The hypocrisy of PC gamers
There are petitions these days trying to get developer From Software to port Dark Souls to the PC. The petitions have garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures, but it’s still unlikely we’ll ever see Dark Souls on PC. Why? Because PC is a platform with 90% piracy rate.
The majority of PC gamers will never pay for their games, no matter how many Steam sales Valve has, no matter how much the game are marked down, no matter how easy and convenient and DRM-free it is: it’ll never be better than free. Last year, a whopping 4 million PC gamers pirated Crysis 2. When time comes for Crysis 3, which platform do you think developer Crytek will focus on? PC or consoles? Even Portal 2, which is made by Valve, a company with a God-like status among gamers, was pirated more than 3 million times on the PC.
“If you didn’t pay for it, you stole it. Doesn’t matter if its a physical copy, or a digital copy — the developer won’t get paid for their work.”Developers like Valve can afford to put out great and expensive PC titles: they have an established fan base who are going to buy the game no matter what. But when it comes to small developers, and especially first time developers, it’s a very different story, as Bohemia Interactive showed last year with the release of ArmA 2: for every 3 people who bought the game, 100 pirated it. The head of Bohemia said the statistic was “really worrying for us as a mid-sized, independent, PC-oriented developer”.
Politically correct PC gamers insist that services like Steam and lower prices are the solution to game piracy, but Steam has been around for a few years now, as have other digital distribution systems. Has PC gaming piracy gone down? Not at all. Granted, publishers share some of the blame: restrictive DRM solutions have certainly driven away some legitimate gamers. But before you start praising “non-DRM” solutions, know that there are no true “non-DRM” services. Steam is a DRM service. If you don’t believe that, try and give one of you Steam games to a friend. Try and sell the game that you bought and rightfully own — oh, you can’t. That’s because you don’t own the games in your Steam library, technically you pay for a “subscription” to them.
With those kinds of numbers, why should From Software make Dark Souls for the PC platform? If 9 out of 10 gamers will pirate the game, that’s not a good business proposition. And when multiplatform titles do get a PC release, it’s usually in the form of a bad console port. That’s where the hypocrisy lies: elitist PC gamers complain about bad ports and developers not caring enough about the PC platform. But then they pirate the game anyway. At least 9 out 10 times. The tired old excuse that “online piracy isn’t theft, because it’s just a copy” is bullshit. If you didn’t pay for it, you stole it. Doesn’t matter if its a physical copy, or a digital copy — the developer won’t get paid for their work.
“If I was a developer, would I spend my resources developing for a platform with 10% piracy rate, or 90% piracy rate?”For the record, I don’t own a console. I’m a PC gamer. And all but one (Battlefield 3) of my 40+ games were bought on Steam. But unlike many other legitimate PC gamers, I don’t complain when a developer decides not to release a PC version. Or when they decide to spend most of their resources on the console versions. Nor I don’t complain about bad PC ports that are released years later. I understand their reasons. If I was a developer, would I spend my resources developing for a platform with 10% piracy rate, or 90% piracy rate?
Face it, we PC gamers don’t deserve any more exclusive titles. We don’t deserve proper PC versions or ports. We don’t deserve a truly non-DRM system. By pirating 9 out of 10 games, we have’t earned the right to any of those things.
Sincerely,
A PC gamer.
It is not that extreme. Besides the rate of piracy is also skewed, you have to consider how many of those were potential buyers anyway. There is a good chance people just pirate because they can. Also with many developers not doing demos there are people who do use it to test games. Also PC sales have gone up year after year with steam, their sales doubled for the past 7 years. I appreciate the well thought out argument shows I shouldn’t complain, but too bad its all I can do at this time.
You, sir, are an idiot. The fact that you sign yourself with “A PC gamer” in the end is laughable. It doesn’t matter how high the piracy rate is. What matter is how well it sells. There will always be pirates but as long as there are enough people buying it that’s all that matters. It’s funny you mention crysis 2. Why not mention crysis 1 and how well it sold, maybe because unlike its sequel was a proper pc title.
maybe Crysis 1 was released in a time that piracy was a little less of an issue as it is right now (due to higher bandwith etc)…
but it is common for people to put a finger to things they don’t like, but as soon as it applies to them a whole lot of shouting occurs about the reasons why this time the moral ‘error’ is not that bad at all and hell, even very understable! There IS no argument to dissolve the “if you didn’t pay for it, you stole it”… sorry people but that is such a clean an righteous fact that any argument against is seems like a poor excuse for pircay. Just think about what the word “PIRACY” means in the first please …
There is 0 bandwidth difference between 2007 and 2011. Also, notice the poor sales of Crysis 1 on consoles. Do you think the devs made more money on PC or consoles? Obviously, this proves that console piracy is greater than PC piracy. Or so your logic would tell us. “The Hypocrisy of Console Gamers”, right?
Take into account that there are 2 (higher-end) consoles v.s. PC. If a game sold equally on all mediums, then there should be a 2:1 console to PC sales ratio. That’s not what’s happening right now. There are games that sell great on PC with very little console sales in comparison, and then there are mainstream console titles that sell much less on PC. Statistics that are considered when looking at sales usually pit both consoles together against PC in an attempt to lure developers to console development so that the Sony and Microsoft can make more money on royalty.
As for sources on PC games selling better on PC than console, see
http://www.destructoid.com/portal-2-sold-better-on-pc-than-xbox-360-or-ps3-210194.phtml
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/11/23/cthulhu-saves-the-world-bundle-drives-100k-insane-on-steam/
Having trouble finding sources for DA:O, Crysis 1 and Risen, all of which sold more on PC than consoles. In DA:O’s case, it did better on PC than on both consoles combined.
As for PC generating more sales than consoles:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/07/27/eas-non-gaap-figures-pc-beating-consoles/
PC revenue growing (see 2008-2011 growth) – notice how PC is worth more than 1/2 of console revenue, while if the chart only included X360 and PS3 (which it does not), then PC should be much less
http://ewandoo.com/pc-gaming-technology-providing-more-revenue-than-all-other-gaming-consoles/
PC market growing
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-03-01-pc-games-market-has-grown-20-percent-to-USD16bn
PC sales, excludes digital sales, which represent around 75% of PC sales (multiply by 4 for an approximation of total sale numbers)
http://www.vgchartz.com/platform/19/personal-computer/
Oh, and I think you’ll like this one:
http://www.techspot.com/news/43866-lionhead-second-hand-console-games-more-costly-than-pc-piracy.html
Truly, the Hypocrisy of Console Gamers. How does it feel to know that your “kins” are causing more damage to developers than pirates? Dare you say PC gamers are evil, now?
I dont know where you live, but after the direct dollars to euros conversion steam did a while back, pc games arent cheaper in europe on steam than the stores, so that argument is invalid, and as far as DRM goes, take a look at the DRM on Anno 2070, I dont know a single gamer that stays forever with the same graphics card.
You have got to be kidding me… You realize how rampant console piracy is? In many cases its the consoles who get the pirated games first. This “outcry” has been going on long enough and I have witnessed developers bounce back and forth on their stance on this enough times to know its bullshit.
You are seriously lashing out at people wanting a game to be released on their primary gaming platform? We don’t deserve a port? Sorry pal but money talks bullshit walks. If there is enough interest demonstrated for the developers to release to pc – they will. It has nothing to do with principle and hurt feelings, just cold hard cash. Which is the same logic that drove them to release to consoles only. They felt the demographic wasn’t there, but the fanbase is proving them wrong.
Go back to your bridge, troll.
What is more relevant?
A. Number of total copies sold.
B. Percentage of piracy
In other words, what is best if you want to earn a living? Selling 10 games to a platform with lots of piracy, or selling 2 games to a platform with almost no piracy?
Now the thing is that console games sell a lot better than PC games, making them more profitable, so the example above does not hold for reality. In reality console games sell a lot of better than their PC counterparts.
What is the most profitable way to sell games?
A. Developing for two platforms selling lots of copies (Console)
B. Developing for infinite number of platforms, selling fewer copies (PC)
Most publisher will prioritize A. since it give them the shortest development time and generates more money. It’s probably better to put developers on a new console project than to make them port the game to PC.
I think it’s easy to blame piracy, rather than saying that consoles are easier and more profitable.
Now I have some opinions on what the author is writing.
Piracy percentages, like 90% is not reliable at all. At least not for the whole market. Maybe for a specific game. At least link your source to the numbers if you want some credibility.
Even if the numbers were true, how many of these 90% would actually turn out to actual sales if there were no piracy? Think of it this way, if you give away candy for free, most people would eat of it. But that doesn’t mean that everybody who wanted a bite, would have driven to the store to get some candy if you weren’t there.
Secondly why call piracy theft? There’s a reason it’s called piracy and not theft. It’s because nothing is stolen, it’s copied.
If I didn’t work, I would not earn money, but I certainly wouldn’t say that my free time was stealing all my money. If I hired a plumber and didn’t pay h
First of all there is NO WAY you are a PC gamer…never ever in you’re life whick is about 14 years i’m sure.
Aniway the problem with Pc gamers is that they are really picky with the games they buy that is why mediocre games(most of them these days) don’t sell on the pc like on the console and awesome games sell millions.This is the reallity.If you want you’re game to be bought well do you’re freaking job and develop a game worth 50-60 bucks.If you are going to develop X-men destiny,dragon age 2,brink and so on….well expect shitty sales.Its like in any job in the world…you do you’re job great you get you’re money…you don’t?well no money for you.
Excuse me if i don’t trow 50 bucks at any shitty,4 hour,retarded game…but you guys feel free to buy it
And to anticipate any brainless dude that will say: PC games don’t sell…look at Witcher 1 and 2,STALKER series,skyrim,batman,AC,borderlands and so on
The Witcher sold more than 2 million copies to this date and The Witcher 2 sales surpassed 1 million copies by the first two months after it’s release. Both are PC exclusive games so far.
Dark Souls on the other hand sold 1.5 million copies across two platforms (x360 and PS3).
With this data, there’s no reason why Dark Souls shouldn’t be ported to PC because of the piracy rate of the platform (which there’s no factual number to prove). A PC version of From Software game could easily be the most succesful for the developers. If console gamers truly love From Software they should support the PC version and not the other way around.
I really wish Crysis 2 hadnt come out for PC I felt cheated out of $10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvSU6ufMCFU
he has a point guys… damn, piracy on pc is more of a problem than consoles becuase of the ease of download. on console you have to flash your system and then buy parts so your console can play the pirated games. that costs a bit of money. not many people do it in comparison to pc… its much easier on pc, all you do is click and download, maybe run a patch or two and its cracked. a 10 year old kid could do it. the writer has a point. he is in no way saying console is better than pc, he is just saying developers deserve the money for making these great games, and there not getting most of it from pc
I am an older guy,been online(bullitin boards) years before the internet. The www originally was not as commercialised as today,never was it intended to be so.
The authors,developers,etc,who today publish content,should remember that and cannot expect that users pay for anything that is easily downloaded,or downloaded through skilled knowledge of legal online techniques, and not copywrite rules that apply to controlled offline material.
it is more than clear that pc gamers will pay for awesome. Witcher 2, bf3, skyrim are just a few examples of million sellers the pc had last year. 2012 is looking to be an even better year with even more exclusives than deadbox. Please, pc gaming is far from dead and steam and origin are proof of that. They dont sell millions, but they do make a lot more profit on pc due to digital distribution. on steam they get 70 percent and ea gets every single penny on origin, so skyrim selling 2 million on pc is like selling 4 milliion on console cause they make three times the money. Learn your shit before bashing pc gamers. We like good games, made for pc, not the mediocre crap that consoles have right now which have auto aim, see through walls, patrol paths and hold your hand all the way till the end. Please. If anything, its console gamers ruining this generation of games.
This would be cool and all if digitalbattle wasn’t owned by EA. And Crysis 2 was pure unadulterated consolized crap that was so damn linear and boring compared to the first one; it wasnt even worth the disk space. That should tell you something about the quality of games created for PC rather than just being ports.
The writer conveniently omits that the PC-exclusive Crysis sold 3 million copies, more than Crysis 2 did accross three platforms. Of course the latter suffered a big hit to PC sales, because it was console-centered and all in all a bad game. Same with Dragon Age 2 – you can’t fare just on marketing and brand recognition on the PC market.
And while piracy hasn’t gone down, PC sales have significantly gone up with the advent of digital distribution. Ubisoft managed to decrease piracy for their games with their horrible GFWL-like service, but that came with a 90% drop to PC sales too. I don’t think that’s worth it.
The PC market is simply becoming more and more inhospitable for titles that don’t utilise the full potential of the platform or have a bad game service. Of course that pushes away the major publishers, but allows companies like Blizzard, Valve, Paradox, CDProjekt, GSC GameWorld and a lot others to thrive.
You don’t know what the hell you are talking about.
PC gamers routinely purchase their favorite titles, and encourage their friends to buy the title. Most PC gamers will state that one should not pirate. And if someone does turn out to be a pirate in an Internet conversation, about 8 people will jump on him or her and go “WELL I PAID FOR IT!” PC gamers do by and large know the importance of supporting developers.
But this is capitalism. And in capitalism, it is a two way street between the developers and the gamer. So, if the developer makes crap, we won’t buy it, and we will tell all our friends “Its crap.” That’s life in the big city, dude. If its crap, no one pirates it either.
So you are posing “PC gamers are pirates!” But its actually the PC gamers who buy the stuff. Who else would? And if developers can’t be bothered to make a title we don’t want to buy, we don’t have to buy it.
And I really think that this is what it boils down to. This is what is wrong with the nouveau riche and people younger than 30. Just because YOU make it, doesn’t mean I have to buy it. Period. And its a luxury product. So when I am doing my monthly budget, if I cannot afford your expensive game because I have to buy food, I won’t buy your game.
There is also a recession. A lot of people who used to buy games aren’t necessarily able to buy games at the moment.
So here you are having a frothy spit fit about pirates. Its nonsense. This is what happens in a recession. Luxury products die first.
But also, if you make stuff no one wants to buy, no one will buy it. The price of a game is an elective expense. I don’t HAVE to buy it.
All of you big babies who thought mommy and daddy were always gonna pay for your stuff make me sick.
Well, technically, people do pirate shit games. How do you know a game is shitty without playing it? Do you suggest your tastes must be identical to that of everyone else, thus making their opinion on the quality of a game as valid for you? Or, do you suggest one should buy all games they are interested in? If the former, obviously, one person might think a game shit, while the other might think it a masterpiece. As for the latter, publishers don’t care whether you like the game or not. All they care about is that you give them money. If they receive money, they make more games of this kind (and before you know it, no good games come out anymore). If they don’t receive money, however, other than blaming piracy, they’ll stop producing games of that kind.
Of course, if games still had demos, it wouldn’t be necessary for anyone to have ever purchased a bad game (leaves a sour taste in the mouth) to pirate before buying.
Well, it’s a choice between BUYING a game, and having to install GFWL, Origin, and all sorts of associated crap that in NO WAY adds to the gaming experience, as well as intrusive DRM (that doesn’t work, ever) and Day 1 DLC which could (and should) have been included in the game, or pirating it and getting a MUCH better experience before I’ve even launched the damn game, I know which one I will do.
Steam and GoG are the only decent services out that, and even then they’re not perfect.
EA must have asked you really nicely for this article, seeing as your traffic is abysmal. Good day sir.
You are only telling half the story.
Piracy will never go down.
But the amount of people who buy games after enjoying a pirated copy of it have gone up and will continue to do so.
Hell some pirates ARE the customers. The decide to pirate the game and pay for it anyway.
Why? Because piracy is far better service than the one shipping with the product.
Piracy sets the standard. If hackers are able to provide a better service on a lower [read: none existant] budget than all big gaming corporations then the pirate was damn well justified.
Take a look at upcoming title “Mass Effect 3″, it comes with DRM (Origin, a tacked on “service”), plenty of pre-order DLC, which also varies between retailers. And top that off with the planned upcoming DLC that is actually on-disc content held back to be “re-released”.
You’re forced to buy at least two copies of Mass Effect 3(one collectors edition), play the demo of Kingdoms of Amaleur, and purchase all of the upcoming DLC that is already finished by release. Once you have installed the game you’re forced to authorize your key online, through Origin, before you can play it. Then bind all of the DLC keys to your origin and authorize all of the DLC keys every time you boot up the game making a constant online connection mandatory. And this is considered “mild DRM”. If you want to see some truly awful ones take a gander over at Ubisoft.
And what is the reasoning behind DRM? It’s there to prevent people from pirating the game.
Instead it encourages possible customers to pirate the game.
Because pirates don’t need to bother themselves with any DRM, only customers do.
Pirates also don’t have to deal with missing content just ’cause they bought the wrong version from the wrong retailers.
And they get all post-release content for free as well.
So the question here is: Why aren’t you a pirate yet?
There are quite a few who’ve realized the true way to counter piracy.
Good old games, steam and most indie developers on the market will agree piracy isn’t evil.
Only the perception of misinformed men makes it so.
And so they have dedicated their efforts to provide services that are better than piracy.
And a hint for future endeavors, don’t be a fanboy.
Most of these illegal copies are being download from third world countries where the games won’t sell anyway, and makes the numbers look bigger than they are when you discriminate between potencial costumers and people that will never buy the products in first place.
I, for one, didnt had a job before.
Now with a steady job I buy the few games I play, hell I bought most of the game I already finished that i had pirate.
Great games sell well.
http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/121/1215997p1.html
Steam keeps growing 100% every year.
Piracy doesn’t equal a lost sale, I’ve bought so many games after pirating to try them out first, as developers hardly ever release demos anymore and i like to try before I buy, as money is pretty tight right now.
Plus, Piracy is pretty rampant on consoles too. Then there’s the used game market it doesn’t give any money back to the developers, it’s companies like gamestop etc. that make the profit from the used copies. And people on consoles are constantly trading in games and buying used to save some cash.
Also those statistics are bullshit, maybe 2 million of those portal 2 pirates actually bought the game. Like me, I pirated portal 2 on release because I didn’t have the money to buy it and I really wanted to play it, I bought it the week after release, when i got paid.
Well if you had to spend $1-2k on the machine to run the games, as opposed to $100-300 for a wii or and xbox, you would probably cut corners where you could…
I lol’ed.
“for every 3 people who bought the game, 100 pirated it”
That’s not even what he actually said. He said “that for every 3 legitimate copies playing multiplayer there are 100 failed attempts to play with a pirated version,” however the same person/pirated copy is likely to try many attempts until he finds a method that works (the same goes for download numbers, people often have to try several versions before they find one that works). If you actually payed attention at all you would have realized he said that it’s impossible to provide any hard numbers of piracy or whether stopping piracy would increase sales several times.
A vast majority of piracy doesn’t come from US consumers with disposable income and convenient purchase avenues, it comes from places where gamers can’t get the game due to government censorship and limited releases or can’t afford it because the average income is too low. If you somehow managed to stop all piracy the games still wouldn’t sell in those areas.
Finally, it’s not even much harder to pirate console games, so the “this is just a PC problem” angle is total bullshit. There are still millions of reported downloads for wii and 360 games as well.
@david
I built my current rig in its original state back in 08 for just under 400 bucks.
Mind you, it was some of the latest tech at the time. GTX260 springs to mind.
I have only upgraded once since then and it was last year in August.
I got a few new parts. An i5 processor, 2GB of ram and a GTX560ti.
The upgrade cost me a total of 239 bucks. Which means I’ve spent a total of 639 bucks for a rig that is able to run all games at 1920×1080 with maxed settings, except I run the AA at 8 instead of 16.
It also serves as my workstation when I’m home.
Point is, if anyone ever pays over a thousand bucks on a gaming/home rig then he’s an idiot.
Instead of them focusing on console games than PC, why don’t they ACTUALLY work on the game’s security more than it’s a lot more harder to pirate.
Make it activate with a username and a password the company generates when it gets the money transferred I don’t know!
But focusing on console games and most of the time just don’t release games for the PC is just a horrendous fail from the company’s end.
“If you didn’t pay for it, you stole it.”
Shit… better turn myself in for using Ubuntu to play OpenArena.
I buy games that I think will be supported and active, 99% of what I’ve pirated I would have never bought, or even considered buying mostly due to the fact that even when you spend $60 on an EA/Activision title, you get a half broken piece of crap that takes a year for them to patch correctly, then they move onto yet another release.
40+ games? Impressive… NOT. I was (and still am to some extent) a pirate, and so far I own 326 games on Steam, including Portal 2. What does that make me then, hmm? A PC god?
I have at around 70 games on Steam and 10 games in Origin. I live in Peru. A country where you can buy a pirated game just around the corner for some $ 3 on average. I choose to buy original games because the prices and Steam are excellent and because the multiplayer worth it. Sometimes spending $ 60 on games that I like very much like BF3 or NFS The Run and others. I think the issue of piracy on the PC must convatir with prices much lower. With digital copies of least cost to the company and allow the game to sell at a price of $ 10 or less, not $ 60 and should try to include an excellent online version.
So when did ubisoft write this article? 90%? That sounds way too high. People will pirate no matter what, and don’t just say “Oh, they’ll switch to console only.” Well guess what you can do on consoles as well?
“online piracy isn’t theft, because it’s just a copy”
Making a copy… that’s what forgery is, right?
You’re missing a lot of variables here. Studies have shown that pirates are also the best and most loyal customers.
I pirated Half-Life, both expansions, Half-Life 2 with both episodes, Portal, Portal 2, hell, even Minecraft. But you know what?
I bought them all a week after pirating them, because they were good games who deserved my money. Developers can’t whine about piracy when all they release for PC are buggy and unfinished ports of console games. These games aren’t worth the money. If developers would focus on making a proper PC version, sales would go up.
The big flaw I see in this article is that it’s grouping PC gamers with software pirates. A true PC gamer buys all their games and MAY pirate a game when a demo is unavailable. Why isn’t the true PC gaming community the only audience considered for the platform? It seems like a sensible idea to just ignore the pirates. If they pirated the game, they probably weren’t going to buy it anyways and they don’t deserve to be part of the community of people who did.
It’s like banning junk food from society because some people get fat off of it… Sort of >.>
“No matter how much the game are marked down, no matter how easy and convenient and DRM-free it is: it’ll never be better than free.”
This is only true for people who have absolutely no money to spare on video games. I doubt there are many gamers who can’t even afford Steam’s generous holiday sales.
Piracy is usually a hassle even if you know exactly what you’re doing, and I bet most people are willing to pay money for convinience. $0 could get you no patches, no DLC and no multiplayer, and $10 will make those problems go away. And it’ll still be easier and faster than Pirate Bay.
On the other hand, it can work the other way around. I bought Bulletstorm during the Steam Christmas sale, and discovered that because of GFWL it was more of a hassle than the pirated version I had already played. So I kept playing the pirated version. I also pirated Saints Row 3 and discovered that, for whatever reason, its framerates were borderline unplayable even though my system should have been able to handle it. Maybe that was just a problem with the pirated version (very unlikely), but am I going to pay €30-50 just to find out? The answer is definitely no. Actually, the reason I didn’t buy SR3 was because of THQ’s pre-order policies, and not because I wasn’t sufficiently interested in the game or able to afford it. I ended up buying Skyrim instead. Now that was truly a lost sale for THQ, but not because of piracy (incidentally, it appears THQ is doing pretty badly. I can’t imagine why).
These days I refuse to buy a lot of games because they’ll have game content only available through pre-ordering or from a specific retailer, or something like that. Even if I’m able to jump through all these hoops and get all the content (as if I was trying to catch Pokemons), it’s still the principle that counts.
And let’s not forget the fact that so many of today’s AAA hype extravaganzas are boring or just plain shit, and not even worth the effort of pirating them.
It’s not piracy that’s compromising sales.
Here’s yet another angle: I have a pirated copy of every game I own, so that I can install it whenever, and on whichever of my computers I desire. No Steam, no “renting” my owned copies of my games. Plus, if a game I bought happens to be garbage, I can sell it and recoup some of my money back. Console owners get to ditch their rubbish, PC gamers are stuck with the stink of it attached to their steam accounts.