Ubisoft games - poster children for piracy?

[Berkut]

Berkut, Crysis was not a PC exclusive.  http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/crysis  See?

The console version came out 4 years after the PC version. When the PC version was the best selling game of the year, and sold 3 million copies, it was a PC exclusive. The console version is a much later, and IIRC, somewhat crippled version of the PC game.

[Razgovory]

Not really - because the scale at the time was that much smaller. People who want to pirate, pirate. Then and now. It's not like the old barriers to piracy were significant.

Yeah, the barriers were far more significant.  For instance, you had to know someone with a copy of the game.  If there is nobody who has the game in your area in the days of Myst, you weren't going to pirate it.  Internet connections just were fast enough in those day.  Or at least not for most people.  Now if your area releases a game three days after it's released in another, you can still pirate it on the first day of release even if nobody has to the game in hundred miles of you.

[Berkut]

Not really - because the scale at the time was that much smaller. People who want to pirate, pirate. Then and now. It's not like the old barriers to piracy were significant.

Yeah, the barriers were far more significant.  For instance, you had to know someone with a copy of the game.  If there is nobody who has the game in your area in the days of Myst, you weren't going to pirate it.  Internet connections just were fast enough in those day.  Or at least not for most people.  Now if your area releases a game three days after it's released in another, you can still pirate it on the first day of release even if nobody has to the game in hundred miles of you.

Right. Because it was real hard to find someone with a copy of Myst.

Christ Raz, I was a gamer in those days. I remember them just fine. It was not a problem to find any game I wanted via people who pirated games. And that was in a variety of different states.

[Berkut]

I never actually played Crysis. Maybe I will give it a try...is it a Steam product these days?

[Razgovory]

You can't have both ways on this Crysis thing Berkut.  You can't say that simultaneously that the markets are changing making the PC game less profitable thus devs are moving to consoles and at the same time Crysis was tremendously profitable.

[Jacob]

The used PC market is practically non-existent. It is not the same at all.

Ok.

Again, is that really the FIRST question? Not "What is your good idea that will sell product?"

Well maybe not the FIRST. Maybe not even the SECOND.

But it's going to be one that's asked before they give you any money. Of course, you're going to have a hard time finding any venture capitalist who's willing to put money into a PC house to begin with at all.

I suspect you are on the dev side, and feeding us the dev story. It is like asking a DA how they feel about defense attornies tactics - their answers might be interesting, but probably should not be accepted as being objective or balanced.

You suspect I'm feeding you the dev story? That's explicitly what I'm doing. I'm telling you what I know about devs and publishers making development and publishing decisions, and I'm telling you that piracy does in fact drive many of those decisions. I'm telling you that piracy does have a significant impact on what sort of games you see developed for PC.

Seems like the claim that piracy has made PC gaming a poor choice doesn't hold up to the actual facts very well, no matter how many developers tell us that really, it is piracy that has stopped them from developing PC games...except for all the successful PC games out there, of course.

So you don't think developers and publishers have any insight into why they make the decisions they make? Then I'm not sure what we're talking about to be honest, because the only thing I'm bringing to this conversation is what I know about developers and publishers and their decision making.

[Razgovory]

Not really - because the scale at the time was that much smaller. People who want to pirate, pirate. Then and now. It's not like the old barriers to piracy were significant.

Yeah, the barriers were far more significant.  For instance, you had to know someone with a copy of the game.  If there is nobody who has the game in your area in the days of Myst, you weren't going to pirate it.  Internet connections just were fast enough in those day.  Or at least not for most people.  Now if your area releases a game three days after it's released in another, you can still pirate it on the first day of release even if nobody has to the game in hundred miles of you.

Right. Because it was real hard to find someone with a copy of Myst.

Christ Raz, I was a gamer in those days. I remember them just fine. It was not a problem to find any game I wanted via people who pirated games. And that was in a variety of different states.

Were you a gamer in Europe and Australia at the same time?  These differences in release date tend to be by region.  Your statement is simply absurd.  You could find every game at any time pirated when you were a kid?  Or did you just want the ones that people had pirated at your school?  Could you also find all books on sale at your local book store?  I mean, I can find nearly every book ever published on Amazon.com  I couldn't do that at the local book store.  Why do you suppose that is?

[Jacob]

Berkut, Crysis was not a PC exclusive.  http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/crysis  See?

From my quick googling it seems that both Skyrim and Crysis had better sales on 360 and PS3 than on PC, but I'm not quite sure what this proves either way.

[Jacob]

No my argument is that developers don't develop for PCs by and large because they don't think they will sell enough copies to make it profitable. Some of them may think this is because of piracy, but they are deluding themselves, the reality is that if it is not profitable (or not profitable enough)it is because the market has changed.

"Because of piracy" is a subset of "because the market has changed."

[Berkut]

You can't have both ways on this Crysis thing Berkut.  You can't say that simultaneously that the markets are changing making the PC game less profitable thus devs are moving to consoles and at the same time Crysis was tremendously profitable.

Crisis came out in 2008. It was incredibly profitable. Would anyone doing a "Crysis" today make it PC exclusive? Certainly not.

The point is that Crysis was PC exclusive at a time when piracy was rampant, and yet it made a lot of money, more than the people who developed it thought it would in fact, despite it being one of the most pirated games ever. That pretty much kills the argument that piracy has is the reason games like Crysis are not PC exclusive anymore.

The fact that the dev for Crysis made his well know whine about how Crysis should have sold more copies than Half Life 2 if only there wasn't so much piracy, when HL 2 was heavily pirated as well, just proves the point that the developers are full of shit.

[Berkut]

Berkut, Crysis was not a PC exclusive.  http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/crysis  See?

From my quick googling it seems that both Skyrim and Crysis had better sales on 360 and PS3 than on PC, but I'm not quite sure what this proves either way.

Did your quick googling point out the Crysis was a PC exclusive for something like 4 years before the 360 port came out?

The point is that Crysis did just fine at the very height of the supposed piracy era, when piracy was killing PC gaming. Oops. Turns out not to be the case after all...

[Jacob]

Crysis 2 seems to have way more sales numbers on console than PC.

I wouldn't be surprised if Crysis 3 saw the PC version released significantly later (if at all) than the console ones a la Rockstar.

[Jacob]

Did your quick googling point out the Crysis was a PC exclusive for something like 4 years before the 360 port came out?

The point is that Crysis did just fine at the very height of the supposed piracy era, when piracy was killing PC gaming. Oops. Turns out not to be the case after all...

Yet Crysis 2 sold way more on Xbox than on PC. I can guarantee you that the publishers are asking themselves "if we don't release on PC, will the increase in sales on console make up for the lost PC sales?" If they think the answer is yes, and piracy is definitely part of that analysis, then this franchise which started out on PC will disappear from that platform.

[Berkut]

No my argument is that developers don't develop for PCs by and large because they don't think they will sell enough copies to make it profitable. Some of them may think this is because of piracy, but they are deluding themselves, the reality is that if it is not profitable (or not profitable enough)it is because the market has changed.

"Because of piracy" is a subset of "because the market has changed."

But we have yet to see any data that suggests that piracy has had a significant impact on that market change, compared to other factors.

In other words, given actual data, if there was no piracy at all, the market would still pretty much look like it does right now.

[Jacob]

But we have yet to see any data that suggests that piracy has had a significant impact on that market change, compared to other factors.

By "we" I assume you mean "you" right? Because for my part, I'm convinced by the data I've seen.

In other words, given actual data, if there was no piracy at all, the market would still pretty much look like it does right now.

What's the actual data you base this conclusion on?