Infinity Ward says pirates are plundering PC gaming
Category: PC, Posted: 01/16/2008 at 04:14AM CST by Andy Groen, Content Contributor
Call of Duty 4 developer Infinity Ward published an interesting blog recently from Community Manager Robert Bowling. In it, he passionately discusses the state of PC gaming, and the rampant piracy that he says cripples it.
The post is titled "They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More."
"We pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer (which was fantastic). What wasn't fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen /cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only people playing online). Not sure if I can share the exact numbers or percentage of PC players with you, but I'll check and see; if I can I'll update with them. As the amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding. It blows me away at the amount of people willing to steal games (or anything) simply because it's not physical or it's on the safety of the internet to do."
Piracy is piracy and it's not going anywhere. However, I do think that the man is unavoidably correct. Maybe he's just mad because it's his company's game, but he's got a point. It's somewhat ironic that many of the biggest fans of PC games are the same people who are familiar enough with the interwebs to illegal download the games they love.
In my opinion, the whole industry went and shot itself in the foot when they called it "Piracy." When they gave it a cool name, they gave the thieves a reason to feel cool for doing it.
I'm in college...I know what it's like to have no money. But that's not an excuse for stealing. If you want companies to be able to make amazing games like Call of Duty 4, they need support. It's not charity. They're doing you a great service in exchange for your money. And trust me, in COD4's case, it is truly a great service.
In another bit of tasty irony, the most common excuse for videogame piracy is inflation of prices. "Sixty/Fifty dollars is too much." The ironic part is that were it not for piracy, the industry would be able to consider dropping prices.
I don't know about anyone else, but I really hope Infinity Ward publishes the piracy statistics.
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On the aspect of piracy killing PC gaming... I don't see how... maybe it is just the games that promote piracy; Crysis and CoD 4 have gotten alot of attention for piracy, they are hardcore FPS games with rather large PC system requirements with a focus on the single-player experience. StarCraft, World of WarCraft, Company of Heroes, The Sims 1/2, are these games known for their piracy?
No.
Why?
CoH's focus is tactical, intricate multiplayer.
Sims 1/2 is a great gift for girls
WoW is a MMOG
StarCraft is a cultural phenomenon
None of these developers have come out and said Piracy is killing PC Gaming and yet... Relic is exclusively a PC developer. Sims' Developer, Maxis, is an exclusive PC developer. Blizzard is a PC exclusive developer.
Sims 1 is one of the best selling games in history, across all platforms, WoW has a suscriber base of 9-10 million people, StarCraft has food based on it in South Korea.
Maybe Infinity Ward need to further promote digital download services like Steam, maybe Infinity Ward need to restructure their games to discourage piracy; like constant additions to the game similar to the Battlefield series in the forms of downloadable maps, weapons etc.
I'd say the PC gaming world is due for a shake up in structure, stop developing these high end requirement games with 3-5 hour singleplayer experiences and multiplayer with minimal-to-none updating (beyond patching).
I'd actually say CoD 4 and also Crysis were pirated so much (which is itself a relative term, 'so much') is because of high system requirements leading to the inability to view the game in the fullest quality and so people not wanting to spend $50-60 bucks on a game they can't fully 'enjoy' at the maximum quality.
The projected PC piracy numbers for the PC version of CoD 4 is around 20,000. The game has sold 378,000 copies on PC. The projected Xbox 360 piracy numbers for the X360 version of CoD 4 is around 15,000. The game has sold 463,000 copies so far on Xbox 360.
How are these numbers showing that the PC version of CoD 4 is slaughtered by piracy? The percentage between piracy and actual sales of these two versions of this game is not that different.
Sources: Various Bittorrent sites for numbers of downloads of PC and X360 versions of CoD 4
The SimExchange for actual sales numbers of PC and X360 versions of CoD 4
kind galaxy there is such a thing called cracked servers, and not everyone considers the sims as a great gift for girls, in fact most people consider something from anne sommers a great gift for girls.
and as far predicted sales and predicted copies of pirated games, they are just that, predictions. and i think he is more worried if theres say X amount of pirated copies online, how many have just downloaded it for the single player?
The fact is im guilty of doing this myself, though if the game is truly worth it then i will pay the money to add it to my collection.
unfortunately this can not be said for most people, people are tight and love free stuff.
I must admit, I used to pirate from time to time. Although now I pay money for any game that I want to play.
Sometimes I make a bad decision, and spend money on something I don't actually enjoy, but that's life. I deal with it.
If i don't have the money, i just don't get the game. I still can't afford Crysis!
You don't deserve it either!
I partially agree with KindGalaxy, who wants to pay $60 for a game that doesn't run even close to full quality on a computer, i just bought Crysis and my computer is less than a year old, the game tested my system and recommended High settings then when I started to play i was getting 8 fps (WTF?)
I however do not agree that piracy is driving up game prices, publishers are driving up game prices. First they say that new technology (xbox 360, ps3) cost more to develop for so prices have to rise, then they say that piracy is killing their profits so prices have to rise...bullsXXt, they just want more money. Look at Valve, a company I respect for their stable and entertaining games, they said that steam would allow them to sell games cheaper because they would not need to pay a distributer, or print cd's or manuals, yet the Orage box cost the same on steam as it does to go to the store and buy a box.
Not having the computer to run games at max settings is hardly an excuse to pirate a game. Yeah it won't look as good as it could, but that is why games come with settings.
Piracy excuses are just that: excuses. They justify nothing. If you can't afford a game, don't feel it gives enough value for the price, or don't feel that it will look as good on your system as you'd like, then don't play it. If you want to play it, then pay for it and give the developers their due.
We bought COD2 for the 360. One day, we downloaded it for the pc(illegally...) we found out that it was vastly superior to the 360 version, then one day the harddrive stopped working. This has made me consider buying it again for the PC... So piracy isn't all bad, sometimes it can be considered as a demo. ^_^
@SNAKEOILER
"publishers are driving up game prices. First they say that new technology (xbox 360, ps3) cost more to develop for so prices have to rise, then they say that piracy is killing their profits so prices have to rise...bullsXXt, they just want more money."
The publishers want more money by raising prices, and the pirates want more money by not having to pay for games. The two arent different. Money grubbing is money grubbing, if you're going to bash the publishers for it, you have to bash the pirates as well.
I totally agree with their assessment of the situation, piracy is a huge problem on the PC, there are millions of hardcore PC gamers and yet very few really good online PC games break a million in sales.
CoD4 is a product that deserves to be paid for, the devs deserve to be paid for their hard work. This is why we didn't see CoD3 on the PC at all, and it's why we probably won't see CoD5 or Infinity Ward's next game on the PC either.
I'm glad that I'm no longer a part of this problem. I realized this was happening and put a stop to my pirating ways. I can't even remember the last game I downloaded.
When I used to pirate games back in the day, they were impossible to play. The would crash and were impossible to register with those crappy keygens that are full of spyware. I'll just pay the $50 for a game that I can actually play.
KindGalaxy, not to be rude, but Maxis is not a PC exclusive developer. Blizzard is almost PC exclusive, but they have had a couple non-PC releases over the years (most recently a GBA re-release of The Lost Vikings), and Relic is not PC exclusive either. Relic's pretty close, though.
Anyways, PC games aren't being killed by piracy, if anything, they're being killed by recycled ideas and not enough incentive to buy some of the new games. If developers would work on something new or creative (like the console developers are doing), then no-one would be saying that PC games are dying because of this or that.
Archem - There are amazing ideas in PC gaming, such as the FPS/Survival Horror/RPG hybrid STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. Indeed, the lack of barrier to entry that the PC offers would make it a better spot for new ideas than a console. However, piracy makes it impossible to sell many games, especially the high-spec games we're talking about. The PC market may not entirely die, but the big-budget game on the PC can't be justified for much longer if it's this hard to make money back. And such a thing will be a huge blow to game creativity in general.