PC Games - Where have they gone??

[PmanUk]

Personally I have noticed a sharp decline over past couple of years, there are fewer and fewer places to buy pc games on the market now.

When game announced its problems I remember being quite sad about it but then it dawned on me "when did I last buy a game in Game?" the answer was quite some years ago....

Regarding piracy the biggest drawback is lack of online gaming, in every other regard the advantage is with the pirate. How frustrated was I with the install limit AND being online with assassins creed 2?? And a pirate had neither restriction...

Nowadays I use Steam, easier and during their sales a lot cheaper too

Sad days

[ladcrooks]

Go to Tesco and a like - hardly any PC games whatsoever - if they sold them cheap enough, it would almost solve piracy. I'm sure most of us would rather have the real McCoy in its retail box.
Same with any digital media, once its put together, its peanuts to mass produce! music, films, software, they could all learn a lesson!

Take Adobe CS6 = £1400 well they can sling their hook, I know a man that can = AA ha!

[kalniel]

Go to Tesco and a like - hardly any PC games whatsoever - if they sold them cheap enough, it would almost solve piracy.

Piracy has nothing to do with price. See that recent game that only cost 79p yet it was still pirated to hell.

[BENBOBBY]

Steam and online stores have probably killed it. Cant remember the last time I bought anything from HMV

[dangel]

Piracy has nothing to do with price. See that recent game that only cost 79p yet it was still pirated to hell.

Whoa there! Steady on - of course it has an effect. It's not the whole story by any means but it does indeed have an effect. And to pick up on an earlier point so does DRM - which ranges from insane (Ubisoft/Starforce) to not really noticeable (Steam). Incidentally the Witcher 2 sold bucketloads without DRM at all - in fact it was as much a marketing tool for them as anything else about the game, that and their amazing support of the title. Imagine if all publishers spent that DRM money on expansive patches and improvements free for their customers. It's all about value - DRM adds none to your paying customers, makes their 'experience' far worse and is easily worked around by pirates. Steam OTOH offers you portability, a library feature, MP, autopatching and convenience. And their horrific sales which frankly rape me every summer
It's a complex issue and varies from person to person and their circumstances. I did used to do naughty things as a student admittedly for example but i've gone on since to pay (and can afford to do so) now.

Digital and mail order for me, have been for years now.

[ZaO]

Why people buy anything in the shops when it's cheaper online is beyond me. PC games have always been way cheaper online. We don't need shops and that's what's happening basically.

[jimbouk]

PC games have always been way cheaper online.

'Back in the day' this wasn't true. Steam for example always had games at full retail price when the shops, even new, had them for less. This is going back several years though. These days if you wait a couple of months you can pick things up in a random sale for a very good price. I remember being soooooo peeved when I went out and got the retail Half-Life 2, but still had to wait half a day for Steam to patch the game which they seemed to have shipped half finished. Now I'm a Steam convert.

[ZaO]

'Back in the day' this wasn't true. Steam for example always had games at full retail price when the shops, even new, had them for less. This is going back several years though. These days if you wait a couple of months you can pick things up in a random sale for a very good price. I remember being soooooo peeved when I went out and got the retail Half-Life 2, but still had to wait half a day for Steam to patch the game which they seemed to have shipped half finished. Now I'm a Steam convert.

Yeh maybe a real long time back. I do remember the days of buying games in the shops. But you can buy retail games online so much cheaper and it's been like that for a long time. Steam can be a lot more expensive and I usually only buy from it when they do sales. I think I'm like you in the way that I used to avoid download versions of games but now I prefer to buy stuff on Steam if possible. I'm not keen using anything else though cos I don't want loads of god damn services to have to manage and keep running on my machine. Annoyed the hell out of me not being able to get bf3 on steam...

[[F]ogell]

It seems that all my local supermarkets have also removed PC games from their shelves. I remember queieing at the 24 hour Tescos for WOW expansions... not there is not a single title aside Driving Test Quizes on the bargin spinners.

I even ventured in to PC WORLD (burn my soul) recently looking for a copy of D3 (it was marketed as 10 quid cheaper than Blizz dl) but alas they were sold out, I even had to ask a member of staff where PC games were, they werent under the floating sign of 'Gaming' with the bountiful console titles and shelves and displays, but tucked away under the laptop sales. They had SIMS and angry birds.

Sometimes I just like to own boxes, they look better on the shelf than printed Steam reciepts!

[atlewis]

Steam.com I do miss having games cases though, and installing rather than downloading, and just paying for a loan of the game which I can never sell on -.-' ty Steam.

[dangel]

Steam.com I do miss having games cases though, and installing rather than downloading, and just paying for a loan of the game which I can never sell on -.-' ty Steam.

that might change though..

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/07/03/eu...-and-licenses/

Not without a major fight though but interesting isn't it?

[ZaO]

Steam.com I do miss having games cases though, and installing rather than downloading, and just paying for a loan of the game which I can never sell on -.-' ty Steam.

Not being able to sell games on has destroyed the secondhand market and taken selling power away from the people. It's total corporate domination and it's not right. Most boxed games have become pointless because they always make you register the serial key to your own personal account. So you can't sell the game on because that key can't be used again. They're doing this on consoles as well as pc's now. That's total, disgusting greed. It's why I started buying games on Steam though because having the disc n all has just become a waste of materials seeing as you can't sell it on anyways.

that might change though..

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/07/03/eu...-and-licenses/

Not without a major fight though but interesting isn't it?

There was an article just like that on this site. It would be great if we were able to sell Steam games on. I have games just sat there never being played and I know someone else would appreciate them. I would even just give them away if I could. Don't see why someone should have the right to stop me from doing that since I paid for it.

[DarthRager]

last game i got brick and mortar was BF3, prior to that it was COD:MW2, both from supermarkets - the last game I got from a game/gamestation/HMV etc is too long ago to remember.

This is not the case for me, the GAME Stores in my area did have quite a decent amount of wall space dedicated to PC Gaming, I picked up about 7 titles there cheaper than on steam (BF3, B2k, Shogun 2 Total war, Crysis 2 etc etc) the guy at the desk was like in monotone: If you're computer is not powerful enough to run these games and they do not work correctly we cannot refund them for you.

I almost chuckled mildly before I relaised he was serious and probably gets a lot of idiots trying to buy games for the windows 2000 PC with 1GB of RAM and a Pentium core duo.

--edit--

This was about the time GAME was going bust though.

[shaz]

I hate sims so much I cannot even describe. The people that enjoy it are brain dead.

[outwar6010]

digital distribution is taking over gaming, films and music etc for the last few years i have become sooo annoyed with discs etc and have gone fully digital as its just sooo much more convenient steam deals beat retails deal all the time lol

[Tyrion]

Digital delivery is popular on PC because it's easier and faster. Thinking about all the indie games that come out on PC, I'd say it has the biggest production of games. The problem is nowadays only "true gamers" play on pc while kids play on consoles.