BulletStorm didn't sell well because of piracy

[Craig234]

On another note on piracy, the World of Tanks thread reminds me of another way publishers are getting around piracy.

Pretty much everyone who plays World of Tanks plays within their business model, which allows for some free play while charging for premiums (the F2P model).

So they get 100% of the revenue their game is designed to get - no one can, say, have a 'type 59' premium tank if it wasn't paid for (only issue being the selling of accounts).

I think developers are pressured to make games like that keeping 100% of the revenue rather that to make a normal game that is heavily pirated.

Same with DLC and other models that make more than the old model of a game.

 

[Arglebargle]

I think it is more credible that they feel the damage done to the IP by their poor porting, and misjudgement of its PC popularity, had more to do with the decision to not make a sequel to BulletStorm.

'Piracy' has become a pro forma response of corporate capitalism. As such, it doesn't mean anything, as it will be trotted out in any situation. They're firing up the blame shifters!

It would certainly make a better fall back position on the part of the folks who greenlighted the project, and allowed a cheap, shoddy version to be released. Otherwise someone might look askance at their quarterly bonus.

Me, GFWL was an immediate 'no buy'. After my experiances with it, I wouldn't play GFWL games even if they were free.

And while I was very enthused about the Witcher 2, they released it with no invertable mouse and no native support for my monitor resolution. Other games got my attention in the interim, and I will probably only pick up Witcher 2 on sale cheap. Their loss.

Really, the genie is out of the bottle. Cost of doing business includes things like piracy. But as the recent spate of kickstarter financed games has shown, people are happy to pay for things they like, even if they aren't even made yet.

 

[BoberFett]

Too bad I can't get you one of the extra copies I bought, but Steam and Amazon don't allow that. Might wait for a sale, it's at $20 on Steam and $16 on Amazon.

I'm betting Craig doesn't even see the irony in this post...

 

[exdeath]

I've been buying most of my games as GOTY editions for $20 brand new lately.

Skip over all the milking and franchising and endless DLC and get it all complete for 1/3rd the price. Publishers are so filled with franchise greed now that it's pretty much inevitable that 15 editions will be released of every game made today, might as well wait for the completed final version and get it for a steal instead of being milked like a cow.

If there is a great game on the way from a smaller dev/publisher who aren't tyrannical assholes like EA/Activision I will pre order just to support them.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

It really wasn't that awesome of a game. It would be incredible fun if the main campaign was co-op. I would love to troll through that game with a friend and many beers.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Same logic says Skyrim didn't sell well because of piracy, too. Oh wait-

 

[Craig234]

Same logic says Skyrim didn't sell well because of piracy, too. Oh wait-

Huh? No, it doesn't. But the CEO over Skyrim also said he was unhappy that Skyrim was pirated even before the launch.

http://gamingbolt.com/skyrim-pete-hines-outraged-about-games-piracy

What is to hard to understand about the idea that piracy reduces sales?

Whether a game sells few or many copies, that doesn't determine whether there's piracy.

Sometimes, a bad game's sales are low even if there weren't piracy. Sometimes, a good game's sales are high, even though they'd be even higher without piracy (Skyrim).

Is it really that hard, that you have to make the mistake of claiming that - sarcastically as you tried - the fact Skyrim sold well proves piracy isn't an issue?

Since analogies are working so well with people of your ideology, we'll do another (hey, sarcasm goes both ways).

Imagine you own a restaurant, and the mob demands 20% in protection money. You find paying that leaves you 10% short to pay bills and go out of business.

The mob says, 'bullshit. The best restaurant up the road pays their 20%, and has great sales, and can stay in business - so the issue is your restaurant, not the protection money'.

Good argument! It's the game's fault, not the pirate's, about the lost revenue from piracy!

 

[gothamhunter]

Huh? No, it doesn't. But the CEO over Skyrim also said he was unhappy that Skyrim was pirated even before the launch.

http://gamingbolt.com/skyrim-pete-hines-outraged-about-games-piracy

What is to hard to understand about the idea that piracy reduces sales?

Whether a game sells few or many copies, that doesn't determine whether there's piracy.

Sometimes, a bad game's sales are low even if there weren't piracy. Sometimes, a good game's sales are high, even though they'd be even higher without piracy (Skyrim).

Is it really that hard, that you have to make the mistake of claiming that - sarcastically as you tried - the fact Skyrim sold well proves piracy isn't an issue?

Since analogies are working so well with people of your ideology, we'll do another (hey, sarcasm goes both ways).

Imagine you own a restaurant, and the mob demands 20% in protection money. You find paying that leaves you 10% short to pay bills and go out of business.

The mob says, 'bullshit. The best restaurant up the road pays their 20%, and has great sales, and can stay in business - so the issue is your restaurant, not the protection money'.

Good argument! It's the game's fault, not the pirate's, about the lost revenue from piracy!

Are you enjoying ignoring all of the arguments that make sense, where everyone says bad games have bad sales, and good games have good sales, and both games have piracy issues?

Blaming piracy for not making a sequel is a cop-out, because if it was a good game, in the eyes of the mass public, it would of had good sales even with piracy problems (i.e. the Skyrim example).

 

[ImpulsE69]

Are you enjoying ignoring all of the arguments that make sense, where everyone says bad games have bad sales, and good games have good sales, and both games have piracy issues?

Blaming piracy for not making a sequel is a cop-out, because if it was a good game, in the eyes of the mass public, it would of had good sales even with piracy problems (i.e. the Skyrim example).

Yea, I noticed that too. Then he started trying to throw it off by claiming I was being obnoxious. His posts skip right over the very valid points people keep making and going into hysterics.

We all know pirating hurts sales, but (our) general opinion is in this case, it more than likely had very little to do with Bulletstorm getting a sequel or not, compared to it being a below average game. Sure there were people who enjoyed it, but not enough. They can cry wolf, but unless they have real factual numbers (unlike the estimates and probabilities in Craigs initial post), then good luck persuading me (and others) to think otherwise.

I'm still convinced either he was on their dev team or was going to be for the sequel and now he's mad. I doubt he would have enjoyed the game so much to be this stubborn, if he's even played it.


I will agree with him on the WoTs. It is a model, that while I don't necessarily agree with, can work well for MP/MMO type games. If you really enjoy playing the game for a length of time, chances are you will buy more stuff. This works for LoL as well, and those items are really just cosmetic overall. In the end though, many will try and fail with this type of "payoff". Players are fickle.

 

[reallyscrued]

Used digital goods are 100% equivalent to new, so there is a difference. Physical goods experience wear when used which usually translates to lowered performance and therefore effects the value. However, with the online pass type of thing that EA is doing, a used copy does not equal a new copy, so that is closer to the traditional used market that physical goods have.

Products no longer wear out? Boo-hoo.Times are changing. It's the digital age; it has been for the last 15 years. Big companies need to get with the program. Hell, Many manufacturers sell products with a lifetime guarantee. And even then, if your 100% perfect condition argument holds water, then what If I paid my friend 100% of the original MSRP of the game, would that make publishers happy? I bet they'd still bitch, the fact of the matter is: The money is not going into their wallets.

Stop flooding the markets with crap no one with $60.00 USD wants to play and spend your big budgets on making things fun. I wonder if Mike Capps even played the game to the end. Someone should ask him how it ended, I bet he himself didn't find it fun. Wow, he'd be a super hypocrite then, wouldn't he? No one cares about your nutshots.

I never took piracy accusations too close to the heart as a consumer until they started hating on used sales. Then I knew they had a hard-on for cash, not creativity and polishing a well made product. It's very clear they want people to 'take the chance' when they buy a game and if it's not to their liking, they'll have no recourse whatsoever. You can't return it, you can't resell it. You're stuck with it.

The ridiculous DRM PC gamers have to put up with when launching games now-a-days is akin to walking into a Radioshack and being followed around every second you're in there.

"We know if you had a chance to steal, you'd do it! WE'RE WATCHING YOU!"

 

[BrightCandle]

Although a lot of studies disagree I like to think of the PC market as split into a few camps:
1) The pirates who like to copy stuff and play it
2) The game lovers who buy them without concern for other considerations
3) The DRM haters who avoid so called draconian schemes that limited their freedom and buy games that are not hampered

Its a horrid strawman model, its widely inaccurate as a generalisation but does appear to be how the arguments around game copyright goes. There are always these 3 groups of people arguing from their viewpoint and there are lots of justifications for being in one or the other.

The industry distils their argument however on type 1's and how with just the right DRM scheme they can become paying customers. But I am personally not convinced that type 1's represent any lost sales at all. If it wasn't free they wouldn't even play it let alone pay real money for it.

Making a successful game is about courting type 2 and 3 to buy your game. But I also suspect that the sizes are (1) > (2) > (3). The industry really thinks it ought to be 2 >> 1 and the type 3's don't exist at all. Denying the current market conditions however isn't really right, a lot of things drive a large type 1 population and price and opportunity is only one small part of the equation.

 

[Chiropteran]

You know free will causes a lot of games to fail. If only humans didn't have free will, we simply have no choice but to buy every game released, then game developers could easily make a lot more money.

Damn that free will.

My point is: piracy isn't going away. Whether it is good or bad for the game publishers is pretty much irrelevant, it's a cost of doing business and they will not stop it completely, ever.

 

[thespyder]

The ridiculous DRM PC gamers have to put up with when launching games now-a-days is akin to walking into a Radioshack and being followed around every second you're in there.

"We know if you had a chance to steal, you'd do it! WE'RE WATCHING YOU!"

I gotta kind of disagree with you here. To a point. DRM is "Supposed" to hamper Piracy. We all know that it doesn't do that, but it does prevent people who might casually pirate. In that it serves "Some" purpose.

However, it isn't like going into a store and having a chaperone. it is more like the digital cameras that are in all four corners of the store. Serves the same purpose in that it prevents someone who "Might" steal from doing it.

Or that is the way it is "Supposed" to work.

In reality, it probably does cut down on a small amount of piracy. Unfortunately (and i am not sure who to blame, the hackers or the Corporations), it impacts legitimate consumers as much or more than it does pirates. The current generation of "Heavy Handed" (read draconian if you want) methods will often times inflict restrictions on games which prevent the game from running properly on legitimate users. And probably to a greater degree than pirates. Which is where it all breaks down.

Personally (and I have no stats to prove this, only a supposition and the success of companies that go DRM free), I suspect that removal of DRM completely might increase legitimate sales by a margin larger than the sliver of piracy that it prevents. Will the game still get pirated? Sure. But the lift in "Consumer confidence" would probably significantly swamp that small percentage of Piracy that DRM would normally prevent.

However, investors don't see it that way. They want to "Protect" their investment and no amount of statistics are going to sway them to believe the above hypothesis. Shame really because they are cutting their own noses off despite their faces.

 

[reallyscrued]

I gotta kind of disagree with you here. To a point. DRM is "Supposed" to hamper Piracy. We all know that it doesn't do that, but it does prevent people who might casually pirate. In that it serves "Some" purpose.

Disagree. I don't know a single person who knows someone who buys a game, copies it through physical means and tries to play it. Pirated games, by far and large, are pre-cracked or distributed with detailed instructions on how to circumvent these measures. In the end, we all lose.

However, it isn't like going into a store and having a chaperone. it is more like the digital cameras that are in all four corners of the store. Serves the same purpose in that it prevents someone who "Might" steal from doing it.

Digital cameras don't follow you around after you leave the store.

Or that is the way it is "Supposed" to work.

You're proving my point.

 

[LumbergTech]

I held off on purchasing the game until it was $5 due to all the shitty reviews (by reviewers I actually trust, not the ones who are paid to buff up their review score). I didn't pirate it. I waited.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I held off on purchasing the game until it was $5 due to all the shitty reviews (by reviewers I actually trust, not the ones who are paid to buff up their review score). I didn't pirate it. I waited.

That's what I do, for games, movies, music, books.

I have enough choices that I can play Star Trek now while I wait for Mass Effect 3's price to drop to what I want to pay, and there are shows I'm waiting to reach Netflix streaming so I'll watch something else instead.

I don't feel entitled to take things without paying for them, but I'm also patient (and stubborn) enough to wait until they're down to my price.

 

[mmntech]

Publishers will never admit that their half-assed effort was to blame...talk about entitlement.

"We want to make all the money, we just don't want to do all the work!"

It's Hollywood's go to excuse every time a lousy product fails. I guess it fools shareholders into blaming someone else for why their portfolios keep dropping.

If the entertainment industry effectively eliminated piracy. If they shut down the internet and jailed for life everyone caught sharing, renting, or selling used copies. I don't think for a second that any of that would improve their profits or result in a better product. It didn't result in better products in the days when piracy was sill fairly uncommon. Nor did it make the Nintendo DS a worse product despite rampant piracy on that system. The Dreamcast didn't fail because games were too easy to pirate. It failed because Sony had a better product that offered better value. High quality PC games have sold very well in recent years. Skyrim is a great example.

My point being, if you produce a terrible product, people aren't going to buy it. You have only yourself to blame.

 

[BrightCandle]

I find it amusing that gamer publishers ignore the PC as a platform. Of all the platforms its the largest by quite a way. Sure sales of the PS3 + Xbox 360 combined usually outsell a port to the PC but a PC exclusive that is truly popular will outsell PS3+Xbox+Wii quite handily. I also the think the PC market is a lot less tolerant of faults with games, they do not like ports.

If the best you can do is an average game then you may as well release on console, if you are really good then PC is a better market to sell into with a longer tail of sales.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I used to think quality control on consoles was better than PC. I think it's much more lax now that they think they can just push out an update to a console like they could with PC games (assuming they do). It will only get worse as time goes on.

 

[dust]

I find it amusing that gamer publishers ignore the PC as a platform. Of all the platforms its the largest by quite a way. Sure sales of the PS3 + Xbox 360 combined usually outsell a port to the PC but a PC exclusive that is truly popular will outsell PS3+Xbox+Wii quite handily. I also the think the PC market is a lot less tolerant of faults with games, they do not like ports.

If the best you can do is an average game then you may as well release on console, if you are really good then PC is a better market to sell into with a longer tail of sales.

It better be! Otherwise it wouldn't be that exclusive.:sneaky:

 

[thespyder]

Disagree. I don't know a single person who knows someone who buys a game, copies it through physical means and tries to play it. Pirated games, by far and large, are pre-cracked or distributed with detailed instructions on how to circumvent these measures. In the end, we all lose.

So I don't know who you know. But i know a fair amount of people who play around with Hack programs. They don't pirate themselves, but I have come to understand and appreciate how it works. Maybe i just hang with a more technical crowd.

Digital cameras don't follow you around after you leave the store.

You're proving my point.

I think perhaps I chose the wrong wording. I was attempting to express how DRM is intended to work and that the "Intended" method is no different than what exists today. The analogy of the digital camera still applies (Install authentication). It watches everyone in the store. And if it has reasonable suspicion, legal authorities DO follow you home (routine monitoring over time).

However, DRM today tends to be more invasive then perhaps was intended, and actually impacts legitimate consumers. This is not the intended state (or so I would suppose). And needs to be rectified.

Maybe our stances aren't that different. However, I was just trying to clarify that DRM isn't like some burly guy in a suit that chaperones you through the store and then follows you home. If it were, a whole lot more people would be impacted than actually are.

I would say that less than 10% of legitimate consumers are impacted. They are a vocal 10%, but they are not the majority (as you indicate by your analogy).

 

[frozentundra123456]

It better be! Otherwise it wouldn't be that exclusive.:sneaky:

Good catch on the inappropriate wording dust. Anyway, I think what he meant to say was that a multiplatform game optimized well for the PC will outsell consoles. Unfortunately, even this I dont really think is true. I dont have the figures, but even though Skyrim was a great success on the PC, didnt it sell much more on the consoles?

Can any one name a recent game developed for all three platforms that sold more in absolute numbers on the PC? Dont get me wrong, I am a great fan of the PC and dont play on consoles at all except some family games on the Wii. But unfortunately consoles are where the sales are.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I also have a comment in regards to DRM. I am not a fan of DRM, and am especially opposed to the always on the internet, no offline play model. In fact I was looking forward immensely to Diablo 3, but probably will not buy it due to the always online DRM, and also the auction house crap.

That said, I cant recall any games recently that I have not been able to play due to DRM. It may be annoying (windows live), but none of that has prevented me from playing a game.

 

[SirStev0]

"B....b...b....but Piracy!"

this.

 

[reallyscrued]

So I don't know who you know. But i know a fair amount of people who play around with Hack programs. They don't pirate themselves, but I have come to understand and appreciate how it works. Maybe i just hang with a more technical crowd.

No argument there, but I assume their chance at stopping the highly technical is slim to none anyway; I'm sure their mission is to stop the casual downloader and crack applier - ie - my crowd. My point is they are doing a piss poor job of it. Go on teh bay real quick and try to come across a game you *can't* find.

My original assertion was that they accomplish nothing with their methods and I stick by that.

I think perhaps I chose the wrong wording. I was attempting to express how DRM is intended to work and that the "Intended" method is no different than what exists today. The analogy of the digital camera still applies (Install authentication). It watches everyone in the store. And if it has reasonable suspicion, legal authorities DO follow you home (routine monitoring over time).

However, DRM today tends to be more invasive then perhaps was intended, and actually impacts legitimate consumers. This is not the intended state (or so I would suppose). And needs to be rectified.

Maybe our stances aren't that different. However, I was just trying to clarify that DRM isn't like some burly guy in a suit that chaperones you through the store and then follows you home. If it were, a whole lot more people would be impacted than actually are.

I would say that less than 10% of legitimate consumers are impacted. They are a vocal 10%, but they are not the majority (as you indicate by your analogy).

I think you're right, our stances aren't that far apart but as per your image of the burly guy that follows you home...well, what you don't know about can't hurt you I guess. And it seemed utterly cliche to use the slippery slope argument here but I don't see any reason of why not to apply it.

A few posts back I mentioned that they way I interpret they want their business run is that if you buy software you don't like, you won't be able to sell it or return it, you're basically stuck with it. Now in addition to this they'd like to install 'security cameras' in our personal computers. (/tinfoil hat)

And now they're blaming sales on it?

I don't see consumers benefiting in any way with the direction the wind is blowing and I don't see how you can argue that how it is now should be how it should be.