Ubisoft Director: Piracy is Killing PC Gaming

[lambofgode3x]

also, game companies want games to sell...how about they dont release bullshit titles like PDC World Championship Darts 2008. you're going to sell what, 12 copies? jackasses....

 

[hemelskonijn]

@Milany:

In the Netherlands is every copy legal due to the fact that we pay a copyright license fee when buying Writable CD’s. The fee is only E0,50 cents.

This is is truth multimedia including but not limited to audio, video photo's and books for the purpose off education and or home usage.
Software however is never legally copied partly because software developers and publishers don`t get a a share of the 50cent tax and partly because even if they did get some money for it they have security wich has to be broken or worked around wich in turn is illegal.

The same goes for downloading ... downloading of pirated software is illegal to make things worse even if you use your bought key or license file.
Audio video books and pictures on the other hand are legal to download to copy and even to share among friends (not mass distribution and not for a fee) uploading however is illegal even though you pay the tax since your mass distributing it and most p2p protocols networks and clients upload while downloading.

back to the topic:
i strongly disagree with the people who say there are less good games coming out for the pc in contrast to the consoles.
In my opinion ports are the main reason the consoles seem to have the better games since the few titles that are exclusive to a console most of the time are the better games.

 

[Milany]

One more thing I just came up with is this.

PC gamers are gamers that want to get the best visuals and performance out of their games. But because of the fact that PC’s are more advanced then game consoles are the games never the less the same and get PC games less visual quality and sparkles because the game consoles cant coop with those high graphical levels.

PC games are to low in quality to play on a high performance PC, so why bother paying for those games.

 

[GenKhan2]

I have been an avid PC gamer for over a decade. I still haven't bought a single game for my launch PS3 but I've bought many PC titles over the same period. Recent anti-piracy efforts by misguided publishers have placed me in a difficult position. When I have to download a pirated copy or crack in order to get the best experience from my purchased game we have serious issues in the PC market. What sells PC is high quality visuals, true multifunction (web/office/game), and the fact it is an open system. Trying to consolize PCs with hardcore DRM will ALWAYS hurt the PC platform because it seeks to eliminate one of the selling points. Wake up publishers. Treat your customers as friends and they will return the favor.

 

[Guest]

The problem isn't piracy. It is the lack of good games. I buy all the games I really enjoy playing, but what's the point of spending $40-50 on something you are really only going to enjoy for a week?

Also any game that has a good multiplayer cannot be pirated (basically all Blizzard games).

And finally, I'm tired with all the fucking console ports that just don't feel right on a PC. Game makers save themselves the work, and just port it, the controls and feel are wrong, and no one buys it, and then they blame piracy. If you want to sell PC games, MAKE PC GAMES. Stop trying to sell console ports as PC games.

 

[Guest]

Who buys boxed versions of games anymore anyway. You can pay and download them via EA games or Direct2drive which is way better. Just burn or keep a copy of the download and keys on your pc and you're good. I've bought my last 10 games online by download which takes a few hours in the comfort of my own home. Never again will I buy a boxed version. So, who cares if EB games or Walmart reduce shelf space for games, it's an obsolete mode of delivery anyway.

 

[dgrambo]

Why work on a clean title for PC when you can make more money working on a console version and perhaps later port it over to PC (if it looks money). The problem is public opinion. How do you turn your backs on the less profitable customer base in order to focus entirely on the stronger profit center? Well, nows is the right time to blame the consumer and maximize profit! Are you suprised? Its just bu$ine$$. Do you believe the CEO's care about anything more than numbers? Do you think the dev teams control the industry? There is is nothing unless its profitable and then more profitable or abandoned. And if you ever try to circumvent the corporation will buy you or litigate you to death. Money is power, power is corruption. What they dont no is corruption leads to revolution and you cant package that.

 

[Mromson]

Piracy isn't killing PC gaming, DRM and crappy games do.

 

[erloas]

I used to like the Tom Clancy games, at least the Rainbow Six line, up until they "consolized" them. Bascially with Vegas they did add some new and interesting things but for me they changed all of the FPS aspects of the previous games that I liked and made it very similiar to all of the other FPSs that I don't really care for.

The day PC gaming dies is the day I give up electronic gaming altogether. I'll stick with table top gaming, and there are some very good board games around if you actually look for them.

I just can't justify getting a console. Sure they aren't as much as a PC, except that every person has a PC already, and the difference in cost between a surf the net PC, and a mid range gaming PC is less then that of most consoles. And if you want to be a "console" gamer you kind of need more then just one of them too.

Also if you are like me and wouldn't even have a TV if a co-worker hadn't given it to me, then I would have to factor that in, and probably a decent HDTV too.

The biggest problem with electronic gaming in general is the lack of diversity. I can play shooters, RPG shooters, action/adverture shooters, horror/survival shooters, and I'm sure quasi RTS shooters are coming too. Is there a pattern here? I don't like shooters on consoles, they belong on PCs. Either way though, there are only so many shooters a person can take. The game types I liked on consoles are getting much fewer and farther between. I got gamefly for a while and I couldn't find more then a dozen games on the PS2 that I wanted to play, lasting all of 2 months. Pretty bad considering it had been probably a year or more since I had last played any games on it.

The PC is even worse for it, they don't even have the occasional racer, or fighting game or sports game that at least gives consoles a little bit of diversity. Look at Fallout 3, it was a game I had been looking forward to for about 10 years... up until they starting actually making it and made it clear they were making it a shooter/RPG instead of an RPG.

I stopped buying games when I stopped finding games I wanted to buy, its as simple as that. I haven't even pirated any in probably 6-8 years (back when it was with a friends CD and a no cd-patch). Other then WAR its been a long time since I've purchased any game before it hits the $20 price point. (and its really bad when you are disappointing in a game when you pay that little for it)

 

[erloas]

As for buying games online, that isn't practical for everyone. I'm stuck here in the middle of the US and we have a 20GB download limit on our "premium" service, and 10GB on the regular. Thats what, 1 game a month? In some cases not even that.

If they want to blame anyone for poor PC game sales who they need to blame is Dell and HP and the other PC manufacturers. They want $800 before you get anything other then integrated video, and they want like $1200 before you get a mid range video card. Those same systems can be built from Newegg for 30-40% less. Of course some people will say "but they need to make money" and so does Newegg. If Newegg can sell the same parts for 40% less and still make money then why can't Dell and HP? The problem with PC gaming and the general population (the numbers needed for good sales) is that the people selling them computers are screwing anyone if they even think about gaming on a pre-built system.

 

[bounty]

Ugh... these things originated from different places. Remember back when you had Playstation games and PC games. They were totally separate. I don't think PC gamming has gone down hill that much from the publishers side. Is Blizzard making less now than when they first released Diablo? Is Valve earing that much less $ than when HL 1 came out? Is EA? Ubisoft? I think these companies have made more and more each year. (And that's even though the games they're making now are less revolutionary) Lets compare their growth to say Ford or GM. HAHAAHAHAHHAHA

One thing that has happend in the last few years, is consoles have skyrocketed. I don't know why but, maybe they think they're protecting console sales by not releasing PC titles.... I don't think console gammers are flocking to the PC to pirate games, so the publishers are just impailing themselves for no reason.

If we go back to when it was either a PC game or a console game, that's fine by me. There will always be good PC games. Games are developed on PC's, and there will always be devolopers who (like me) prefer this more open platform. (BTW thank god for MODS like Desert Combat for BF1942 etc.)

 

[ram1009]

The notion that people who know how to get something for nothing (pirates) will willingly pay for that something if the quality were just improved is simply ludicrous. The higher the quality or lower the price the more demand there will be from both the paying and non-paying market. These are the laws of supply & demand and of human nature. Everybody wants something for nothing. Some realize that this is unsustainable and are willing to act in their own best interest. Others are too selfish and short sighted to care.

 

[DXRick]

“But at the moment, if you release the PC version, essentially what you’re doing is letting people have a free version that they rip off instead of a purchased version. Piracy’s basically killing PC.”

If they release the PC version, everyone will steal it resulting in less console sales?
So, by this "logic" PC pirating is really going to kill their console sales, no?

The last Ubisoft game I didn't buy (but wanted) was the last Splinter Cell. It required a GPU that supports shader model 3.0. My fairly new $300 ATI X800XT did not. At that time only the latest high end cards would work. So, due to their HW requirements I couldn't play it at all.

In fact, I haven't built a new PC yet, and I haven't bought any games in 3 years that won't run on my old PC. Maybe it is the ever spiraling hardware requirements that is killing PC gaming.

BTW, the last game I pirated (around 1992) was Leather Goddesses Of Phobos, which came on a 5 1/4" floppy.

 

[Guest]

Piracy, Bah!

My 8 Month old $2000 gaming machine is just a space heater these days. Personally I am sick of being treated like a criminal, the only people DRM effects is the paying customer. Lord knows the pirates don't have to deal with it...

I don't really know any pure PC gamers anymore. All IRL friends have bolted to to console to avoid the hassle with DRM, Drivers, installs, and shoddy multiplayer. Never mind how much more fun multiplayer is withought all the aim-bots, map hacks, and other cheats.

The games are still selling well. The buyer's just moved to the console to avoid all the frustration these days from the production company's invasive DRM, poor QA, and the never ending hardware upgrades to keep frame rate fluid.

 

[kamkal]

Gone are the days of devs actually making good games

video game industry is similar to music industry, same sh!t over and over to move units

why do you think there are like 4830483 ww2 games and 3802238 tom clancy games, joe average keeps buying the same games over and over just like in the music industry, same nonsense, different "artist"

publishers are in complete control and they only care about top dollar, thats why there is more money spent on marketing and hyping the game rather than developing a good game. and anyone giving a "hype" game a bad review, gets canned, ie Kane and Lynch Dead Men and the Gamespot reviewer who got sacked cuz he game the game a bad review
but the thing is... kane and lynch SUCKS, the review was just, but it's all coporate suits making the decisions now and all that matters is $.

and dont even get me started on securom and stupid sh!t like that
the game is cracked and available for dl before it hits the shelves, anti piracy schemes are a waste of the budget, if your game is good, it will move units

let's look at a game like oblivion for example, good game, lots of hours of game play, NO PROTECTION whatsoever, yet it has sold lots of copies

 

[wolfwhispers]

I agree with a lot of what's already bin said, piracy ironically is the only reason I still bother playing pC games! I've bin an avid PC GAMER since Duke-Nukem/Sierra Nascar/Settlers, but I've grown cynical over the last decade because of buggy, piss-poor programming, seems games nowadays are just a scam for peeps ta upgrade there putes to a level where MAYBE ya can play them. I think the "alliance" is on the right track trying to get all interested parties on the same page, hopefully they'll get there shit together. The avid PC Gamer has bin used and abused for long enough, be nice ta get some value for all the hard earned money we've invested over the years.

 

[dragoncyber]

As I read everyones posts here I can see that many of you are exactly what this article is talking about, "Pirates". When I say that I mean the people who feel they can constantly get something for nothing in life and never have any consequences from it. Now it's coming around and biting you in the ass.

The people who have worked hard to bring you a game , whether in the end it be to your liking or not are working hard to bring you a form of Entertainment that they love and are passionate about. They studied the programming languages, they went to school, and they worked for sometimes years on a game title only to have "YOU LAZY PIRATES"
ruin it by stealing their creations and playing them for free.

What's worse is that you can't feel guilty alone. No once you've acquired your pirated software you then spread it like wildfire to all your friends and across the internet for others, like you are fighting for some cause that everyone should get these software titles for free.

But what you don't realize is that in the end the only thing you've done is ruin your own favorite hobby as now most PC gaming software developers are switching their interests to other venues like Game Consoles where you have a lovely life span for game that equals on average about 7 hours play time until youve completed it.

You are ruining Software development, Publishers are pulling out, and stores all across the nation are pulling PC titles from their shelves, and the store space devoted towards PC software in general is getting smaller and smaller.

A great example of what is happening to PC games now, first started when people used to buy software, burn the disks and then return it to the stores. This resulted in stores making a no return policy on all computer software, then they made music unreturnable then they made Console games unreturnable, and then Finally DVD's. WHY?? Because people kept abusing the fact that they could get something for free by burning discs and bringing them back. That all resulted from the release of cd burners to the civilian market. Once people realized what they could get away with they went crazy.

The same thing is happening now, the people who are making these games are now putting limits on them or not making games at all for PC because software piracy has run rampant, and now we all have to suffer for because in this case "The few affect the many".

In closing I'd like all of you who are Burning Discs and giving them to friends, or playing pirated games, or using cracked software to just remember this, you are playing a vital role in the life or death of future games software development for the PC. Now you must decide whether in the end it's worth it for you to keep pirating these games or one day not have any PC games to play.

 

[nine3o]

Piracy has never killed any platform (whether it's Console or PC based), lack of quality games or poor management decisions have killed platforms.

Considering my first computer was a Commodore Amiga, that platform was "pirated to hell and back" and it did well until poor management decisions killed the company, but that's another story.

I don't know of one platform I own(ed) that has not been "pirated to hell and back" since I started gaming. Lets see: Amiga, SNES, PS1, PS2, Xbox, Xbox360, Wii, PC, NDS, PSP...

Piracy has been around for as long as I can remember, and it's here to stay on every platform, the companies that complain Piracy is killing the PC gaming scene are full of it. It is easier for these companies to create a game on a console since they are creating a game for specific system that has identical hardware, console games don't have to change anything just pop in the disc and play so if there is a market of 20 million Xbox 360's worldwide (probably more than that now) it's easier to sell to these users than users that have $3000 PC systems.

And to release a game on the PC after its console release is just stupid. Most people will play it first on their console so of course your PC sales are going to be lower!!!

 

[zodiacfml]

blaming the pirates....
if the PC gaming industry is going down, why does ATI/NVIDIA sell. And both companies is still growing.

PC and gaming is changing. MMO's and online sale of games.
There are various gaming portables and consoles for a complicated PC to compete with, but nothing replaces the gaming quality that can be achieved on the PC.

 

[Guest]

I can relate to some of it all, I mean,
If you need to buy a new pc every 4 years, because it's unable to play the newer games, it's more than normal people try to find alternate ways to game.

I myself don't game,and if I do, I'm happy to play some of the opensource games found for free online.

But most of my time I really am too old to still game around.
It's not only piracy, it's the people. Many people don't have the time or money anymore to spend on gaming.
We are the gaming generation, the generation born between '78 and '83.
Newer kids find more fun on their skateboards, outside with their friends, going to places and stuff.
We are the generation buying these games in the past, but we now have families and need to feed them...

So it's not (only) the piracy.. Besides, ever since DOOM came out,I haven't really seen many new games. Most games where just but upgraded versions of already existing games to the third and fourth generation.
But a 1th person shooter in my eyes (which I don't really like) will always be a 1th person shooter. DOOM, or the latest version of quake/or other games like this...

Games used to be fun, because they used to have a great story line to them.
Not anymore. A mere 'finish levels', do briefing, and skip the next level until it's 'the end' really doesn't satisfy gamers anymore.

Like Toms say, stop blaming the pirates,when I finally find a good game worth buying, I will (however I haven't done that for 6 years, since for 6 years I hardly play anymore; and hardly meaning maybe one game per year).

 

[Guest]

I think as an addition,lately it might be hard to "WOW!" the customer anymore you know?

No matter how hard gaming industry is doing it's best, they don't seem to be able to bring the WOW back into the games...

In 1985 something WOW meant 8 color screen games
around 1990 great story line!
1994 improved 3D graphics
around 1996 higher resolutions and MMX acceleration
around 2002, almost all games could be classified,and genres of games where defined.
ok, with an occasional game that eg: was both 1st and 3th person shooter; or a game that combined strategy,RPG and adventure with 3th person 3D or something..

What's really been new lately?

Crysis yes, with almost a virtual real-life-looking environment, but it's still a 1/3th person shooter...

 

[chaohsiangchen]

[citation][nom]dragoncyber[/nom]As I read everyones posts here I can see that many of you are exactly what this article is talking about, "Pirates". [/citation]

I buy my games and I don't pirate games. Yet, I feel the same to a lot of people said here: game developing companies and game publishers should get their asses together and and make good games instead of whining about pirates. Sue those pirates for damage then stop whining, it can be done and it is done before.

A lot of titles in the past two years aren't up to gamers' expectation. Take BF2 for example. A lot of bugs and exploits had been reported since beta test, and a lot of these still aren't fixed, and the game still do random CTD on regular basis. They then moved on to produce BF2142, which is a even buggier game. In the meantime, Toys for Bob still can't get Activision to grant another Star Control game, despite us the gamers want a new Star Control game from Toys for Bob.

The irony is that it takes time, money and efforts to produce good games. Sometimes it's just too expensive in the eyes of game company CEOs. Those game publishers just want quick money, and produce way too many mediocre titles. Sad thing is that people still buying them. Some crappy console titles still sold more copies then Crysis last year, and each of them takes a fraction of what Crysis cost to develop.

 

[ckthecerealkiller]

Well I agree that buying boxed games is pretty useless anymore. But piracy still happens on unpackaged games. I have had my HL2 collectors edition hacked from Steam before which still hasn't been resolved. But anyway the point is piracy will NEVER stop when you make software period. But your revenue will ALWAYS stop when you begin do doubt this industry, duh.

 

[spleendamage]

I bought Tom Clancy Rainbow Six Vegas from Direct2Drive.

I haven't been able to play it since I changed my hardware. Not because my hardware won't handle it, but because I can't re-activate the game.

All I have to do, according to Direct2Drive is contact UbiSoft support.
Well, so far no luck, but hey... it's only been a year.

Granted I will never buy an UbiSoft game again until they get this one working for me, but I'm sure it's PIRACY that's killing their sales.

 

[brendano257]

Ok, so you put all your money on singleplayer (the only one you can really pirate) and then make crappy multiplayers with not zing, or fun to them (Crysis.) And complain about us not buying your games, some games after you buy them and play the SP maybe twice then it hits the shelf and stays. Also Punk Buster and such kills the fun for legit rulers when we JUST WANT TO PLAY and have to manually update and stuff. Honestly EA must PB check to make sure the CD is in the drive every 17 minutes while I'm playing...? (It's true...)
Ok, that's my rant, SP is fun but not without a MP to support it after you exhaust the SP.EA is a little protection happy, and PB just has issues...