Piracy & PC gaming

Games
61

Hey. This is my first post on these forums. I’m a source/unreal 3 level designer working with an indie developer on a project hoping to jump into the industry. I have been an avid gamer for about 18 years since the Atari 2600. I have a few feelings on the issue of piracy I’d like to share.

I realize that there are many aspects and situations that I do not fully understand about the business side of game development and I also know many developers post here so I will keep this respectful.

I’ve always thought the current trend of gaming in terms of creativity and how it has transformed into a mutli-billion dollar industry has affected the root of what the true game was really meant to be. Piracy has many facets to its existence, however most of them stem from the same problems that game developers, as well as publishers, perpetuate on a regular basis, causing a vicious cycle, if you will. I relate it very much to the film industry, in both cause, effect and also the similar structure between both industries.

I believe the lack of innovation or out-of-the-box thinking in the gaming industry is leading the way in the decline of sales for the PC. The PC platform to me has always been about out-of-the-box thinking. It has always been the industry leader in new ideas and will continue to do so because of the low cost of development and hosts a multitude of young, passionate aspiring game designers (like me) who haven’t yet been jaded from the industry. It’s a perfect breeding ground for the unorthodox game design. Consoles to me have always been the platform which takes after PC innovation and distributes it to a wider audience. I’d consider it a success if my PC game was successfully ported over to a console - but definitely not vice versa.

What the problem seems to be is publishers seems to push the development of “tried and true” genre’s and discourage creativity. It limits the exposure level for PC games due to the void of readily available availability. This is fine and dandy for the consoles, as they have much better ways of making sure their customers have a means of easy obtainability through such things as renting and borrowing through friends etc. However, PC gamers are treated like criminals from the get go and therefore have to do extensive research before they decide to make the purchase, and once they do thats it - no going back. Would you take a chance on a brand new shooter game with fancy box art if you had no idea how it was or had any reference to if you might like it? Not really. I do, and I have many purchases which I regret (Gothic 3, Vanguard for example).

So it’s no wonder piracy decided to fill the void which PC gaming left wide open. Accessability, obtainability and exposure is something PC gaming doesn’t hold a candle to when it comes to consoles. Does it benefit you more to go down to your local video store, and pick up a 360 game you wanted to try for $5 or download a 4+gig file, burn the image, and go from there? Video store seems more viable. What about PC gaming? Spend $50+ or download a torrent? Many people do pirate for that reason. They want to be able to play the game before committing to spring for the full price. However with piracy as the exposure medium, you’re likely not going to see people buy a game once they’ve got the whole thing cracked. They have no obligation to.

And don’t bring up demos either as a means for exposure. Nobody likes demos. People shouldn’t have to download 1gig+ files for limited content. And demos have really limited content. They may as well download the whole game with the time spent downloading the demo and the hassels of mirrors and download-limited sign-up pushers.

It’s my view on why piracy is flooding the market. But that isn’t to say there is no solution. If theres anyone out there who thinks theres no way to combat it effectively, well, maybe you’re just becoming a dinosaur in the game industry.
If anything rings true universally in any industry is it will survive if the industry itself adapts. The yesterday-thinking minds of today who lead the forefront of game design are more and more handing in their game designer cards to go work exclusively for consoles, abandoning the very platform that made every successful game designer out there successful. It’s not a bad thing either. It just means you have intentionally stifled your creative ability for the demand for more mass consumption - typical in such industries as the film industry. Like I said before, PC platform should be about creativity and new ideas. If you’ve run out of them, then yeah maybe consoles are the best option. I don’t think I’d ever want to work on a clone console title, however someday I probably will, when I’m close to retirement, or my Big Book of Game Ideas are fulfilled.

The direction of the industry in the face of this problem is anyones guess. However Steam seems to be doing well. I’ve used steam as a good example of how a great way to deter piracy is used. I also endorse subscription based gaming, and I don’t think many developers would scoff at the idea if it meant they could devote much more time on new content, patches and generally evolving their game post release. I also like service-based solutions when it comes to online based games. I am not a fan of peer 2 peer, and I’m sure many others would also appreciate a full online service.

I guess the point is, what all those things have in common with each other is they all battle piracy in a positive way, and respect the customer very well and it has been proven to be successful. Negatively battling piracy will only perpetuate the whole ‘culture’. SecureRom, the dreaded Starforce, limited activation keys (bioshock), etc and has proven to be unsuccessful.

These are just my opinions and observations of the industry in my short time here. I understand the sensitive subject considering many posters here have felt the impact of piracy intimately and have a lot of animosity towards it, but that should not stop the industry as a whole to develop ways to combat the piracy on the PC at its very root.

I hope my first post has been satisfactory, and much respect to the many developers on this site - chances are I’ve bought your games :)

62

Of course I do, but I often get the impression when people talk the doom of PC gaming, that they focus big budget titles when they spout sales, piracy numbers, and the high costs of making games rather than look at the opportunities in the marketplace.

I mean, when was the last time a PC game sold 4 million copies?* Was the hardcore PC market ever that big? Consoles are the home theater of video gaming, of course your Transformers and Armageddon’s are going to do well there. They are mass market devices dedicated just to video games.

*excepting WoW.

63

Yeah, okay. I guess I didn’t think that through. No, he wouldn’t lose sales. And he would gain them – but not at the same rate as he’d gain pirates.

Yes, if he made the game on the same budgets, and such, he wouldn’t lose money. He would, indeed, make more with more coverage. But the amount of people who pirate his game would rise to the point where actual sales were dwarfed by pirated copies, and thus, put him in the same position as other PC developers.

This is why I’m saying it’s a bit misleading to suggest that the PC gaming industry’s problems are its own fault. Yes, they are producing beyond their means. But even if they aren’t, PC Piracy is a huge problem, and even if they make profit and stay in business, the simple fact is that just because piracy isn’t a big problem for stardock, doesn’t mean it’s not a big problem that won’t drive decisions.

Consider this excerpt:

When your games get more popular, and you see the amount of people enjoying them without paying, it’s going to be pretty damn attractive to you too to move off the PC. I mean, when you see 2 million people playing and enjoying your game, but you only sold 400k copies, can you really sit back and say “Well, I’m satisfied I made a profit, and really, who cares about those 1.6 million in lost sales due to piracy”?

That’s what it comes across like. Even if you treat it as a business, there will come a point where you ask “why can’t I choose to make money on the rest of those people as well?”

64

People have been pirating our stuff since day 1. It is annoying.

But I don’t make business decisions based on emotion. I base them on whether I can produce a product or service at an acceptable profit. I don’t accept your premise that there’s “1.6 million in lost sales”. You are assuming that those pirates would have bought the game in the first place.

Even right now, there’s like 700 people downloading Sins from a single torrent. It definitely pisses me off. But at the end of the day, what counts is whether the game was profitable or not.

65

Sure, but I’d be a liar if I said it was the norm. Someone from EA said at GDC that The Sims (in all its flavors) has sold over 100M units. Guild Wars has sold over 5M, and WoW is probably in that nieghborhood. C&C Red Alert sold 12M, and the franchise topped 21M before Generals was released. Warcraft 3 blew past that threshold very quickly. The original Half-Life has sold 16M so far.

It’s a short list, though, and you’ll find most of it on Wikipedia.

66

In the scenario you posit, though, they don’t really sound like lost sales. We know how big the market is for Sins of a Solar Empire. It’s roughly equivalent to the number of people who bought it. If, suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a huge spread on it in a magazine, and a million people pirated it, it wouldn’t really be rational to consider those ‘lost sales’.

Note that I’m not saying general piracy doesn’t cause lost sales - just disputing Charles’ conclusion in this specific case.

67

Brad, I mean in a case where you know there are 1.6 million people enjoying the game, playing it on a regular basis. Don’t you, as a businessman, want to find some way to make these people pay for it? If you had stats that let you know that 2 million people were playing an average of 20 hours a week, you’d just sit back and say “Oh well, they probably wouldn’t buy it anyway”?

Because it seems to me, that’s bad business.

68

Most of the titles dying at retail right now—whether due to piracy or other problems—didn’t have big budgets or high costs. It’s hard to make money on games in core genres that cost $2-$4 million to make.

You can make AAA-level games for less than $10 million, which in theory means your game “only” needs to sell 500,000-ish units. That used to be attainable for core genres on the PC; today, not so much.

I mean, when was the last time a PC game sold 4 million copies?* Was the hardcore PC market ever that big? Consoles are the home theater of video gaming, of course your Transformers and Armageddon’s are going to do well there. They are mass market devices dedicated just to video games.

Few console games sell 4 million copies, and none (that I’m aware of) have budgets that require 4 million in sales to be hugely profitable.

I’m sure the Call of Duty 4 PC port was profitable, since I doubt its budget was $10 million on its own. (It might have been a million bucks, I dunno.) But the only reason it’s brought up in piracy discussions is that the Infinity Ward guy pointed out that a high number of bogus codes were appearing. So those were people who had a PC powerful enough to run the game and who apparently liked it enough to want to try the multiplayer, and I’m sure that despite its success, it’s still frustrating to see.

Now put yourself in the shoes of a developer who made their game on the cheap, saw it perform poorly at retail, and you see the same percentage of people trying to log in with bogus codes.

69

You’ve got to recognize that for some number of those hypothetical 1.6 million - probably a considerable number of them - the retail price is simply more than they are willing to pay, and no amount of awesome unbreakable DRM will ever get you their money. The real question is, what percentage of pirated copies are genuine potential sales lost, and what percentage are people who would never have given you their money to begin with. And unfortunately, no one seems to have a clue as to the answer.

70

AC is at around 6 million copies sold, and the budget was such that to be ‘hugely profitable’, 4 million is probably pretty close, considering we needed (I believe) well over two million copies in order to break even.

71

Certainly. If 2 million people are playing my game I want to find a way to either keep them from playing or get them to buy.

HOWEVER…

I am not willing to do anything that would cause inconvenience to the people who pay my salary - my customers. The people who actually do pay for the games I make.

Paying customers ultimately are the ones who decide what products get made (well except in the PC game industry it seems). The pirates lose their vote. I focus on making games for the people who buy games and delivering it to them in the way they prefer.

72

Of course. But if it were on console, a percentage of people would’ve been forced to buy it, and out of 1.6 million people, I doubt they would all be students living off macaroni and cheese.

Must I link Michael Fitch’s post about doubling profit by selling to 10% of pirates?

73

Oh I dunno, I think people like demos just fine, most get over the large size barrier quickly (they download huge giant dual-layer ISOs, 1080p TV shows and Blue-Ray/HD-DVD discs these days without much qualm) and people don’t mind them. I think you’re tainted with a development’s mindset, though–developers hate doing demos. Just absolutely detest them with a passion.

— Alan

74

Sure, I understand where you are coming from, but if you could double your profits by implementing online authentication, I can’t believe you’d just brush it off because a few of your customers didn’t want it.

75

We already use on-line activation (not in Sins yet but in our other software). Just not CD/DVD stuff or constant calling home.

If it didn’t inconvenience customers and the technology was possible, I’d have the game send DNA data over the net to verify the actual person using the game. :)

Look at the popularity of Steam. People aren’t unreasonable about activation and such. They just don’t want to be inconvenienced or treated like criminals.

76

No, I absolutely agree that a percentage of those hypothetical pirates would have bought the game. No question whatsoever. I’m just saying that you can’t assume that the entire number are lost sales. It’s also worth considering, when comparing console and PC numbers, that a not insignificant portion of those console sales are lost PC sales. Most of us, I’d assume, know a number of former PC-only gamers who now do most of their gaming on consoles. Hell, I’ve got a machine that could easily run COD4, prefer mouse and keyboard for shooters, but still bought it on the 360, simply because the people I want to play with play on that platform.

77

Quat, I wasn’t saying at all that PC should sell as much as consoles, or that all pirated copies are lost sales. There’s plenty of evidence all over this board that I think the exact opposite of both of those things.

78

Well… yeah, OK. Yikes. (And people still like to say it costs more to make PC games, hah.)

I’m sure Ubisoft probably calculated out that if the original wasn’t hugely profitable, the theoretical sequel(s) would be because they’d be progressively cheaper to make because most of the expensive issues would have already been solved. In theory, at least.

79

Why do they? I sure don’t, I just don’t see the reasoning behind hating doing a demo. Its mental. Its like recording a great hit single but refusing to make a video. Or running a fantastic restaurant but not bothering with a menu. The demo is part of the process of making a game. It amazes me people still release million dollar games with fuck all demo on day one.

80

Really? Who says that? I’d like to laugh at them.

Because if you make a demo, it means you push back the release of your game by a month, for an average case. If you are working on a timeline or with a real budget, sometimes that’s just not realistic. The end result is that if you do a demo, you end up cutting features to compensate.

edit: And that’s before you even get in to technical reasons.