ZombieSupaStar
Member
Chris_C said:
most pc gamers own a console also, we've matured past the forbidden toy experiment stage of life.
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Epic Blames Pirates For Console-First Development
- Thread starter Zombie James
- Start date
most pc gamers own a console also, we've matured past the forbidden toy experiment stage of life.
koji said:
It's a horrible cycle that piracy has put us in. Developers want to protect their property from being stolen, so they lock it down more and more every year. Yet it will always be cracked, and the only ones who suffer are the paying customers.
There really is no easy solution. You can't just leave the game wide open; otherwise you take a much bigger risk at losing possible sales. However you can't keep screwing over your legitimate customers like this...
CecilRousso
Member
PC gaming will always be just fine. If one developer moves away from it, that will just mean more space and opportunities for the next one. There is money to be made for the platform, which means that someone always will want a piece of that. If PC gaming in the future will be like it is now and in the nearest future, with titles such as Team Fortress 2, Civ 5, Portal, Torchlight, Total War, Starcraft II, L4D, Half Life 3 etc., then I will be just fine with that.
I also own consoles, XBOX360 and PS3. That games like Fable II and Brütal Legend - two titles I really enjoyed - isn´t available on PC doesn´t matter to me.
I also own consoles, XBOX360 and PS3. That games like Fable II and Brütal Legend - two titles I really enjoyed - isn´t available on PC doesn´t matter to me.
charlequin said:
That window also coincides with the wide availability of broadband, though. Later on the advent of torrents made the process even easier. It'd be difficult to establish that one advance in technology had an effect on game sales to the exclusion of the other, though.
You can't claim this at all. For instance, many publishers and developers disagree with you. Their opinion on the matter is suspect of course, but unlike us they actually have sales figures to make a correlation. We don't.
You don't know this. It's clear that piracy doesn't affect sales at a 1:1 basis, but what is the actual ratio? Is it 1:10? 1:100? Nearly 0:1?
How do you know the number isn't significant? I know people who would pirate and would never buy a game new, I know people who will buy games they can't pirate. In my admittedly anecdotal experience it's close to 1:10. With some of the bigger titles that certainly seems significant. In BC2's case, wouldn't an extra 100k copies sold affect their 'huge actual sales numbers'?
Aesthet1c said:
Do not get mixed up, it's NOT piracy that is the cause for this anti consumer behavior,
they would have done it in a heartbeat before if they could.
I mean it's UBISOFT we're talking about, not some 'company that cares about their customers and wishes to produce the best for their customers because they're the best'.
I mean they're the producers, developpers and marketers behind the ungodly amount of shameful soulless shovelwares put on some other market after all.
Seriously piracy is merely a scapegoat used to get more control on their customers, I mean it's pretty clear that when you get an industry where 'ingame advertisement' is seen as the revolution of the futur you know you're heading into a shithole
maniac-kun
Member
If Microsoft would support Windows the way they support the 360 the PC situation would look different. With PC 360 exclusives that get released at the same time on pc and xbox. And some kind of Quality controlle on the PC side.
CecilRousso
Member
You can look on the piracy the other way around:
We have reached the peak of piracy - a situation where everyone can pirate anything. They can get what they want without any real effort, and the people behind torrent sites are regarded like heroes.
And still:
*We got tons of titles released on PC, games that can be considered hardcore titles.
*A game like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 can sell millions in a short time, even though it´s also available on two consoles.
*Steam continues to grow in an astonishing rate.
*We get more ports of console games than ever before.
*Indie developers can create incredible success.
*A campaign where everyone can pay just as little as they want for five games generates over a million dollars.
I really don´t consider that a dying platform in anyway.
We have reached the peak of piracy - a situation where everyone can pirate anything. They can get what they want without any real effort, and the people behind torrent sites are regarded like heroes.
And still:
*We got tons of titles released on PC, games that can be considered hardcore titles.
*A game like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 can sell millions in a short time, even though it´s also available on two consoles.
*Steam continues to grow in an astonishing rate.
*We get more ports of console games than ever before.
*Indie developers can create incredible success.
*A campaign where everyone can pay just as little as they want for five games generates over a million dollars.
I really don´t consider that a dying platform in anyway.
The Faceless Master said:
Crazy, I didn't know Independent meant "small". I guess Insomniac is small as well? As far as I knew, "independent" simply meant they weren't owned by a publisher, no?
Edit: I suppose to be more specific I should say Independent Developers (or Development studios) aren't own or financed by a 3rd party publisher. Still, I think the comment was taken a little out of context.
Also: Why again are people mad at epic and not at all upset at the cheap skates who steal?
arstal said:
I don't buy that at all. SNK kinda ran themselves into a corner with the price of the NeoGeo system. Not many people were going to invest in a machine that had such a narrow selection of games for that price, piracy or not. I know I wouldn't of, even after I became an SNK fan. Also on that note I would of NEVER became of SNK fan if I had been exposed to their games through piracy. Now I buy every game that comes out that's reasonably priced, and even bought a neogeo pocket. If it hadn't been on that neogeo emulator and KOF98 rom I stumbled upon, I wouldn't of spent the hundreds of dollars I do today on them.
Diatribe1974
Member
While you can get a pirated game for a console just as easy as a pirated game for the PC, it is the ease of which a person on the PC can access the pirated PC game versus the pirated console game. Wherein the PC version (assuming it's simply an ISO), just burn it to DVD and be done with it. With the console, you have to make sure your console is modded to allow burnt discs to be played (there are other things that can be done, but we won't go into detail here). On the PC? Load up the torrent, fire up the download. Burn to disc for storage. Install the game. Use whatever cracks/hacks you need. Play. From the moment you have the game on a physical DVD to actually playing, it can be as quickly as minutes. With a console, unless you've previously modded your machine, it's no where near as quick.
HAL_Laboratory
Member
I stopped playing PC games when they required a PC to be played.
CecilRousso
Member
HAL_Laboratory said:
Well, that´s your loss.
Mael said:
This is silly. It doesn't matter if you're not 'reducing the resource' available to other people.
Let me put it this way:
I write a piece of software. I upload it to a server. I invite people to download the software in exchange for money. They must pay me to download it, however the URL is public and open.
Someone comes along and goes straight to the URL to download the software without paying.
Is this theft? I say, yes. It is.
By your logic it is not because the person downloading isn't diminishing a resource.
THAT cannot be the boundary between theft and 'non-theft' or whatever you want to call it. The boundary is whether the trade is agreed upon by the vendor.
Also your analogies are flawed. The closest analogy to other crimes, in moral terms, in terms of the scale of difference between two crimes under one banner might be manslaughter and murder (both 'killing'). Both end up in the same end result, its the circumstances that differ. However, the differing circumstance that may absolve someone morally in the case of manslaughter (lack of intent) aren't even really present as a distinction between 'stealing' and 'pirating', if you're knowingly downloading a pirated copy of a game.
Mael said:
To me, it's the equivalent of stealing the money. You've usurped the bank's exclusive rights to make and distribute copies (money) in order to get money you shouldn't have.
WHATEVER legal differentiations you want to make, IN MY OPINION, you are a thief. That's my judgment, and I have no qualms about personally considering software pirates to be thieves.
Mael said:
OK, well I'm not sure what this has to do with anything of what I said prior to my last post. I took your point to be the 'I wasn't going to buy it anyway' defense.
Mael said:
Knowingly infringing a copyright is as good as theft. We call it different things in different contexts - e.g. plagiarism - but it's just another type of theft IMO. Again, a court might think them different, deal with them differently, but it in my opinion it's as good as theft.
charlequin said:
Intuitively there is a loss immediately someone copies material you own the rights too. There is a theft on that level at least, a theft of your monopoly over the material.
charlequin said:
I am talking about piracy vs stealing a piece of software.
Me saying that piracy is IN MY OPINION - whatever about how courts parse them out - effectively equivalent to theft is nothing like equating burglary with rape. Rape is the sexual violation of an individual. Burglary is breaking into a house with intent to rob or commit a crime. The end outcomes are not remotely the same, whereas with piracy and stealing a game (from a publisher server or a physical store - whatever the case), the amount of overlap in terms of the outcome is mostly to entirely the same depending on the particular circumstances. Thats why I consider it effectively to be theft. You, or the legal system, can make as many distinctions as you wish, but for ME, I think of it little differently.
Gully State
Member
dralla said:
I agree but it's probably b/c they want the PC gaming community to migrate to consoles exclusively.
red shoe paul
Banned
Ok so Epic is finally realizing the PS3 will not let you play backed up games meaning people will have to buy the game to play, and that's why they're putting a game out for it?
Warm Machine
Member
markot said:
IronLore
dralla said:
Certainly not an excuse. PC versions of games aren't free, they still have to throw money towards that development. Also, if you cannot ensure that it will sell, at all, on PC, then why throw resources at it?
The way I see it is like this? They can either ignore PC entirely, and play it safe on consoles, or they can go for a risk / reward market for PC. Piracy definitely plays into that "risk/reward". Frankly, if they don't need PC, there's no reason to go after it. I say abandon it completely, and I wish everyone would. Let the market go through a rebirth.
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
There are plenty of smaller indie developers that seem to be doing okay. They just don't get a lot of attention from most of the gaming population. Just look at adventure gaming, there's a surprising amount of stuff out there.Nirolak said:
Titan Quest was so expensive that nearly (edit, apparently actually) selling 1 million copies didn't make money? I don't buy it.Warm Machine said:
Maybe it was their convoluted DRM that made the game appear broken when pirated (that they didn't proclaim publicly) was a bigger deterrent than the actual piracy to new buyers?
XiaNaphryz said:
How many copies do they sell? I've bought a few adventure games (Sam and Max 1, Vampyre Story, Machinarium, Whispered World will be mine next month) but with the possible exception of Sam & Max none of those game sell a lot of copies. I'd be surprised personally if A Vampyre Story and Whispered World will break even. The market for adventure games is very small and even here on Gaf most people will never have heard of those titles.
eznark said:
Iron Lore was unable to get any funding for new projects so they had close the shop. Perhaps they did make a profit on Titan Quest but if you're unable to get funding for your new game from interested publishers and there's not enough cash in the vault to keep the company going for two years, it's better to quit now than to use up all your remaining cash and then quit halfway through the production of a new game.
Gully State
Member
ymmv said:
Adventure games don't cost much to develop though..
eznark said:
I don't think you guys understand how business works. Making money isn't the same as making enough money to make another game. You can invest $20million over 2 years on a project, get back $21million, technically "made money", but investors will bail out because they could've made a lot more money on something else given the same amount of time. Movies are considered failures if they don't make double the initial investment and sequels of moveis AND games will definitely get canned for making small % profits because there are safer ways to make that much money, and equally risky ways to make a lot more money.
I'm not saying Titan Quest made a 5% profit, but whatever it made, it was less than what is considered worth the investment given the risk and time frame of game development.
Titan Quest was massively discounted soon after release, and most of those sales were likely at the $9.99 to $19.99 price point.
eznark said:
They didn't get funding because Titan Quest made so little profit that investors didn't have confidence in IronLore's next game doing any better. If Titan Quest sold better, investors would've had the confidence to invest in their next game.
BloodySinner
Banned
I don't remember this company having any problems.
obonicus said:
Simple, because the decisionmakers behind the publishers are risk-averse, genuinely believe that 1 pirated copy= 1 lost sale, believe DRM works, and that consumers will accept DRM. Large corporations tend to be risk-averse by nature. This is why the Stardocks and Paradoxes of the world, mid-sized to smaller corps, have been the ones benefitting by DRM-light/free games.
Give it a few years for the bad decisionmakers to lose money/get ousted.
The worst case scenario for PC though is if the big publishers manage to consolize the PC, which is their real goal.
This is why I'm a bit fanatical on supporting the companies that do things right. (aka have games that don't require a 3rd-party program to start, and have light to no DRM on their games)
Odds are Michael Fitch was a bad businessman. Being able to make a good game, does not mean you have any business sense. You need both to succeed (why Stardock's in good shape)
It's about making the most profitable game, not the best game. (Gal Civ II sold about 1mil, and made 8-digit profit on around $1-2 mil invested into it)
Zzoram said:
The margins on Titan Quest really should have been excellent. It's a fantastic game but if it cost them so much to make that they had less than 30% annualized returns after selling a million copies then I would be unwilling to invest in their next project as well as Iron Lore was clearly facing efficiency issues.
Like you said, the lack of investment ultimately doesn't have a lot to do with sales, it has everything to do with profit. Again, if the company could not make money selling a million copies of Titan Quest they had much, much larger problems than piracy.
I remember Iron Lore folks going on about piracy (I think at qt3, that's where I recall them complaining about pirates saying the game was full of bugs when really it was their foolish DRM) but it seems to be an easy scape goat for a poorly run and bloated enterprise.
Well, he himself says Titan Quest is a tough sell regardless of the platform itself (new IP, independent dev, hardly a marketing budget) so i don't know how fair it is to attribute the failure on the PC.
Also, one of the main reasons he mentiones is the game getting pirated weeks before release. This phenomena is pretty much gone on the PC-side. Every self-respecting game applies a sort of mechanism (be it Steam or something else) that simply denies a game to be played before its release date. In fact 0-day piracy is now more pertinent on the 360 than on any other platform. Every single 360 games gets pirated at least ~ a week before the store date.
Also, one of the main reasons he mentiones is the game getting pirated weeks before release. This phenomena is pretty much gone on the PC-side. Every self-respecting game applies a sort of mechanism (be it Steam or something else) that simply denies a game to be played before its release date. In fact 0-day piracy is now more pertinent on the 360 than on any other platform. Every single 360 games gets pirated at least ~ a week before the store date.
eznark said:
Ah, there we go again. "Piracy is a victimless crime". If a developer goes under, it's always their own fault, we should never ever blame the noble pirates. But as Michael Fitch wrote: "If 90% of your audience is stealing your game, even if you got a little bit more, say 10% of that audience to change their ways and pony up, what's the difference in income? Just about double. That's right, double. That's easily the difference between commercial failure and success. That's definitely the difference between doing okay and founding a lasting franchise. Even if you cut that down to 1% - 1 out of every hundred people who are pirating the game - who would actually buy the game, that's still a 10% increase in revenue. Again, that's big enough to make the difference between breaking even and making a profit. (...) Some really good people made a seriously good game, and they might still be in business if piracy weren't so rampant on the PC. That's a fact."
Dr Zhivago
Member
aeolist said:
Not really, no.
I like how in this sort of thread people on message boards are convinced they know more about Epic's finances than Epic themselves.
ymmv said:
What? I'm not saying anything about piracy anywhere in that post and I am most certainly NOT advocating it or calling the thieves noble. My point is that if IronLore seems to have had a serious resource management problem and potential investors realized it. Had more people purchased the game their inability to efficiently produce a game would have been mitigated I'm sure. Piracy definitely hurt IronLore, but poor business sense is what doomed them.
Easier to blame piracy than your own inadequacies, however.
Did Runic Games create Torchlight in a different plane of existence that they somehow were able to thrive, despite only selling half of Titan Quests numbers? No, they were simply smarter about the game they made and more efficient when making it.
drhankmccoyphd
Member
ymmv said:
This sounds a lot more like an indictment of shitty DRM than it does of piracy. If the IronLore guys had ditched the DRM and released a little earlier they might have had more success. It's also your responsibility as a publisher or any content owner really to make sure you secure your source code. I can't tell you how many times as a reviewer I've gotten advance copies of simple burned DVDs whether this is from TV networks, music labels or game companies.
I think they're kinda full of shit.
They've gotten a taste of the success they had with a less able user base who generally have a lower set of standards to adhere to. So it's like, "Oh I can make this game with not a lot of effort and have it sell millions? Sweet."
That's not to say that the GoW series has been BAD. It's just that they're games with not a terrible amount of depth to them. They were pretty solidly built with some cool things in them here and there, but most of what pushed it along to success was its looks. It was the poster child of Unreal Engine 3.
I think they're just a bit bitter that Unreal Tournament III didn't end up doing as well as they hoped, despite having a lot more stuff put into it, especially in comparison to the first Gears. IMO, they released the first one to simply get something out and make money until they could actually finish UT3. Then UT3 kinda bombed, GoW did well, and so they took the next logical step in making a more fleshed out sequel.
Repeat success, and there you go. They now have this massive user base to which they can pump games to. Why go through the effort of trying to snag a more difficult-to-impress platform?
What changed the landscape was not piracy, but rather the 'make easy[sic] money' platforms that we now have today. PCs were a good starting point when they were thought of as the cutting edge in all things high-tech when it came to games, but now we have these systems that can make things look "pretty enough" and provide a means of selling people of selling people more shit even after the games have been released. We don't have to worry about getting every bit of juice out of system or memory limitations as much as we did, so it gives us more time to think about 'how can we make money off of this?' now. Piracy only hurts this model simply because these devs have been greedy and don't want to pass up on the thought that they're loosing customers -- i.e., potential money. Hell, on top of that, consoles of today even have an integrated way of advertising directly to consumers by way of services like XBL or PSN, since they're sitting right there in front of the user's face.
PCs, being as open as they are, inhibit this ability to do so, because everything is much more "scattered". You can get different bits of software from different sources (Steam, publisher-specific stores, piracy, etc.), so managing where your money is coming from becomes difficult. Hence why he mentioned Facebook.
They've gotten a taste of the success they had with a less able user base who generally have a lower set of standards to adhere to. So it's like, "Oh I can make this game with not a lot of effort and have it sell millions? Sweet."
That's not to say that the GoW series has been BAD. It's just that they're games with not a terrible amount of depth to them. They were pretty solidly built with some cool things in them here and there, but most of what pushed it along to success was its looks. It was the poster child of Unreal Engine 3.
I think they're just a bit bitter that Unreal Tournament III didn't end up doing as well as they hoped, despite having a lot more stuff put into it, especially in comparison to the first Gears. IMO, they released the first one to simply get something out and make money until they could actually finish UT3. Then UT3 kinda bombed, GoW did well, and so they took the next logical step in making a more fleshed out sequel.
Repeat success, and there you go. They now have this massive user base to which they can pump games to. Why go through the effort of trying to snag a more difficult-to-impress platform?
What changed the landscape was not piracy, but rather the 'make easy[sic] money' platforms that we now have today. PCs were a good starting point when they were thought of as the cutting edge in all things high-tech when it came to games, but now we have these systems that can make things look "pretty enough" and provide a means of selling people of selling people more shit even after the games have been released. We don't have to worry about getting every bit of juice out of system or memory limitations as much as we did, so it gives us more time to think about 'how can we make money off of this?' now. Piracy only hurts this model simply because these devs have been greedy and don't want to pass up on the thought that they're loosing customers -- i.e., potential money. Hell, on top of that, consoles of today even have an integrated way of advertising directly to consumers by way of services like XBL or PSN, since they're sitting right there in front of the user's face.
PCs, being as open as they are, inhibit this ability to do so, because everything is much more "scattered". You can get different bits of software from different sources (Steam, publisher-specific stores, piracy, etc.), so managing where your money is coming from becomes difficult. Hence why he mentioned Facebook.
mikespit1200 said:
The DRM wasn't necessarily shitty, but keeping it a secret was a really, really stupid move. Arkham Asylum had the same sort of thing, pirated copies had some fail state early in the game, but they trumpeted that fact. Some DS games do the same. That way if anyone bitches on a forum about "bugs" you know they are a filthy pirate. Keeping it a secret defeats the purpose and serves to only deter purchasing the game.