Crytek says they will not longer be pc exclusive

[Modelworks]

While discussions of piracy are welcome here, openly admitting to software piracy is not permitted. Please cease doing so, or it will result in the offending members posting privileges being suspended. - PC Gaming Moderator - DAPUNISHER

I understand their reasoning.
Piracy is rampant on the pc side of things.
While people do pirate on the console side, its much harder to do and involves modifying the hardware. Something lots of people will not do.

I just hope they don't start doing console first and then everythings a port to pc.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2...-longer-pc-exclusive/1

Crytek, while it maybe never had anything properly announced or set in stone, was possibly the last of the big-time developers to focus only on PC. Even Epic, id Software and Bethesda are multiplatform at best when it comes to game releases.

Crytek has now confirmed though that it will no longer be a PC exclusive developer because of industry pressures resulting from piracy.

"We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin. I believe that?s the core problem of PC gaming: PC gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform," Crytek president Cevat Yerli told PC Play.

"Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won?t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive any more.?

Piracy was also cited as one of the main reasons for the closure of Titan Quest developer Iron Lore Studios and is a major concern for developers and publishers at the moment.

RockPaperShotgun recently investigated the rampancy of pirated games and found that from a single site in a single day more than 25,000 copies of Assassin's Creed PC had been downloaded illegally - and that's before the game was even released!

 

[Riverhound777]

Wah Wah wah... why do they feel the need to blame piracy, couldn't they just say they wanted to expand to consoles? I never played Crysis, and now I don't plan on it. Screw em.

 

[Edge1]

Piracy or no, I'd love to know the bottom line net profits on a reasonably successful PC game.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: Edge1
Piracy or no, I'd love to know the bottom line net profits on a reasonably successful PC game.

To the developer its about 15% on the retail price.

 

[KMFJD]

I just had a quick look at 1 torrent site, i see GTA 4 with 200 seeds and 1000 leeches....good thing people only pirate PC Games....

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
Wah Wah wah... why do they feel the need to blame piracy, couldn't they just say they wanted to expand to consoles? I never played Crysis, and now I don't plan on it. Screw em.

Err... what? What exactly are you angry about?

 

[Riverhound777]

Originally posted by: Martimus

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
Wah Wah wah... why do they feel the need to blame piracy, couldn't they just say they wanted to expand to consoles? I never played Crysis, and now I don't plan on it. Screw em.

Err... what? What exactly are you angry about?

I'm angry about all these developers blaming their problems on Piracy.

 

[Edge1]

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: Edge1
Piracy or no, I'd love to know the bottom line net profits on a reasonably successful PC game.

To the developer its about 15% on the retail price.

Thanks Modelworks. If I do some very basic math with numbers obtained from *ahem* wikipedia, then Crysis, with 1 million units sold at, let's say, an avg of $40 ($6 net profit per), resulted in $6M total net profit and counting. Just trying to get some perspective.

Comparing those results with a reasonably successful 360 or PS3 game would probably be a truer perspective on why a developer chooses consoles as a platform for future work. I bet those numbers are impressive.

Note - in no way do I condone piracy.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: Edge1
Note - in no way do I condone piracy.

I hear that. I remember when I was young, the NES days, games for it were $40+. And yet, here we are in 2008 and games for the PC are a whopping, $40+.



If you divide the number of playable hours for good games by the cost, you usually get less than $4 per hour. Sometimes, especially when the game includes a good MP, it's pennies per hour.

I would have paid $100 for some of my games.

 

[tigersty1e]

Either 1 of 2 things.

1. They are idiots for just now realizing people priate PC games.

2. They know about the pirating, but want to expand profits.

 

[KeithTalent]

This does not surprise me in the least. It was only a matter of time.

Profits are, of course, the real reason, but piracy is the easy scapegoat.

KT

 

[skyofavalon]

I hope they know what they are getting themselves into.If they release a game on PS3/360 it has to run good,they cant do what they did with Crysis.

They cant release a "future proof game" on PS3 and tell everyone dont worry it'll run great of PS4

 

[AstroManLuca]

It's just annoying that a lot of publishers and devs seem to think that one pirated copy = one lost sale. That's not even close to true, especially for games that have no demo available. I know Crysis did have a demo, but a lot of the people who pirated Crysis probably wouldn't have bought it in any situation.

Personally, I tend to stay away from SP-focused games on the PC, at least for first-person shooters. They just don't provide enough replay value to be worth it. Furthermore, that keeps me away from pirating games because I tend to be rather uninterested in the SP campaigns and you generally can't do multiplayer if you pirate a game (obviously there are a lot of better reasons not to pirate but that's one practical one among many).

 

[chizow]

Crytek has to take some of the blame for poor sales by creating a game that is only playable on such a low % (maybe 20%?) of PCs sold/built in the last year. But its obviously not something they're making up as Dev after Dev continues to cite piracy as a key concern in the industry. I think its clear Devs will continue to develop for the PC, but its a bit concerning whether future titles will be ports/cross-platform or delayed on the PC going forward. Unfortunately piracy is just part of the PC platform's culture with no solution in sight.

People are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money on hardware, but balk at a $50 retail price tag for a game or $10 monthly subscription fee. Its mind-boggling really. Part of me thinks its a sense of entitlement, that buying the hardware entitles you access to "free" software. I remember looking at a recent poll on Guru3D that asked what kind of Windows version you were running....I believe only 20% reported a legit copy of Windows with the other choices being some form of pirated copy.

Even looking at overclocking you see this mindset, as there was some controversy early on whether overclocking was "stealing" performance. The CPU industry was quick to put restrictions on OC'ing by locking chips and voiding warranty, but have become more lenient lately with "Black" and "Extreme" editions. The GPU industry has all but embraced OC'ing. I think they both saw that OC'ing didn't really impact their sales, and if anything, increased them.

Edit: Oh right, the point was I think Crysis targets a demographic that may be more inclined to pirate games, the hardware enthusiast that goes for broke on hardware and feels everything else should be free to play on that expensive hardware.

 

[brandonb]

This reminds me of the mid/late 90's.

Software houses are developing, but nobody is buying. They blame piracy (as they did back then) but they don't look at the real reason for the problem.

There isn't anything being produced that is any fun.

"Fun" is a subjective term, but in the mid to late nineties, we had about 100 doom clones. Shadow Mancer, Redneck Rampage, Blood, Hexen, Heretic, Hexen 2, and who knows what else. People stopped buying because it was just the same crap thrown at us over and over again. During this time period, nobody produced any RPG games. It wasn't until Baldur's Gate and Diablo that the gaming side of things started to pick up again. And that only happened because they were just different than the doom clones out there.

We are starting to see that today. Look at all the MMORPG's coming out and have been released over the last few years. They bring nothing new to the table, nothing new as far as gameplay is considered. It's still the same old leveling treadmill, respawning monster, static quests/dungeons/gameplay that we've seen dozens of times before.

Until someone comes out with something new. Nothing will change. What has changed in FPS lately? The only one to even change up the scene was Battlefield 1942... Otherwise its just been the same run and gun crap we've seen for 10 years. Now we just have Battlefield 1942 clones and run and guns. Is it no wonder Unreal 3 or Crysis failed? I played the demo of both for a day each (8 hours playtime) and to be honest, I had absolutely no interest in buying either. There was nothing there new or what captured me, except more pretty graphics which didn't do much for me. I don't buy games for graphics, I play them to be entertained and to have fun.

The last games to throughly "wow" me was Eq1 and Falcon4. Before that Master of Orion 2, and before that Bard's Tale series, and that was the 1980's which doesn't count.

Each brought something new to the table which advanced gameplay.

There is a market on the PC side of things, The Sims series proves that, and I'm sure that gets pirated too.

Maybe Crytek should innovate, rather that replicate.

 

[Maleficus]

Developers blaming piracy makes me see red, I'm so sick of 'piracy' being the scapegoat for shitty devs.

 

[Skott]

I do realize there is piracy and its a problem but I dont think its as big of a problem as they try to make it out to be. It may be harder to pirate on the console side but that wont stop it from happening. As more people move to consoles so will more of the pirates. They'll figure out ways around the console legalities. Personally, I think companies and game developers use the piracy issue as an excuse to move to consoles. This gives them a way out of saying, "Hey, I dont want to support pc gaming anymore" and not offending the pc users. Walking through the stores I see how the console games have a much higher price tag than pc games generally do. Thats why they are going towards console games IMO. The money.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: brandonb
There is a market on the PC side of things, The Sims series proves that, and I'm sure that gets pirated too.

Maybe Crytek should innovate, rather that replicate.

Thing is, I highly doubt the majority of the "Sims crowd" is tech savvy enough to pirate the Sims. There's also less need to pirate as the titles and expansions are cheaper than your average PC title. Retailers substantiate this with their ads, as I've seen nothing but Sims titles advertised in BB and CC fliers in lieu of any other PC games. Its really frustrating seeing full page spreads for the consoles and indescript, easily overlooked single PC titles, but do you blame them?

I thought Crytek did a good job of delivering an innovative game, maybe too much so in terms of hardware requirements. That may be part of the reason they kept it on the PC. I think the future for PC will have to be some sort of cheaper digital download to cut retail price and increase profits to the actual devs. The other proven method would be some kind of monthly subscription, but that's a much smaller pie and there's only so many slices out there. Another idea I saw here recently was Episodic charges. Like you pay say $10 for each piece of the game up to say, $50 for the entire game. That would be a compromise between the folks who demand demos and the folks who pay full retail while allowing the product to largely determine its success.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Developers blaming piracy makes me see red, I'm so sick of 'piracy' being the scapegoat for shitty devs.

And I'm so sick of you discounting it and instead blaming it on the product being shitty. But of course you think everything is shitty, which justifies your position that pirating is acceptable. Big surprise. :roll:

 

[AstroManLuca]

I think a lot of the people here who have a strong negative reaction to developers blaming poor sales on piracy are really just offended because they feel they're being lumped in with people who pirate games. It's like when the teacher punishes the whole class because a few rowdy kids were making trouble.

The fact is, though, piracy is a problem for PC games. I'm not sure anyone knows just how big of a problem it is, for several reasons, but I'm sure it affects PC game sales at least a little, if not quite a bit more. There are just too many factors involved to be able to narrow down its effects with any certainty.

1. Do PC gamers tend to buy more or less games than console gamers?
2. How big a role does the recent falling quality and lack of innovation in PC games play? Are gamers simply too demanding?
3. How many people pirate games without ever intending to buy them (e.g., given the choice between purchasing the game and simply never being able to play it at all, they would choose the latter)?
4. Does the economic downturn affect this as well?
5. Chicken and egg theory: Are gamers moving to consoles because more and better games are being developed for them, or are console games better because gamers are moving to consoles?
6. This probably represents a fairly small number, but how many of those pirated copies were downloaded by people who either eventually bought the game (i.e. used a pirated copy as a demo) or who already bought the game and are downloading it to bypass restrictive DRM schemes?

 

[miniMUNCH]

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Developers blaming piracy makes me see red, I'm so sick of 'piracy' being the scapegoat for shitty devs.

Crysis is not a shitty game.

Titan Quest is not a shitty game.

Yet these games are hammered by piracy.

Two of my game dev friends have also told me that piracy is killing the PC platform, more so than PS3 or 360, by far.

One friend said they expect 80% of their PC installs to be pirated where as the number is more like 10-20% on console.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: Riverhound777

Originally posted by: Martimus

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
Wah Wah wah... why do they feel the need to blame piracy, couldn't they just say they wanted to expand to consoles? I never played Crysis, and now I don't plan on it. Screw em.

Err... what? What exactly are you angry about?

I'm angry about all these developers blaming their problems on Piracy.

Piracy is part of their problems. Especially if MiniMunch is anywhere near right about the percentage of people who pirate the game. 2-3% would be acceptable and probably wouldn't require any changes. 5-10% is a little excessive, but may be made up by skimping on develepment costs or increasing costs for actual sales. 80% is completely insane, and I would get out of that business immediately. I wonder if they made any money on that game or if they are at a net loss after all that work they did.

Of course there are other problems for high cost PC games, such as the need to support a near infinite number of hardware configurations; and the fact that most computers have very bad integrated graphics which reduces what you can do with those.

Look at all the trouble Take Two has had, and they have two of the most success games ever with Guitar Hero and Grand theft Auto. Making video games just isn't a profitable business, which doesn't seem to make much sense considering how many people play games. I never thought that pirating was nearly that bad, but some of the comments on here about people finding pirated software after looking for only a few seconds shows me that is is a huge problem. I only hope that is is stopped to the point that it gets back down to that 2-3% range, and the rest of us don't have to suffer because of the douche bags who steal everything.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: miniMUNCH

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Developers blaming piracy makes me see red, I'm so sick of 'piracy' being the scapegoat for shitty devs.

Crysis is not a shitty game.

Titan Quest is not a shitty game.

Yet these games are hammered by piracy.

Two of my game dev friends have also told me that piracy is killing the PC platform, more so than PS3 or 360, by far.

One friend said they expect 80% of their PC installs to be pirated where as the number is more like 10-20% on console.

I seriously question his figures. I just stopped buying games that fail to interest me, don't even bother to pirate them.

Guess we can look forward to more of the same with more and more devs going consoles. Identical, limited, dumbed down gameplay, with dull graphics that don't change much for half a decade.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Developers blaming piracy makes me see red, I'm so sick of 'piracy' being the scapegoat for shitty devs.

Movie producers pull the same crap. That guy who made that horrible movie Hostel 2 said piracy was the cause of poor sales. That movie is so bad that I don't even know anyone who has a pirated or legal copy. It's not even worth stealing.

There's usually some truth to piracy hurting sales, but people will only pirate it if there are people willing to buy it. If your software is a piece of crap that nobody is willing to buy, it's fair to assume that nobody is willing to pirate it either. Lowering the price to free doesn't automatically make something a good deal. I don't eat roadkill, even though that's free.

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: miniMUNCH

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Developers blaming piracy makes me see red, I'm so sick of 'piracy' being the scapegoat for shitty devs.

Crysis is not a shitty game.

Titan Quest is not a shitty game.

Yet these games are hammered by piracy.

Two of my game dev friends have also told me that piracy is killing the PC platform, more so than PS3 or 360, by far.

One friend said they expect 80% of their PC installs to be pirated where as the number is more like 10-20% on console.

Piracy is probably more prevalent on the PC because you don't need to do anything to the hardware. Just download the torrent and there you go. I know the dreamcast could play copies without mod chips... but what about ps3, xbox, or the wii?

EDIT: oops what the OP said!