Ubisoft games - poster children for piracy?

[Berkut]

Does piracy have "an effect"? I am sure it does. Is it significant? Hard to say, I think.

Not that hard to say, to be honest. Like I said, I've had that kind of conversation with the people who make the decisions.

"Are we doing a PC version?"
"Nah fuck PC, it's not worth it."
"Why not?"
"They'll just fucking pirate it."

So unless you consider the decision not to develop for or port specific titles to PC to be insignificant, then piracy does have a significant impact.

Now, I think it's perfectly fair to argue that there are other factors in play as well in the rise of console games compared to PC games, but the reality of piracy on PC definitely impacts the decision-making when it comes to development.

I don't buy it - I think it is just a handy bitch by people who are pissed that people are stealing their stuff. Again, the data does not follow - lots and lots of games sold lots and lots of copies and made lots and lots of money despite piracy.

If piracy was such a negative driver, then there never would have been a time when PC games dominated the market even while they were being pirated like crazy.

The whiner from Crysis illustrates the point perfectly - Crysis made more money than they projected, sold more copies than they projected. The entirety of their bitch is that it was pirated a lot. So we see that even though it was pirated at a huge rate, the game still made more money than they thought it would, and still sold more copies than they thought it would. So how can they possibly claim that piracy hurt them so badly that there is no point in making another Crysis?

Then they come along and say "Yeah, even though the product made more than we thought, and sold more than we thought, we aren't going to do PC games anymore because nobody will buy them - they will just pirate it!"

That makes no sense at all. People WILL in fact buy them, as Crysis clearly shows. As Half Life 2 clearly shows.

Of course, the game has to be good - and I suspect that what is really happening is that bad games fail, and the easy answer to why they fail is "ZOMG Its the piratz!".

[Berkut]

Yeah it seems like consoles would be a big part of it. I buy almost all my games now on consoles as I never need to worry about upgrading my hardware and wondering if the game will work. It just does without extra expense on my part to get it to work.

It's really the flip side of the same thing. If there's more money to be made in consoles, that's what publishers and developers will do. Certainly, the convenience of consoles helps reaching a wider audience as well. Conversely, however, there are plenty of people with PCs without consoles (even now), so ideally you sell to both; but not if you undermine your primary revenue source.

And isn't that exactly what is happening?

It used to be that consoles simply did not have the power to compete with PCs - there was an entire class of games that simple could not be done on the XBOX/PS2 and earlier consoles. So the PC dominated the high end gaming market. Even after the internet made piracy easy (although prior to the internet it was sitll damn easy, and still the same scale of problem).

That is no longer the case though - now the consoles (while still not as powerful or capable) are capable enough to meet the needs of enough of the gaming community that their cheap cost, ease of maintenance, and predicatbility have trumped the PCs power. So they are the dominant platform, and that is where developers focus their attention.

If you could wave a magic wand and make piracy impossible, I don't think it changes the gaming market significantly, no matter what the developers claim. They are not an objective observer, they are a vested party.

[Berkut]

And the used game market, which a lot of developers consider to be pretty much piracy anyways.

Yeah, but that's the same for console and PC.

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

On another note, if you wanted to raise venture capital to start a PC focused dev studio pretty much the first question you'd have to answer is how you'd plan to deal with piracy. If you don't have a good answer to that, you're not getting any money from anybody.

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

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.

Right now the right answer to that is "Facebook". But while facebook games are getting a lot more complex than they used to be, they're still not the kind of games I think most of Languish would enjoy.

Yeah, most of the games that Languish would enjoy are being developed and sold for PCs at a rather impressive rate.

Dragon Age
Skyrim
WoW
Paradox Strat games
Wargames

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.

[Neil]

If piracy was such a negative driver, then there never would have been a time when PC games dominated the market even while they were being pirated like crazy.

Can you think of a time during the reign of the PC game where the piracy problem was as significant as it is now?

[Neil]

I suspect you are on the dev side, and feeding us the dev story.

I would hope he was on the dev side.

Dragon Age
Skyrim
WoW
Paradox Strat games
Wargames

Console game.
Console game.
MMO.
Niche.
Niche.

[Berkut]

If piracy was such a negative driver, then there never would have been a time when PC games dominated the market even while they were being pirated like crazy.

Can you think of a time during the reign of the PC game where the piracy problem was as significant as it is now?

I can't think of a time when the piracy problem was any less than it is now.

Sure, technology helps pirates, but it helps the PC industry as well. Back when PC games like Kings Quest came on floppy disks, those disks were being copied and handed around. Was there less piracy in absolute terms? Sure - but there were less copies being sold as well, because less people had PCs. But those who did were still pretty savvy people, and still were quite capable of pirating like crazy, and many did.

I don't accept that the "piracy problem" is any more significant now than it is at some other point in time. And I am still waiting for evidence to the contrary- so far the only evidence is a bunch of people saying that other people told them that it was a problem. And one cited example of a developer going on record complaining that their game sold more copies than they expected, made more money than they expected, but since it was pirated more than they expected, supposedly they are not making PC games anymore?

Saying that piracy is worse now than before because some developers told you so is like saying kids don't respect their parents like they did before, and you know this is true because some parents were bitching about it just the other day.

[sbr]

The whiner from Crysis illustrates the point perfectly - Crysis made more money than they projected, sold more copies than they projected. The entirety of their bitch is that it was pirated a lot. So we see that even though it was pirated at a huge rate, the game still made more money than they thought it would, and still sold more copies than they thought it would. So how can they possibly claim that piracy hurt them so badly that there is no point in making another Crysis?

Then they come along and say "Yeah, even though the product made more than we thought, and sold more than we thought, we aren't going to do PC games anymore because nobody will buy them - they will just pirate it!"

That makes no sense at all. People WILL in fact buy them, as Crysis clearly shows. As Half Life 2 clearly shows.

So at what point are you allowed to be upset that more people stole your product than bought it?

[Jacob]

I don't buy it - I think it is just a handy bitch by people who are pissed that people are stealing their stuff.

Again, the data does not follow - lots and lots of games sold lots and lots of copies and made lots and lots of money despite piracy

I think you're missing the point I'm making - people make investment, business and development decisions based on that "handy bitch". It doesn't matter whether you think the data does or does not follow. What matters is whether the people in the position to make decisions about game development are influenced by that "handy bitch".

In my observation, they are. They are, notwithstanding whatever arguments people put forth that they ought not to be.

If piracy was such a negative driver, then there never would have been a time when PC games dominated the market even while they were being pirated like crazy.

Budgets and dev teams were smaller in those days.

The whiner from Crysis illustrates the point perfectly - Crysis made more money than they projected, sold more copies than they projected. The entirety of their bitch is that it was pirated a lot. So we see that even though it was pirated at a huge rate, the game still made more money than they thought it would, and still sold more copies than they thought it would. So how can they possibly claim that piracy hurt them so badly that there is no point in making another Crysis?

Why does it matter how they can possibly claim it? If they are not going to make another Crysis because of piracy, how can you possibly find it hard to say whether piracy has an impact on PC game development decisions?

Then they come along and say "Yeah, even though the product made more than we thought, and sold more than we thought, we aren't going to do PC games anymore because nobody will buy them - they will just pirate it!"

That makes no sense at all. People WILL in fact buy them, as Crysis clearly shows. As Half Life 2 clearly shows.

Yet apparently they're not going to make another one*.

*I'm just quoting what's being said in this thread. I have no specific insight into Crysis development decisions. In fact, I expect that if they did make as much money as you're saying they did they'll put it out on PC again after bitching.

Of course, the game has to be good - and I suspect that what is really happening is that bad games fail, and the easy answer to why they fail is "ZOMG Its the piratz!".

Nah, developers and publishers are a fair bit more sanguine (if not always in agreement) about the failure of any given title. In fact, I'm not quite sure how you can make that point in the same post as you're claiming Crysis was successful in spite of piracy, yet they're still complaining about it?

[Razgovory]

I don't buy it - I think it is just a handy bitch by people who are pissed that people are stealing their stuff. Again, the data does not follow - lots and lots of games sold lots and lots of copies and made lots and lots of money despite piracy.

If piracy was such a negative driver, then there never would have been a time when PC games dominated the market even while they were being pirated like crazy.

The whiner from Crysis illustrates the point perfectly - Crysis made more money than they projected, sold more copies than they projected. The entirety of their bitch is that it was pirated a lot. So we see that even though it was pirated at a huge rate, the game still made more money than they thought it would, and still sold more copies than they thought it would. So how can they possibly claim that piracy hurt them so badly that there is no point in making another Crysis?

Then they come along and say "Yeah, even though the product made more than we thought, and sold more than we thought, we aren't going to do PC games anymore because nobody will buy them - they will just pirate it!"

That makes no sense at all. People WILL in fact buy them, as Crysis clearly shows. As Half Life 2 clearly shows.

Of course, the game has to be good - and I suspect that what is really happening is that bad games fail, and the easy answer to why they fail is "ZOMG Its the piratz!".

Wait, your argument is that developers are deliberately hindering themselves because someone out there is stealing their stuff and they are bitter?  Your argument is that developers are simply irrational?

The question is not "will some people buy them", it's "will enough people buy them to make it profitable".  Would Crysis have been profitable if it had sold only on the PC?

[Berkut]

I suspect you are on the dev side, and feeding us the dev story.

I would hope he was on the dev side.

Dragon Age
Skyrim
WoW
Paradox Strat games
Wargames

Console game.
Console game.
MMO.
Niche.
Niche.

PC game
PC game
MMO
Niche
Niche

But nobody has claimed that someone ought to develop ONLY for PCs for "big" games - that clearly makes no sense in todays market for reasons that have nothing to do with piracy.

The claim is that developers don't develop for PCs because of piracy - if that were true, they would not do PC ports of their console games at all. And yet the PC game market in absolute terms is as large as it has ever been. If piracy was the reason consoles have more share, then they would not even be developing for PCs at all, since developing console versions does not stop PC piracy.

No, the reality is that they develop PC versions where they think they can sell enough copies to make a buck. And some people will pirate them, just like some people will steal from WalMart and some people will download music, and yet everyone still makes money. Whatever the real dollar figure in lost revenue is for piracy, it is just another cost of business, and not significant compared to other driving factors. I will continue to believe that until someone gives me some actual data or evidence or even simple reason that suggests otherwise.

[Neil]

If piracy was such a negative driver, then there never would have been a time when PC games dominated the market even while they were being pirated like crazy.

Can you think of a time during the reign of the PC game where the piracy problem was as significant as it is now?

I can't think of a time when the piracy problem was any less than it is now.

Sure, technology helps pirates, but it helps the PC industry as well. Back when PC games like Kings Quest came on floppy disks, those disks were being copied and handed around. Was there less piracy in absolute terms? Sure - but there were less copies being sold as well, because less people had PCs. But those who did were still pretty savvy people, and still were quite capable of pirating like crazy, and many did.

I don't accept that the "piracy problem" is any more significant now than it is at some other point in time. And I am still waiting for evidence to the contrary- so far the only evidence is a bunch of people saying that other people told them that it was a problem. And one cited example of a developer going on record complaining that their game sold more copies than they expected, made more money than they expected, but since it was pirated more than they expected, supposedly they are not making PC games anymore?

Saying that piracy is worse now than before because some developers told you so is like saying kids don't respect their parents like they did before, and you know this is true because some parents were bitching about it just the other day.

Well, you're wrong and your reverse argument from authority doesn't make you sound any more clever.  Passing around some floppies and photocopying a manual at the library is different from the massive scale of what Bittorrent allows.

[Berkut]

I don't buy it - I think it is just a handy bitch by people who are pissed that people are stealing their stuff. Again, the data does not follow - lots and lots of games sold lots and lots of copies and made lots and lots of money despite piracy.

If piracy was such a negative driver, then there never would have been a time when PC games dominated the market even while they were being pirated like crazy.

The whiner from Crysis illustrates the point perfectly - Crysis made more money than they projected, sold more copies than they projected. The entirety of their bitch is that it was pirated a lot. So we see that even though it was pirated at a huge rate, the game still made more money than they thought it would, and still sold more copies than they thought it would. So how can they possibly claim that piracy hurt them so badly that there is no point in making another Crysis?

Then they come along and say "Yeah, even though the product made more than we thought, and sold more than we thought, we aren't going to do PC games anymore because nobody will buy them - they will just pirate it!"

That makes no sense at all. People WILL in fact buy them, as Crysis clearly shows. As Half Life 2 clearly shows.

Of course, the game has to be good - and I suspect that what is really happening is that bad games fail, and the easy answer to why they fail is "ZOMG Its the piratz!".

Wait, your argument is that developers are deliberately hindering themselves because someone out there is stealing their stuff and they are bitter?  Your argument is that developers are simply irrational?

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.

The question is not "will some people buy them", it's "will enough people buy them to make it profitable".  Would Crysis have been profitable if it had sold only on the PC?

Crysis was sold only on the PC, and was one of the most successful games of all time.

Half Life. Half Life 2. Both PC games (primarily). Both pirated like mad. Both ridiculously proftiable. The Sims. The Sims 2. Civ games. Wing Commander. Myst. The lsit of very profitable PC games that were pirated like crazy is rather long.

[Jacob]

And isn't that exactly what is happening?

It used to be that consoles simply did not have the power to compete with PCs - there was an entire class of games that simple could not be done on the XBOX/PS2 and earlier consoles. So the PC dominated the high end gaming market. Even after the internet made piracy easy (although prior to the internet it was sitll damn easy, and still the same scale of problem).

I don't claim piracy is the sole cause, but it certainly has influenced the cycle.

That is no longer the case though - now the consoles (while still not as powerful or capable) are capable enough to meet the needs of enough of the gaming community that their cheap cost, ease of maintenance, and predicatbility have trumped the PCs power. So they are the dominant platform, and that is where developers focus their attention.

Personally, I think the two things go hand in hand; it's a feed back cycle. People buy games for platforms that have the games they want; developers develop for platforms where they can make money.

If you could wave a magic wand and make piracy impossible, I don't think it changes the gaming market significantly, no matter what the developers claim. They are not an objective observer, they are a vested party.

I don't think anyone is claiming the developers are objective observers. All that's being claimed is that they're making decisions based on piracy; thus, piracy has an effect on game development.

[Razgovory]

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

[Berkut]

If piracy was such a negative driver, then there never would have been a time when PC games dominated the market even while they were being pirated like crazy.

Can you think of a time during the reign of the PC game where the piracy problem was as significant as it is now?

I can't think of a time when the piracy problem was any less than it is now.

Sure, technology helps pirates, but it helps the PC industry as well. Back when PC games like Kings Quest came on floppy disks, those disks were being copied and handed around. Was there less piracy in absolute terms? Sure - but there were less copies being sold as well, because less people had PCs. But those who did were still pretty savvy people, and still were quite capable of pirating like crazy, and many did.

I don't accept that the "piracy problem" is any more significant now than it is at some other point in time. And I am still waiting for evidence to the contrary- so far the only evidence is a bunch of people saying that other people told them that it was a problem. And one cited example of a developer going on record complaining that their game sold more copies than they expected, made more money than they expected, but since it was pirated more than they expected, supposedly they are not making PC games anymore?

Saying that piracy is worse now than before because some developers told you so is like saying kids don't respect their parents like they did before, and you know this is true because some parents were bitching about it just the other day.

Well, you're wrong and your reverse argument from authority doesn't make you sound any more clever.  Passing around some floppies and photocopying a manual at the library is different from the massive scale of what Bittorrent allows.

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.

How can you just assume that the scaling factor of the internet means that less people are going to BUY a game because of piracy? If anything, the ease of transferring files might make more people pirate, but it is a leap to assume that those more people were buyers otherwise. The data time and again has shown that increased piracy of a title if anything correlates to increased sales, although I would not claim there is a casual relationship there. Just that more desirable games get more pirating, AND more sales.

This is the central error of the "Oh, piracy has ruined PC gaming!" crowd. The assumption that every pirate is a lost sale, or that some significant percentage of them are such that it is crippling the industry, when there are many, many examples that prove that it is just not the case.

Crysis being a perfect example of how piracy does not matter to the financial feasibility model. It was one of the most pirated game ever...and still sold more copies than the people who wrote it thought it would. I am kind of amazed that people can look at that example and STILL claim that piracy is what is doing PC gaming in.