RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS THREAD!

[Mamoulian War]

News at 11, console piracy exists too, etc.

 

Yeah, no. Not anywhere near the scale that it exists on the PC at least. It is just too easy to pirate on the PC, whereas console piracy has more hoops to jump through.

 

Not if you can buy chipped console right out of the box, even with 2 years guarantee... Which is easily possible in more countries, than you can imagine

[pmp10]

News at 11, console piracy exists too, etc.

 

Yeah, no. Not anywhere near the scale that it exists on the PC at least. It is just too easy to pirate on the PC, whereas console piracy has more hoops to jump through.

 

Not if you can buy chipped console right out of the box, even with 2 years guarantee... Which is easily possible in more countries, than you can imagine

And what do you do when anti piracy updates are rolled out? Send it back for a update assuming one becomes available?

[RPGmasterBoo]

They block firmware updates.

 

Only the PS3 doesn't have a widespread crack, - apparently some Aussies made a USB stick/chip that does crack the PS3.

[pmp10]

Except without updates new games won't run.

In the end it's just not as simple as on PC.

Edited November 21, 2010 by pmp10

[Humanoid]

I used to be insanely jealous of my friend who had some device to play Sega Master System and/of Mega Drive games off floppy disks (of which he had several boxes), all the while I had to beg my parents to buy single NES games.

[RPGmasterBoo]

Except without updates new games won't run.

In the end it's just not as simple as on PC.

 

From this generation of consoles I know that XBOX360 has been cracked with some sort of drive flashing. As for the last generation, all of them were cracked.

[Hurlshort]

My point is that it is not as simple to pirate on the PC, not that it is impossible or it isn't a problem. The issue is Starcraft, a PC-only AAA title, has sold only 3 million games. This may seem like a lot, but then you look at something like Call of Duty: Black Ops and their sales numbers, and you wonder why any developer would ever bother to make a PC game again. CoD:BO probably cost way less to make, and there is no way that they are dealing with piracy on the same scale as Starcraft.

 

When a game is being pirated on a 1 to 1 scale, meaning for every game sold they are also getting one pirated, that is a serious serious serious issue.

[Malcador]

Wonder if the pirates would have bought it to begin with.

[Nepenthe]

Wonder if the pirates would have bought it to begin with.

 

Obviously game pirated =/= lost sale. It does = someone enjoying something they haven't paid the asked price for. On one hand, I'm against the court doctrine of forcing pirates to pay the cost of the games involved (this is mostly a legal opinion, as due to the lack of contractual relation between pirates and publishers, the pirates should only be responsible for the damage they've caused, not for placing the publisher in the position where he would have been if there'd been actual, fictive sales...). OTOH, if I jack somebody's Bentley and go joyriding, the fact that I wouldn't have bought it anyway is kind of a poor argument.

[Malcador]

Well in that case, you've actually stolen property. The tangible kind. Why developers still make games for the PC, I guess the revenue they get still nets them a profit so they're happy with it, I guess.

[Hurlshort]

So when someone creates something and sells it online, and then 2.7 million people take it without paying, do you think it is comforting for them that those people likely wouldn't have bought it anyway?

[Bendu]

Age of Empires III: Complete Edition for 10 Cent on Games for Windows Live.

[Malcador]

So when someone creates something and sells it online, and then 2.7 million people take it without paying, do you think it is comforting for them that those people likely wouldn't have bought it anyway?

 

No, but it's nothing to upset them as they're not a factor. I wonder if anyone's totalled up the piracy numbers for non-torrent sources though, for both console and PC.

Edited November 21, 2010 by Malcador

[pmp10]

Age of Empires III: Complete Edition for 10 Cent on Games for Windows Live.

No that's funny.

Microsoft no longer forces me to pretend I live elsewhere to sign up for Live but won't take my money in their store. You'd think they care more about the latter.

[Hurlshort]

So when someone creates something and sells it online, and then 2.7 million people take it without paying, do you think it is comforting for them that those people likely wouldn't have bought it anyway?

 

No, but it's nothing to upset them as they're not a factor. I wonder if anyone's totalled up the piracy numbers for non-torrent sources though, for both console and PC.

 

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. Do you see that this is rampant piracy? Does it make sense to you that this is a large problem for the PC industry? Is it logical that with piracy like this, less developers will choose to create PC games? That's all I'm getting at.

[Vilhelm]

A guy plays the first 15 minutes of Call of Duty: Black Ops without shooting. I guess New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Donkey Kong Country Returns aren't the only games that play themselves.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Age of Empires III: Complete Edition for 10 Cent on Games for Windows Live.

 

And it's over... Oh well, I would have grabbed it but if they're only going to have short-sales it's their own fault if they miss some sales.

[Humanoid]

Still is 10c on the Top Downloads section and lets me add it to the cart - no idea about getting any farther since I'm too lazy to register.

[mkreku]

A guy plays the first 15 minutes of Call of Duty: Black Ops without shooting.

Yeah.. And the console crowd thinks we "PC elitists" are being stupid when we whine about games being more and more dumbed down.

 

Thank god there are still sadistic GRPG's around.

[Nepenthe]

A guy plays the first 15 minutes of Call of Duty: Black Ops without shooting.

Yeah.. And the console crowd thinks we "PC elitists" are being stupid when we whine about games being more and more dumbed down.

 

Thank god there are still sadistic GRPG's around.

 

I think you only become a PC elitist when you blame consoles, as opposed to a non-platform specific pandering for the masses, for this.

 

It's interesting, really, the change just between Modern Warfare 1 and this is pretty staggering. MW1 was fully dependent on YOUR ( the player's) ability to keep advancing continuously. This was already scaled back with MW2, and now you're just a bystander while the rest of the team advances. MW2 had the solo sections, and even when you had your team with you, they didn't seem quite so omnipotent as these guys do.

[Malcador]

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. Do you see that this is rampant piracy? Does it make sense to you that this is a large problem for the PC industry? Is it logical that with piracy like this, less developers will choose to create PC games? That's all I'm getting at.

 

Wardell's stance on it was akin to what I was getting at. If they weren't going to buy it, what did you lose ? I suppose it is a problem for the PC industry just for the temptation though and their solutions are usually all useless (yay for open-ness, though).

 

Funny to talk about piracy today, had a nice walk through Chinatown today,

[Nepenthe]

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. Do you see that this is rampant piracy? Does it make sense to you that this is a large problem for the PC industry? Is it logical that with piracy like this, less developers will choose to create PC games? That's all I'm getting at.

 

Wardell's stance on it was akin to what I was getting at. If they weren't going to buy it, what did you lose ? I suppose it is a problem for the PC industry just for the temptation though and their solutions are usually all useless (yay for open-ness, though).

 

Funny to talk about piracy today, had a nice walk through Chinatown today,

 

And the opposing point is that when people enjoy your work for free, it only stings marginally less that they wouldn't pay for it in the first place. Besides, piracy is so all-pervasive that it's not possible to get reliable data on how many of the people who are interested enough in a game/other product to pirate it would, in fact, buy it (even if they claim otherwise).

[Hurlshort]

It is a completely ridiculous argument to say that they wouldn't pay for it anyways. That isn't how businesses work, they work on supply and demand. There are 6 million people using the product. Only half are paying for it. That is a serious problem. From a business perspective, that is a huge loss.

 

I can't think of another industry with a 50% theft rate. That's insane.

[Malcador]

Well as long as you get paid for the month, I'm sure that sting will go away. I suspect that people outside of NA/EU might be fall into that set you've mentioned though.

 

If you're going to call it a loss, well then you're claiming every 'stolen' (heh) copy was money you would have gotten. Not guaranteed to be the case, and they can't verify that. Not really a 50% 'theft' rate though, Blizzard shipped 3 million copies, so to speak, rather than 6. Hm, kind of hard to think of software applications that way

 

 

Anyway, Piracy Bad.

Edited November 22, 2010 by Malcador

[Hurlshort]

Well as long as you get paid for the month, I'm sure that sting will go away. I suspect that people outside of NA/EU might be fall into that set you've mentioned though.

 

If you're going to call it a loss, well then you're claiming every 'stolen' (heh) copy was money you would have gotten. Not guaranteed to be the case, and they can't verify that. Not really a 50% 'theft' rate though, Blizzard shipped 3 million copies, so to speak, rather than 6. Hm, kind of hard to think of software applications that way

 

You are not looking at this from a business perspective. Logically, you might be correct, but businesses run on profit & loss, supply & demand. They have a product with a high demand, but they are unable to make a profit on half of the users. What I'm saying is at some point, most businesses are going to look at that and decide there is an opportunity for more profit and less loss on the consoles.

 

I'm just saying this is a huge problem for the PC industry. Like numero uno. I'm glad we can agree that piracy is bad.

 

edit: I'm making a big deal about this because it shocked the heck out of me. I've always been a vocal opponent of piracy, but I didn't realize it was this rampant. I figured most games suffered about 10-20% losses to piracy, and I assumed a good chunk of piracy occurred after a game was released for awhile. This is a brand new game and it is seeing close to 50% piracy numbers. That is absolutely crazy to me. If I spent years of my life working on a game and I knew that many people took it without paying, I would quit and go do something else with my creative talent.

Edited November 22, 2010 by Hurlshot