Visualante
Member
Bring on the piracy tax.
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"PC piracy, one day stats, nay-sayers pwned"
- Thread starter Wunderchu
- Start date
Nuclear Muffin
Banned
kenta said:WOW Assassin's Creed comes out on top!
CoD4 still going strong!!!!
Orange Box doesn't have legs
Anyone have LTD on Bioshock????
This one made me :lol Sorry.
It's sad though, the majority of PC gamers are pirates and that's a fact.
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
"*cough* digital distribution *cough*"
*cough* needs to get better than it currently is *cought*
*cough* needs to get better than it currently is *cought*
Hellraizer said:
Just some random ps2/psp games on mininova:
Harry Potter: OTP - ps2 - 61,352
NFS
roStreet - ps2 - 45,630MGS3 -subsistence - ps2 - 17,812
FFXII - ps2 - 12,261
PES2008 - ps2 - 9,873
God of War: CoO -psp - 20,283 (another torrent same game 9,873x downloaded)
PES2008 -psp - 6,820
Castlevania X Chr. -psp - 8,831
Too tired looking for other stuff ... x360 games is in the hundreds ... ps3 games, good luck finding them.
No Means Nomad said:
And these are the pirates who like to collect every release just for the sake of ... having it.
Also i have to ask. Can you return a PC game to ebgames / gamestop etc if you dont like it? I know console games tend to have a 7 day return policy, but what about PC games?
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
"Just last week i caught a friend of mine downloading piracy."
What?
What?
Fixed.ch0mp said:
I'm sure the statistics are just as high for Movies, Music, and software of all kinds. I count 10 000 copies of Photoshop currently being pirated just on the first page of TPB.
The key to preventing piracy is to ensure that the legitimate version has something that pirates can't easily replicate. Make it extremely easy to re-install or something. I don't know. But the very WORST thing you can do is make pirated versions better than retail versions. That means no requiring CDs to be in the drive, no rootkits, no DRM bullshit that just pisses off legitimate users and that pirates avoid entirely in their illegal copies.
iTunes is successful because the store very nicely integrated into iTunes. The insistence on DRM-protected songs, however, severely weakens the appeal and gives pirates a reason to download a torrent. It's both easier and cheaper to just pirate a new CD than it is to download a CD from iTunes, burn it and re-import it to strip the DRM (thus making it compatible with other devices, like your Xbox, etc). It's fantastic that they're now moving away from hobbling their service.
iTunes does it. Steam does it.
Make your product better than what pirates can achieve.
If you could wipe out piracy what would be the knock-on effect?
Speaking to people I know who are hardcore PC gamers who basically buy maybe 5 games a year max and pirate the rest, the consensus seems to be that if they couldn't steal the games, they wouldn't be happy to spend $thousands on hardware. The only way they can afford said hardware is by not spending money on games. If they couldn't do it, they'd either buy consoles (which are far cheaper) or give up on gaming altogether.
So if you wiped out piracy, your biggest impact would be on the hardware vendors who would see their market shrink dramatically leading to higher prices, a slow-down in R&D or both.
Which then starts pricing PC gaming out of the reach of even more legitimate consumers which would probably put developers into an even bigger mess than they are in right now.
Speaking to people I know who are hardcore PC gamers who basically buy maybe 5 games a year max and pirate the rest, the consensus seems to be that if they couldn't steal the games, they wouldn't be happy to spend $thousands on hardware. The only way they can afford said hardware is by not spending money on games. If they couldn't do it, they'd either buy consoles (which are far cheaper) or give up on gaming altogether.
So if you wiped out piracy, your biggest impact would be on the hardware vendors who would see their market shrink dramatically leading to higher prices, a slow-down in R&D or both.
Which then starts pricing PC gaming out of the reach of even more legitimate consumers which would probably put developers into an even bigger mess than they are in right now.
Takeda Kenshi
blew Staal
I almost feel sorry for the 1750 people who downloaded Hellgate:London....
Almost.
Almost.
Version 3.0
Member
I don't pirate games, but have sometimes been tempted to do so by annoying anti-piracy measures. Those measures also keep me from feeling sorry for the companies being ripped off.
Also, in reference to the OP: movie piracy is even more rampant than PC game piracy, yet the home movie industry is the healthiest entertainment market in existance. Consoles also have rampant piracy (last gen was ridiculous), but thrive. Why should we think it's piracy killing the PC market, and not any of its other weaknesses?
I'm not condoning piracy at all. Pirates, theoretically, are ripping me off just as much as they are these publishers. What I'm questioning is the level of that theft. These stats prove nothing except that people are playing games they didn't pay for. That is not the same thing as "lost revenue", no matter how much you, Activision, or whomever wish it to be.
Also, in reference to the OP: movie piracy is even more rampant than PC game piracy, yet the home movie industry is the healthiest entertainment market in existance. Consoles also have rampant piracy (last gen was ridiculous), but thrive. Why should we think it's piracy killing the PC market, and not any of its other weaknesses?
I'm not condoning piracy at all. Pirates, theoretically, are ripping me off just as much as they are these publishers. What I'm questioning is the level of that theft. These stats prove nothing except that people are playing games they didn't pay for. That is not the same thing as "lost revenue", no matter how much you, Activision, or whomever wish it to be.
Something needs to happen with Steam, but everyone wants their big piece of the pie even if it means there will be no more pies in the near future. Gabe Newell had the vision to do what he and his company did so he should get the most out of it while helping out PC gaming.
I'm also wondering what this PC Gaming Alliance is going to do.
I'm also wondering what this PC Gaming Alliance is going to do.
k79 said:Just some random ps2/psp games on mininova:
Harry Potter: OTP - ps2 - 61,352
NFS
MGS3 -subsistence - ps2 - 17,812
FFXII - ps2 - 12,261
PES2008 - ps2 - 9,873
God of War: CoO -psp - 20,283 (another torrent same game 9,873x downloaded)
PES2008 -psp - 6,820
Castlevania X Chr. -psp - 8,831
Too tired looking for other stuff ... x360 games is in the hundreds ... ps3 games, good luck finding them.
360 games, go to a xbox only tracker and you will see. 25000? thats nothing compared to the day halo3 got released. Madness, never seen so many people download anything like that.
I have seen people downloading PS3 isos on a well know invitation-only page. There are people that just love to download things, even when useless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blank_media_levyVisualante said:
You open a big can of worms with something like that...Wikipedia said:
It exists in Canada, among other places. We currently have one on R/RW CDs ($0.21), but the $2 - $20 levy on MP3 players was revoked a while ago. They've recently failed to introduce a levy for SD cards and such as well, so it looks like our (Canada's) blank media levy is being phased out by technological advance.
This post is meaningless and any one with even half a brain will tell you that the figures shown or presented in the original post aren't backable by any kind of serious math/study.
First, a LOT of people downloading games do it for collecting purpose and never play said downloaded game. You have a LOT of people like that; who absolutely HAVE to have everything that comes out under the sun.
Second the math used (hey lets for the sake of our argument make a claim that would back it up while beeing incredibly stupid and having no root in reality) has no logic or validity. True, piracy is rather high on PC, but to say that every person who is playing (or trying) your game in a pirated way is a lost customer is wrong, and that logic has been proven false a lot of times.
Yes piracy is harming the gaming industry, but it's nowhere near as stupidly high as what the OP says.
First, a LOT of people downloading games do it for collecting purpose and never play said downloaded game. You have a LOT of people like that; who absolutely HAVE to have everything that comes out under the sun.
Second the math used (hey lets for the sake of our argument make a claim that would back it up while beeing incredibly stupid and having no root in reality) has no logic or validity. True, piracy is rather high on PC, but to say that every person who is playing (or trying) your game in a pirated way is a lost customer is wrong, and that logic has been proven false a lot of times.
Yes piracy is harming the gaming industry, but it's nowhere near as stupidly high as what the OP says.
Version 3.0
Member
Slavik81 said:
This is correct. Also, implement anti-piracy measures, not anti-consumer measures. What ever happened to the idea of flooding the piracy sites with non-working copies? That's an anti-piracy measure. A CD key is not.
Burai said:
Your theory is far-fetched. The likely real-world effect of no piracy would be a small downturn in hardware sales and a small boost in software sales. That's about it.
Chairman Yang
if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
You'd think that if piracy was as common as this article claims, more people would play PC games (even if they didn't pay for them) and there would be less anti-PC ignorance around.
zoku88 said:
Well if I was to take my own experience, I found back in 2004 that the amount I was spending on PC gaming was far too much for the enjoyment I was getting out of it. So I got rid of everything, bought a Mac and went console-only.
Never underestimate the value of money in the face of a passtime. Hell, I love sports cars. Doesn't mean I'm likely to ever own one!
The Faceless Master
Member
one day, not day one. these were from earlier this week, so the calculation being constant would be a very lowball figure.Immortal_Daemon said:
Count Dookkake
Member
Burai said:
They can steal the computers then.
domokunrox
Banned
Wunderchu said:
On that note, Piracy threads aiming at PC gaming are rather annoying. No one cares really.
Its called Steam, folks, use it.
The Abominable Snowman
Member
Private tracker has over 4000 seeds for God of War PSP alone and a little more than a 9th of that in leechers. Methinks Piratebay.org will be a better site to track at.
Visualante
Member
Yeah I already knew about that bunch of tossers.Slavik81 said:
I pretty much mean Call of Duty 4 on Steam being outrageously high and others following suit to offset against all this new public info on PC game sales and piracy.
Going after individual pirates is useless, I think they need to go to the root of the problem and that is the people who release these pirated games and the people who give people access to downloading these games (sites like the Piratebay, Mininova etc.)
Suburban Cowboy
Member
market's changed developers, up to you to quit bitching about it and find a way to deal with it. Ya its harsh and not necessarily fair, but that's business. Adapt or die.
k79 said:
Vintage game magazines for the 80´s, 90´s. Pure gold.
BTW, In Spain there is a tax on CD, DVD, video players, music players, phones, almost everything that can be used for pirating, that is used to pay the "affected" ones for the piracy. Too bad, for the moment is used for a mafia-like RIIA that only pays music "artist" that are affiliated with them.
gregor7777
Banned
{Mike} said:
Now that Snah and tjhooker are gone, you sir, rise to the top of the shit pile as Worst Poster on GAF. By a good green country mile.
Visualante
Member
There's always CoD5 to turn into an MMO.sedaku said:
