TorrentFreak Reveals Top Pirated Games of 2011

[Voltano]

What stood out for me is proving that even games on consoles are being pirated. Sure the PC games have higher numbers, but it just seems like a pointless argument for developers to say they won't develop games for PCs because of the "piracy" issue on there since Xbox 360 and freaking *Wii* games are being pirated.

(Of course there is still a good amount of PC games being made, but I still hear a developer now and then say that bull-crap. Not even freaking Kinect games are safe from pirates!)

 

[Mike Kayatta]

Pirated games
1) Provide a try-before-you-buy opportunity. I.e. the ability to try that $60 game before you make a $60 commitment.
2) Tend not to have the unskippable "this company made this game!" crap at the beginning.
3) Aren't as restricted (DRM and install limit wise)
4) In some cases, provide additional features. For example, LAN play or local multiplayer.

Purchased games
1) Treat you like a criminal.

So... which product would you prefer to have?

Yes, aren't they great!? We don't have to read about the thousands of people who labored for years to make something! We don't have to pay! We get unlimited demos! OF COURSE this is better; who wouldn't want this superior product? You've completely made me rethink my position. If only I'd considered how totally awesome it is to take someone's product from them and alter it however you'd like without paying them for it before writing this article! Games are like some sort of magical fruit that the universe randomly blips into creation. We should be free to take them and enjoy them whenever and however we want because clearly the universe will just magically continue to create more of them for us to take. And you know why? Because we're entitled to them. Never forget that!

 

[Tiamat666]

Can someone quote me and explain how you pirate a Wii, Xbox, PS3 game? I understand the ability to pirate a PC game to a PC but I'm confused about the others.

Consoles contain a CD/Blueray drive just like a PC. You download the disk data (ROM) from the internet, burn it on CD and stick it into your console. I'm not sure if there are some copy protection issues involved. I suppose there are because I've read a couple of times about people "modding" their consoles to pirate games.

again the graphical milestones get screwed over by pirates and pc gamers wil undoubtedly say that no money or profit was lost or that its ea´s fault and get angry when companies decide to make the pc a lower priority or go to consoles or give it drm or drop it entirely............

Anyone see the bloody irony and entitelment?

I would like to know how the numbers above compare in relation to how many people actually own a PC vs. a console. If there are four PCs in the world for every XBOX, then the above numbers mean that MW3 was actually pirated just as much on the XBOX than on the PC. In absolute terms the numbers above are meaningless.

Also, many gamers own PCs AND consoles. The piracy will likely happen on the PC, but the purported "lost sale" would also apply to all the consoles that pirate owns.

 

[Mike Kayatta]

Can someone quote me and explain how you pirate a Wii, Xbox, PS3 game? I understand the ability to pirate a PC game to a PC but I'm confused about the others.

Consoles contain a CD/Blueray drive just like a PC. You download the disk data (ROM) from the internet, burn it on CD and stick it into your console. I'm not sure if there are some copy protection issues involved. I suppose there are because I've read a couple of times about people "modding" their consoles to pirate games.

again the graphical milestones get screwed over by pirates and pc gamers wil undoubtedly say that no money or profit was lost or that its ea´s fault and get angry when companies decide to make the pc a lower priority or go to consoles or give it drm or drop it entirely............

Anyone see the bloody irony and entitelment?

I would like to know how the numbers above compare in relation to how many people actually own a PC vs. a console. If there are four PCs in the world for every XBOX, then the above numbers mean that MW3 was actually pirated just as much on the XBOX than on the PC. In absolute terms the numbers are meaningless.

Also, many gamers own PCs AND consoles. The piracy will likely happen on the PC, but the purported "lost sale" would also apply to all the consoles that pirate owns.

A direct correlation between owned PCs and owned consoles is likely still skewed. I'd be willing to bet there are over a hundred times more computers than Xboxes in people's homes, but the real question here is how many PCs are being used as a primary means with which to game as compared to consoles. That number would likely find PCs somewhat of a minority. Let's take Skyrim as an example. As of now, you have about 1.62 million PC sales, 2.69 million PS3 sales, and 4.62 million Xbox sales. Skyrim is currently the most popular game on the market, making it a good, if not definitive example. Skyrim is also a game that many people feel "is supposed" to be played on PC. So, considering it is dwarfed by both PS3 and Xbox sales, it's likely that the platform is used by gamers between two and four times less frequently than an individual console. This is only one game, but check the numbers on any other cross-platform title. You'll see the same, or more drastic, correlation. That being said, you can now compare that figure to the discrepancy in pirated titles. On average, PC titles are pirated four times as often, and yet, four times fewer people are gaming on PCs. Them seems to be pretty direct evidence that developers are losing revenue off of piracy based on this one logical exercise alone (though, that shouldn't really have ever been considered a question. How much, perhaps, but not "yes" or "no")

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Well, the soloution is obvious:

We should stop making those games. If we just stop making games that people pirate, then the pirates will have nothing to copy and go out of business.

#herpderp

 

[Meight08]

What stood out for me is proving that even games on consoles are being pirated. Sure the PC games have higher numbers, but it just seems like a pointless argument for developers to say they won't develop games for PCs because of the "piracy" issue on there since Xbox 360 and freaking *Wii* games are being pirated.

(Of course there is still a good amount of PC games being made, but I still hear a developer now and then say that bull-crap. Not even freaking Kinect games are safe from pirates!)

look at how many times mario galaxy 2 got pirated 1,280,000 times that looks like alot but think about it 1,280,000 in an entire freaking year.
now look at modern warfare 3 3,650,000 times in just 2 fucking months.

mario galaxy 2 has been out for a year so
1,280,000:12=106,666 units pirated each month

modern warfare 3 on pc has been out for 2 months so
3,650,000:2=1,825,000 units pirated each month

1,825,000:106,666=17,1
Oh yeah the consoles suffer just as much from piracy
[/sarcasm]

now
lets compare the console and pc versions of modern warfare 3
modern warfare for pc:
3,650,000:2=1,825,000 units pirated each month since its release
now the xbox version
830,000:2=415,000 pirated each month since its release

1,825,000:415,000=4.4
That is four times as much
four times!

there is no way you can justify saying that developers are complaining considering
that:
FUCKING CRYSIS THE FLAGSHIP OF PC GAMING! got pirated 20 times for each unit sold that is a real good reason to go develop for consoles.
now world of goo 90% of all the people who played it pirated it
and machinarium a game the developers poured their heart and soul into also 90& of the people who played it pirated it

either you refuse to acknowledge that much of the pc gaming scene has become a festering pit of pirates pirating everything they have a remote interest in playing and ruining the name of good pc gamers hell considering the circumstances (the shitty economy) there were precious few tragedies like crysis this year
so now please think before saying developers are whining about piracy on pc and using it as a reason to not develop for it because they arent its a sad sorry state for all pc gamers developers and publishers.

 

[thespyisdead]

funny Skyrim did not make any of those (not counting Wii) lists

 

[saregos]

Pirated games
1) Provide a try-before-you-buy opportunity. I.e. the ability to try that $60 game before you make a $60 commitment.
2) Tend not to have the unskippable "this company made this game!" crap at the beginning.
3) Aren't as restricted (DRM and install limit wise)
4) In some cases, provide additional features. For example, LAN play or local multiplayer.

Purchased games
1) Treat you like a criminal.

So... which product would you prefer to have?

Yes, aren't they great!? We don't have to read about the thousands of people who labored for years to make something! We don't have to pay! We get unlimited demos! OF COURSE this is better; who wouldn't want this superior product? You've completely made me rethink my position. If only I'd considered how totally awesome it is to take someone's product from them and alter it however you'd like without paying them for it before writing this article! Games are like some sort of magical fruit that the universe randomly blips into creation. We should be free to take them and enjoy them whenever and however we want because clearly the universe will just magically continue to create more of them for us to take. And you know why? Because we're entitled to them. Never forget that!

Uh... what? Did you read anything I said? Or are you just going to attack me (and a pretty little straw-man you set up for the purpose) for disagreeing with you?

Once more - Pirates currently provide a better product. Because they're more in-tune with what the customer wants. So maybe, instead of attacking the pirates (and while you're at it, anyone who disagrees with you, or points out flaws in your reasoning) you should concentrate on how to make the legitimate product better than the pirated one?

But no, instead you'll completely misinterpret everything I said. I would have expected better, but that's all too common.

Enjoy your high horse. But it's attitudes precisely like yours that drive piracy in the first place.

By the way, thanks so much for editing out the part where I pointed out that this is a failure in customer service. Probably because you can't address that?

 

[Scarim Coral]

Xenoblade Chronicles make sense since I guessing this was before they announse the US release date. Also it seen the Crysis fans were in vain (since they vow not to pirate it).

 

[saregos]

This confirms my suspicions that most people pirate games because they want to know if their computers can run it before they buy it. Why else would Crysis 2 be the most pirated?

Also, it would interesting to know how many times Witcher 2 was actually pirated.

The industry faces yet another year of massive loss

Do you have any evidence to back up this statement or are you just making it up?

I'm just making it up. All (conservatively) 100 million copies of various games illegally downloaded last year were all for demo purposes. Every single person who downloaded them promptly quit after playing thirty minutes, deleted the file, and purchased the game legitimately. Not even one person was interested in a game, but chose to downloaded it off BitTorrent instead of buying it. There's no way the industry lost even a dollar off of this legitimate and wholesome practice, so yeah, I'm making it up. Ya got me!

That's not the part I called you out on. I wanted you to back up your statement that 2011 was a year of massive loss for the industry, and that that loss was caused by piracy and not by, oh I don't know, THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS.

He's being disingenuous - if he was being honest, the bit you quoted should be "The industry might have lost some profits to piracy. Maybe."

Instead, he's implying that the industry is in the red. Which is definitely untrue.

 

[RA92]

snip

Eh. There's millions upon millions of gamers in places like South East Asia and Eastern Europe where video game prices are beyond their means, or there aren't any legit retail stores, or games aren't localized via digital distribution. A friend of mine went back to his home in Bangladesh for holiday and suddenly found out he couldn't buy any games on Steam because they were region-locked.

Do they have any other choice other than to pirate this stuff?

And trust me, you don't need expensive hardware to run PC games. My rig is running on an ancient ATi HD4350, and guess what? I finished Crysis 2 just fine (albeit at 800X600 resolution and low FOV).

Say, where's the report on handheld piracy numbers?

 

[Mike Kayatta]

This confirms my suspicions that most people pirate games because they want to know if their computers can run it before they buy it. Why else would Crysis 2 be the most pirated?

Also, it would interesting to know how many times Witcher 2 was actually pirated.

The industry faces yet another year of massive loss

Do you have any evidence to back up this statement or are you just making it up?

I'm just making it up. All (conservatively) 100 million copies of various games illegally downloaded last year were all for demo purposes. Every single person who downloaded them promptly quit after playing thirty minutes, deleted the file, and purchased the game legitimately. Not even one person was interested in a game, but chose to downloaded it off BitTorrent instead of buying it. There's no way the industry lost even a dollar off of this legitimate and wholesome practice, so yeah, I'm making it up. Ya got me!

That's not the part I called you out on. I wanted you to back up your statement that 2011 was a year of massive loss for the industry, and that that loss was caused by piracy and not by, oh I don't know, THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS.

I'm sorry, I failed to read the obviously implied "and that that loss was caused by piracy and not by, oh I don't know, THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS" when you wrote "Do you have any evidence to back up this statement." Won't happen again.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Can someone quote me and explain how you pirate a Wii, Xbox, PS3 game? I understand the ability to pirate a PC game to a PC but I'm confused about the others.

I'm not sure how it's done this gen but last gen you would have to put a chip in your ps2 and that would allow you to use imports and games you downloaded.
I hate to say it but this article makes pirating on the ps3 sound like fun: it's all done directly? Not that I personally would condone anything illegal but I have to admit I'm curious about how it works.
It's surprising that the numbers aren't higher on the ps3, it's not like we can expect any big and awesome updates to the firmware from Sony. The last big update was just to make the vita dock with it properly.

Billions of dollars worth of product distributed that wasn't payed for.

Yes, that is a loss. Damn asshats.

You don't really think that all those people who pirated it would have really bought their own copy if pirating wasn't possible, do you? If pirating wasn't possible, the shoplifting numbers would just go back up.

 

[Mike Kayatta]

Pirated games
1) Provide a try-before-you-buy opportunity. I.e. the ability to try that $60 game before you make a $60 commitment.
2) Tend not to have the unskippable "this company made this game!" crap at the beginning.
3) Aren't as restricted (DRM and install limit wise)
4) In some cases, provide additional features. For example, LAN play or local multiplayer.

Purchased games
1) Treat you like a criminal.

So... which product would you prefer to have?

Yes, aren't they great!? We don't have to read about the thousands of people who labored for years to make something! We don't have to pay! We get unlimited demos! OF COURSE this is better; who wouldn't want this superior product? You've completely made me rethink my position. If only I'd considered how totally awesome it is to take someone's product from them and alter it however you'd like without paying them for it before writing this article! Games are like some sort of magical fruit that the universe randomly blips into creation. We should be free to take them and enjoy them whenever and however we want because clearly the universe will just magically continue to create more of them for us to take. And you know why? Because we're entitled to them. Never forget that!

Uh... what? Did you read anything I said? Or are you just going to attack me (and a pretty little straw-man you set up for the purpose) for disagreeing with you?

Once more - Pirates currently provide a better product. Because they're more in-tune with what the customer wants. So maybe, instead of attacking the pirates (and while you're at it, anyone who disagrees with you, or points out flaws in your reasoning) you should concentrate on how to make the legitimate product better than the pirated one?

But no, instead you'll completely misinterpret everything I said. I would have expected better, but that's all too common.

Enjoy your high horse. But it's attitudes precisely like yours that drive piracy in the first place.

By the way, thanks so much for editing out the part where I pointed out that this is a failure in customer service. Probably because you can't address that?

Whoops, sorry. When you said: "Tend not to have the unskippable 'this company made this game!' crap at the beginning," I thought you meant you didn't want to see the logos of those who made the games. When you said: "Aren't as restricted (DRM and install limit wise)" and "In some cases, provide additional features. For example, LAN play or local multiplayer," I thought you meant that you wanted altered versions of people's products. When you said: "Provide a try-before-you-buy opportunity. I.e. the ability to try that $60 game before you make a $60 commitment," I thought you meant taking someone's product without paying them. Sorry, I guess I really did misinterpret you, huh. Won't happen again.

And since I want to stop "driving people to piracy" with my attitude, I suppose I'll start advocating the practice in order to quell it ... because that makes sense. Thanks for the tip. Either way, I've got to stop replying to comments and get back to my high horse. He's likely got the munchies by now.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Can someone quote me and explain how you pirate a Wii, Xbox, PS3 game?

Generally it involves installing custom/hacked firmware on the console (known as softmodding) that disables the console's inbuilt DRM. Once that's done you can either play burnt discs or run games from flashdrives, depending on the console in question.

The big downside to that (legality and morality aside) is all console online services scan for said altered firmware (and so on) and ban modded consoles they detect, so going online with them is a definite risk, especially if you like your online services.

That's about as deep an explanation as you'll get here as going into further detail is begging for modwrath.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Billions of dollars worth of product distributed that wasn't payed for.

Yes, that is a loss. Damn asshats.

You don't really think that all those people who pirated it would have really bought their own copy if pirating wasn't possible, do you? If pirating wasn't possible, the shoplifting numbers would just go back up.

It's still a loss... it just isn't 'lost sales' it's the far more nebulous concept of 'devaluation of IP'... which means the potential earnings/worth of the IP have been lowered rather than the loss of actual money.

The problem is that if you tried to explain to the layman about how an IP's value is estimated and consequently how it gains and loses value, most would say "Ugh, shut up, you're making my head hurt." That, and if they wrapped their heads fully around how things have their value estimated by corporations (it breaks down to being 'educated guesswork') they'd never take corporations seriously again... this is not a bad thing but corporations don't like it. Remember, these are the sorts of people who call making a profit that wasn't as big as their projected profit a 'loss'.