable and the latter being completely not. When someone tries to count torrent downloads and imagine that if that torrent weren't present each of those -- or even any significant number -- would have become a sale is simply delusional.
gofreak said:
Theft is something specific. Copyright infringement is a completely different thing that is also illegal. Copying Is Not Theft, and in fact even the underlying reasons that the two acts are criminalized are different -- theft is criminal because of the direct harm of loss it causes to the victim, while copyright infringement is illegal (originally) because of the aggregate disincentive it creates for all artists.
When people use this rhetorical device, it's like saying that having your house burgled is actually being raped because you had your privacy disregarded and violated -- it's an inflammatory analogy that does not hold up to even fairly superficial scrutiny and it certainly should not be used as the basis for actual legal reasoning. If you want to argue why copyright infringement is wrong, there are plenty of very good reasons that do not involve fundamentally misrepresenting the action being performed.
This is also why personal copyright infringement continues to be a major issue despite the efforts to brand it as a different crime -- people intuitively understand that it isn't comparable to theft, typically make their first moral judgment on whether it's acceptable based on that knowledge, and so arguments that are obviously inaccurate do little to sway public opinion. (It's like hyperbolic anti-drug ads -- it's good to encourage kids not to use illegal drugs, but many of these ads actually undermine their own purpose by being so obviously full of shit that people disregard their message.)
SapientWolf said:
More specifically, the way PC hardware evolved, off-the-shelf department-store PCs became dramatically worse gaming systems than they had been in the past. In 1994, any sufficiently new off-the-shelf Dell or HP box would play 100% of PC games. In 1999, an off-the-shelf box wouldn't play things as nicely as would be ideal, but at least they'd still play with software rendering. The rise of integrated graphics cards that literally could not be used to play even older games was one of the big factors that killed the casual gaming market and created the false appearance that a gaming PC was inherently a huge investment.
ymmv said:
No, simply a statement of facts.
The fact that piracy exists, is widespread, and cannot ever be meaningfully stopped does indeed have victims: the full class of all creators of copyrighted artistic works, who suffer from the uncertainty and the loss of control over their work's distribution that piracy results in; and paying users, who get stuck paying money for something that other people are getting an equal (or even worse, better) experience from after downloading illicitly.
However, in practice, the impact of piracy on the sales of any individual work is much smaller than other factors. BF:BC2's huge piracy numbers have not affected its also huge actual sales numbers; the 360 still sells more software than the PS3 despite the former being completely piratable and the latter being completely not. When someone tries to count torrent downloads and imagine that if that torrent weren't present each of those -- or even any significant number -- would have become a sale is simply delusional.
BobsRevenge said:
It's impossible to know the truth but we don't generally get moderate opinions on the topic. Instead of "piracy is an issue", we have the two hyperbolic opposites of "piracy is raping the industry" or "piracy isn't an issue, period".
Good read but there are some things that I think don't fully work in that article.
With Reflexive games and their 1 sales increased for every 1000 blocks, I believe they posed their question wrong. IIRC, they asked that if it was impossible to pirate their game, would you buy it, and only 1 in 1000 said yes. However, that's still understating the effect of piracy because you could still pirate someone else's game. I want to know the answer to "if you couldn't pirate any game, would you have bought ours?"
CabbageRed
Member
I was interested in GoW way back when, but it snuck out on PC long after it left the public's eye and totally slipped past me. I'm not sure what they were expecting but it couldn't have been terribly rational. Pity that they choose to burn bridges rather than simply adapt.
You are not alone. I'd much rather see Ubisoft jump ship altogether rather than risk having their DRM set a precedent for other publishers.
a Master Ninja said:
You are not alone. I'd much rather see Ubisoft jump ship altogether rather than risk having their DRM set a precedent for other publishers.
gofreak said:
Let me guess you think 2nd hand games should be stamped out too?
To Epic, I really dont care if the PC is not the platform with the huge exclusive AAA titles anymore.
It has PLENTY of exclusives. It probably has too many if anything. Just because they are not over hyped, super expensive FPS blockbusters doesnt mean they arent good games.
Ive spent the last few days playing World of Goo and its pretty much the best game ive played all year. The fact is the indie scene on PC is exploding right now with channels like Steam letting small teams produce big hits for big profits.
Torchlight has sold half a million. Its a single player PC exlusive. Wait i thought they didnt sell anymore? :lol
If you like adventure games, dozens get released every year that most people never hear about. Genre dead? Lol no.
Humble indie bundle made over 1.2 million dollars in 10 days using a 'pay what you want' deal.
Theres plenty of success stories on the PC. They just arent for console type games anymore maybe but so what. PC is its own platform, let it have its own style of games.
Lets not forget all the big multiplatform games DO still get released for PC anyways.
Plenty of people supposedly in the know have shouted about the death of PC gaming for about the last two decades. Still waiting for it.
Mael said:
Ubisoft came pretty close recently and from what I've read from a dubious source they're going to make their DRM even more draconic. (took Razor almost 2 months to really crack AC2)
Heck if that DRM would actually work I wouldn't mind... It just sucks that paying customers get shafted by a crappy system while pirates can play the game without issues.
"source" -> http://www.overclock.net/video-game-news/725664-pcg-ubisoft-copy-protection-will-further.html
ReBurn
Gold Member
I have to wonder. If people who normally pirate PC games couldn't do it any more, would they actually start buying the games they used to pirate?
There are probably a few games that former pirates would buy if they couldn't get them for free any more. Honestly, though, I imagine that if the piracy problem just went away tomorrow we wouldn't see a huge surge in PC game sales follow.
I think it sucks that someone's hard work and sacrifice is just stolen by the golems that live behind the internet's scrotum. I just wonder if it's the piracy or the business model that's causing DEV's to go under.
There are probably a few games that former pirates would buy if they couldn't get them for free any more. Honestly, though, I imagine that if the piracy problem just went away tomorrow we wouldn't see a huge surge in PC game sales follow.
I think it sucks that someone's hard work and sacrifice is just stolen by the golems that live behind the internet's scrotum. I just wonder if it's the piracy or the business model that's causing DEV's to go under.
koji said:
Thing is filthy pirates in the end gets the best treatment from the developpers :-/
I mean it went with some fucking huge downside for AC2 :-/
If they managed to remove the DRM totally (or at least the online checks) the game is actually more of a game if it comes from the pirates.
And even then that wouldn't have spent 60 bucks on the game shell out the cash either.
Now if Ubi was made of competent marketers they would make sure that the customers see values in the pc game (like bundling it with the fucking comic they produced at the same time to promote the game)
koji said:
The scariest thing about that to me is that the people like him that are against this idea and think it hurts the industry will probably get canned eventually while the ones that are on-board with the idea and want to maximize profits will find themselves moving to upper management rather quickly.
I see PC gaming making a shift towards more Indie games alongside poor quality multiplatform ports and a random exclusive every once in a blue moon.