Last week we published an editorial called “The Hypocracy of PC gamers“. We’ve received a ton of feedback and emails from readers, some good, some bad, but we also got emails from a few game developers as well. One developer wanted to share his story on how piracy affected his studio. These are his thoughts.

I run a small independent PC game studio (which will remain anonymous), and we have a slate of smaller puzzle and RPG games that we’ve made since 2009. We sell the games on Steam and other downloadable services, in addition to selling them on our own site, completely DRM-free. In 2011, we had 12 developers and artists working on new titles, and working on getting our games on the iOS platform. Sales were decent throughout the years, enough to support us and ensure that we could keep updating our games. Then our entire catalog of games was posted on The Pirate Bay and spread to other torrent sites.

“The “bundle” of games hit the torrent sites in January 2011, and by March, sales were down 50%. By May, they were down 80%”We didn’t think much of it at first, piracy affects everyone in this industry, and we believed that sales wouldn’t be affected too much and that gamers would appreciate supporting the devs and buying DRM free games. Then sales went down. A lot. The “bundle” of games hit the torrent sites in January 2011, and by March, sales were down 50%. By May, they were down 80%. We tried to respond to the piracy of our games in several ways. We lowered the price on Steam by 33%. Sales picked up a tiny bit, but it’s impossible because you’re competing with free. We had Steam sales, bundle packs, everything we could. It wasn’t enough, and by October of 2011, I had to let go half of my team — 6 people. We’ve restructured now to focus entirely on iOS games. I dunno how it’ll turn out, but developing on PC and supporting our PC games is not an option any longer. We just can’t afford it.

It’s easy for gamers and game journalists to get on their soapbox and proclaim they know how to fix the piracy issue, they always seem to “know” what developers should do (“Put it on Steam”. “Don’t use DRM”, “Use clever advertising” etc.). But you’re not the ones who have to manage a studio, you’re not the ones who have to make sure your developers get paid so they can feed their families. Our studio was doing just fine before our games hit the pirate channels. Then it all went downhill.

There are some claims that piracy causes millions of lost jobs in the US. I dunno about those numbers, maybe they’re true, maybe they’re much lower. But I know that piracy cost at least 6 jobs in 2011. Six people that I had to fire. Talented, hard-working folks with families.

So to all of you Pirate Bay supporters, all of you “experts” on Internet freedom who support “sharing” and who claim that “it’s not stealing”. From the bottom of my heart and on behalf of those 6 people: fuck you.

UPDATE: Our contributor emailed in this addition to the post: “For all those who ask: I won’t name my company nor the games we make. I’m fully aware that my statements go against most gamer’s beliefs on piracy and I have no intentions of drawing the wrath of the Internet to my company, which is already struggling. And this has nothing to do with quality — our games had a great fan base and we were doing just fine for two years before the games hit the torrent networks.”

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.

Editorial by Michael Hawkes.

The SOPA bill (Stop Online Piracy Act), is a vile peice of corrupt legislation that should have never been introduced in the first place. Luckily, the Internet is comprised of smart people who are good at voicing their opinion, especially when it comes to gamers. Many insisted that their favorite game developers and publishers oppose SOPA, but opposition to this bill should have been in place by game companies from the beginning.

“To be against SOPA today is like saying ‘I’m against dictatorship’. Where were all these developers like Bungie and Epic when SOPA was first introduced?”Over the past week, dozens of developers and publishers have joined the anti-SOPA movement, some because of pressure from their customers, others simply because it’s now “cool” and will get you respect from gamers — respect which was never really earned.

To be against SOPA today is like saying “I’m against dictatorship”. Where were all these developers like Bungie and Epic when SOPA was first introduced? Companies like Google and Facebook opposed SOPA from the beginning, notifying their users and customers of their stance, explaining what the bill means, showing what the effects of it might be, etc.

Where were the game developers and game publishers then? Oh that’s right, they were supporting it — directly or indirectly through their trade organization ESA. Now that SOPA has been revealed to the mainstream audience (which includes gamers) for what it is, it’s easy to score points by opposing it. Credit should go to those who helped shed light on SOPA (and the Internet activists), credit should go to those companies who were the first to take a stance against it, not the current horde of developers and publishers who are simply jumping on the bandwagon to get some karma points from gamers. The current trend is not a company policy, it’s a marketing policy. It’s decided by PR departments to come out against SOPA because it’ll look good on the company.

The game developers and publishers we’re seeing these days coming out against SOPA is nothing but a massive Internet karma-whoring trend. They should have opposed it from the beginning. When it wasn’t cool.

Activision just announced that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 will be getting a staggering amount of DLC over the next 9 months. Specifically, there will be 20 DLC packs (twenty!) for Modern Warfare 3 in the next 9 months. That’s more than one DLC every second week.

Which begs the question: how much DLC is too much? How much of this DLC was supposed to be in the game in the first place? A game which wasn’t that much different from previous CoD titles to begin with. And at one point do gamers just stop caring? While 20 DLC packs will no doubt generate a lot of revenue for Activision, it’s easy to assume that a large chunk of gamers will just get lost in all the content that’s available, and the fragmentation that could occur: if there are 20 map maps out there, it’ll spread the player base quite a lot, even with a game as popular as Modern Warfare 3. Want to play with your friend? You’ll need map pack #12. Want to play with another friend? You’ll need map pack #17 for that. And so on.

“Want to play with your friend? You’ll need map pack #12. Want to play with another friend? You’ll need map pack #17 for that.”The announcement of so many DLC packs also seems like a selling point for Activision’s Call of Duty Elite service. Elite membership costs $50/year and includes free DLC, but that’s $50 on top of the regular game’s $60 bucks. And on top of the Xbox Live subscription, which is another $50/year. Yes, gaming is getting very expensive. At least multiplayer gaming on the Xbox 360.

While we can’t say that we’re surprised over this (it’s Activision and Call of Duty, after all), hopefully it won’t be a direction that other publishers take. Depending on how gamers respond to this, it has the potential to become the norm — a somewhat lackluster game, coupled with a ton of DLC and a “premium” service sprinkled on top.

Remember when maps used to be free? Remember when instead of a few maps for $15, we got huge expansion packs for $20? Those were the good old days…