PC Gaming and Piracy: Must Read Article

[SenseOfTumour]

I've got absolutely no numbers to back up anything I say, but my opinions, that are backed up by nothing, are that there are far more gaming PCs sold to people who don't want or need them, than are sold to gamers, and the sort of people who pirate are the sort of people who build their own.

I know most PC stores in the UK, you can't buy a basic machine for just internet and office work, whatever you get will cost at least about $500 and run most stuff on low to medium settings.

From my experiences tho, with my parents, its web and flash games like Bejeweled that get pirated among the masses, especially among the older generation, precracked versions get passed around with some people not even knowing that the game isn't meant to be free.

However, these are not the people 'stealing' Fallout 3 or COD4. I'd personally put a sizable bet on more copies of a game being sold than pirated. I know that's not a good figure, 50/50, but I don't believe the figures thrown around like 90% of all pc games are 'stolen'.

 

[hebdomad]

I think sales of the Wii might have allot to speak for this data, and for PCs to compete they need to be as easy to use as consoles, just put the disk in and play. (no installing just run from disk)



As for the DRM side they could do this though universal encryption that is then decrypted by windows on auto run. They could also use of USB dongles or USB games, Soon Usb drives will have the capacity, durability, and cost factor to do all this.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I also think if the PC games market was to die out, a lot of the PC pirates would chip a 360 or PS3 and go on playing.

 

[cuddly_tomato]

The PC is hardly a platform more as it is a factorial of all the potential hardware pieces number of platforms. There are glitches with console versions too, but as there's usually no way to fix or patch console games, of course the complaints are going to be less. People with glitches on the PC know there are potential ways to fix their problems, so they post in forums on their PC.

Released software is ALWAYS buggy. There's no such thing as a piece of software that will run perfectly on every platform, and optimizing software to run on 3 systems (WII, 360, PS3) is infinitesimally easier than optimizing it for every known hardware configuration.

You can't think of any other reasons why forums for a computer would tend to get more posts from people playing on PCs? If you're playing it on a PC and it crashes, the support forum is right there, if you're playing it on a 360, you'd have to get up and turn on your PC to go and complain.

And this is why PC developers keep churning out games half-assed an unfinished. Some of the consumer base, make excuses for them, rather than demanding that they clean up their act and release games in a finished state. Not all of the consumer base though, a lot of people are using consoles for this very reason.

 

[Credge]

However, these are not the people 'stealing' Fallout 3 or COD4. I'd personally put a sizable bet on more copies of a game being sold than pirated. I know that's not a good figure, 50/50, but I don't believe the figures thrown around like 90% of all pc games are 'stolen'.

I do think a statistic like 90% of all PC games are pirated is correct. I don't think that 90% of all PC games played are pirated is correct. Mainly because there's no true way to actually track such a statistic.

Take a look at The Sims 2. Many, many, many, many, people bought the game, found out that SecuRom raped their PC, and then downloaded a pirated version. There are plenty of stories on the net about mothers asking their kid what was wrong and being told to download a pirated copy to remove it. The same thing happened with Spore as well.

Those two games are also some of the most pirated games of 2008.

There is correlation to be found there.

 

[orifice]

Two crap torrent sites isn't saying much this also doesn't factor in people who are "downloading" in order to monitor traffic via the P2P system. This also doesn't factor that servers could be downloading this in order to seed it faster. In fact this doesn't take much if anything into account other then people who clicked download which means they downloaded a torrent file they didn't download the game so thus the stats are useless.

I agree! Also I doubt these numbers account for fake and broken torrents that cause multiple downloads.
On top of this people on consoles BUY their pirated games from people who own a pc and mass produce copies from a file they downloaded once. Hence console piracy is much higher than the torrent figures suggest and is probably worse than pc piracy.

 

[Mariena]

However, these are not the people 'stealing' Fallout 3 or COD4. I'd personally put a sizable bet on more copies of a game being sold than pirated. I know that's not a good figure, 50/50, but I don't believe the figures thrown around like 90% of all pc games are 'stolen'.

I do think a statistic like 90% of all PC games are pirated is correct. I don't think that 90% of all PC games played are pirated is correct. Mainly because there's no true way to actually track such a statistic.

Take a look at The Sims 2. Many, many, many, many, people bought the game, found out that SecuRom raped their PC, and then downloaded a pirated version. There are plenty of stories on the net about mothers asking their kid what was wrong and being told to download a pirated copy to remove it. The same thing happened with Spore as well.

Those two games are also some of the most pirated games of 2008.

There is correlation to be found there.

You might wanna check your quote there, because that wasn't my quote

 

[Zadred Darkflame]

The PC is hardly a platform more as it is a factorial of all the potential hardware pieces number of platforms. There are glitches with console versions too, but as there's usually no way to fix or patch console games, of course the complaints are going to be less. People with glitches on the PC know there are potential ways to fix their problems, so they post in forums on their PC.

Released software is ALWAYS buggy. There's no such thing as a piece of software that will run perfectly on every platform, and optimizing software to run on 3 systems (WII, 360, PS3) is infinitesimally easier than optimizing it for every known hardware configuration.

Omitted

And this is why PC developers keep churning out games half-assed an unfinished. Some of the consumer base, make excuses for them, rather than demanding that they clean up their act and release games in a finished state. Not all of the consumer base though, a lot of people are using consoles for this very reason.

I was speaking from a programmer's perspective, not a consumers. Yes games are often released in less than satisfactory condition. However the reason for that is having to meet often unrealistic deadlines, which is not the fault of the dev team but of the company they are working for. One reason Blizzard is so successful is that they don't put release dates on their products. They're released when "finished" although of course not bug free. But they aren't sloppily thrown together in the last couple hours before mass production is set to begin. The consumer base isn't "making excuses" either they show quite well whats a quality release and what isn't with the money they spend.

 

[cuddly_tomato]

I was speaking from a programmer's perspective, not a consumers.

Righteeoo. My apologies good Darkflame.

Yes games are often released in less than satisfactory condition. However the reason for that is having to meet often unrealistic deadlines, which is not the fault of the dev team but of the company they are working for. One reason Blizzard is so successful is that they don't put release dates on their products. They're released when "finished" although of course not bug free. But they aren't sloppily thrown together in the last couple hours before mass production is set to begin. The consumer base isn't "making excuses" either they show quite well whats a quality release and what isn't with the money they spend.

Then the fault is the business model the gaming industry has on the PC. This is evidenced in other ways, DRM for example, which has zero effect in preventing piracy but does plenty to encourage it.

I also disagree with a lot of this. The odd bug is no big deal. The odd floating bush or spelling mistake or maybe even some slowdown, occassionally, when a lot is going on.

But when you very first click "New Game" only to be confronted with this:-

That makes you kinda wonder why the hell you bothered getting the PC version. A console version you can slap in the disk drive and play. A lot have stopped wondering and started buying console versions. This is inevitably going to lead to a decline in developers focusing on PC.

Look at Epic Games. They have gone from making the worlds premier FPS titles for PC into abandoning the platform altogether.

Note to any PC fanboys: I don't give a shit about shiney graphics and I can't be arsed with mods. I just wanted to play a damn game.

 

[Zadred Darkflame]

Ah god that just freaked me out. I forgot i had this forum open and saw the error message.
Wiiiiiindoooozzzzzeeeee!
If you haven't already tried it I'd suggest uninstalling and reinstalling.