We're not saying that secondary MMO's need to sell like WoW to be viable, we're saying that unless you can show that the average MMO fares better than non-ported non-MMO's by a statistically significant degree, you're full of shit.
Okay, so let's take the article's numbers on CoD4 (unquestionably one of the most successful FPS released in the last few years) and compare them to the numbers on a few MMOs. The article claims 383,000 copies of CoD4 PC were sold at retail in the first few months. Since you can't get numbers on digital distribution, the article far overestimates the Steam numbers by doubling the number of retail copies. The actual number is likely much much lower (most digital distribution is casual), but let's ignore that for a moment and stick with the article's 766,000 figure.
Guild Wars, across its lifespan, sold 5 million copies. That's over 7 times as many sales, for a game with a similar metacritic score, on the same platform. What's the difference? That piracy isn't a significant issue for the sales of Guild Wars, while it kicks CoD4 in the crotch.
If you don't like the Guild Wars example, consider Lineage. MMOGChart shows Lineage breaking three million subscribers during its heyday, with the less popular Lineage 2 only breaking 2 million. Remember, this is active subscribers at a given time, not total sales - the actual sales numbers are higher, since many users do not retain their accounts after purchasing the game.
Even widely hyped MMOs that turned out to be "only okay" still beat the 766,000 benchmark. Age of Conan, for all the shit it got, still sold a million units, and Warhammer Online sold 1.2 million. To get below CoD4 levels, you have to start looking at some very mediocre titles.
In short, good MMOs outgross pirateable PC games several times over - all before collecting a single monthly fee.
We're not saying that secondary MMO's need to sell like WoW to be viable, we're saying that unless you can show that the average MMO fares better than non-ported non-MMO's by a statistically significant degree, you're full of shit.
Okay, so let's take the article's numbers on CoD4 (unquestionably one of the most successful FPS released in the last few years) and compare them to the numbers on a few MMOs. The article claims 383,000 copies of CoD4 PC were sold at retail in the first few months. Since you can't get numbers on digital distribution, the article far overestimates the Steam numbers by doubling the number of retail copies. The actual number is likely much much lower (most digital distribution is casual), but let's ignore that for a moment and stick with the article's 766,000 figure.
Guild Wars, across its lifespan, sold 5 million copies. That's over 7 times as many sales, for a game with a similar metacritic score, on the same platform. What's the difference? That piracy isn't a significant issue for the sales of Guild Wars, while it kicks CoD4 in the crotch.
If you don't like the Guild Wars example, consider Lineage. MMOGChart shows Lineage breaking three million subscribers during its heyday, with the less popular Lineage 2 only breaking 2 million. Remember, this is active subscribers at a given time, not total sales - the actual sales numbers are higher, since many users do not retain their accounts after purchasing the game.
Even widely hyped MMOs that turned out to be "only okay" still beat the 766,000 benchmark. Age of Conan, for all the shit it got, still sold a million units, and Warhammer Online sold 1.2 million. To get below CoD4 levels, you have to start looking at some very mediocre titles.
In short, good MMOs outgross pirateable PC games several times over - all before collecting a single monthly fee.
I know alot of people that bought COD4 on their 360 so they could play it online with their xbox live friends, rather than on their PC.
Diablo 2 sold something like 2 million copies in its first 3 months right?
I havn't read all of the tread, and this has been discussed multiple times, I'm sure. But wanted to add, DRM only hurts the people who buy the game legitimately. DRM dosn't hurt pirates, its cracked as soon as the disk goes gold. Pirates know the work around. Its the honest customer who buys the shiny new game, whos hurt by it. Do you know how many people at work (who ask me PC questions) I tell to just go and download the crack to make the game run right? And alot of times it fixes the problems their having.
....
the point of DRM is not to hurt pirates. At All. The point is to raise the bar above casual pirtes, and also to slow down the professional hackers long enough for the company to get a few more sales before a hack is released.
And i'm willing to bet the number of people is actually quite small, seein' as the vast majority of legitimate gamers have no problem with DRM.
I havn't read all of the tread, and this has been discussed multiple times, I'm sure. But wanted to add, DRM only hurts the people who buy the game legitimately. DRM dosn't hurt pirates, its cracked as soon as the disk goes gold. Pirates know the work around. Its the honest customer who buys the shiny new game, whos hurt by it. Do you know how many people at work (who ask me PC questions) I tell to just go and download the crack to make the game run right? And alot of times it fixes the problems their having.
....
the point of DRM is not to hurt pirates. At All. The point is to raise the bar above casual pirtes, and also to slow down the professional hackers long enough for the company to get a few more sales before a hack is released.
And i'm willing to bet the number of people is actually quite small, seein' as the vast majority of legitimate gamers have no problem with DRM.
...in a perfect world where DRM never causes problems.
I know alot of people that bought COD4 on their 360 so they could play it online with their xbox live friends, rather than on their PC.
Diablo 2 sold something like 2 million copies in its first 3 months right?
You may be surprised to learn that "I know a lot of people" or "I heard, this one time" is not a compelling argument in the world of business.
Show me sales numbers and examples as to how a modern PC-only game that is not an MMO can be as successful as a console offering. Give me something I can show to a publisher to convince them that PCs are a safe investment, against all the lackluster sales numbers.
Because publishers are the ones who decide the life or death of the PC game industry. Publishers are the ones who will not fund PC gaming now, and publishers are the reason the only major PC releases are cross-platform titles, MMOs, and Blizzard games. They've made their business decision, and I cannot conjure a compelling argument why they should decide otherwise. Can you?
We're not saying that secondary MMO's need to sell like WoW to be viable, we're saying that unless you can show that the average MMO fares better than non-ported non-MMO's by a statistically significant degree, you're full of shit.
Okay, so let's take the article's numbers on CoD4 (unquestionably one of the most successful FPS released in the last few years) and compare them to the numbers on a few MMOs. The article claims 383,000 copies of CoD4 PC were sold at retail in the first few months. Since you can't get numbers on digital distribution, the article far overestimates the Steam numbers by doubling the number of retail copies. The actual number is likely much much lower (most digital distribution is casual), but let's ignore that for a moment and stick with the article's 766,000 figure.
Guild Wars, across its lifespan, sold 5 million copies. That's over 7 times as many sales, for a game with a similar metacritic score, on the same platform. What's the difference? That piracy isn't a significant issue for the sales of Guild Wars, while it kicks CoD4 in the crotch.
If you don't like the Guild Wars example, consider Lineage. MMOGChart shows Lineage breaking three million subscribers during its heyday, with the less popular Lineage 2 only breaking 2 million. Remember, this is active subscribers at a given time, not total sales - the actual sales numbers are higher, since many users do not retain their accounts after purchasing the game.
Even widely hyped MMOs that turned out to be "only okay" still beat the 766,000 benchmark. Age of Conan, for all the shit it got, still sold a million units, and Warhammer Online sold 1.2 million. To get below CoD4 levels, you have to start looking at some very mediocre titles.
In short, good MMOs outgross pirateable PC games several times over - all before collecting a single monthly fee.
MMOs and FPSs are completely different markets, and COD4 was released on consoles while MMOs are computer only. This doesn't prove anything. A better comparison would be something like Sins of the Solar Empire vs. Red Alert 3, but even that is far from ideal.
Why is the first week of sales important? Quite frankly, i'm beginning to think DRM is about preventing people from knowing the real quailty of the product. Developers hype the piss out of their games, then time and time again release something no where near as good, and far too frequently something buggy or just plain terrible.
I'm sure developers have reasons for why fewer and fewer games release Demos, and I think it's the same reason why they keep adding DRM to games. The first week of sales is important because it's not enough time for word to spread about how good the game really is. They want people buying it blindly based on hype early, and they don't like pirates screwing that up for them.
No, I don't pirate, and no I don't think it's cool to do so, but I don't think developer's motives are all that pure either.
Red Alert 3 and Sins of a Solar Empire are both niche market PC titles that were pirated to hell. Neither of the two sold very well, in terms of mainstream games. I'm not sure what that comparison would prove about piracy, exactly.
As for developer's motives - their motives are to make money. I'm not going to debate whether that's a "pure" motive or not. It's their ethical responsibility to make money for their shareholders, and their personal responsibility to keep the lights on at their place of business. They've simply found that they can make more money on consoles than PCs, because PC games are pirated so heavily. That's the issue here.
If I'm not mistaken RA3 has some strict DRM, while Sins has little, and they are both RTS games, but I specifically said even that comparison while more apt, still isn't ideal. As both games still have far too many difference to explain away whatever sales difference they would have. (as RA being an established IP, and Sins being heavy on digital distribution).
My main point was that your comparison was apples to oranges.
We're not saying that secondary MMO's need to sell like WoW to be viable, we're saying that unless you can show that the average MMO fares better than non-ported non-MMO's by a statistically significant degree, you're full of shit.
Okay, so let's take the article's numbers on CoD4 (unquestionably one of the most successful FPS released in the last few years) and compare them to the numbers on a few MMOs. The article claims 383,000 copies of CoD4 PC were sold at retail in the first few months. Since you can't get numbers on digital distribution, the article far overestimates the Steam numbers by doubling the number of retail copies. The actual number is likely much much lower (most digital distribution is casual), but let's ignore that for a moment and stick with the article's 766,000 figure.
Guild Wars, across its lifespan, sold 5 million copies. That's over 7 times as many sales, for a game with a similar metacritic score, on the same platform. What's the difference? That piracy isn't a significant issue for the sales of Guild Wars, while it kicks CoD4 in the crotch.
If you don't like the Guild Wars example, consider Lineage. MMOGChart shows Lineage breaking three million subscribers during its heyday, with the less popular Lineage 2 only breaking 2 million. Remember, this is active subscribers at a given time, not total sales - the actual sales numbers are higher, since many users do not retain their accounts after purchasing the game.
Even widely hyped MMOs that turned out to be "only okay" still beat the 766,000 benchmark. Age of Conan, for all the shit it got, still sold a million units, and Warhammer Online sold 1.2 million. To get below CoD4 levels, you have to start looking at some very mediocre titles.
In short, good MMOs outgross pirateable PC games several times over - all before collecting a single monthly fee.
I said non-port so you wouldn't pull out a title that split its sale with another platform. Lo and behold, you pick a multiplatform game whose predecessor wasn't even released for the PC.
Also, one would expect any console game with a PC port to see similar drops as the port itself, given that, assuming that pirating is replacing buying, people would go with the pirated PC version rather than the bought console version. The fact that most high profile games are still ported indicates that developers aren't very concerned with piracy.
By all means, pick a triple-A, PC-exclusive non-MMO for your sales number comparisons. Post what you find.
I didn't post a PC-exclusive title because I couldn't think of any major recent games that fit that description while remaining comparable. Triple-A titles have been cross-platform or console-only for years, because no one wants to develop exclusively for the platform that lets people get their games for free.
If you have actual statistics and numbers that prove me wrong, instead of conjecture and theory, by all means, post them. I'm not going to keep finding and listing new sources that say the same thing, in the hopes that you'll finally be convinced that piracy has gutted PC gaming. I've supported your my arguments - support yours.
By all means, pick a triple-A, PC-exclusive non-MMO for your sales number comparisons. Post what you find.
I didn't post a PC-exclusive title because I couldn't think of any major recent games that fit that description while remaining comparable. Triple-A titles have been cross-platform or console-only for years, because no one wants to develop exclusively for the platform that lets people get their games for free.
If you have actual statistics and numbers that prove me wrong, instead of conjecture and theory, by all means, post them. I'm not going to keep finding and listing new sources that say the same thing, in the hopes that you'll finally be convinced that piracy has gutted PC gaming. I've supported your my arguments - support yours.
Sins of a Solar empire did exceptionally well financially. It didn't bring in GTA 4 numbers but it didn't cost 100 million dollars to make either. It was actually more profitable, pound for pound, than the vast majority of console games. It cost in the 6 figures to make (according to stardock) and brought in 20 million dollars if you only count the registered copies
A PC exclusive has to be a PC exclusive to get good PC sales numbers. Spore sold quite well for example. A multiplatform PC release will not sell as well and will be pirated to hell and back because alot of pc gamers have consoles. You demand real verified numbers and I don't have them, because the companies that find the numbers are too busy counting the number of torrent downloads rather than doing market research of substance such as finding out how many PC gamers bought the 360 version instead!
No one is denying that consoles are where the money is at, I'm really not sure what your point is. PC gaming is dead? Well I suppose you can say that, but PC games continue to post profits. Valve went multi platform not because they weren't making money in PC gaming, but because they could make more money by making it multiplatform. It's the same reason console games are largly multiplatform (with the PC as one of the platforms).
If a game is already developed for the console it is obviously profitable to put it on the PC as well, even if it only sells a few hundred thousand copies. If a game is developed for the PC it is profitable to sell it on the consoles too, even if it only sells a few hundred thousand copies.
We're not saying that secondary MMO's need to sell like WoW to be viable, we're saying that unless you can show that the average MMO fares better than non-ported non-MMO's by a statistically significant degree, you're full of shit.
Okay, so let's take the article's numbers on CoD4 (unquestionably one of the most successful FPS released in the last few years) and compare them to the numbers on a few MMOs. The article claims 383,000 copies of CoD4 PC were sold at retail in the first few months. Since you can't get numbers on digital distribution, the article far overestimates the Steam numbers by doubling the number of retail copies. The actual number is likely much much lower (most digital distribution is casual), but let's ignore that for a moment and stick with the article's 766,000 figure.
Guild Wars, across its lifespan, sold 5 million copies. That's over 7 times as many sales, for a game with a similar metacritic score, on the same platform. What's the difference? That piracy isn't a significant issue for the sales of Guild Wars, while it kicks CoD4 in the crotch.
If you don't like the Guild Wars example, consider Lineage. MMOGChart shows Lineage breaking three million subscribers during its heyday, with the less popular Lineage 2 only breaking 2 million. Remember, this is active subscribers at a given time, not total sales - the actual sales numbers are higher, since many users do not retain their accounts after purchasing the game.
Even widely hyped MMOs that turned out to be "only okay" still beat the 766,000 benchmark. Age of Conan, for all the shit it got, still sold a million units, and Warhammer Online sold 1.2 million. To get below CoD4 levels, you have to start looking at some very mediocre titles.
In short, good MMOs outgross pirateable PC games several times over - all before collecting a single monthly fee.
MMOs and FPSs are completely different markets, and COD4 was released on consoles while MMOs are computer only. This doesn't prove anything. A better comparison would be something like Sins of the Solar Empire vs. Red Alert 3, but even that is far from ideal.
Why is the first week of sales important? Quite frankly, i'm beginning to think DRM is about preventing people from knowing the real quailty of the product. Developers hype the piss out of their games, then time and time again release something no where near as good, and far too frequently something buggy or just plain terrible.
I'm sure developers have reasons for why fewer and fewer games release Demos, and I think it's the same reason why they keep adding DRM to games. The first week of sales is important because it's not enough time for word to spread about how good the game really is. They want people buying it blindly based on hype early, and they don't like pirates screwing that up for them.
No, I don't pirate, and no I don't think it's cool to do so, but I don't think developer's motives are all that pure either.
Was Bioshock not a good game? That had a demo and DRM.
Except that you haven't, because your examples dont' actually prove the thing that you think they prove.
How about comparing Civ 4 BtS to Civ Revolutions or something.
Actually according to wikipedia, Civ 4 sold more copies than Mass Effect, and I'll bet you my kidneys that it made more profit per unit.
I can't find civ rev sales figures so more apples to oranges sales comparisons.
Something that people are missing is that the average PC game costs significantly less to develop than the blockbuster console games they are always compared to. This of course excludes WoW, which probably cost hundreds of millions and the souls of a thousand orphaned children to imprison within their server hardware
I think override367 has a point. Crysis had twice the sales CoD4 had on the PC, despite the fact that it had more demanding specs than CoD4 and also isn't as popular with the FPS crowd as CoD4 is.
I still think that PC gaming is doing so poorly not because of pirates, but because of consoles. And I don't think that's a bad thing. The only thing the current consoles need to make them in every way equal or superior to PC gaming is mouse/keyboard support. If all of the consoles had this, there'd be no reason for the PC gaming industry at all.
I mean, look at what's been going down this generation of consoles. Specifically the 360.
Live is amazing for building a community. Having demos, videos of games, cheap arcade games, digital distribution. If it were free, Live would pretty much be the perfect solution to what people on the PC have been struggling with for years, a one stop friends list for all their online games.
Then we have a lot of the media features of a PC being able to be accessed in your living room. Things like Play On are fantastic, allowing for people to watch Hulu shows and Youtube videos all on their couches.
And now we have the newest, and in my mind the most impressive feat of this console generation, the community games. Everyone who wants to see the future of indy game development, look no further than the community games. Within 3-4 weeks we have all different types of games, some good, some horrid, but all at least interesting. Swords and Monsters? It's amazing that someone is actually able to make money off of something that is obviously a joke to them. How about the ability to write not only games, but real software? It won't be long before we see things such as synthesizers and video recording/editing software (once they allow access to the live vision camera that is).
Consoles are growing, and PC gaming, well, it isn't. This is, at least from my perspective, why games fail to sell on PCs. Pirating has been around for as long as the internet. Before bittorrent there was edonkey, before that there was supernova. Before that there were newsgroups. To say that it's only started hurting in the last few years is rediculous. And to say that pirates are the only reason why DRMs exists is also silly. If that were the case, well, look up sentence 3 in paragraph 4 of this post. The third word, well, that's you access code. Or, if you will, take out your pirate wheel and match up Guybrush's head to the word "pirate" on the wheel. In the third sun of the june moon you will find the passcode.
Red Alert 3 and Sins of a Solar Empire are both niche market PC titles that were pirated to hell. Neither of the two sold very well, in terms of mainstream games. I'm not sure what that comparison would prove about piracy, exactly.
We're not saying that secondary MMO's need to sell like WoW to be viable, we're saying that unless you can show that the average MMO fares better than non-ported non-MMO's by a statistically significant degree, you're full of shit.
Okay, so let's take the article's numbers on CoD4 (unquestionably one of the most successful FPS released in the last few years) and compare them to the numbers on a few MMOs. The article claims 383,000 copies of CoD4 PC were sold at retail in the first few months. Since you can't get numbers on digital distribution, the article far overestimates the Steam numbers by doubling the number of retail copies. The actual number is likely much much lower (most digital distribution is casual), but let's ignore that for a moment and stick with the article's 766,000 figure.
Guild Wars, across its lifespan, sold 5 million copies. That's over 7 times as many sales, for a game with a similar metacritic score, on the same platform. What's the difference? That piracy isn't a significant issue for the sales of Guild Wars, while it kicks CoD4 in the crotch.
If you don't like the Guild Wars example, consider Lineage. MMOGChart shows Lineage breaking three million subscribers during its heyday, with the less popular Lineage 2 only breaking 2 million. Remember, this is active subscribers at a given time, not total sales - the actual sales numbers are higher, since many users do not retain their accounts after purchasing the game.
Even widely hyped MMOs that turned out to be "only okay" still beat the 766,000 benchmark. Age of Conan, for all the shit it got, still sold a million units, and Warhammer Online sold 1.2 million. To get below CoD4 levels, you have to start looking at some very mediocre titles.
In short, good MMOs outgross pirateable PC games several times over - all before collecting a single monthly fee.
MMOs and FPSs are completely different markets, and COD4 was released on consoles while MMOs are computer only. This doesn't prove anything.
No, I don't pirate, and no I don't think it's cool to do so, but I don't think developer's motives are all that pure either.
I still think that PC gaming is doing so poorly not because of pirates, but because of consoles. And I don't think that's a bad thing. The only thing the current consoles need to make them in every way equal or superior to PC gaming is mouse/keyboard support. If all of the consoles had this, there'd be no reason for the PC gaming industry at all.
I mean, look at what's been going down this generation of consoles. Specifically the 360.
Live is amazing for building a community. Having demos, videos of games, cheap arcade games, digital distribution. If it were free, Live would pretty much be the perfect solution to what people on the PC have been struggling with for years, a one stop friends list for all their online games.
Then we have a lot of the media features of a PC being able to be accessed in your living room. Things like Play On are fantastic, allowing for people to watch Hulu shows and Youtube videos all on their couches.
And now we have the newest, and in my mind the most impressive feat of this console generation, the community games. Everyone who wants to see the future of indy game development, look no further than the community games. Within 3-4 weeks we have all different types of games, some good, some horrid, but all at least interesting. Swords and Monsters? It's amazing that someone is actually able to make money off of something that is obviously a joke to them. How about the ability to write not only games, but real software? It won't be long before we see things such as synthesizers and video recording/editing software (once they allow access to the live vision camera that is).
Consoles are growing, and PC gaming, well, it isn't. This is, at least from my perspective, why games fail to sell on PCs. Pirating has been around for as long as the internet. Before bittorrent there was edonkey, before that there was supernova. Before that there were newsgroups. To say that it's only started hurting in the last few years is rediculous. And to say that pirates are the only reason why DRMs exists is also silly. If that were the case, well, look up sentence 3 in paragraph 4 of this post. The third word, well, that's you access code. Or, if you will, take out your pirate wheel and match up Guybrush's head to the word "pirate" on the wheel. In the third sun of the june moon you will find the passcode.
I think this is true of some games, like shooters, but those are largly already moving to the console domain. Games that have lower system specs and can be played anywhere will stay in the PC corner because you can play them anywhere a computer exists. I can play Civ 4 or WoW at any friends house, at any college campus, or at work (well at my old job). More importantly, literally anywhere if I take my laptop.
I just think to developers (and the consumers) the consoles are a much more pleasing platform to work on. Less headache to fix bugs, more and more PC like abilities (but with a fixed platform), less chance of piracy.
But the piracy isn't the only reason. It takes very little to get a 360 to run pirated games (at least from what I've read), but yet 360 games are selling like gangbusters.
Hell, doing a quick search on Farcry 2... the top pc torrent on one of the larger pirating sites has around 200 seeders... the 360 one has around 180. Now, the numbers on all the games I checked out vary, but there's not a overwhelming lead on the PC's part besides on a few games. Both are pirated, but the PC is the only one with dwindling sales.
Something that people are missing is that the average PC game costs significantly less to develop than the blockbuster console games they are always compared to. This of course excludes WoW, which probably cost hundreds of millions and the souls of a thousand orphaned children to imprison within their server hardware
Not always true - the tech is equivalent, and the price of producing a Triple-A game project has increased across the board, and console-specific costs (such as 360 dev kits and certification) shrink to a small percentage of your overall budget when the game itself runs you 20 million. The additional QA required on a PC over a console eats up a large percentage of those savings.
Sins has sold at least 500,000 copies, and cost less than $1,000,000 to develop. That is a huge return on investment.
Sure - but Stardock's model isn't one that the industry can adapt, and if you think otherwise it's because you don't understand how the game industry works. Stardock is in the business of publishing niche strategy games with absolutely minimal development budgets, not mainstream titles.
Worse, Stardock's position of "Piracy is not the issue" gives justification to the millions that have killed the PC game industry.
I happen to like Sins, but it's important to understand exactly how Stardock keeps its development costs so low. They offer graphics that are hopelessly out of date and release software on the disc that is defective, such that it must be patched online to get a decent experience. Developers working on triple-A games can do neither of those things - they must get publisher's approval on the gold master version, and their art is not allowed to suck or be only "okay."
Likewise, Stardock can afford to self publish because they have an extraneous source of non-game-related income through Windowblinds. Most development houses are reliant on publisher funding - Stardock gets all the money for each of their releases, which allows them to turn a significant profit even on limited sales. Nevermind that their game still gets pirated all to hell, and all of Wardell's hand-waving can't change the fact that the vast majority of devs are reliant on publisher funding that just doesn't exist for PCs.
So how is the Stardock model supposed to apply to general game development, exactly? How does it handle Triple-A game development, which costs actual money and requires that you employ actual artists?
It doesn't. That's why the people who want to develop triple-A games, not niche RTS titles, have moved to consoles.
Something that people are missing is that the average PC game costs significantly less to develop than the blockbuster console games they are always compared to. This of course excludes WoW, which probably cost hundreds of millions and the souls of a thousand orphaned children to imprison within their server hardware
Not always true - the tech is equivalent, and the price of producing a Triple-A game project has increased across the board, and console-specific costs (such as 360 dev kits and certification) shrink to a small percentage of your overall budget when the game itself runs you 20 million. The additional QA required on a PC over a console eats up a large percentage of those savings.
Sins has sold at least 500,000 copies, and cost less than $1,000,000 to develop. That is a huge return on investment.
Sure - but Stardock's model isn't one that the industry can adapt, and if you think otherwise it's because you don't understand how the game industry works. Stardock is in the business of publishing niche strategy games with absolutely minimal development budgets, not mainstream titles.
Worse, Stardock's position of "Piracy is not the issue" gives justification to the millions that have killed the PC game industry.
I happen to like Sins, but it's important to understand exactly how Stardock keeps its development costs so low. They offer graphics that are hopelessly out of date and release software on the disc that is defective, such that it must be patched online to get a decent experience. Developers working on triple-A games can do neither of those things - they must get publisher's approval on the gold master version, and their art is not allowed to suck or be only "okay."
Likewise, Stardock can afford to self publish because they have an extraneous source of non-game-related income through Windowblinds. Most development houses are reliant on publisher funding - Stardock gets all the money for each of their releases, which allows them to turn a significant profit even on limited sales. Nevermind that their game still gets pirated all to hell, and all of Wardell's hand-waving can't change the fact that the vast majority of devs are reliant on publisher funding that just doesn't exist for PCs.
So how is the Stardock model supposed to apply to general game development, exactly? How does it handle Triple-A game development, which costs actual money and requires that you employ actual artists?
It doesn't. That's why the people who want to develop triple-A games, not niche RTS titles, have moved to consoles.
The argument is straightforward and both intuitively and logically sound: for every pirated copy of a product, there is some potential loss of income to the producer of that product. This is not the same as saying that every pirated copy is a lost sale. What it actually means is that firstly some proportion of the people who are pirating a game would have bought it in the absence of piracy. Equally as important however is the fact that even those who would never have paid the full purchase price for one reason or another may still have paid some lower amount to purchase and play the game which they pirated. This is because by the very act of obtaining and playing a game, they've clearly demonstrated that they place some value on that game. After all, if something is truly 'worthless', consumers won't bother to obtain or use it in the first place, regardless of whether it's free or not. Even if a game only gives the pirate a few hours of enjoyment, that's still worth something.
This does not necessarily follow. Yes, somebody taking the time to download or crack a game obviously finds some value in it. However, that value does not necessarily translate into a sale at any price. I can't find the quote right now, but Tycho once wrote that the psychological rift between paying zero dollars and paying a single cent is much larger than a strict economic analysis of the value of one cent would imply. If you told me that I needed to start paying any arbitrary amount to download a game demo, I'd tell you where to stick it.
Actually it does necessarily follow. The problem is that its a worthless amount of information. And it assumes that acquiring pirated software is free. Its not.
Imagine I want to pitch an investment to you and i say "people place some amount of value on my product" your first question will be "how much value" and i will respond "Some! Shit if i know"
The fact that people value the product is meaningless it you don't know how much that value translates into lost sales at the price point that you have chosen. The fact that it does translate into lost sales at some price point[note: Free is a price point, since obtaining the game has non zero costs] means absolutely nothing.
I haven't yet read the article, but if this guy used that as a justification for saying that piracy was bad and DRM was good then he is the one of the worse "economists" i've heard of.
I emulate a lot of games too. I'd never heard of Fire Emblem when I pirated a copy, and since then I have bought all 5 English-released Fire Emblem games.
Piracy... increases sales?
Sins has sold at least 500,000 copies, and cost less than $1,000,000 to develop. That is a huge return on investment.
Sure - but Stardock's model isn't one that the industry can adapt, and if you think otherwise it's because you don't understand how the game industry works. Stardock is in the business of publishing niche strategy games with absolutely minimal development budgets, not mainstream titles.
Developing AAA titles isn't sustainable for 99% of the industry, either. Games like Sins (Whose graphics aren't "hopelessly out-of-date" unless your standards are unreasonably high) are the middle-ground between casual games and Crysis. The vast majority of games aren't going to sell well enough to justify spending millions on Crysis-level graphics.
Edit: I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't appreciate your marginalising of non-AAA games and their developers. Just because Stardock aren't a AAA developer, it does not mean that they do not employ "actual artists" or that they release intentionally-gimped games. As someone who will likely be working at a non-AAA dev in a year, I take personal offense to that.
This is a false assumption. Because the end consumers of downloadable piracy never see the DRM. As such, there is no casual disincentive for them to not pirate. All they see is the disincentive in dealing with DRM from owning the game.
DRM as a means of preventing a zero day crack is another issue. But that seems more like an internal security issue than anything else and has a myriad of possible solutions that does not involve cluttering up your game with DRM that, as above, provides zero disincentive for the average user to pirate and provides real incentives for people to pirate to get around the DRM.
I might get through the rest of the article at some point. But i have a feeling its going to be riddled with utterly basic mistakes which call into question or break his entire chain of argument.
Goumindong on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
This is a false assumption. Because the end consumers of downloadable piracy never see the DRM. As such, there is no casual disincentive for them to not pirate. All they see is the disincentive in dealing with DRM from owning the game.
DRM as a means of preventing a zero day crack is another issue. But that seems more like an internal security issue than anything else and has a myriad of possible solutions that does not involve cluttering up your game with DRM that, as above, provides zero disincentive for the average user to pirate and provides real incentives for people to pirate to get around the DRM.
I might get through the rest of the article at some point. But i have a feeling its going to be riddled with utterly basic mistakes which call into question or break his entire chain of argument.
I get the feeling I should ignore your last sentence until the second last gets fulfilled.
Seriously "I haven't read it but I feel it with my emotional bits".
Dude what.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I get the feeling I should ignore your last sentence until the second last gets fulfilled.
Seriously "I haven't read it but I feel it with my emotional bits".
Dude what.
Dude what what?
The guy makes a bunch of basic fucking logical and economic errors that an economist should not fucking do. Based on him making these logical and economic errors i "feel" that the rest of it is probably also going to have these basic logical and economic errors.
That's fucking basic inference.
E.G.
One last point: some people are in such a mad rush to insist that Steam is somehow the solution to every aspect of piracy and DRM, they fail to consider that by giving Valve a monopoly in digital games distribution, this will only help keep game prices high. Digital distribution should logically be about reducing prices due to lower production costs, and yet Steam's prices remain on par with retail sales, primarily to prevent them from undercutting the retail market. If Valve is serious about getting digital distribution to truly take off it needs to insist that publishers sell their games for a much lower price on Steam. However I believe it will take the presence of a decent competitor in the digital distribution market before Valve takes such steps.
The man seems to be ignorant of transaction costs. Games on Steam are cheaper than hard copy games. You don't have to burn gas or energy to get to the store to get the game you just download it, something that is significantly cheaper to you. You also don't have to pay shipping costs. Steam can afford to have higher prices because they're competing with the retail market and their distribution model is cheaper to their primary user base than their competitors. Only a fucking idiot would lower their prices below retail in that situation[provided retail was the proper price point of the game]
As an aside: holding steam up as a model is not some sort of "give valve a monopoly on digital distribution" but as a model of "this is good and it works".
edit2:
The guy doesn't even fucking understand basic supply and demand and the meaning of "Economies of scale".
1. Economies of scale only define supply with a large barrier to entry and low marginal costs to increased production. It has nothing to do with optimal sales figures based on units produced. Your optimal price can go nothing but down with economies of scale so long as demand supports the product in the first place.
Specifically with games there is nearly zero marginal cost since copying shit is nearly free. With digital distribution marginal cost is only bandwidth. You never have to worry about the costs of producing more product because with digital distribution you can actually decide at each margin when the cost of the extra bandwidth costs you more than the product.
2. If you increase prices then you are going to lose sales. Increasing prices does not increase revenue unless you have a monopoly type advantage and the previously set price was not efficient. The idea that companies would increase their prices to deal with piracy is completely and utterly retarded. It denies the very basics of supply and demand and pricing strategy.
For one because if a company could benefit from monopoly/oligopoly type pricing they would do so in the absence of piracy. The company doesn't give a shit what their sales numbers are they give a shit what their final profit is. And if increasing the price means more profit, then they'll sell it at an increased price. There is pretty ample evidence(iirc) that monopoly/oligopoly pricing does not exist except for a very select few game products. Because of this, if you increase your prices due to "piracy" you will have dramatically reduced sales as everyone moves to your competitors. Its business suicide.
In short, Piracy cannot ever have an effect to make companies increase prices.
Goumindong on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
I get the feeling I should ignore your last sentence until the second last gets fulfilled.
Seriously "I haven't read it but I feel it with my emotional bits".
Dude what.
Dude what what?
The guy makes a bunch of basic fucking logical and economic errors that an economist should not fucking do. Based on him making these logical and economic errors i "feel" that the rest of it is probably also going to have these basic logical and economic errors.
That's fucking basic inference.
E.G.
One last point: some people are in such a mad rush to insist that Steam is somehow the solution to every aspect of piracy and DRM, they fail to consider that by giving Valve a monopoly in digital games distribution, this will only help keep game prices high. Digital distribution should logically be about reducing prices due to lower production costs, and yet Steam's prices remain on par with retail sales, primarily to prevent them from undercutting the retail market. If Valve is serious about getting digital distribution to truly take off it needs to insist that publishers sell their games for a much lower price on Steam. However I believe it will take the presence of a decent competitor in the digital distribution market before Valve takes such steps.
The man seems to be ignorant of transaction costs. Games on Steam are cheaper than hard copy games. You don't have to burn gas or energy to get to the store to get the game you just download it, something that is significantly cheaper to you. You also don't have to pay shipping costs. Steam can afford to have higher prices because they're competing with the retail market and their distribution model is cheaper to their primary user base than their competitors. Only a fucking idiot would lower their prices below retail in that situation[provided retail was the proper price point of the game]
As an aside: holding steam up as a model is not some sort of "give valve a monopoly on digital distribution" but as a model of "this is good and it works".
edit2:
The guy doesn't even fucking understand basic supply and demand and the meaning of "Economies of scale".
1. Economies of scale only define supply with a large barrier to entry and low marginal costs to increased production. It has nothing to do with optimal sales figures based on units produced. Your optimal price can go nothing but down with economies of scale so long as demand supports the product in the first place.
Specifically with games there is nearly zero marginal cost since copying shit is nearly free. With digital distribution marginal cost is only bandwidth. You never have to worry about the costs of producing more product because with digital distribution you can actually decide at each margin when the cost of the extra bandwidth costs you more than the product.
2. If you increase prices then you are going to lose sales. Increasing prices does not increase revenue unless you have a monopoly type advantage and the previously set price was not efficient. The idea that companies would increase their prices to deal with piracy is completely and utterly retarded. It denies the very basics of supply and demand and pricing strategy.
For one because if a company could benefit from monopoly/oligopoly type pricing they would do so in the absence of piracy. The company doesn't give a shit what their sales numbers are they give a shit what their final profit is. And if increasing the price means more profit, then they'll sell it at an increased price. There is pretty ample evidence(iirc) that monopoly/oligopoly pricing does not exist except for a very select few game products. Because of this, if you increase your prices due to "piracy" you will have dramatically reduced sales as everyone moves to your competitors. Its business suicide.
In short, Piracy cannot ever have an effect to make companies increase prices.
Much better, thankyou.
I wasn't challenging how correct you were. I was poking you to actually read the damn thing and tell us what you think.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Sure - but Stardock's model isn't one that the industry can adapt, and if you think otherwise it's because you don't understand how the game industry works. Stardock is in the business of publishing niche strategy games with absolutely minimal development budgets, not mainstream titles.
Worse, Stardock's position of "Piracy is not the issue" gives justification to the millions that have killed the PC game industry.
Um... I hate to break it to you but triple A titles are only a relatively small amount of the profits of the game industry as a whole, they just grab the headlines.
At some point you need to consider that maybe the companies that don't sell many copies of their games on PC are doing something wrong. If a game is multiplatform and sells 500,000 copies on PC, it is a success. If a game is PC exclusive and sells a million copies, it is a success.
So explain to me how "Oh well name a game that isn't made by Blizzard or Valve or Maxis or Stardock that has good sales" defense of an argument is a good one. Obviously those companies are doing something right and other companies are doing something wrong.
Blizzard produces amazing titles that require registration for forum access, customer support, and multiplayer. They do not beat you over the head with DRM.
Valve produces amazing games that require registration for forum access. customer support, and multiplayer. They also do not beat you over the head with DRM, once you've registered steam that's it.
Maxis does a few things, first off the games they make are top notch for the target audience, you have to register for custom user content on their sites, while this can be accomplished with piracy you are really missing out by not having a legit copy. I believe you also need it for support for the game. They use restrictive DRM since EA got in the mix, no indication that they even needed it given the stellar success of the Sims franchise.
Stardock makes amazing games that incorporate features requested by registered users, games that will run on people's office machines or laptops at low cost, and includes no DRM.
Why cant some or all of these methods be looked at by companies that complain about piracy? I'll have you note the most important element is that those companies all make good games. I mean I didn't like Spore but my sister in law and nephew adore the shit out of it, and that's who it was aimed at.
I will wager right now, Diablo 3 outsells call of duty 4 on the Xbox360
Goumindong, both of your points, that he's wrong on his application of economy of scale and that there is a disregard for price elasticity have been covered in the previous pages of this thread.*
I'm not saying that directly to you, but this thread has become one huge ass fucking repetition of the same arguments with different people involved.
Edit: And by that I mean that you're correct, not that they have been answered.
Sure - but Stardock's model isn't one that the industry can adapt, and if you think otherwise it's because you don't understand how the game industry works. Stardock is in the business of publishing niche strategy games with absolutely minimal development budgets, not mainstream titles.
Or maybe you're the one who doesn't understand that the game industry is changing. The "mainstream" is really just an amalgam of niches. FPSs are there own niches, RTSs are their own niche, "casual" games like the Sims are there own niche, and so forth.
Worse, Stardock's position of "Piracy is not the issue" gives justification to the millions that have killed the PC game industry.
Or, you know, the truth.
I happen to like Sins, but it's important to understand exactly how Stardock keeps its development costs so low. They offer graphics that are hopelessly out of date and release software on the disc that is defective, such that it must be patched online to get a decent experience. Developers working on triple-A games can do neither of those things - they must get publisher's approval on the gold master version, and their art is not allowed to suck or be only "okay."
Ahem, can I interest you in a little thing called the Wii? Or WoW?
The head-over-heels race for better graphics that has dominated the video gaming market for the last couple of years has basically broken. The difference between Half Life and Doom 3 is very obvious to anyone who looks at the two games. The difference between Doom 3 and Crysis not so much. You are now running into a problem of dimnishing returns. The actual quality of the game as a game is far more important. The demographic shift created by products like the Sims and the Wii which have broadened the user base is also pushing this along.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Here's a new one. Myself and many people I work with don't want to make PC games anymore because of piracy. That's the only reason. I take a morale hit every time I see our game posted on torrent sites, people asking for help in the support forums with obviously pirated copies, etc.
I'm being 100% honest- I won't work on another PC game, given the choice.
I read the first few pages and didn't want to bother with the ones after them since I encountered a lot of "ur wrong", "no u".
I am morally opposed to Piracy but a lot of people are not, which is a shame. It is so easy to pirate for the PC that it actually talks more effort to go to the store and buy the piece of software. I use Steam for that reason and only go to stores when I want to be a collector's item (<3 FO3 lunchbox).
That said, most DRM is pointless because it only affects a small group of people who pirate software for their shits and giggles. What's worse, most people don't know it even exists. The people who pirate it rarely encounter it and when they do, they get a crack and shrug it off. Honest consumers usually get a middle finger down the road and have to jump through hoops to get the software working. PC gaming is technical enough as it is and DRM just adds another layer of complexity for the average user. DRM is mostly a joke.
I cannot say that I want piracy to completely gone because there are a lot of games that you can't buy anymore. My favorite game is Planescape: Torment and I would of never played it if I haven't pirated simply because I had no means of buying the damn thing. I like piracy for its archival properties but I hate how it affects developers.
I think the PC is going to end up as a multiplayer only platform. Which is unfortunate because it is a great indie platform as well.
My favorite game is Planescape: Torment and I would of never played it if I haven't pirated simply because I had no means of buying the damn thing.
Gametap.
In 2003? Most of the nice alternatives came out recently. I signed up for the beta for GOG when it was first announced, which was less than a year ago I think.
My favorite game is Planescape: Torment and I would of never played it if I haven't pirated simply because I had no means of buying the damn thing.
One of my favourite games too. I still play it today.
If they made use of some of the DRM schemes in use today, I certainly wouldn't be able to make use of my copy now. Black Isle sank along with Interplay, but that doesn't matter anyway since I've already used up my quota of install limits oh my deary me. Unless of course I either pirate a copy, or crack it myself and break the DMCA. Hmmm :?
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Okay, so let's take the article's numbers on CoD4 (unquestionably one of the most successful FPS released in the last few years) and compare them to the numbers on a few MMOs. The article claims 383,000 copies of CoD4 PC were sold at retail in the first few months. Since you can't get numbers on digital distribution, the article far overestimates the Steam numbers by doubling the number of retail copies. The actual number is likely much much lower (most digital distribution is casual), but let's ignore that for a moment and stick with the article's 766,000 figure.
Guild Wars, across its lifespan, sold 5 million copies. That's over 7 times as many sales, for a game with a similar metacritic score, on the same platform. What's the difference? That piracy isn't a significant issue for the sales of Guild Wars, while it kicks CoD4 in the crotch.
If you don't like the Guild Wars example, consider Lineage. MMOGChart shows Lineage breaking three million subscribers during its heyday, with the less popular Lineage 2 only breaking 2 million. Remember, this is active subscribers at a given time, not total sales - the actual sales numbers are higher, since many users do not retain their accounts after purchasing the game.
Even widely hyped MMOs that turned out to be "only okay" still beat the 766,000 benchmark. Age of Conan, for all the shit it got, still sold a million units, and Warhammer Online sold 1.2 million. To get below CoD4 levels, you have to start looking at some very mediocre titles.
In short, good MMOs outgross pirateable PC games several times over - all before collecting a single monthly fee.
I know alot of people that bought COD4 on their 360 so they could play it online with their xbox live friends, rather than on their PC.
Diablo 2 sold something like 2 million copies in its first 3 months right?
....
the point of DRM is not to hurt pirates. At All. The point is to raise the bar above casual pirtes, and also to slow down the professional hackers long enough for the company to get a few more sales before a hack is released.
And i'm willing to bet the number of people is actually quite small, seein' as the vast majority of legitimate gamers have no problem with DRM.
...in a perfect world where DRM never causes problems.
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
You may be surprised to learn that "I know a lot of people" or "I heard, this one time" is not a compelling argument in the world of business.
Show me sales numbers and examples as to how a modern PC-only game that is not an MMO can be as successful as a console offering. Give me something I can show to a publisher to convince them that PCs are a safe investment, against all the lackluster sales numbers.
Because publishers are the ones who decide the life or death of the PC game industry. Publishers are the ones who will not fund PC gaming now, and publishers are the reason the only major PC releases are cross-platform titles, MMOs, and Blizzard games. They've made their business decision, and I cannot conjure a compelling argument why they should decide otherwise. Can you?
MMOs and FPSs are completely different markets, and COD4 was released on consoles while MMOs are computer only. This doesn't prove anything. A better comparison would be something like Sins of the Solar Empire vs. Red Alert 3, but even that is far from ideal.
Why is the first week of sales important? Quite frankly, i'm beginning to think DRM is about preventing people from knowing the real quailty of the product. Developers hype the piss out of their games, then time and time again release something no where near as good, and far too frequently something buggy or just plain terrible.
I'm sure developers have reasons for why fewer and fewer games release Demos, and I think it's the same reason why they keep adding DRM to games. The first week of sales is important because it's not enough time for word to spread about how good the game really is. They want people buying it blindly based on hype early, and they don't like pirates screwing that up for them.
No, I don't pirate, and no I don't think it's cool to do so, but I don't think developer's motives are all that pure either.
As for developer's motives - their motives are to make money. I'm not going to debate whether that's a "pure" motive or not. It's their ethical responsibility to make money for their shareholders, and their personal responsibility to keep the lights on at their place of business. They've simply found that they can make more money on consoles than PCs, because PC games are pirated so heavily. That's the issue here.
My main point was that your comparison was apples to oranges.
I said non-port so you wouldn't pull out a title that split its sale with another platform. Lo and behold, you pick a multiplatform game whose predecessor wasn't even released for the PC.
Also, one would expect any console game with a PC port to see similar drops as the port itself, given that, assuming that pirating is replacing buying, people would go with the pirated PC version rather than the bought console version. The fact that most high profile games are still ported indicates that developers aren't very concerned with piracy.
I didn't post a PC-exclusive title because I couldn't think of any major recent games that fit that description while remaining comparable. Triple-A titles have been cross-platform or console-only for years, because no one wants to develop exclusively for the platform that lets people get their games for free.
If you have actual statistics and numbers that prove me wrong, instead of conjecture and theory, by all means, post them. I'm not going to keep finding and listing new sources that say the same thing, in the hopes that you'll finally be convinced that piracy has gutted PC gaming. I've supported your my arguments - support yours.
Sins of a Solar empire did exceptionally well financially. It didn't bring in GTA 4 numbers but it didn't cost 100 million dollars to make either. It was actually more profitable, pound for pound, than the vast majority of console games. It cost in the 6 figures to make (according to stardock) and brought in 20 million dollars if you only count the registered copies
A PC exclusive has to be a PC exclusive to get good PC sales numbers. Spore sold quite well for example. A multiplatform PC release will not sell as well and will be pirated to hell and back because alot of pc gamers have consoles. You demand real verified numbers and I don't have them, because the companies that find the numbers are too busy counting the number of torrent downloads rather than doing market research of substance such as finding out how many PC gamers bought the 360 version instead!
No one is denying that consoles are where the money is at, I'm really not sure what your point is. PC gaming is dead? Well I suppose you can say that, but PC games continue to post profits. Valve went multi platform not because they weren't making money in PC gaming, but because they could make more money by making it multiplatform. It's the same reason console games are largly multiplatform (with the PC as one of the platforms).
If a game is already developed for the console it is obviously profitable to put it on the PC as well, even if it only sells a few hundred thousand copies. If a game is developed for the PC it is profitable to sell it on the consoles too, even if it only sells a few hundred thousand copies.
Except that you haven't, because your examples dont' actually prove the thing that you think they prove.
How about comparing Civ 4 BtS to Civ Revolutions or something.
Was Bioshock not a good game? That had a demo and DRM.
Actually according to wikipedia, Civ 4 sold more copies than Mass Effect, and I'll bet you my kidneys that it made more profit per unit.
I can't find civ rev sales figures so more apples to oranges sales comparisons.
Something that people are missing is that the average PC game costs significantly less to develop than the blockbuster console games they are always compared to. This of course excludes WoW, which probably cost hundreds of millions and the souls of a thousand orphaned children to imprison within their server hardware
I mean, look at what's been going down this generation of consoles. Specifically the 360.
Live is amazing for building a community. Having demos, videos of games, cheap arcade games, digital distribution. If it were free, Live would pretty much be the perfect solution to what people on the PC have been struggling with for years, a one stop friends list for all their online games.
Then we have a lot of the media features of a PC being able to be accessed in your living room. Things like Play On are fantastic, allowing for people to watch Hulu shows and Youtube videos all on their couches.
And now we have the newest, and in my mind the most impressive feat of this console generation, the community games. Everyone who wants to see the future of indy game development, look no further than the community games. Within 3-4 weeks we have all different types of games, some good, some horrid, but all at least interesting. Swords and Monsters? It's amazing that someone is actually able to make money off of something that is obviously a joke to them. How about the ability to write not only games, but real software? It won't be long before we see things such as synthesizers and video recording/editing software (once they allow access to the live vision camera that is).
Consoles are growing, and PC gaming, well, it isn't. This is, at least from my perspective, why games fail to sell on PCs. Pirating has been around for as long as the internet. Before bittorrent there was edonkey, before that there was supernova. Before that there were newsgroups. To say that it's only started hurting in the last few years is rediculous. And to say that pirates are the only reason why DRMs exists is also silly. If that were the case, well, look up sentence 3 in paragraph 4 of this post. The third word, well, that's you access code. Or, if you will, take out your pirate wheel and match up Guybrush's head to the word "pirate" on the wheel. In the third sun of the june moon you will find the passcode.
Sins has sold at least 500,000 copies, and cost less than $1,000,000 to develop. That is a huge return on investment.
Half Life 2 has 6.5 million not counting Steam sales.
So yeah. I'm calling bullshit on Squidget0's theory.
I think this is true of some games, like shooters, but those are largly already moving to the console domain. Games that have lower system specs and can be played anywhere will stay in the PC corner because you can play them anywhere a computer exists. I can play Civ 4 or WoW at any friends house, at any college campus, or at work (well at my old job). More importantly, literally anywhere if I take my laptop.
But the piracy isn't the only reason. It takes very little to get a 360 to run pirated games (at least from what I've read), but yet 360 games are selling like gangbusters.
Hell, doing a quick search on Farcry 2... the top pc torrent on one of the larger pirating sites has around 200 seeders... the 360 one has around 180. Now, the numbers on all the games I checked out vary, but there's not a overwhelming lead on the PC's part besides on a few games. Both are pirated, but the PC is the only one with dwindling sales.
Not always true - the tech is equivalent, and the price of producing a Triple-A game project has increased across the board, and console-specific costs (such as 360 dev kits and certification) shrink to a small percentage of your overall budget when the game itself runs you 20 million. The additional QA required on a PC over a console eats up a large percentage of those savings.
Sure - but Stardock's model isn't one that the industry can adapt, and if you think otherwise it's because you don't understand how the game industry works. Stardock is in the business of publishing niche strategy games with absolutely minimal development budgets, not mainstream titles.
Worse, Stardock's position of "Piracy is not the issue" gives justification to the millions that have killed the PC game industry.
I happen to like Sins, but it's important to understand exactly how Stardock keeps its development costs so low. They offer graphics that are hopelessly out of date and release software on the disc that is defective, such that it must be patched online to get a decent experience. Developers working on triple-A games can do neither of those things - they must get publisher's approval on the gold master version, and their art is not allowed to suck or be only "okay."
Likewise, Stardock can afford to self publish because they have an extraneous source of non-game-related income through Windowblinds. Most development houses are reliant on publisher funding - Stardock gets all the money for each of their releases, which allows them to turn a significant profit even on limited sales. Nevermind that their game still gets pirated all to hell, and all of Wardell's hand-waving can't change the fact that the vast majority of devs are reliant on publisher funding that just doesn't exist for PCs.
So how is the Stardock model supposed to apply to general game development, exactly? How does it handle Triple-A game development, which costs actual money and requires that you employ actual artists?
It doesn't. That's why the people who want to develop triple-A games, not niche RTS titles, have moved to consoles.
Developers selling crap that needs day 1 patches?
Holy fucking breaking news, Batman.
Actually it does necessarily follow. The problem is that its a worthless amount of information. And it assumes that acquiring pirated software is free. Its not.
Imagine I want to pitch an investment to you and i say "people place some amount of value on my product" your first question will be "how much value" and i will respond "Some! Shit if i know"
The fact that people value the product is meaningless it you don't know how much that value translates into lost sales at the price point that you have chosen. The fact that it does translate into lost sales at some price point[note: Free is a price point, since obtaining the game has non zero costs] means absolutely nothing.
I haven't yet read the article, but if this guy used that as a justification for saying that piracy was bad and DRM was good then he is the one of the worse "economists" i've heard of.
NES, SNES, even one or two PS1 games.
You mess with the dolphin, you get the nose.
Piracy... increases sales?
Developing AAA titles isn't sustainable for 99% of the industry, either. Games like Sins (Whose graphics aren't "hopelessly out-of-date" unless your standards are unreasonably high) are the middle-ground between casual games and Crysis. The vast majority of games aren't going to sell well enough to justify spending millions on Crysis-level graphics.
Edit: I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't appreciate your marginalising of non-AAA games and their developers. Just because Stardock aren't a AAA developer, it does not mean that they do not employ "actual artists" or that they release intentionally-gimped games. As someone who will likely be working at a non-AAA dev in a year, I take personal offense to that.
DRM as a means to prevent casual piracy.
This is a false assumption. Because the end consumers of downloadable piracy never see the DRM. As such, there is no casual disincentive for them to not pirate. All they see is the disincentive in dealing with DRM from owning the game.
DRM as a means of preventing a zero day crack is another issue. But that seems more like an internal security issue than anything else and has a myriad of possible solutions that does not involve cluttering up your game with DRM that, as above, provides zero disincentive for the average user to pirate and provides real incentives for people to pirate to get around the DRM.
I might get through the rest of the article at some point. But i have a feeling its going to be riddled with utterly basic mistakes which call into question or break his entire chain of argument.
I get the feeling I should ignore your last sentence until the second last gets fulfilled.
Seriously "I haven't read it but I feel it with my emotional bits".
Dude what.
Dude what what?
The guy makes a bunch of basic fucking logical and economic errors that an economist should not fucking do. Based on him making these logical and economic errors i "feel" that the rest of it is probably also going to have these basic logical and economic errors.
That's fucking basic inference.
E.G.
The man seems to be ignorant of transaction costs. Games on Steam are cheaper than hard copy games. You don't have to burn gas or energy to get to the store to get the game you just download it, something that is significantly cheaper to you. You also don't have to pay shipping costs. Steam can afford to have higher prices because they're competing with the retail market and their distribution model is cheaper to their primary user base than their competitors. Only a fucking idiot would lower their prices below retail in that situation[provided retail was the proper price point of the game]
As an aside: holding steam up as a model is not some sort of "give valve a monopoly on digital distribution" but as a model of "this is good and it works".
edit2:
The guy doesn't even fucking understand basic supply and demand and the meaning of "Economies of scale".
1. Economies of scale only define supply with a large barrier to entry and low marginal costs to increased production. It has nothing to do with optimal sales figures based on units produced. Your optimal price can go nothing but down with economies of scale so long as demand supports the product in the first place.
Specifically with games there is nearly zero marginal cost since copying shit is nearly free. With digital distribution marginal cost is only bandwidth. You never have to worry about the costs of producing more product because with digital distribution you can actually decide at each margin when the cost of the extra bandwidth costs you more than the product.
2. If you increase prices then you are going to lose sales. Increasing prices does not increase revenue unless you have a monopoly type advantage and the previously set price was not efficient. The idea that companies would increase their prices to deal with piracy is completely and utterly retarded. It denies the very basics of supply and demand and pricing strategy.
For one because if a company could benefit from monopoly/oligopoly type pricing they would do so in the absence of piracy. The company doesn't give a shit what their sales numbers are they give a shit what their final profit is. And if increasing the price means more profit, then they'll sell it at an increased price. There is pretty ample evidence(iirc) that monopoly/oligopoly pricing does not exist except for a very select few game products. Because of this, if you increase your prices due to "piracy" you will have dramatically reduced sales as everyone moves to your competitors. Its business suicide.
In short, Piracy cannot ever have an effect to make companies increase prices.
Much better, thankyou.
I wasn't challenging how correct you were. I was poking you to actually read the damn thing and tell us what you think.
Um... I hate to break it to you but triple A titles are only a relatively small amount of the profits of the game industry as a whole, they just grab the headlines.
At some point you need to consider that maybe the companies that don't sell many copies of their games on PC are doing something wrong. If a game is multiplatform and sells 500,000 copies on PC, it is a success. If a game is PC exclusive and sells a million copies, it is a success.
So explain to me how "Oh well name a game that isn't made by Blizzard or Valve or Maxis or Stardock that has good sales" defense of an argument is a good one. Obviously those companies are doing something right and other companies are doing something wrong.
Blizzard produces amazing titles that require registration for forum access, customer support, and multiplayer. They do not beat you over the head with DRM.
Valve produces amazing games that require registration for forum access. customer support, and multiplayer. They also do not beat you over the head with DRM, once you've registered steam that's it.
Maxis does a few things, first off the games they make are top notch for the target audience, you have to register for custom user content on their sites, while this can be accomplished with piracy you are really missing out by not having a legit copy. I believe you also need it for support for the game. They use restrictive DRM since EA got in the mix, no indication that they even needed it given the stellar success of the Sims franchise.
Stardock makes amazing games that incorporate features requested by registered users, games that will run on people's office machines or laptops at low cost, and includes no DRM.
Why cant some or all of these methods be looked at by companies that complain about piracy? I'll have you note the most important element is that those companies all make good games. I mean I didn't like Spore but my sister in law and nephew adore the shit out of it, and that's who it was aimed at.
I will wager right now, Diablo 3 outsells call of duty 4 on the Xbox360
I'm not saying that directly to you, but this thread has become one huge ass fucking repetition of the same arguments with different people involved.
Edit: And by that I mean that you're correct, not that they have been answered.
Or maybe you're the one who doesn't understand that the game industry is changing. The "mainstream" is really just an amalgam of niches. FPSs are there own niches, RTSs are their own niche, "casual" games like the Sims are there own niche, and so forth.
Or, you know, the truth.
Ahem, can I interest you in a little thing called the Wii? Or WoW?
The head-over-heels race for better graphics that has dominated the video gaming market for the last couple of years has basically broken. The difference between Half Life and Doom 3 is very obvious to anyone who looks at the two games. The difference between Doom 3 and Crysis not so much. You are now running into a problem of dimnishing returns. The actual quality of the game as a game is far more important. The demographic shift created by products like the Sims and the Wii which have broadened the user base is also pushing this along.
I'm being 100% honest- I won't work on another PC game, given the choice.
I am morally opposed to Piracy but a lot of people are not, which is a shame. It is so easy to pirate for the PC that it actually talks more effort to go to the store and buy the piece of software. I use Steam for that reason and only go to stores when I want to be a collector's item (<3 FO3 lunchbox).
That said, most DRM is pointless because it only affects a small group of people who pirate software for their shits and giggles. What's worse, most people don't know it even exists. The people who pirate it rarely encounter it and when they do, they get a crack and shrug it off. Honest consumers usually get a middle finger down the road and have to jump through hoops to get the software working. PC gaming is technical enough as it is and DRM just adds another layer of complexity for the average user. DRM is mostly a joke.
I cannot say that I want piracy to completely gone because there are a lot of games that you can't buy anymore. My favorite game is Planescape: Torment and I would of never played it if I haven't pirated simply because I had no means of buying the damn thing. I like piracy for its archival properties but I hate how it affects developers.
I think the PC is going to end up as a multiplayer only platform. Which is unfortunate because it is a great indie platform as well.
Gametap.
In 2003? Most of the nice alternatives came out recently. I signed up for the beta for GOG when it was first announced, which was less than a year ago I think.
One of my favourite games too. I still play it today.
If they made use of some of the DRM schemes in use today, I certainly wouldn't be able to make use of my copy now. Black Isle sank along with Interplay, but that doesn't matter anyway since I've already used up my quota of install limits oh my deary me. Unless of course I either pirate a copy, or crack it myself and break the DMCA. Hmmm :?