Empire using Steam; Gamespot interview/preview

[Monk]

And so ?
In all countries you can download the said game for zero dollar. It's even cheaper than pennies paid to a street vendor. What's your point ?

It served as an example of how developers are being, in some cases, completely cut out of the picture. It's happening on a bigger scale than you're willing to admit, and that is one example of it.

So the true impact is that people who would not have paid for it, will not pay for it ?
Either I missed something in your reasoning, either you make absolutely no sense.

Bob wants to buy a game, Bob decides from what he reads online the game sounds bad, but he decides to get it anyway. He doesn't buy it so he pirates it. Goods are acquired without the exchange of anything at all, under any other method the definition is stealing. You can go ones tep further anda ssume that Bob will continue to pirate games now that he's done it already.

If he were the only one in the world to take this attitude then there would be no harm, but he's not. I know people here in the states who don't buy a single game. All they do is pirate things. They don't care about supporting a developer, they just want the game.

No, it's to take into account that, while piracy has incredibly increased in raw numbers, sales also have incredibly increased in raw numbers.
I don't think the proportion of piracy has really increased. Heck, I'm even pretty sure it has actually proportionnaly DEcreased, simply because there is now a LOT of "casual gamers" who buy all their games, while there was simply no "casual" people in the computer world twenty years ago - we were all somehow nerds/passionnates/technicians and the like. And non-casual people tends to "know the ropes", and as such have a much higher tendency to know how to get their games for free - and as such, much higher proportion to GET them for free.

You'd be surprised with how little "know-how" is required to actually pirate a game. It's not like it's a rubix cube and only a select few know where to go and what to do to get what they want. Google can find you pretty much anything, and a stumbling search with terms that don't completely apply would get you to a site that will let you do a lot.

I've read a few articles in the past year (and one in 07 that was predicting it) that state PC game sales are actually slowing. I can't sit here and tell you piracy is cause number one concretely, but its my opinion that it has a big part in it.

Of course, if this is truly how this conversation intends to go we'll have to agree to disagree about Piracy's effects on the market (which is aiding in going further and further OT). Neither of us seems closer to convincing the other.

[Akka]

It served as an example of how developers are being, in some cases, completely cut out of the picture. It's happening on a bigger scale than you're willing to admit, and that is one example of it.

I'm perfectly willing to admit it's on a large scale.
I'm unwilling to admit it's on a proportionnally largeR scale than before.

Bob wants to buy a game, Bob decides from what he reads online the game sounds bad, but he decides to get it anyway. He doesn't buy it so he pirates it. Goods are acquired without the exchange of anything at all, under any other method the definition is stealing. You can go ones tep further anda ssume that Bob will continue to pirate games now that he's done it already.

You're mixing the ethical point of view ("is copying a theft ?") with the practical one ("did the publisher lost a sale ?").
The first point is for another thread. The second is clear : in your example, Bob wouldn't have bought the game anyway. So there is no loss for the publisher. You can think "it's bad, it's stealing", but it's not a sale lost anyway.
But you can be sure that the guys in the industry will count it among the pirated games, and say "we lost fifty bucks here !". Which is an outright lie.

You can only "lose a sale" if it was about being made in the first place. You can't lose a sale from someone who would have not bought the game if he couldn't pirate it.

Now you can be quite pissed off to see someone playing your game without having paid for it, but that's another matter.

You'd be surprised with how little "know-how" is required to actually pirate a game. It's not like it's a rubix cube and only a select few know where to go and what to do to get what they want. Google can find you pretty much anything, and a stumbling search with terms that don't completely apply would get you to a site that will let you do a lot.

I perfectly know how easy it is to get a pirated game.
But I can also tell you how many casual users won't touch it, easy as it may be, because it's still feel like some technical/illegal/nerd stuff.

I've read a few articles in the past year (and one in 07 that was predicting it) that state PC game sales are actually slowing. I can't sit here and tell you piracy is cause number one concretely, but its my opinion that it has a big part in it.

Actually, I did point in my first message that it was the only real danger of piracy : driving publisher from PC to console. That's my main worry.
Of course, that's not the only thing. Console games are harder to pirate, but also have only ONE hardware configuration, which make developping games infinitely more streamlined. They also have a much more easily-pleased public, with much more basic requirements.

And as there is close to no piracy, you can also see that funnily, prices for the exact same games are 20 to 30 bucks higher, while market logics would tend to make the prices LOWER, right ?
(perhaps a hint that piracy isn't only killing business, but also acting as a safeguard against ripping consumers off ?)

[Monk]

You make some good points, Akka, but I think we need to respect Martok's wishes and stop dragging this thread OT.

We've gotten away off point.

[Martok]

I'll admit to some curiosity as to how online play works, especially as regards Steam's matchmaking abilities. Can anyone shed any light on this?

[Praxil]

I'll admit to some curiosity as to how online play works, especially as regards Steam's matchmaking abilities. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Ahmm...

I don't think that there are that many PC games out there using "matchmaking" to find the "right" opponents for you. Anyway, Valves own games have their in built server searching options, quite poor like in any other games. As far as it goes for server browsers The All-Seeing Eye was something unique, now Qtracker does the job fairly.

[Polemists]

Much like spore. Many of us without internet, or a solid internect connection ( I live in Saudi Arabia, try getting a solid connection not at work, I dare you.) will do what we did with spore

[No discussion of game cracks please. -- Martok]

It's not pirating, but if I pay 60$ for a game, I'm not going to be forced online to activate it. Several games in past have required such, as usual in 3 hours after release, someone figures a way around it. I'm not going to download it but nor am I playing the I'm paying 60$ to only install it 10 times game.

[edyzmedieval]

I love Steam. My Steam account has around 15 games, but to be honest im not too happy that we have to go on Steam to play ETW.

[hellenes]

It served as an example of how developers are being, in some cases, completely cut out of the picture. It's happening on a bigger scale than you're willing to admit, and that is one example of it.



Bob wants to buy a game, Bob decides from what he reads online the game sounds bad, but he decides to get it anyway. He doesn't buy it so he pirates it. Goods are acquired without the exchange of anything at all, under any other method the definition is stealing. You can go ones tep further anda ssume that Bob will continue to pirate games now that he's done it already.

If he were the only one in the world to take this attitude then there would be no harm, but he's not. I know people here in the states who don't buy a single game. All they do is pirate things. They don't care about supporting a developer, they just want the game.



You'd be surprised with how little "know-how" is required to actually pirate a game. It's not like it's a rubix cube and only a select few know where to go and what to do to get what they want. Google can find you pretty much anything, and a stumbling search with terms that don't completely apply would get you to a site that will let you do a lot.

I've read a few articles in the past year (and one in 07 that was predicting it) that state PC game sales are actually slowing. I can't sit here and tell you piracy is cause number one concretely, but its my opinion that it has a big part in it.

Of course, if this is truly how this conversation intends to go we'll have to agree to disagree about Piracy's effects on the market (which is aiding in going further and further OT). Neither of us seems closer to convincing the other.

Copyright infrigment has as much to do with theft as car speeding has to do with rape....

PS as for the doom and gloom brainwash campaign:
http://www.shacknews.com/tag.x/PCGA

[Martok]

All right folks. Either play nice, or don't play at all.


Let's stick to the original subject. If you wish to conduct a more general discussion of game piracy and copy protection, please do so in the Arena or the Backroom.

[andrewt]

I've read a few articles in the past year (and one in 07 that was predicting it) that state PC game sales are actually slowing. I can't sit here and tell you piracy is cause number one concretely, but its my opinion that it has a big part in it.

Not going to go in to the piracy thing, but if you're talking about NPD sales statistics, they're grossly flawed. If you buy Empire as a download from Steam instead of buying a retail copy of the game, to these guys, it's like you never bought the game at all.

Those monthly subscriptions I pay for World of Warcraft? Nope, they're not PC game revenue at all. At least, until the first quarter of this year, when they decided that there was over $1B in MMO gaming subscriptions they were not tracking that must've been hidden under a rock.

A lot of these sales research firms are employed by retailes. Since a lot of PC revenue has cut out the middleman, retailers, they pretend these don't exist. Much of PC game revenues nowadays are subscriptions, advertisements, micro transactions and downloads.

I can't wait to see these guys call Empire a bust because the "retail" sales have evaporated.