Zalathar
Stellar Research Incorporated
DEFI4NT
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Posted - 2008.06.01 08:38:00 -
[1]
Is PC game piracy really as big a problem as game developpers make it out to be?
At first i thought it was a bit of a scare that game makers were spreading, but after some investigation, it seems to be real, and a genuine problem for the game industry.
For a while the PC game market has not been growing, with revenue staying about the same, despite the increasing costs of development to conform to the higher quality standards expected of modern games. The console market on the other hand hass been booming over the past few years, with large increases in revenue, and many exclusive titles and such.
Its hard to think of many PC exclusives recently (other than strategy games, which are best on PC, or possibly), but when pressed, Crysis springs to mind. Crysis was produced by Crytek, a company with a record for good PC exclusives, for exapmle the fist Farcry (not the console remakes). Crysis was a beautiful game, ludicrously so, and thus it was very expensive to produce. I personally was expecting everyone with a PC wich could handle it to purchase the game, or in my case, to beef up the their rig to play it properly. Suprisingly, Crysis sold remarkably poorly, leaving the makers with a severly decreased revenue.
Why was this? Crysis has no DRM (digital rights management), meaning that the game was pretty easy to hack, and distribute illegaly, ie pirate, not pay for it. This of course leaves makers out of pocket, and following Crysis's fizzle, they announced that they can nolonger afford to make PC exclusives.
As we have already seen with Farcry's console follow-ups, great non-linear segments of Farcry , and now Crysis's sequel, will have to be removed to dum it down to the mass console crowd, and scale the graphics down to go with the less powerful processing ability of consoles.
So, let me get this straight. People who could afford to shell out over $1000 for a gaming PC that could handle crysis, could not be bothered to pay the 50 or 60 bucks that it would cost to buy Crysis, and had to pirate it instead. That is one of the lowest, most cheap things i have ever heard.
I am sure their are PC exclusives i failed to mention, so you are all free to flame me on that.
So how to Pc publishers react to piracy, and the shrinking of the market associated with it? they implement excessive DRMs.
example: Mass effect's publisher's EA (dont turn this into an EA falme thread) announced a stringent set of measures to prevent piracy. Every 10 days, you would have to go through verification, and the game would have a maximum of 3 installations.
I hardly need to say that the gaming community was furious, ad many decided to boycott the game, some even declaring that "to punish ea, they would pirate it". So, and excellent game, is being brought to PC, afetr several months reworking, an awsome improvement to the graphics, huge bug busting work, and promise of a whole continued string of 100% free DLCs, by a renowned and respect RPG producer (bioware), and people are boycotting it due to the hassle involved in verification???
Is it really that wrong for a PC publisher to wish to protect their games. EA learned for their missatke with Crysis, are trying to stop piracy, protect and promote the PC market, and respond to many PC gamers asking for Mass effect to come to PC, and then have them complain that they can't pirate it/have to go through lots of DRM.
Thi sis all just wrong. IF games are art, game makers are artists. Do you steal an artists works? Many do, but it should not happen. You would not steal a bag, some beer from a store, or CD from a shop, so dont steal games.
You are all free to flame me, or ewven write TL;DR. |