Hard times: PC game piracy in US estimated at 75-80%

[Qmark]

These things make me laugh, they invest big bucks into the latest anti-piracy measures to the point where they conflict with themselves. One games DRM stops another game from starting.

[...]

With more PC games having to make you jump through hoops like this I can see why fewer people are buying new PC games. If I was asked I would suggest the console version.

The pirated version any idiot with a bittorrent client downloads, for free, actually works. The one bought at Wal-Mart, for money, does not, or at least not until after a couple hours of insanity.

Guess which is going to be more popular?

Additionally, consider how many people here are honest enough to buy a game, but end up grabbing a no-cd crack or an entire pirated version of the same damn game, jut to get the freakin' thing to run? I'd bet they have gotten piled into that "80%" as well.

[Devilkin]

Take into account a 1 time fee of purchasing a console $299-$499 compared to upgrading a pc every 4-6 months to be able to play the newest releases...yea.. console game sales will be better.

[robotdevil]

Well, the numbers definately don't add up. 80% is a rediculous amount of people pirating games. If you figure an average decent game sells approximately a million copies that means that 800,000 people have an illegal copy of that game. That's a little hard to swallow. I would be more inclined to agree with something in the range of 40-60%. But I also agree that arguing whether or not this is morally wrong is idiotic. It is wrong, plain and simple. You are taking someone elses hard work and using it without reimbursement.

That being said, it's not all hard work either. Most people don't realize that many games share the same underlaying engine (care to guess how many games use the Quake engine? How about the Unreal engine? Yeah, didn't think so) and the cost to liscense those is hundreds of thousands of dollars. And consider that an average game takes 6 to 8 months to develop and a good game takes 12-18 months you can see the cost for these is getting pretty high.

But then we see a ton of games produced with no purpose. And games building on the franchises that made them famous not delivering. CoD4 for me was a huge let down. CoD1 and 2 had great single player campaigns and when I heard that CoD4 was being made by the same peeps I had high hopes for it, and it really is a good game. But $50 for 5 hours of play? Come on, that's reatarted. And the notion that the multiplayer is what makes the game, well the multiplayer is just average, nothing really special about it. I will eventually purchase it, but I'm glad I downloaded it for now.

Conversely, I also downloaded UT3 and was so immensely impressed with it that I did purchase it. And I wasn't expecting much from that game (I was expecting UT for a 4th time).

So, for me at least, the question of whether this is "right" or "wrong" is irrelevant. I am a PC gamer, and have been for years, and the cost of keeping a gaming rig running has gone up by an exponential factor. Unfortunately my pay has not kept pace so I must cut corners to decide what games are worth keeping and what games will end up in a landfill on a DVD-R.

Now, that's not entirely true, I use DVD+R.

[RagManX]

Well, the numbers definately don't add up. 80% is a rediculous amount of people pirating games. If you figure an average decent game sells approximately a million copies that means that 800,000 people have an illegal copy of that game.

Actually, an 80% piracy rate means total sales make up 20% of the entire game usage base. So a game selling 1,000,000 has an additional 4,000,000 people playing pirated copies. I'm not sure I buy that at all.

Furthermore, comparing piracy rates for Bioshock will almost certainly give some of the worst rates possible, since many of us gamers found out early on about the evil and potentially destructive copy protection and warned others against buying it. I had already installed the copy I bought at GameStop before I found out it had the same copy protection that had previously destroyed 2 of my CD burners. I warned people on my web site not to buy it. I didn't say pirate it, but I'm sure many people who heard about the problems did that instead of paying for something that could actually cause a hardware failure. The pirated version had no such copy protection.

I don't approve of piracy, and I spend a heck of a lot on games I want to play. When I can't afford something, I wait until I can or do without. I'm not saying stealing games is acceptable behavior. But I think I can explain why some people are doing it. And I don't believe the 80% number given.

RagManX

[phsychokill]

alot of the people who pirate games must be stupid as if you look on the officail assassins creed forums there is a bunch of people asking for help with crashes when the game isnt out till the end of the month and they are all having the same crash as the leaked copy had a bad file.

[krakenx]

So follow the logic here: If something doesn't sell, its because of the pirates. So when Coke 2 didn't sell, it was because people were pirating it?

Of course PC games aren't selling because their minimum system requirements are 10x what people need otherwise. 900MHZ is enough for web browsing, word processing, and SD video playing, which is what people usually use their computers for. If you want Bioshock to look half as good as the 360 version, you need a beefy (2.2ghz x2) dual core processor at least 1.5 gigs of RAM and a very powerful (possibly two) graphics card. And even after that, you still have draconian DRM, awful keyboard control, a lengthy install, storage issues, and system incompatibilities. PC gaming will die as soon as M$ and sony let you plug in a USB mouse for RTS games and Blizzard makes a WOW port. And its not because of piracy, its because of common sense.

It isn't going to die completely of course. On the fringes, there will still be the counterstrike crowd, casual games will continue to expand, and indie games like Aquaria will continue to be amazing, but the days of mainstream 3D PC gaming are numbered.

[Murdock]

This entire discussion is dumb and has been done so many times ... always the same arguments by the "piracy hunters" and their "fellows" (those who cry like idiots: "Piracy = Crime!")

1. Piracy is not legal .. that's true ... but comparing a simpe COPY of a game/video/song ... with a crime like stealing sth. in a store (maybe even with violence involved) is just rediculous ... every idiot can see there's a huge difference!

2. These numbers only serve to excuse lousy PC game sales ... nothing else!

3. Unfortunately I have seen a German company going down because a good game did not sell very well, it's called "Paraworld" .. great game if u ask me ... but I seriously doubt the reason (as the CEO of the company later stated) was that the game was copied too often ... there was hardly any advertisement (due to a lack of money), game shops sold the game, but it was placed in the very last shelf of the shop I didn't even notice it b4 the news was on the TV that the company had to close it's doors

4. What about the numbers of console games that get copied and played? No information about that ... simply comparing two numbers (sales console vs. PC) is rediculous ...

5. Don't tell me that playing a copied PC game via pirated servers/hamachi, etc. is the same than playing the original game online with a valid key .... it is surely NOT! Every1 who states sth. else doesn't know what he's talking about! -> new games are created around the online gaming feature (e.g. QW:ET, find out which game this is urself). So ppl. who first play the pirated version will be pretty eager to by the game (like in my case ... I didn't pirate it, but a firnd of mine brought it to a LAN match ... I played it with him, against bots and wanted the original) -> since online gaming gets more and more dominating, the problem will vanish more or less by itself ... since no1 can play on RANKED servers for example with a copy ... it simply doesn'T work!


6. A company who gains more and more profit every damn year and at the same time comes whining and crying like a whimp that their games get copied and they lose money is makeing a fool of itself ... just look at these companies gains ... no matter where u look, music, video or game industry .. they earn more and more every damn year ... and then complaining about piracy? :rofl: sorry, but this can't be true ...

7. Conclusion from these above and agreeing with other comments here:

- Lower the prices and more ppl. will b able to buy the games! I know that production costs are very high for good games, but u can't tell me that a game has to cost 60 to 70 € ... I got QW:ETfor 19,- € ONLY about half a year after release ... so why not selling it from day 1 at such a low price? It'd be like a wave, more ppl. have the game from day 1 on, more other ppl. will see the gae at their friend's and in turn will buy the good game again for the cheap price ... -> in the end = more money for the companies ... they'd even need less money for advertising a game, since good games then would advertise themselves ...

BUT: The problem is that more than 50 % of the games are pure CRAP! Therefore companies require a high price to get the money for development back. They do not want ppl. to advertise their games since they aren't 100 % convinced of their product themselves ... they know this "wave-theory" would not work!

The only thing they want is a lot of money from the first buyers ... they know these ppl. won't recommend or advertise the game since they play it, get mad since they payed a lot of money for it and tell their friends that it sux or their friends play it themselves and see it's not good.

This is not a theory, it's a matter of fact! Seen it so many times ... a firned of mine buys a lot of new games since he's got a job. 90 % of his friends see the games and we of course test them on LAN parties ... most of them are quite fun for an hour, but aren't work 60 bucks ... -> no recommendation -> no further money for the company -> high price for the first buyer who gets angry then and may even think about pirating the next game because he got literally cheated the last time!

The current system still worx, but I doubt it will for a long time ...

PC gaming will die as soon as M$ and sony let you plug in a USB mouse for RTS games and Blizzard makes a WOW port. And its not because of piracy, its because of common sense.

more than doubtful ...

why should players buy console games that cost 1.5 times what the same darn PC title costs? Additionally, try to install MODS and add-ons on a console ... they try to improve the add-on possibility on console titles, but it's not the same. And I believe it will never be the same ...

additionally, there's more than just the mouse and the keyb u need to play an FPS shootter properly. THings that a console can never serve ... every1 who has ever played a FPS shooter on PC with PASSION knows what I mean ...

oh, and please ... explain ur common sense to me ... seems not as common as u thought since I don't get it -.-