PC Forum

So why don't Developers/Publishers and the PC Gaming Alliance stop focusing on preventing Piracy because they'll never win, people who crack games will always find a way. With mmorpgs you can host private servers, there are some WOW pirvate servers which have 50k people signed up and playing on them. Even Steam i easily crackable and you can download it all over bittorrent and people who download games for free don't care about losing features because they were never going to buy the game in the first place.

Instead of focusing on a battle they'll never win to try and gain sales they'll never get because the people pirating these games wouldn't ever buy them anyways. Why not focus how to get new customers? Why not focus on getting the kinda people who play consoles to play on their PC? Why not target people who are at work and play mini flash games?

For me Steam doesn't prevent Piracy and I'll admit I do pirate games because for me I don't have much money to spare on games and having to fork out £30-45 on a game that might suck and not be able to get a refund is alot of money to waste when that money would feed me for a week or two. However I see deals on Steam like the Titan Quest game was only $10 and I was never going to buy that game but because it was only $10 I did. Developers and Publishers need to start supporting platforms liek Steam more and there should be more advertising for it. Not only that but I also think to myself "I'm not gonna bother with GTA4" but because it's on Steam I go ahead and preorder it from there..... it's weird how it works at gettign you to buy games but it does.

Why can't more games be web browser games that the average work PC can play and get it's revenue from advertising and then that money be counting as PC gaming revenue? Whyd oes it always have to be money made from hard sales of the game? SOE for example make loads more money through the TCG in SWG or the Station exchange where people buy and sell items through EQ2. Thats money made because of them games and yet that revenue isn't counted and even CS 1.6 has in game advertising which isn't counted.

Why can't the companies in the PC Gaming alliance like Dell, Acer, Nvidia and AMD/ATI make a deal to stop putting crap graphics cards in each PC and making a standard for them. The average home PC's on sale from DELL (which premade PC's are probably what 99% of people who own a PC owns is a premade) should all have a 8800gt or 3870 as the lowest. These cards are dead cheap and they play games very well still today and people who buy a PC will slowly work out "hang on a second I can play games now" lol.

That Crysis PC which was launched to play Crysis on High settings with a high framerate for $700. Why can't the PC Gaming alliance make an even cheaper version at say $400-500 and sell it in gaming stores with the booths and hooked up to the show TV's. They can even sell them at PC retailers too and really market it as another gaming machine like the 360 and PS3. Games for Windows Live could even be put up there and marketed as that it crosses over to your 360 so the 360 crowd will want to buy one. Crysis would make a perfect PC gaming mascot because it shows off what better graphics the PC can do over the consoles.



Anyways Just some thoughts because right now all anyone seems to be doing like Epic Games (who are in the PC Gaming Alliance) is sitting there moaning about PC Piracy and not doing shit all about it. They even have stuck two fingers up to PC gaming by saying things like Gears 2 wont come out for the PC and their next engine wont be designed for the PC. I'm thinking........ why are they even in this shambles of an alliance which just seems to want to hurt PC Gaming? Sitting there with their fingers up their arse, moaning about how badly they're doign because of piracy wont do anything. All this is doing is hurting PC Gamign because it's putting off potential buyers from wanting to buy a gaming PC and buying the games because they wont want to make the investment because you just said it's dying or whatever.

No Epic your games sold poorly on the PC because of you, not piracy but YOU!

1. Gears of War was sold 1 year after launch and everyone already played it and it was a bad port. There was also no advertising for it and online was borked with no dedicated servers.

You expect people to buy that?

2. UT3 wasn't all that good and didn't sell very well over all 3 platforms.

Blizzard and Valve found a way so why can't you?


Anyways just my thoughts on the subject.

Posted 1 month, 1 week ago

If people just started selling exclusively on Steam this wouldn't happen nearly as much.  Epic completely turned their back on the PC a while ago though, it was made pretty obvious ever since the first Gears sold well. Its pretty amazing how hypocritical they've turned, they wouldn't even be in the business if it wasn't for the PC to begin with. And yes, Ut3 is a completely disgrage, and is NOT even considered a UT game, to actual UT fans.

People aren't wrong in general to care abou piracy, I mean, look at World of Goo, an indy game that had a 90% piracy rate all because they choose to not do DRM, and do what everyone wanted them to do, and they got spit on for it basically.

I'll be honest though, I didn't even nearly read all of this, but I get the overall thing you're saying. I've pirated things before as well, and in certain cases, I really don't care what anyone thinks of it, as in people telling me Mount and Blade is such an amazing game, better than Oblivion...knowing it looked like shit to begin with, I pirated it, played it for about 20 minutes, and uninstalled and removed it from my computer immediately. I wasn't gonna fucking buy a game that didn't even look good to begin with just to prove someone wrong.

Anyway, end thing I'm saying here is this- Piracy is a problem, that isn't going to go away...but in plenty of cases it isn't even nearly as bad as people make it out to be(most big games.) Even people on consoles that want a game early, mod out their Xbox's and are always playing them a month or weeks ahead of time, hence Gears 2/Fallout 3.(plenty more too I'm sure,) the end result is this, those who pirate and most who want to bad enough, whether on PC or with a modded console, are going to find a way to do so no matter what barriers are put against them.But it can be decreased, and lessened by easily followed things that don't have to be DRM, and I think people putting games out exclusively on Steam is a starting point, as in no where else, ever. That's just what I think.

Edited 1 month, 1 week ago

Piracy is only way to buy video games on some countries (i mean getting games by buying an illegal copy). unfortunately this the only way to play every games not only PC's. what would you do if you were in situation such as this?

Edited 1 month, 1 week ago

Posted 1 month, 1 week ago

If I'm not sure on a game then I'll download it because too many times have I been burnt and if I like it then I'll pay for it outta respect, thats just me. Alot of my friends download games because they're at Uni and can't afford them so it's that or they just wont bother playing them and I think that speaks to most of the people who download them, because they just can't afford them and why you're not really losing much money. I feel like developers just need to start creating more great games and advertising the PC as a gaming platform other than the 360, I mean Microsoft doesn't want you to buy a PC for gaming but a 360... which is why theres room for a gaming OS like how firefox came out and killed  IE.

Posted 1 month, 1 week ago

pause422 said:

"People aren't wrong in general to care abou piracy, I mean, look at World of Goo, an indy game that had a 90% piracy rate all because they choose to not do DRM, and do what everyone wanted them to do, and they got spit on for it basically."

Posted 1 month, 1 week ago

Good, we're still winning.

Posted 1 month, 1 week ago

Bellum said:

"Piracy, the result of spoiled self-centered brats. The developer shouldn't have to do anything. Piracy should be a criminal offense. Y'know, the kind where you go to prison. Theft has never been acceptable before.

To LiquidPrince, development for the PC is easier, especially for smaller independent developers. Keyboard + mouse is the superior input device for any application requiring a high level of precision, and like you said, PC gamers have access to virtually any kind of input device. PC developers are backing away to consoles simply because there are more console gamers. That's it."

Posted 1 month, 1 week ago

LiquidPrince said:

"Bellum said:

"Piracy, the result of spoiled self-centered brats. The developer shouldn't have to do anything. Piracy should be a criminal offense. Y'know, the kind where you go to prison. Theft has never been acceptable before.

To LiquidPrince, development for the PC is easier, especially for smaller independent developers. Keyboard + mouse is the superior input device for any application requiring a high level of precision, and like you said, PC gamers have access to virtually any kind of input device. PC developers are backing away to consoles simply because there are more console gamers. That's it."

No, PC is not easier to develop for because when a developer makes a game, he has to make sure that it can run on so many different pieces of hardware with so may differing specifications. Consoles don't have that problem. As for keyboards, PS3 has that option and it has already been used in games like Unreal Tournament 3. "

Posted 1 month, 1 week ago

Piracy is a problem. It's not going away.

I really don't know what can be done. The advertising model you have suggested is definitely viable, but will it bring in revenue? We will have to see with Quake Live and Battlefield Heroes.

I truly believe that an advertising model has untapped potential. Quake Live seems like it will be a huge success - it runs on old computers, its free, its a small download, and the only drawback is advertising? The PC population is alive and well, playing World of Warcraft and the like, there just needs to be a better way to turn this crowd into revenue.

For $$ games, the future doesn't look that promising for the PC platform. Fortunately, there are a few successes here and there, such as Left 4 Dead. The future is very uncertain, but I'm not too confident game purchases will have a comeback of any sort.

Edited 1 month, 1 week ago

The PC Gaming Alliance is an utter shambles full of morons who have no clue on what to do. Its a publicity stunt and nothing more, since it started i can't think of one thing they have done to improve or be of benefit for the PC as a gaming platform. Epic's CEO bitching about Intel is the only thing i can remember aswell as his bitching about PC gaming dying in general and how piracy is killing the platform etc etc.

Honestly the following points would be something they should look into...

• Developers need to release games in a reasonable state and quality. When you buy a game for retail price and find its full of bugs and can't be played for more than 10-20 minutes without a crash or issue something has gone wrong. Even more so when you play a game and find bugs that were in the Beta still occuring in the final release. Its just not an acceptable quality of release if the game has more bugs in it than a rainforest. Even more so when patches aren't handed out until weeks or months after release.
• Optimisation is key to allowing games to run on multiple levels of systems ranging from low to middle of the line and the very high end spec machines. Poor optimisation has no excuse when it comes to PC games. If you expect us to buy the game then atleast make an effort to try and get the game to run at a decent level of performance on my machine. Don't expect me to fork out a small fortune on a new PC or expensive upgrade just to play your one mediocre yet amazingly beautiful game, talking to you Crytek.
• If your PC game is going to require a pretty high spec computer to run it then don't release the game over Christmas. That is the most expensive time of the year for most people and i doubt very few are willing to splash out on a brand new PC to play your game when they can buy 4 or 5 games that will run on their current PC. Use marketing and PR to your advantage developers, plenty of times during the summer there is no games being released for weeks, launch a big summer title for once.
• Make a good game. I know its somewhat speculative and up for debate as to what constitutes itself as a good or bad game, and its all down to a matter of opinion but we can all agree that there are some things which are and aren't acceptable now in games. If a game just isn't good it won't sell well and when that occurs everyone loses out, consumers lose out for spending money on the game and developers lose out due to bad publicity. So lets all try to be cool and make a good game, don't release trash, if you think its going to flop then don't release it, improve on it and make the game worth releasing.
• Please start to follow the "Stardock Bill of Rights" for god sake. Its probably one of the smartest and clever moves made by a PC friendly developer in regards to pushing the platform forward and improving its state of affairs. Why no one has started to really give serious thought on enforcing it is beyond me, likely because its too simple. Because i see no reason it shouldn't have already been put into use by now, honestly it would benefit everyone if they just followed it.
• STEAM is the best digital delivery service on the internet for games, hands down you cannot deny it. So start being clever and releasing more of your games on this awesome program and get your games an even bigger audience. Steam is spearheading the digital delivery service on the PC and i think the quicker more developers jump onboard with it the better. D2D can go die, slowly....and quietly.
• Don't blame the consumer or assume the consumer is pirating your games. Try and think of ways to attract new consumers to buy your games instead of thinking up ways on how to stop consumers from pirating your games. It just creates negative feeling amongst gamers and ends up causing more people to either A.) Not buy the game in protest or B.) Pirate it anyway in spite. The EA DRM issue pretty much showed us that. So lets not have a repeat situation in the future?
• Give me a job, i really need one :(

Posted 1 month, 1 week ago

h8smikemoore said:

I dont buy a game and not own it. If I buy spore, I own that disk and everything on it.

I never agreed to any liscence, even if its in the booklet.

If I dont own the game, then it shouldnt be anymore than 5 dollars, just like at the rental place down the street.

Posted 1 month, 1 week ago