Bottom line is.. piracy and lack of general pc knowledge killed the pc games industry.
I don't think it was piracy so much as a lack in demand - PC's only became big for gaming during the early-mid ninties as soon as the Playstation was released companies moved to developing for consoles in droves - the difference in sales numbers between console and PC games is huge (Piracy or not)?
Piracy has good and bad to it. Sometimes you need to see if a game will even RUN on your system, especially if the game doesn't have a demo (and even when it does, it doesn't mean the full game will have the same requirements). I, for one, have a very finicky computer, and what SHOULD work doesn't always work. Hence, I tend to download a cracked copy first, and then purchase the legal copy. That way, I know I'm not being gypped, and the developers still get their well-deserved money.
BUT
I'm glad I didn't pirate Sam and Max though, for some reason, the transitions from one area to another can take up to 5 or 6 minutes on here, despite my exceeding the requirements. If I had illegally downloaded the game, the loading times would have put me off, (since I wouldn't have had the commitment to it that one has with purchased games) and I wouldn't have purchased the full game, thus I would have missed out on the first great point-and-click in years.
*disclaimer: There is no excuse for piracy, don't do it, etc.*
Erm uh.......do you ever say.....defrag your computer?
When I posted that, I was using an SiS 760 onboard video card... defragging had nothing to do with the transition times being so long, it was the card, and the fact that the memory on this system was crippled down to only 300-something megs of RAM. After I got a new card and unlocked the rest of the RAM, the problem was solved.
Firstly.. pc has never died in the crude terms. Actually as it has been stated ..world of warcraft has one of the largest bases in history. To me its the lack of people wanting to just deal with a pc. Most would rather turn the tv on and press one button, anything past that is to difficult... this is also al lowes reason puzzles in adventure games are easy now IE sam and max. So companies moved with this shift saying lets keep making games for pc but lets port them frommmm a console. At the time of psX.. nintendo 64 was already kickin butt and pc wasnt even phased, nor when psx came out.. the real killer was ps2 and xbox... but again its not dead by any means. Just not getting much attention.
Look to the skys robin I see directx10 running on Xp pro playing crysis or cellfactor or bioshock in insane resolutions on my 8800GTX with physx.. oh yea... pcs are dead LOL.
If only you people would all use Steam exclusively...I mean, I'm not saying it's impossible to crack something like Half-Life 2, but definitely a lot harder.
It does suck that pirates are ruining the experience for all PC gamers. I'm thinking the only way to even it out would be...to make console games equally piratable?
Meh, sort of a cruel way of doing it, but I do love the PC gaming platform, and wish the playing field were a bit more level. I'm just glad it's really impossible for PC gaming to die out entirely.
First of all, you read The Inquirer? Uh, lol. "Yeah I saw that story about the Air Force Pilots capturing the alien dudes from Jupiter 7! That was so real!"
Second of all, yes, piracy is very bad. I think that there is no excuse for pirating, no matter what the intention. Frankly, my dear, you should buy your own darn copy, and if you don't like it, you can use a little thing called E-B-A-Y.
Third of all, the main reason why PC Gaming has never died is because we have more Triple-A big shot titles than our console friends.
For example, console gaming was starting. Halo comes out. Console starts making money. PC Gaming loses money. Half-Life comes out. PC Gaming gains money.
There are many more examples. Even sequels help. The same exact thing happened with Half-Life 2.
Also, a PS3 may beat a PC in terms of hardware, but only during the first two or three weeks. A new PC always beats any new console after a couple weeks, so anybody trying to tell you, "my PS3 t0t4lly pwnz ur PC n00b!oneone111one1111one1" is dead wrong (besides being brain-dead).
There is my two cents. I hope I was somewhat relevant to the discussion taking place.
If only you people would all use Steam exclusively...I mean, I'm not saying it's impossible to crack something like Half-Life 2, but definitely a lot harder.
Not harder at all. What´s the difference? It only does online checks which can be bypassed, not harder then all the rest of it. Besides that, better dont wish all people will use Steam, because they wont. Noone needs Middleware installed on his/her pc.
Piracy is a bad thing no doubt, but there are also buyers who wouldnt have bought the game if they would have been limited to testing the demo.
Yeah that's right. Half-Life 2 was in fact one of the most easily cracked games in late memory.
In the current state, I don't think there's anything that could prevent piracy, except the fact that we have brains. Most of us (S&M enthusiasts ) found Season 1 cheap and enjoyable, and were glad to support TellTale for making our dream come true! That kind of fandom is something that hasn't been seen in PC games for years, and it made Telltale's success (and bucks!).
Now more people are making episodic games because they see it as a good moneymaker. Ridiculous! The fact that S&M Season 1 is available now in the "free networks" proves it wrong : they're still as crackable as others. Do you really think Half-Life episodes will sell better because they're Steamed? Harr harr, think again!
What made S&M's success is the simple fact that it is GOOD. Take that, Valve.
Um...Half-Life's episodes ARE selling better...but regardlessly, I love Sam and Max, and I don't want to start an argument between them. They're both great companies catering to different arguments.
Valve's reasoning, though, was that Half-Life 3 would take them beyond retirement. Even as long as they have taken, the "Episodes" were a pretty good choice...considering the alternative.
Well, the Episodes might sell well, OK. But it is a well known fact that Episode 1 wasn't worth the cost. We'll see if Episode 2 proves, or not, that Valve is commiting extortion. Unlike the happy fellows at TellTale, who made big bucks by pleasing a solid fanbase AND many more new fans of Sam & Max at a reasonable price!
It IS possible to compare the two, if you think in percentage.
Oblivion has no copyright protection at all (other than a simple DVD check). In fact, I made a copy of my Oblivion DVD just so I can play using the copy and keep the original nice and shiny.
I may be wrong, but the lack of DRM and copyright protection didn't seem to hurt sales of the PC version, did it? Consumers may not be a slimey as we are made out to be.
Copy protections don't have anything to do with the malaise that PC games are enduring nowadays. Games, have been cracked since the beginning of protections, since Atari ST for all I know, certainly earlier.
The problem is the massive distribution. Peer to peer, humongous bandwiths. That's the problem. Software editors lose money, but on the other side, internet providers and hardware companies are making loads of cash. Piracy was one of the main reasons behind the success of PS1 & PS2. I think it's a complicated battle between software & hardware people, with a bunch of laws thrown in for good measures. I mean, would making BitTorrent simply illegal deprive us of our rights? Does anyone think it's used for something else than piracy? OK, they're a few games sites that use it for the diffusion of demos and patches, but come on, it's nothing compared to the pure madness of it all! I wonder if it'll stop...
But it is a well known fact that Episode 1 wasn't worth the cost.
I thought HL2: Episode 1 was one of the best games of last year, hands down. It was well worth the cost to me. It's next to never that you can play a chunk of gaming that diverse, and that tightly packed with such polished extreme quality. I personally don't care that it was "only" 5 hours long, or something, and cost $20. I pay $10 to see a 90 minute movie quite frequently, and it's very rare that I'm as entertained as I was by Half Life 2: Episode 1. Also, for that $20, I can play it over and over as often as I like (and I have, played through it twice now). Valve didn't deliver on meeting a truly episodic schedule, but I think they did deliver in spades on moving away from sprawling hours and hours of doing the same thing in favor of a shorter, far more tightly packed and varying gaming experience.
I mean, would making BitTorrent simply illegal deprive us of our rights? Does anyone think it's used for something else than piracy? OK, they're a few games sites that use it for the diffusion of demos and patches, but come on, it's nothing compared to the pure madness of it all! I wonder if it'll stop...
I have to arrest you there. There are several legal uses for BitTorrent, which would ease the load on several servers, if more used this technology for legal downloads. One of the most obvious cases where BitTorrent has helped a lot on the server load, is with several different linux distros(for example: http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/). Also, BitTorrent has been used by gaming companies like Funcom to ease the load on the server(http://torrent.funcom.com/torrents/Dreamfall_Trial_EN_25930.torrent), when people download their demos. Also, AutoPatcher uses torrent files to ease the load on their servers for people who want to download patches and fix up their PC.
Making BitTorrent illegal is like making cars illegal, because you can use the car to do something illegal. Or making knifes completly illegal, because you can use them to kill somebody. Like with every technology, it can be abused and misused, but there will always be several benefits to the technology if it is used in positive and good ways. Anyway, it wouldn't be a problem to share files in other ways if torrents disappeared. To make efficient laws that would prevent all piracy online, one have to make laws which practically made the entire Internet illegal.
There's ups and downs about pirating softwares (Note: I am not saying I am for nor against pirating).
For example, to some people that Sam & Max Episode 1 demo seems too short even for a demo. I can say that some people may have played a pirated copy of the episode 1 all the way to the end and they like it so much that they're buying the full season.
At the same time, there's always way poor, poor little kids who doesn't have access to credit card or know anything about the hard working labor of programming, developing, designing a video game, no matter how long the game is, those people who work on the game deserve a share of the profit from the software, but yet, they just don't understand that concept. The only concept they know is INTERNET = EVERYTHING IS FREE.
I take umbrage at that. Believe it or not, I know plenty of kids who know more about what is going on than some adults I know.
Don't assume that just because someone's a minor, they lack values and morals. That's a mean-spirited stereotype propagated by media which needs some rightless group to scapegoat.
re. PC gaming dieing? I could think of a few reasons why PC game sales are failing to the console counterparts.
Such as you don't need to upgrade constantly, just keep the right generation of console handy.
You don't get your consoles infected with spyware, malware, adware and other stuff which bogs it down which normal user won't have a clue they have or how to get rid of. I work as sysadm at a school here. The students have laptops from the school. I deal with people daily who complain that the computer is a piece of crap which never works. Quick inspection shows that the reason it's so bad is because unwanted processes eat up 50-60% of CPU and memory resources. Explaining how installing everything you see isn't a good idea is usually met with blank stares. Much easier with a console. You push the power button and you're ready to go. No maintenance.
For the PC I'd say though that I still prefer the mouse/keyboard combo. And I can't imagine going online with a console, though it's getting closer to something usable. And even though I know it's usually frowned upon, I like using no-CD patches for my games so I don't have to have the disc in drive constantly. Impulsive as I am it's a bother for me to get up to find the disc when I suddenly want to play something. Everything gets installed nowadays anyway.
Generally don't have a problem with people pirating stuff, but really think they ought to buy it if they actually like it and want to use it beyond a test. Demos can be misleading, but by buying the things you like, you support the people who make stuff to your taste. Problem with that is we live in a world where morale and ideology are good things to have, but the distance to action is very variable. Sad but true. There's no easy solution to this.
I'm not ashamed to say I pirated Culture Shock because I didn't know what to expect from Telltale. I promptly bought the whole season after playing it.
PC piracy is inescapable. Short of really invasive stuff like Starforce, you're not going to be able to do much to stop it entirely. I think in this case, it's not really piracy that took a big bite out of the series as much as it is confusion.
Everyone I talk to about these games says "Oh, I don't want to buy Gametap." or "Yeah, but I want to be able to keep the games after I cancel my subscription." They don't know about Telltale's deal, the bonus disc, any of that.
Gametap handled much of the marketing of these, but it's a double-edged sword. Gametap lied, repeatedly. They called the games "Gametap Exclusives" and when dealing with the press, they'd deny they were availible any other way.
I asked a Gametap rep to his face "Is there going to be any other way to get these games at any point?" and he told me straight to my face "No."
I expect the retail release to do well because a lot of casual gamers not up on all the details of how you can buy this to stumble on it and say "Oh, I didn't even know this was out."
I don't think it was piracy so much as a lack in demand - PC's only became big for gaming during the early-mid ninties as soon as the Playstation was released companies moved to developing for consoles in droves - the difference in sales numbers between console and PC games is huge (Piracy or not)?
lol. There was so much good stuff for the PC during the PSX's life it's ridiculous. That was actually the time in my life when I did the least console gaming.
In Europe computer gaming was huge all through the 80s on through the 90s as well. More kids had their commodores, amigas, and spectrums than Nintendos.
I think PC gaming lost a lot of people in the late 90s/early 2000s when games (not to mention Windows 98/ME) were so sloppily programmed that a new purchase had a 50/50 shot of actually working, even if you met the requirements. It chased people away and they never came back, even though the situation is better now.
lol. There was so much good stuff for the PC during the PSX's life it's ridiculous. That was actually the time in my life when I did the least console gaming.
In Europe computer gaming was huge all through the 80s on through the 90s as well. More kids had their commodores, amigas, and spectrums than Nintendos.
I think PC gaming lost a lot of people in the late 90s/early 2000s when games (not to mention Windows 98/ME) were so sloppily programmed that a new purchase had a 50/50 shot of actually working, even if you met the requirements. It chased people away and they never came back, even though the situation is better now.
Amen. I get painfully nostalgic for mid-nineties PC games quite often. Not the big-name titles mostly, but the underdogs and indies (which at the time were often found on HUGE compilation shareware discs... remember the first 3 Galaxy Of Games CDs from Softkey? I'd kill to have those again.)
I also feel your pain on the 98/ME era of PC games... I think that was when MS started really hitting the games market, wasn't it? Definitely no coincidences there. (Not that they haven't redeemed themselves with the XBox and the 360)
Lots of good dos era games around. Lots of bad games as well. The difference I guess is that back in the day you _could_ actually make a game out of a basement or a garage. Today what's required for you to have a "proper" game would be insane graphics, lots of soundwork, brilliant level design and a good engine.
Way too complex for one or two people to usually pull off, and with the rising complexity comes time it takes to make and with time to make comes cost. With a higher cost the willingness to bet on something which might not be mainstream goes a long way down. And so there are few good unique games around today.
There are some, but not the abundance there were earlier, and unique != good. Personally I've got a couple of ideas for games which I could imagine being fun and different, but not being that good a coder, especially when it comes to 3D. And being horrible with graphics and AI I'm not about to start up trying to make them come true.
Personally I've got a couple of ideas for games which I could imagine being fun and different, but not being that good a coder, especially when it comes to 3D. And being horrible with graphics and AI I'm not about to start up trying to make them come true.
Why not? Start simple. Look how far one-man efforts have gone in the past. For example, Llamasoft. Jeff Minter started with no coding skill whatsoever, and now he's known worldwide for coding the 360's Neon engine. (not to mention all of his great lightsynths and games)
It's hard work (I know, I'm spearheading a two-man game project with no experience at all), but there's few things more rewarding than seeing your ideas come to fruition.
Incientally, the first day Culture Shock went on sale at our site it also showed up on a torrent, but it was actually 800MB of gay porn. :eek:
Literally made me rofl.
On-topic,
Software piracy is unstoppable.
Even if you use Themida, or any other software "protector" to pack your software;
there's going to be a reverse-engineer that can unpack it.
However I don't see why people don't go the extra mile and support Telltale Games for their hard work.
[ I can't imagine how long it took them to make their games in C++, C#, or whatever language they used. ]
Software piracy is one of those things that is impossible to get rid of, and shouldn't be tried too hard to elimate, but must still have some preventive measure.
Even though there are people out there that can unpack most to all publicly available packers...
Using Themida will prevent ALOT of crackers/software reverse-engineers.
But if one person cracks it, and releases it... the remaining people that can't crack it won't matter anymore.
Edit: I didn't really roll on the floor, but it still gave me a good chuckle.
Lots of good dos era games around. Lots of bad games as well. The difference I guess is that back in the day you _could_ actually make a game out of a basement or a garage. Today what's required for you to have a "proper" game would be insane graphics, lots of soundwork, brilliant level design and a good engine.
It's true that the days of the the garage blockbuster are over. We'll never see a team of 5 or 6 friends make a game that sells like Doom does again. I don't think we'll ever see a 1-man game make waves the way Out of this World did, either.
But Telltale's a perfect example of how a fairly small company can make a profitable game on a pretty small budget. Digital distribution has opened a lot of doors for the little guys out there.
Any indie developer will tell you the hardest part is getting a publisher to sign off on an unproven idea. With digital distribution there isn't really much, if any, overhead beyond the time you put into development, so that kind of skepticism isn't as relevant. And if a million people download your game, it's easier to break into the retail sector too. Just look at Kenta Cho and the new Wii port of Tumiki Fighters.
Why not? Start simple. Look how far one-man efforts have gone in the past. For example, Llamasoft. Jeff Minter started with no coding skill whatsoever, and now he's known worldwide for coding the 360's Neon engine. (not to mention all of his great lightsynths and games)
It's hard work (I know, I'm spearheading a two-man game project with no experience at all), but there's few things more rewarding than seeing your ideas come to fruition.
Just a thought.
Yeah, I've learned this, too. I have no ambitions of game development, but there were a lot of times when I shelved good ideas because "I don't know how to do that" only to discover later that I was pretty good at it when I just took the initiative to learn. No one starts out good.
I always feel a little insecure when buying something online, from a company located in another country. Even though I actually ended up buying the whole season, I don't think I would do it again. I mean, if I order from a online store located in my country, I got a lot of rights. But what happens to those rights if the company is located in another country? If the company doesn't deliver the goods, and still charge me, suddenly I can be out of luck. Fortunately, this has never happened to me, but I am sure it could happen. That's why I was very happy to hear it will be released retail too, because then I at least won't have to send my credit numbers over the sea again
Anyway. So what was my point again? Oh yes, for me, I can afford buying the whole season(or single episodes for that sake), but I rather buy it if I can get it from a local store - so I know my rights as a consumer is protected. Actually, when I decided to order sam & max : season 1, I only dared to do it because it was not very expensive at all, so I figured: if I loose that money, it's no risk. For the next season, buying the entire season on DVD, in the store, after that season is finished, is a less risky solution for me. But then again, here you get a lot more rights if you buy something retail compared to if you buy it online(as digital downloads).
So yeah, it could be that others like me can afford it, but are afraid for their rights if something should happen to TTG or if something goes wrong with the transaction. Thus they rather make illegal copies instead, because when you haven't paid for anything, you have no rights that can be violated Thus I have a feeling the retail sale will top even the sales of whole-season-passes(download style) because some people will be unsure what they are actually getting when they buy the season as a whole online(like, can they keep playing the game if the server goes down? such things...)
I always feel a little insecure when buying something online, from a company located in another country. Even though I actually ended up buying the whole season, I don't think I would do it again. I mean, if I order from a online store located in my country, I got a lot of rights. But what happens to those rights if the company is located in another country? If the company doesn't deliver the goods, and still charge me, suddenly I can be out of luck. Fortunately, this has never happened to me, but I am sure it could happen. That's why I was very happy to hear it will be released retail too, because then I at least won't have to send my credit numbers over the sea again
Anyway. So what was my point again? Oh yes, for me, I can afford buying the whole season(or single episodes for that sake), but I rather buy it if I can get it from a local store - so I know my rights as a consumer is protected. Actually, when I decided to order sam & max : season 1, I only dared to do it because it was not very expensive at all, so I figured: if I loose that money, it's no risk. For the next season, buying the entire season on DVD, in the store, after that season is finished, is a less risky solution for me. But then again, here you get a lot more rights if you buy something retail compared to if you buy it online(as digital downloads).
So yeah, it could be that others like me can afford it, but are afraid for their rights if something should happen to TTG or if something goes wrong with the transaction. Thus they rather make illegal copies instead, because when you haven't paid for anything, you have no rights that can be violated Thus I have a feeling the retail sale will top even the sales of whole-season-passes(download style) because some people will be unsure what they are actually getting when they buy the season as a whole online(like, can they keep playing the game if the server goes down? such things...)
Good point.
I only buy online from sites I've had good experiences with or is trusted; and haven't had any problems. :cool:
Well good luck to anyone trying to crack sam and max episode 4. (Which I bought) I was curious so I, shall we say, had a poke around. The game is protected by 'SoftwarePassport - a greatly enhanced version of the Armadillo Software Protection.
Riiiight. Just look at what's floating around the net. Steam, StarForce, Armadillo and Themida protected games and apps, all cracked and working fine. Armadillo is good, but as the authors themselves say, it's not perfect.
You can only do so much to protect your game without overdoing it. Just look at StarForce. A few SF protected games did withstand the hacker attacks for an impressive amout of time, but the protection was eventually cracked, and when the documents on how to reverse it were published, that was it.
Armadillo is REALLY well documented by reverse engineers. You have tutorials on how to defeat ALL of the Armadillo tricks including the Nanomites and Copy Mem. You even have specialized tools to help you with the cracking.
Anyways, my CD with season one is in the mail and I can only hope that Telltale didn't use any DRM functions. Telltale Build Configuration names SecuROM, which is good, since you don't have to be connected to activate the title. I hate Valve for their Steam, even though I love their games.
P.S. - Sorry for digging up an old quote. Telltale Team should know that I buy their products and I will continue to do so.
I had a similar argument with another developer who was sad about piracy and that he was loosing sales because of it.
But what people don’t realize is that those people using P2P might have never made any purchase, so you can’t count something as a loss if there wasn’t a guarantee that they wanted to buy it in the first place.
People are curious beings and usually don’t like to be constrained, so they use the pirated versions instead of the demos since they can feel the real deal and not some croped version or with annoyances everywhere that makes you puke, if they like it and have the money they will certainly buy it but not if the crippled versions leave a bad taste.
True story: I tried Maya's Personal Edition (the first one they released) and the "watermarks" multiplied a billion times on the screen made me dizzy and made me think the program sucked, I simply couldn’t work in that program. A year later I was trained to use Maya since I was the lead character modeller and the pipeline with the software I used (lightwave) was a bit troublesome and slow for riggers and texture artists, though at first I thought I would have the same bad impression I had with the PE version, but I was hooked with the "clean" application.
So, If people don’t like the product, more often than not they just delete the data and move on and without loosing money on something that didn’t interested or appealed to them.
And believe it or not, piracy might lead to real purchases.
BTW, don’t be a fool thinking that if you have a computer you are entitled to have money to purchase stuff, and also don’t think that if you have money then it means anyone else has.
PS: its funny how those "security" features "like securom and the others" annoy much more the real customers than what they suppose to do with the pirates O_o'. I hate the fact I have to look for "no cd" patches to avoid the annoyance of "put the cd/dvd in drive" every time I want to play something, like accusing you of stealing every time you want to play >_< (same happens with the movies and the two hour long FBI warning saying you might be stealing and you just cant skip it. "I don’t mind the warning... but for god's sake just let me skip it" oh, and if they are from other regions than 1 then you have the warning in English and then in other languages..so it takes twice as much >_<)(sorry for the rant ^^)
PS2: I think I read a few replies about "before people where able to create stuff in their basements....etc" well, if you look for the right information you can still do stuff in your own home. For instance, there are a couple of programs that let you create adventure games like Monkey Island 3 (with better graphic quality) and you don’t need to know a bit of programming (look for a program called Visionaire 2D. or another one called Adventure maker or AGS.. though Visionaire is really great.)
But what people don’t realize is that those people using P2P might have never made any purchase, so you can’t count something as a loss if there wasn’t a guarantee that they wanted to buy it in the first place.
I hate that stupid justification it is bollocks.
If a product is worth downloading and worth your time playing then it is worth paying for.
I do agree that every download might not have been a sale so it is difficult to say exactly what the sales impact on a developer was. However my view is..if it's not something worth my money then it's not worth playing in the first place so why download it.
I've just seen too many pirates use the "I wouldn't have bought it anyway so nobody is losing money" excuse to justify what they are doing.
BTW, don’t be a fool thinking that if you have a computer you are entitled to have money to purchase stuff, and also don’t think that if you have money then it means anyone else has.
Lack of money isn't an excuse for stealing something. Video games are a luxury not an entitlement. I'm sorry if some people can't afford them or lack the willpower and judgement to decide which ones to buy with what little money they have and not play the rest. Just because I can't afford to play EVERY video game that is ever released doesn't give me the right to download them all for free.
There's ups and downs about pirating softwares (Note: I am not saying I am for nor against pirating).
For example, to some people that Sam & Max Episode 1 demo seems too short even for a demo. I can say that some people may have played a pirated copy of the episode 1 all the way to the end and they like it so much that they're buying the full season.
At the same time, there's always way poor, poor little kids who doesn't have access to credit card or know anything about the hard working labor of programming, developing, designing a video game, no matter how long the game is, those people who work on the game deserve a share of the profit from the software, but yet, they just don't understand that concept. The only concept they know is INTERNET = EVERYTHING IS FREE.
Yeah that really annoys me. This guy at school asked me if I knew where he could download PSP games illegal and if I knew how to get them working on PSP! He also asks me the same questions about games that I say are great (like Sam & Max) and that he should buy.
If a product is worth downloading and worth your time playing then it is worth paying for.
Not exactly true. Your saying that even if you download a demo version then its worth paying for it because it took you time to download and playing it?? that was pretty lame.
If you meant it as, if people who download a pirate copy and likes it then they should be paying for it, then yes I agree and many people do buy the product as a result.
BUT, if people don’t like it then they will simply delete the data and you cant force them to buy something they didn’t like, its unfortunate that not all games have demo versions and people is not willing to spend the money on the wrong game, so the only option for them is to download it from a P2P source.
However my view is..if it's not something worth my money then it's not worth playing in the first place so why download it.
Ok, But how do you know something is not worth it?
How do you know you like.. let’s say chocolate? you had to "try" it at some point before you knew you liked it.. Right?, well, this applies to almost everything.
Lack of money isn't an excuse for stealing something
As far as I know that is the main influence for robbery in the world since ancient times.
It's funny to see that this thread got woken up again
I think the main problem is that most games tend to be a complete and total rip off (£50 for a 6 hour game, like Halo 3, is just ridiculous, especially when it's just £20 for 5 episodes of Sam and Max lasting presumably about 20 hours, the way I play them), there's too much rubbish floating about so it's hard to pick out any real gems without splashing out money all over the place, and then reviews won't always match your opinion (I think Halo's terrible, but it gets 9 and 10 out of 10 all over the board).
I'm extremely short on money as it is, without throwing money all over the place at games I'll end up not liking, but I do try and find the best deals before buying anything (I got Mario Galaxy for £15 which was nice).
Ideally, all games would be downloadable rather than boxed, so it's cheaper for everyone, and cuts out the greedy middle men (the publishers and the games shops) and more money goes to the people who deserve it, the developers. Steam and Telltale's methods of distribution are great, seeing as I'm getting the games for much less than I would if I was paying for the packaging and shipping and whatnot as well.
I can see why people turn to games piracy, just like music piracy, because they're being robbed blind by the industry. I don't condone it, especially if it's against smaller companies or upstart developers seeing as they need the money much more than bigger businesses, and their games tend to be cheaper, but I can see why people do it.
Right, I think I'm starting to ramble now, late nights and headaches don't make for great coherency, so I'll stop there.
Yep go figure.. now whats their excuse?
Its a new result but its found that if a person dls say 2000 songs that person is usually more apt to buying more music than the person say who has no clue what p2p is and never dled a song. Bad hit the nail on the head.. its about the rich staying rich.. some games really arent worth it(and wtf no manuals now! I love trinkets and manuals!) Cheap and cheesy. So sadly yes I have pirated kick me now if you will.. but I think you would have to ban 90% of every forum if you want to go there.
I buy.. ALOT lets just say that I believe in the findings
Its a new result but its found that if a person dls say 2000 songs that person is usually more apt to buying more music than the person say who has no clue what p2p is and never dled a song.
That is so true. I practically never bought anything before I started downloading stuff off the Internet(at that time, it was legal, because of old and outdated laws). I would buy perhaps one music cd a year, and that was if it was a good year with a lot of recommendations. I would never buy movies either(and I really mean never, I had no dvds, and the few vhses I had were recorded off TV.) I bought a few games, but usually I bought a few games at random(which was possible back then, but practically impossible now.)
Then when I started downloading different stuff, I discovered a lot of music and games I wasn't even aware of existed, and movies too. Suddenly I started buying more regularly, and I have been working on getting my collection complete since then. Now it's pretty much complete, but that's because I have decided to become more legal and stop downloading stuff at random. Thus I rarely get exposed to new music or movies which I didn't know about.
Also, I have decided to cut down on the amount I buy because of all the suing lately. I don't want to support people who just wants to sue me and my friends for stuff I personally know gives them more sales. Also, I don't want to support an industry who tries to change the laws in ways which restricts and removes my rights to do things I could do freely just a few years ago.
Comments
I don't think it was piracy so much as a lack in demand - PC's only became big for gaming during the early-mid ninties as soon as the Playstation was released companies moved to developing for consoles in droves - the difference in sales numbers between console and PC games is huge (Piracy or not)?
Erm uh.......do you ever say.....defrag your computer?
Look to the skys robin I see directx10 running on Xp pro playing crysis or cellfactor or bioshock in insane resolutions on my 8800GTX with physx.. oh yea... pcs are dead LOL.
It does suck that pirates are ruining the experience for all PC gamers. I'm thinking the only way to even it out would be...to make console games equally piratable?
Meh, sort of a cruel way of doing it, but I do love the PC gaming platform, and wish the playing field were a bit more level. I'm just glad it's really impossible for PC gaming to die out entirely.
Second of all, yes, piracy is very bad. I think that there is no excuse for pirating, no matter what the intention. Frankly, my dear, you should buy your own darn copy, and if you don't like it, you can use a little thing called E-B-A-Y.
Third of all, the main reason why PC Gaming has never died is because we have more Triple-A big shot titles than our console friends.
For example, console gaming was starting. Halo comes out. Console starts making money. PC Gaming loses money. Half-Life comes out. PC Gaming gains money.
There are many more examples. Even sequels help. The same exact thing happened with Half-Life 2.
Also, a PS3 may beat a PC in terms of hardware, but only during the first two or three weeks. A new PC always beats any new console after a couple weeks, so anybody trying to tell you, "my PS3 t0t4lly pwnz ur PC n00b!oneone111one1111one1" is dead wrong (besides being brain-dead).
There is my two cents. I hope I was somewhat relevant to the discussion taking place.
Not harder at all. What´s the difference? It only does online checks which can be bypassed, not harder then all the rest of it. Besides that, better dont wish all people will use Steam, because they wont. Noone needs Middleware installed on his/her pc.
Piracy is a bad thing no doubt, but there are also buyers who wouldnt have bought the game if they would have been limited to testing the demo.
In the current state, I don't think there's anything that could prevent piracy, except the fact that we have brains. Most of us (S&M enthusiasts
Now more people are making episodic games because they see it as a good moneymaker. Ridiculous! The fact that S&M Season 1 is available now in the "free networks" proves it wrong : they're still as crackable as others. Do you really think Half-Life episodes will sell better because they're Steamed? Harr harr, think again!
What made S&M's success is the simple fact that it is GOOD. Take that, Valve.
Valve's reasoning, though, was that Half-Life 3 would take them beyond retirement. Even as long as they have taken, the "Episodes" were a pretty good choice...considering the alternative.
It IS possible to compare the two, if you think in percentage.
I may be wrong, but the lack of DRM and copyright protection didn't seem to hurt sales of the PC version, did it? Consumers may not be a slimey as we are made out to be.
The problem is the massive distribution. Peer to peer, humongous bandwiths. That's the problem. Software editors lose money, but on the other side, internet providers and hardware companies are making loads of cash. Piracy was one of the main reasons behind the success of PS1 & PS2. I think it's a complicated battle between software & hardware people, with a bunch of laws thrown in for good measures. I mean, would making BitTorrent simply illegal deprive us of our rights? Does anyone think it's used for something else than piracy? OK, they're a few games sites that use it for the diffusion of demos and patches, but come on, it's nothing compared to the pure madness of it all! I wonder if it'll stop...
I thought HL2: Episode 1 was one of the best games of last year, hands down. It was well worth the cost to me. It's next to never that you can play a chunk of gaming that diverse, and that tightly packed with such polished extreme quality. I personally don't care that it was "only" 5 hours long, or something, and cost $20. I pay $10 to see a 90 minute movie quite frequently, and it's very rare that I'm as entertained as I was by Half Life 2: Episode 1. Also, for that $20, I can play it over and over as often as I like (and I have, played through it twice now). Valve didn't deliver on meeting a truly episodic schedule, but I think they did deliver in spades on moving away from sprawling hours and hours of doing the same thing in favor of a shorter, far more tightly packed and varying gaming experience.
Also, episode 2 sounds amazing.
I have to arrest you there. There are several legal uses for BitTorrent, which would ease the load on several servers, if more used this technology for legal downloads. One of the most obvious cases where BitTorrent has helped a lot on the server load, is with several different linux distros(for example: http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/). Also, BitTorrent has been used by gaming companies like Funcom to ease the load on the server(http://torrent.funcom.com/torrents/Dreamfall_Trial_EN_25930.torrent), when people download their demos. Also, AutoPatcher uses torrent files to ease the load on their servers for people who want to download patches and fix up their PC.
Making BitTorrent illegal is like making cars illegal, because you can use the car to do something illegal. Or making knifes completly illegal, because you can use them to kill somebody. Like with every technology, it can be abused and misused, but there will always be several benefits to the technology if it is used in positive and good ways. Anyway, it wouldn't be a problem to share files in other ways if torrents disappeared. To make efficient laws that would prevent all piracy online, one have to make laws which practically made the entire Internet illegal.
I take umbrage at that. Believe it or not, I know plenty of kids who know more about what is going on than some adults I know.
Don't assume that just because someone's a minor, they lack values and morals. That's a mean-spirited stereotype propagated by media which needs some rightless group to scapegoat.
Such as you don't need to upgrade constantly, just keep the right generation of console handy.
You don't get your consoles infected with spyware, malware, adware and other stuff which bogs it down which normal user won't have a clue they have or how to get rid of. I work as sysadm at a school here. The students have laptops from the school. I deal with people daily who complain that the computer is a piece of crap which never works. Quick inspection shows that the reason it's so bad is because unwanted processes eat up 50-60% of CPU and memory resources. Explaining how installing everything you see isn't a good idea is usually met with blank stares. Much easier with a console. You push the power button and you're ready to go. No maintenance.
For the PC I'd say though that I still prefer the mouse/keyboard combo. And I can't imagine going online with a console, though it's getting closer to something usable. And even though I know it's usually frowned upon, I like using no-CD patches for my games so I don't have to have the disc in drive constantly. Impulsive as I am it's a bother for me to get up to find the disc when I suddenly want to play something. Everything gets installed nowadays anyway.
Generally don't have a problem with people pirating stuff, but really think they ought to buy it if they actually like it and want to use it beyond a test. Demos can be misleading, but by buying the things you like, you support the people who make stuff to your taste. Problem with that is we live in a world where morale and ideology are good things to have, but the distance to action is very variable. Sad but true. There's no easy solution to this.
Everyone I talk to about these games says "Oh, I don't want to buy Gametap." or "Yeah, but I want to be able to keep the games after I cancel my subscription." They don't know about Telltale's deal, the bonus disc, any of that.
Gametap handled much of the marketing of these, but it's a double-edged sword. Gametap lied, repeatedly. They called the games "Gametap Exclusives" and when dealing with the press, they'd deny they were availible any other way.
I asked a Gametap rep to his face "Is there going to be any other way to get these games at any point?" and he told me straight to my face "No."
I expect the retail release to do well because a lot of casual gamers not up on all the details of how you can buy this to stumble on it and say "Oh, I didn't even know this was out." lol. There was so much good stuff for the PC during the PSX's life it's ridiculous. That was actually the time in my life when I did the least console gaming.
In Europe computer gaming was huge all through the 80s on through the 90s as well. More kids had their commodores, amigas, and spectrums than Nintendos.
I think PC gaming lost a lot of people in the late 90s/early 2000s when games (not to mention Windows 98/ME) were so sloppily programmed that a new purchase had a 50/50 shot of actually working, even if you met the requirements. It chased people away and they never came back, even though the situation is better now.
Amen. I get painfully nostalgic for mid-nineties PC games quite often. Not the big-name titles mostly, but the underdogs and indies (which at the time were often found on HUGE compilation shareware discs... remember the first 3 Galaxy Of Games CDs from Softkey? I'd kill to have those again.)
I also feel your pain on the 98/ME era of PC games... I think that was when MS started really hitting the games market, wasn't it? Definitely no coincidences there. (Not that they haven't redeemed themselves with the XBox and the 360)
Way too complex for one or two people to usually pull off, and with the rising complexity comes time it takes to make and with time to make comes cost. With a higher cost the willingness to bet on something which might not be mainstream goes a long way down. And so there are few good unique games around today.
There are some, but not the abundance there were earlier, and unique != good. Personally I've got a couple of ideas for games which I could imagine being fun and different, but not being that good a coder, especially when it comes to 3D. And being horrible with graphics and AI I'm not about to start up trying to make them come true.
Why not? Start simple. Look how far one-man efforts have gone in the past. For example, Llamasoft. Jeff Minter started with no coding skill whatsoever, and now he's known worldwide for coding the 360's Neon engine. (not to mention all of his great lightsynths and games)
It's hard work (I know, I'm spearheading a two-man game project with no experience at all), but there's few things more rewarding than seeing your ideas come to fruition.
Just a thought.
On-topic,
Software piracy is unstoppable.
Even if you use Themida, or any other software "protector" to pack your software;
there's going to be a reverse-engineer that can unpack it.
However I don't see why people don't go the extra mile and support Telltale Games for their hard work.
[ I can't imagine how long it took them to make their games in C++, C#, or whatever language they used. ]
It's a pity some people can't afford 9 dollars.
You literally rolled on the floor? I didn't know people still did that
Using Themida will prevent ALOT of crackers/software reverse-engineers.
But if one person cracks it, and releases it... the remaining people that can't crack it won't matter anymore.
Edit: I didn't really roll on the floor, but it still gave me a good chuckle.
Ouch, that sounds painful.
But Telltale's a perfect example of how a fairly small company can make a profitable game on a pretty small budget. Digital distribution has opened a lot of doors for the little guys out there.
Any indie developer will tell you the hardest part is getting a publisher to sign off on an unproven idea. With digital distribution there isn't really much, if any, overhead beyond the time you put into development, so that kind of skepticism isn't as relevant. And if a million people download your game, it's easier to break into the retail sector too. Just look at Kenta Cho and the new Wii port of Tumiki Fighters. Yeah, I've learned this, too. I have no ambitions of game development, but there were a lot of times when I shelved good ideas because "I don't know how to do that" only to discover later that I was pretty good at it when I just took the initiative to learn. No one starts out good.
I always feel a little insecure when buying something online, from a company located in another country. Even though I actually ended up buying the whole season, I don't think I would do it again. I mean, if I order from a online store located in my country, I got a lot of rights. But what happens to those rights if the company is located in another country? If the company doesn't deliver the goods, and still charge me, suddenly I can be out of luck. Fortunately, this has never happened to me, but I am sure it could happen. That's why I was very happy to hear it will be released retail too, because then I at least won't have to send my credit numbers over the sea again
Anyway. So what was my point again? Oh yes, for me, I can afford buying the whole season(or single episodes for that sake), but I rather buy it if I can get it from a local store - so I know my rights as a consumer is protected. Actually, when I decided to order sam & max : season 1, I only dared to do it because it was not very expensive at all, so I figured: if I loose that money, it's no risk. For the next season, buying the entire season on DVD, in the store, after that season is finished, is a less risky solution for me. But then again, here you get a lot more rights if you buy something retail compared to if you buy it online(as digital downloads).
So yeah, it could be that others like me can afford it, but are afraid for their rights if something should happen to TTG or if something goes wrong with the transaction. Thus they rather make illegal copies instead, because when you haven't paid for anything, you have no rights that can be violated
I only buy online from sites I've had good experiences with or is trusted; and haven't had any problems. :cool:
Riiiight. Just look at what's floating around the net. Steam, StarForce, Armadillo and Themida protected games and apps, all cracked and working fine. Armadillo is good, but as the authors themselves say, it's not perfect.
You can only do so much to protect your game without overdoing it. Just look at StarForce. A few SF protected games did withstand the hacker attacks for an impressive amout of time, but the protection was eventually cracked, and when the documents on how to reverse it were published, that was it.
Armadillo is REALLY well documented by reverse engineers. You have tutorials on how to defeat ALL of the Armadillo tricks including the Nanomites and Copy Mem. You even have specialized tools to help you with the cracking.
Anyways, my CD with season one is in the mail and I can only hope that Telltale didn't use any DRM functions. Telltale Build Configuration names SecuROM, which is good, since you don't have to be connected to activate the title. I hate Valve for their Steam, even though I love their games.
P.S. - Sorry for digging up an old quote. Telltale Team should know that I buy their products and I will continue to do so.
But what people don’t realize is that those people using P2P might have never made any purchase, so you can’t count something as a loss if there wasn’t a guarantee that they wanted to buy it in the first place.
People are curious beings and usually don’t like to be constrained, so they use the pirated versions instead of the demos since they can feel the real deal and not some croped version or with annoyances everywhere that makes you puke, if they like it and have the money they will certainly buy it but not if the crippled versions leave a bad taste.
True story: I tried Maya's Personal Edition (the first one they released) and the "watermarks" multiplied a billion times on the screen made me dizzy and made me think the program sucked, I simply couldn’t work in that program. A year later I was trained to use Maya since I was the lead character modeller and the pipeline with the software I used (lightwave) was a bit troublesome and slow for riggers and texture artists, though at first I thought I would have the same bad impression I had with the PE version, but I was hooked with the "clean" application.
So, If people don’t like the product, more often than not they just delete the data and move on and without loosing money on something that didn’t interested or appealed to them.
And believe it or not, piracy might lead to real purchases.
BTW, don’t be a fool thinking that if you have a computer you are entitled to have money to purchase stuff, and also don’t think that if you have money then it means anyone else has.
PS: its funny how those "security" features "like securom and the others" annoy much more the real customers than what they suppose to do with the pirates O_o'. I hate the fact I have to look for "no cd" patches to avoid the annoyance of "put the cd/dvd in drive" every time I want to play something, like accusing you of stealing every time you want to play >_< (same happens with the movies and the two hour long FBI warning saying you might be stealing and you just cant skip it. "I don’t mind the warning... but for god's sake just let me skip it" oh, and if they are from other regions than 1 then you have the warning in English and then in other languages..so it takes twice as much >_<)(sorry for the rant ^^)
PS2: I think I read a few replies about "before people where able to create stuff in their basements....etc" well, if you look for the right information you can still do stuff in your own home. For instance, there are a couple of programs that let you create adventure games like Monkey Island 3 (with better graphic quality) and you don’t need to know a bit of programming (look for a program called Visionaire 2D. or another one called Adventure maker or AGS.. though Visionaire is really great.)
I hate that stupid justification it is bollocks.
If a product is worth downloading and worth your time playing then it is worth paying for.
I do agree that every download might not have been a sale so it is difficult to say exactly what the sales impact on a developer was. However my view is..if it's not something worth my money then it's not worth playing in the first place so why download it.
I've just seen too many pirates use the "I wouldn't have bought it anyway so nobody is losing money" excuse to justify what they are doing.
Lack of money isn't an excuse for stealing something. Video games are a luxury not an entitlement. I'm sorry if some people can't afford them or lack the willpower and judgement to decide which ones to buy with what little money they have and not play the rest. Just because I can't afford to play EVERY video game that is ever released doesn't give me the right to download them all for free.
Yeah that really annoys me. This guy at school asked me if I knew where he could download PSP games illegal and if I knew how to get them working on PSP! He also asks me the same questions about games that I say are great (like Sam & Max) and that he should buy.
If you meant it as, if people who download a pirate copy and likes it then they should be paying for it, then yes I agree and many people do buy the product as a result.
BUT, if people don’t like it then they will simply delete the data and you cant force them to buy something they didn’t like, its unfortunate that not all games have demo versions and people is not willing to spend the money on the wrong game, so the only option for them is to download it from a P2P source.
Ok, But how do you know something is not worth it?
How do you know you like.. let’s say chocolate? you had to "try" it at some point before you knew you liked it.. Right?, well, this applies to almost everything.
As far as I know that is the main influence for robbery in the world since ancient times.
LOL, sorry about that ^^
I'm extremely short on money as it is, without throwing money all over the place at games I'll end up not liking, but I do try and find the best deals before buying anything (I got Mario Galaxy for £15 which was nice).
Ideally, all games would be downloadable rather than boxed, so it's cheaper for everyone, and cuts out the greedy middle men (the publishers and the games shops) and more money goes to the people who deserve it, the developers. Steam and Telltale's methods of distribution are great, seeing as I'm getting the games for much less than I would if I was paying for the packaging and shipping and whatnot as well.
I can see why people turn to games piracy, just like music piracy, because they're being robbed blind by the industry. I don't condone it, especially if it's against smaller companies or upstart developers seeing as they need the money much more than bigger businesses, and their games tend to be cheaper, but I can see why people do it.
Right, I think I'm starting to ramble now, late nights and headaches don't make for great coherency, so I'll stop there.
Findings!
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/en/ip01462e.html
Article stating its ok to pirate.. i half agree.. Buy what you like and whats worth it people!
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/11/06/p2p_music_increases_cd_sales_study/1
Yep go figure.. now whats their excuse?
Its a new result but its found that if a person dls say 2000 songs that person is usually more apt to buying more music than the person say who has no clue what p2p is and never dled a song. Bad hit the nail on the head.. its about the rich staying rich.. some games really arent worth it(and wtf no manuals now! I love trinkets and manuals!) Cheap and cheesy. So sadly yes I have pirated kick me now if you will.. but I think you would have to ban 90% of every forum if you want to go there.
I buy.. ALOT lets just say that I believe in the findings
That is so true. I practically never bought anything before I started downloading stuff off the Internet(at that time, it was legal, because of old and outdated laws). I would buy perhaps one music cd a year, and that was if it was a good year with a lot of recommendations. I would never buy movies either(and I really mean never, I had no dvds, and the few vhses I had were recorded off TV.) I bought a few games, but usually I bought a few games at random(which was possible back then, but practically impossible now.)
Then when I started downloading different stuff, I discovered a lot of music and games I wasn't even aware of existed, and movies too. Suddenly I started buying more regularly, and I have been working on getting my collection complete since then. Now it's pretty much complete, but that's because I have decided to become more legal and stop downloading stuff at random. Thus I rarely get exposed to new music or movies which I didn't know about.
Also, I have decided to cut down on the amount I buy because of all the suing lately. I don't want to support people who just wants to sue me and my friends for stuff I personally know gives them more sales. Also, I don't want to support an industry who tries to change the laws in ways which restricts and removes my rights to do things I could do freely just a few years ago.