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.

The recently released first person puzzle game QUBE, which draws inspiration from the likes of Portal, has been somewhat successful, according to the developers. CUBE had a budget of $90,000, pennies compared to AAA titles, but it managed to recoup its costs after just 4 days of being available on Steam. The game retails for $15, and is somewhat of a short affair, with little story and somewhat repetitive gameplay (yes, we’ve played the game). The game has sold 12,000 copies as of a few days ago, but we imagine those numbers are quite higher now.

Either way, we’re glad to see indie titles succeed in an industry that’s increasingly getting hooked on sequels, remakes and adaptations. The developer is currently looking to port the game to iOS and consoles.

Duke Nukem is one of the many classic FPS franchises that eventually went on to define the genre. As you’re sure to know, Duke Nukem Forever recently hit store shelves after being in development for quite some time. While many fans of the franchise were highly anticipating the release unfortunately it didn’t live up to the hype and received generally poor reception across the board. Due to all of this bad press chances are you’re probably going to be pretty hesitant to spend $60 for the game if you haven’t already made up your mind.

Luckily, it was just made known today that a Duke Nukem Forever demo has been made available on not only Steam but Xbox Live as well. This will give a wide array of consumers the ability to check out the game before actually diving head first into the purchase. If you check it out let us know what you think of it and if you disagree with the

In case you wanted Crysis 2 on Steam today, you’re out of luck: CryTek’s FPS, among other EA titles, are gone from Steam. This is most likely EA preparing to offer its own exclusive titles to its Origin download service, but EA has issues a statement saying otherwise:

According to EA, Crytek “has an agreement with another download service which violates some new rules imposed by Steam, resulting in the expulsion of Crysis 2 from Steam,”, EA told gaming site Giant Bomb. Apparently, new Steam rules forbid certain games from being offered on other services, but this is unconfirmed.

There are still a few AAA titles from EA on Steam, including Bad Company 2, Bulletstorm and Dragon Age 2. EA has said that they intend to have exclusive titles for their new Origin service, including tar Wars: The Old Republic.

Everyone loves Steam’s offers: what’s not to love about paying a meager $5 for an awesome game that cost $50 just a few months ago? Steam has launched a new recurring daily offer, which each day will discount one game. Steam is kicking off the deal with Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, which is 75% off and now sells for just $5.

Steam has been running a variety of new offers lately, from their regular weekend deals, to mid-week deals (where they offer a game on Wednesday), to random deals throughout the week. Now with recurring daily deals, we have a reason to visit Steam every day. And Steam has even more reasons for getting our money, and they know it — Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising is currently downloading on my Steam now. Which probably means I’ll be wasting a lot of time this week. Darn you, Steam, darn you!

Valve is one of the most influence names in the gaming community with several of their hardest hitting games sure to go down in history. Of course they have the highly popular Half-Life and Counter-Strike series but they also have the somewhat newer Portal series. If you’re a fan of this series you’ll know that the company has recently released the second addition appropriately dubbed Portal 2 which includes things like co-op play and many new puzzles to portal your way through.

However, once beating both modes of the game there isn’t much you can do besides try to beat your own personal high score. Luckily, Valve has just remedied that today as well as they have just pushed out a level creator for the game. That’s right, you can now create your own puzzling levels for Portal 2 and all it takes it a simple download within the Tools sections of your Steam account.

Sales charts have been a way of tracking how well games sold and compared against each others. Other than what publishers themselves had announced — which isn’t always as accurate as one thinks — sales numbers were often aggregated by sales trackers like NPD, who surveyed all the retailers and then tallied the sales numbers up.

But since digital distribution is getting a bigger and bigger slice of the pie (it’s expected to hit 50% this year), it becomes more and more difficult to get realistic sales numbers, because most of the digital distribution platforms don’t publish the numbers. Now Valve has said that they have no intentions of publishing sales date. Valve’s Steam manager Jason Holtman said,

“The point is, it’s not super important for a publisher or developer to know how well everyone is doing. What’s important to know is exactly how your game is doing — why it’s climbing and why it’s falling; your daily sales; your daily swing; your rewards for online campaign number three. That’s what we provide.”

Which sounds very good. But keep in mind that people have an ego, and they’d like to know whether they’re winning or losing against the competition.

2K Games is running a great daily deal on Steam where it slashed 40% off of the price tag of the fifth installment on the Civilization franchise, Civilization V, which now costs just $30. However, the offer is valid only for today, so hurry up and get a copy if you’re interested. Steam Link. In addition to the game, all Civilization V DLC is 40% off as well — but only for today. For more on the game, check out our Civilization V review.

2K Games is running a daily deal for the next three days, so it’s a good idea to keep a lookout on Steam for some good 2K Games. Yesterday, they had BioShock and BioShock 2 for $5 bucks a piece.

We’ll keep you posted on tomorrow’s deal from 2K as well.

While many gamers are still flocking to their local retailers to get down on the latest titles, digital distribution outlets are becoming quite popular. On the PC, the most popular digital distribution service is none other than Valve’s Steam. The beauty of services like this is that it’s so easy for developers to cut us gamers a deal on some of their hottest titles. In fact, it seems that just about every week Valve is temporarily dropping the price tag of some of the hottest games. This week seems to be no different.

The reason I say this is because it was just made known that for a limited time both BioShock and BioShock 2 are priced at just $4.99 a piece. Unfortunately it seems that the deal is today only so if you’re considering doing it, I’d suggest doing it now. I mean, it’s only $10 for both of them, right?

What’s cooler than a game set in the World War II era? A game set in the World War II era with dinosaurs, obviously. For those of you who share similar views and think gunning down Nazis and dinosaurs sounds like a dream come true, you’re in for a treat. The reason I say this is because a game utilizing Valve’s Source Engine has just hit Steam dubbed Dino D-Day for $19.99.

From the looks of the trailer (included above) a race of human soldiers takes on a race of dinosaurs in an all out death match. Check out the gameplay trailer and let us know you what you think. Additionally, you can also check out the Steam listing for Dino D-Day here.