Comments on: Arrgh… behold ye most pirated games of 2011

By: Douglas

Douglas — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:57:00 +0000

Well you could make that bet, but according to every study I’ve ever seen (here’s one:
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_6.html ) you’d be wrong. PC piracy is much more prevalent. So there’s that, and also the public backlash developers get for trying ways to protect their games from piracy, for instance all the flaming that Ubisoft took over Splinter Cell Conviction. Then you also have the simple fact that developing for consoles is easier than PC where you have to try to accommodate a variety of different hardware and operating systems. And you have 3 big reasons a developer might choose to go the console route only when making a game.

As far as your other point, it almost sounds like you’re saying piracy is okay because games are overpriced. If that’s what you’re trying to say your logic is seriously flawed. Games these days have huge development teams (seriously look through the credits) and most of those professionals worked full time on that game for 2-3 years!

Now I’m not saying I buy all my games. $60 a pop does add up quick and I’m not rich. I often rent games, and look for sales, but regardless I still recognize their value.

By: Ninjaitheninja

Ninjaitheninja — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:25:00 +0000

I’d be willing to bet, that if you stop and look at the numbers, people pirated the XBox and Wii games just as much (#’s wise) as the PC versions. To say that this is the reason PC developers are moving to consoles is just plain ignorant. This is the scapegoat they use to move to consoles, because they can continue to put out regurgitated crap like CoD titles year after year. I’ve tried them all, and they’re worth the $5.99 I paid to rent them for a bit, and that’s it. They aren’t worth the $60 they charge.

Steam is a great platform, and I’d be willing to bet that if Valve took the time to release numbers regarding sales, we’d see that there’s a sweet price point in the $20 range, where people will gladly purchase games. Just look at all the Christmas sales they had last month, I wish I would have had another $50 to spend because there WERE games I wanted, and with that alone I could have gotten 4 games that were less than 6 months old. Try to do that on Xbox.

By: jo

jo — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:37:00 +0000

Douglas I totally agree! I cannot believe so many people do this. This is just the same as going into the store and robbing it. You are taking money from companies and people who worked on these projects for years! Its just sad.. People wonder why developers aren’t making more PC specific games. This is the reason right here I believe. Why develop for a platform that pirates the game in a huge volume comparatively to what it legally buys.

By: Douglas

Douglas — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:13:00 +0000

I hate hearing statistics like this. That is a lot of illegal downloads. I feel like getting up on a soapbox and telling people how much work the people on development teams put into these games, but I doubt that would do any good.

Staggering numbers like this are the reason we’re facing SOPA right now though. And us consumers shouldn’t be giving these lawmakers further excuses to push for legislation like that. Especaially when there are so many cost-effective alternatives with kiosk video game rentals, subscription based rental services etc.

Alright, I’ll get off the soapbox now before someone pushes me off LOL.