News - Most pirated games of 2011 include Crysis 2 and MW3

[kalniel]

What nonsense. Publishers are raking in more PC gaming cash than ever before.

Really? Last time I looked most of them were losing cash, and the rest had reduced takings.

Activision has the WoW cash cow I guess.

The whining about piracy has nothing to do with piracy, the rate of piracy is the same as it ever was. It's all about control and squeezing more profits from the consumer.

PC gaming isn't really profitable, or more people would be doing it rather than concentrating on consoles. Why do they do that? Because despite more people playing PC games, more people buy console games.

[aidanjt]

So your saying Piracy isn't bad?

I'm saying 'piracy' (it's actually copyright infringement, not piracy), is a non-issue. Copyright infringement is as old as copyright itself (which was born out of the moral panic of the printing press). You can't stop it without transforming the world into a fascist's paradise (and even then people will work around that). Focus on delivering a quality product the way people want it and they'll buy it. It's that simple.

[Platinum]

Yea, seems to be working well with Steam, such a shame the PC is the highest pirated platform by a mile though.

[aidanjt]

Really? Last time I looked most of them were losing cash, and the rest had reduced takings.

So if your household debt is shooting through the roof, it must mean you took a giant pay cut, right? No, that's silly. You're almost certainly increasing your debt because you're spending like a retard.

PC gaming isn't really profitable, or more people would be doing it rather than concentrating on consoles. Why do they do that? Because despite more people playing PC games, more people buy console games.

Not being *as* profitable as consoles isn't the same thing as not being profitable. Again, this is part of the service problem, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. PC isn't profitable because of 'pirates', so lets focus on console and introduce more draconian DRM for PC users, PC game quality degrades, more illegitimate downloading from disillusioned users ensues, profits drop, therefore 'piracy' is to blame.

[kalniel]

So if your household debt is shooting through the roof, it must mean you took a giant pay cut, right? No, that's silly. You're almost certainly increasing your debt because you're spending like a retard.

Oh right, so if they are having a profit drop it's their pay scheme at fault, but if they're making a profit it's because they're screwing over customers..

Not being *as* profitable as consoles isn't the same thing as not being profitable. Again, this is part of the service problem, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. PC isn't profitable because of 'pirates', so lets focus on console and introduce more draconian DRM for PC users, PC game quality degrades, more illegitimate downloading from disillusioned users ensues, profits drop, therefore 'piracy' is to blame.

What about the profit drop on publishers that don't use DRM? Or the piracy of said titles?

[aidanjt]

Oh right, so if they are having a profit drop it's their pay scheme at fault, but if they're making a profit it's because they're screwing over customers..

Where did I say anything remotely close to that?

What about the profit drop on publishers that don't use DRM?

See the first sentence of the last post.

Or the piracy of said titles?

What titles?

[kalniel]

Where did I say anything remotely close to that?

What nonsense. Publishers are raking in more PC gaming cash than ever before. 'Piracy' is just a convenient excuse for being cheap, peddling substandard wares, and using a combination of grossly broad and meshed copyright, contract, and crypto laws, most of which big content bribed through, to impose fascist conditions which erode the very legitimate 2nd hand market, which is a *much* greater threat to their substandard product models.

The whining about piracy has nothing to do with piracy, the rate of piracy is the same as it ever was. It's all about control and squeezing more profits from the consumer.

So if your household debt is shooting through the roof, it must mean you took a giant pay cut, right? No, that's silly. You're almost certainly increasing your debt because you're spending like a retard.

What titles?

World of Goo. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2...te-near-90.ars

[aidanjt]

And none of that remotely means:

Oh right, so if they are having a profit drop it's their pay scheme at fault, but if they're making a profit it's because they're screwing over customers..

World of Goo. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2...te-near-90.ars

As I understand it, World of Goo made its developers a *very* tidy sum of money. Lets face it, it's extraordinarily hard to make a loss on a $94,000 investment of a very well known indy title.

[kalniel]

As I understand it, World of Goo made its developers a *very* tidy sum of money. Lets face it, it's extraordinarily hard to make a loss on a $94,000 investment of a very well known indy title.

But you agree it was pirated, despite
a) not having DRM
b) not costing very much at all
c) not coming from a big corp only interested in profit
?

[aidanjt]

But you agree it was pirated, despite
a) not having DRM
b) not costing very much at all
c) not coming from a big corp only interested in profit
?

Pretty much anything which has ever been covered by copyright has been infringed upon. What's your point?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Pretty much anything which has ever been covered by copyright has been infringed upon. What's your point?

exactly. everything gets pirated even console games. nothings new

@kal you sound all doom and gloom in the world of pc gaming?

[kalniel]

Pretty much anything which has ever been covered by copyright has been infringed upon. What's your point?

My point was that some people in this thread, looking at no-one in particular.. were bringing up publisher's greed or DRM in a thread about piracy. I don't know why they did that, seeing as it doesn't seem to have anything to do with piracy as shown by my example.

@josh: Not doom and gloom, just not as good as it could be. If you're happy with casual games and free to play titles then the PC market looks fantastic. The rest is done on the back of console profits, which means there's little incentive to take advantage of the marvels of modern PC technology.

[crossy]

My point was that some people in this thread, looking at no-one in particular.. were bringing up publisher's greed or DRM in a thread about piracy. I don't know why they did that, seeing as it doesn't seem to have anything to do with piracy as shown by my example.

The World of Goo example given was interesting to me - shows you that some ar****les refuse to pay for anything, irrespective of how good it is. Got to wonder if those self-same a-holes would be content to work for nothing.
aidanjt had a point though - as the Goo example shows, if you do a game, then someone will try and rip you off - publishers should just sign and accept the world the way it is, forget labyrinthine DRM and other such stupidity. On the other hand the trend towards mandatory DLC - thereby screwing over the 2nd hand market - screams "greedy publisher" loudly at me. That is, it's something which I truly hate and wish would die as an idea as quickly as it arose.

@josh: Not doom and gloom, just not as good as it could be. If you're happy with casual games and free to play titles then the PC market looks fantastic. The rest is done on the back of console profits, which means there's little incentive to take advantage of the marvels of modern PC technology.

So true, in the ideal world (and I know there's good reasons why it's not done this way) a multiplatform game would be done on the PC first and then "downsized" to fit on consoles. Compare that with the current way where console games seem to be ported to PC's and then slightly enhanced. That said, if this was the case with BF3 then the PC crew did a superb job since it's streets ahead of the XBox version, not only in graphics but also in gameplay.