Gears of War's online cheat detection features/ expired certificate disables game

[chizow]

Originally posted by: jbourne77
What's the point of debating if you're not committed to the argument? Like I said, chizow made some very good points. Maybe he's not "worth arguing with" because it's too difficult to dispute his points.

I'm a PC gamer and want to see it succeed as a platform, but everything chizow stated is true. Just because we may not like what he's saying doesn't mean he's wrong.

The problem is that most people who share our views and concerns about the PC industry are a silent majority, perhaps not even the majority given the rampant piracy rates on the PC. I've received enough PMs though thanking me for calling out the BS of these pro-piracy/anti-DRM folks to know we're not alone though.

It comes down to this, I got tired of seeing companies who produced and developed games I enjoy over the years close their doors or switch to consoles, then blame piracy as the primary reason. I also got tired of watching idiots who contributed to that problem openly admit to stealing those titles, then proclaim the real reason those companies went under was because their games sucked.

Once enough people realize pirates are in fact the primary cause of the PC gaming industry's decline, they'll more actively let those petty thieves know its not acceptable behavior and we may finally start seeing a change in the culture of piracy and PC gaming. Whether its too late or not...we'll see.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: Maximilian

Originally posted by: jbourne77
I'm a PC gamer and want to see it succeed as a platform, but everything chizow stated is true. Just because we may not like what he's saying doesn't mean he's wrong.

No hes repetitive and boring.

Perhaps, but only because there's nothing else needed to be said, and no one has debunked his analysis. The nail in the coffin, in my opinion, is the fiscal analysis. You can't argue with sales figures that aren't just declining year to year, but doing so at an increasing rate. If the rate at which the PC game market is shrinking each year is accelerating, how could one possibly argue that it's in good shape and all is hunky-dory?

Detroit operated like that. For a while.

Well i really dont feel the need to disprove what he says, i dont care, what effect will it have in the long run? Zilch.

My view is the devs that can cut it in the pc gaming arena will succeed or continue to succeed, those that cant will go to consoles or go defunct. I have my starcraft II and diablo III, im satisfied with that. PC gaming is changing, not dying. Besides sales data... it dosent count digital distribution etc, plus theres 3 consoles so really its not fair to compare "consoles" to the PC alone.

Thats all im gonna say because its been done to death and its boring, im not retreading this again... As a PC and xbox gamer i can tell its not dying, like i said its simply changing, i dont need sales figures to form the backbone of my arguement :roll: Unlike the DRM happy chizow i actually am a gamer, not an EA shill.

 

[VashHT]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: jbourne77
What's the point of debating if you're not committed to the argument? Like I said, chizow made some very good points. Maybe he's not "worth arguing with" because it's too difficult to dispute his points.

I'm a PC gamer and want to see it succeed as a platform, but everything chizow stated is true. Just because we may not like what he's saying doesn't mean he's wrong.

The problem is that most people who share our views and concerns about the PC industry are a silent majority, perhaps not even the majority given the rampant piracy rates on the PC. I've received enough PMs though thanking me for calling out the BS of these pro-piracy/anti-DRM folks to know we're not alone though.

It comes down to this, I got tired of seeing companies who produced and developed games I enjoy over the years close their doors or switch to consoles, then blame piracy as the primary reason. I also got tired of watching idiots who contributed to that problem openly admit to stealing those titles, then proclaim the real reason those companies went under was because their games sucked.

Once enough people realize pirates are in fact the primary cause of the PC gaming industry's decline, they'll more actively let those petty thieves know its not acceptable behavior and we may finally start seeing a change in the culture of piracy and PC gaming. Whether its too late or not...we'll see.

You could at least admit that GoW was an awful port to the PC and that was probably the reason it sold so poorly. Not only was it insanely buggy on release, it was also ported long after people stopped caring about it. Yes piracy is bad, it would be insanely nice if a company could come up with DRM that didn't bother legitimate customers and stopped pirates, but I've often seen you go off on people calling them pirates and thieves just because they're anti-DRM.

 

[Canai]

Originally posted by: VashHT

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: jbourne77
What's the point of debating if you're not committed to the argument? Like I said, chizow made some very good points. Maybe he's not "worth arguing with" because it's too difficult to dispute his points.

I'm a PC gamer and want to see it succeed as a platform, but everything chizow stated is true. Just because we may not like what he's saying doesn't mean he's wrong.

The problem is that most people who share our views and concerns about the PC industry are a silent majority, perhaps not even the majority given the rampant piracy rates on the PC. I've received enough PMs though thanking me for calling out the BS of these pro-piracy/anti-DRM folks to know we're not alone though.

It comes down to this, I got tired of seeing companies who produced and developed games I enjoy over the years close their doors or switch to consoles, then blame piracy as the primary reason. I also got tired of watching idiots who contributed to that problem openly admit to stealing those titles, then proclaim the real reason those companies went under was because their games sucked.

Once enough people realize pirates are in fact the primary cause of the PC gaming industry's decline, they'll more actively let those petty thieves know its not acceptable behavior and we may finally start seeing a change in the culture of piracy and PC gaming. Whether its too late or not...we'll see.

You could at least admit that GoW was an awful port to the PC and that was probably the reason it sold so poorly. Not only was it insanely buggy on release, it was also ported long after people stopped caring about it. Yes piracy is bad, it would be insanely nice if a company could come up with DRM that didn't bother legitimate customers and stopped pirates, but I've often seen you go off on people calling them pirates and thieves just because they're anti-DRM.

Chiz, you are flat out wrong on the bolded part. Vash hits another great point... PC gamers are now getting the 'leftovers' - actually, we've been getting the leftovers ever since Microsoft bought out Bungie and forced Halo to the Xbox. Publishers force the devs to release on consoles only until they think they have sold most of what they can, and then they release it on PC. Why? Because if GoW or Halo had been released on PC at the same time it was released on the consoles, nobody would have bought it for the consoles.

When Halo was released for PC, it was outdated trash. Now, imagine what would have happened if it had been released on PC on its original schedule... It would have been groundbreakingly amazing.

You know what's killing PC game sales right now? Your beloved DRM. I, and many other gamers, do not purchase games with the strict overbearing DRM. Those who choose to pirate will pirate regardless of what kind of DRM the game has, but those who choose to purchase will forgo playing - and purchasing - a game that's heavily DRM'd.

Also, you need to realize that the pro-piracy and anti-DRM people are two distinctly different groups. Sure, the pro-piracy people are anti-DRM, but by no means are the anti-DRM people pro-piracy. That connection makes about as much sense as the pro-DRM/nutter connection

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Canai
Great dev houses have been closing ever since the beginning (Black Isle anyone?) - and on top of that we're in an economically unstable time. Devs have never made all that much off of their titles - most of the per unit sale goes to the middle men, mainly the publisher. Essentially what is happening is the mega publishers have set an industry standard of profits, and if those profits margins are not maintained, the game is a 'failure.'

And every pirated copy that could've been a potential sale directly contributes to this problem. There's plenty of devs and publishers who have said this, along with the people here who have either directly or indirectly seen the effects of piracy on a particular game title.

Take Crysis for example - the game that piracy ruined. Despite selling enough copies in the first few months to qualify it as an AAA game, it didn't live up to the projected profits and was deemed a victim of piracy by EA. So instead of continuing updates and patches for Crysis, Crytek canceled patches and released the fixes in the DRM encrusted Warhead. The engine updates and tweaks should have been a patch for Crysis, and the expansion should have been the new levels and gameplay elements, but since it's difficult to employ the uber SecuROM on titles that have already been released, Crysis was abandoned which leaves people - like me - who loved Crysis' more open-ended gameplay with a broken, laggy game and no hope of ever having Warhead's improvements.

Selling enough copies to qualify as AAA and seeing piracy rates mirror copies sold are very different things. You just admitted above, that any single title may have small profits despite being "successful". Additional profits simply allow more margin for failure with future enterprises. And if there is no margin, the dev house closes. Do you honestly think break-even is the only goal for a particular title? Its obvious piracy hurts not only the title in question, but every potential future title.

As for Crysis, Cevat Yertli has stated they are going away from PC exclusive in the future because of piracy, and that the next CryEngine is going to be developed for the next-gen PlayStation as its focus. This is where the pro-piracy/anti-DRM folks chime in and say they don't care because Crysis sucked. And when Crysis 2 launches on the consoles first, then the PC 6 months later or not at all, we can look back and wonder why.......

Games are no longer about gameplay, customer satisfaction, innovation, or quality. They are now about one thing: money. PC gamers are a picky, fussy, whiny bunch, who talk with their wallets, so the mega publishers started targeting the boob tube generation. You can't pawn a $40 console port POS game to PC gamers, but stick the same game in a shiny box and sell it for $60 for the PS3 or 360 and you've got instant profits since the buyers, for the most part, have little or no idea what they're getting into (aka whiny console tweens and drunken frat boys).

No, PC gamers are just as Cliff B said, people who know how to download and run a torrent. On the high-end you have those who feel the high price of hardware equates to entitlement to free software. You'll see that attitude is pervasive on forums such as these, people with thousands in dollars of hardware, expensive video cards, but won't pay $10 for downloadable content. On the low-end you have those who are just casual gamers who may not know downloading games and not paying for them is stealing (see World of Goo, Spore). Such is the culture of PC gaming with widely available broadband.

So you want to blame piracy? Go ahead. But you are wrong in holding piracy as the main factor, and you are wrong in pushing for more DRM. Is piracy a contributing factor? Sure, but by no means is it the only or even the main factor. Developing for the wide variety of hardware configurations is a MUCH larger factor, since it is much, much cheaper to make a game with one or two specific hardware setups in mind.

So what's the main factor? Crappy games? That kinda ignores fact the same (often inferior) console versions are selling exponentially more copies with exponentially lower piracy rates than the PC version. Fewer capable gaming units? Xbox360/PS3 have almost 50 million units worldwide, Nvidia claimed to have 100 million DX10 units alone. Mix in ATI's % market share and that's nearly 150 million DX10 capable GPUs, all more powerful than the GPUs in the 360/PS3. Yet the consoles still sell far more copies.

In the past some of your arguments might have held some water, but now, not so much given the variety and selection of titles that have simultaneous released on PC and consoles (COD4/5, Fallout 3). I've got plenty of evidence backing this claim as well, if you're really interested, particularly for COD4.

Also, ripped versions of the console games are usually online much faster than the PC variants.

Perhaps, but that doesn't change the fact piracy on consoles is much less pervasive than on the PC, despite selling more copies.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: VashHT
You could at least admit that GoW was an awful port to the PC and that was probably the reason it sold so poorly. Not only was it insanely buggy on release, it was also ported long after people stopped caring about it.

Actually I haven't made any direct comment about GoW's sales or market failure, but I'd agree a major reason it was irrelevant on the PC was due to its latent release. It actually ran quite well on my machine with a 8800GTX given the fact it was still one of the best looking titles at the time (Dec 2007).

Yes piracy is bad, it would be insanely nice if a company could come up with DRM that didn't bother legitimate customers and stopped pirates, but I've often seen you go off on people calling them pirates and thieves just because they're anti-DRM.

If I've gone off on anyone and called them a pirate or thief, its because I have cause and a specific admission, whether intentional or not. The only thing worst than a thief is one who's too stupid to keep quiet about it. There's plenty of the latter around here.

As for DRM....again, any DRM is going to bother legitimate customers, there is no such thing as benign DRM. Paying customers need to understand this, what publishers need to do is to ensure DRM actually works in preventing piracy, given its going to be invasive and bothersome by nature and design.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Canai
Bunch of nonsense from an admitted pirate

Like I said in my previous reply, I have plenty of evidence comparing major releases on the PC and consoles backing my claim, if you're truly interested.

 

[mindcycle]

The reason big devs are closing shop on the PC games market is because console games cater to the lowest common denominator and thus make more money. It's no surprise that they'd want to focus on a platform that will make them more money easier. Hardcore PC gamers nowadays on average are typically older than the console crowd, as many of us grew up with PC gaming and have stuck with it through many generations of consoles. We demand smarter games, and don't tolerate shitty mindless console ports as much. The amount of PC games being released recently that actually fit that bill are few and far between.

Now, back to the argument at hand. I believe that just because the PC market is seemingly shrinking doesn't mean it's going away. Maybe no one here is arguing that it is going away, but it sure seems like it to me. My original post in this thread was that I don't care about MS dropping out of the PC games market, and I still stick by that statement. I just don't think it matters as there will be another dev to take up the slack.

So yeah.. We could argue all day about the specifics, but none of this is really going anywhere. Chessewiz will continue his everyone is a pirate blabbering and how he's proved everyone wrong. But whatever. Have fun with all that.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Maximilian
Well i really dont feel the need to disprove what he says, i dont care, what effect will it have in the long run? Zilch.

It'll prove that I was right.

My view is the devs that can cut it in the pc gaming arena will succeed or continue to succeed, those that cant will go to consoles or go defunct. I have my starcraft II and diablo III, im satisfied with that. PC gaming is changing, not dying. Besides sales data... it dosent count digital distribution etc, plus theres 3 consoles so really its not fair to compare "consoles" to the PC alone.

Ironically, one of the major reasons SC2 and D3 are possible is because Blizzard has always had one of the most effective forms of DRM in B.net.

As for PC gaming changing, I'm sure you'll see this first-hand with SC2 coming in 3 installments. Its also unclear whether or not SC2/D3 will be completely free to play. If Blizzard says micro-payments and pay-to-play are required to keep these games viable on the PC, will you accept it as PC gaming "changing" or are you going to say you don't care about that studio?

Thats all im gonna say because its been done to death and its boring, im not retreading this again... As a PC and xbox gamer i can tell its not dying, like i said its simply changing, i dont need sales figures to form the backbone of my arguement :roll: Unlike the DRM happy chizow i actually am a gamer, not an EA shill.

Rofl, what was that about narrow-minded arguments? You don't need to rely on sales figures alone, you can look at numerous quotes from leading devs, actual title releases, future releases (Dragon Age delay as an example), and console exclusives as clear examples of the PC Game industry changing, for the worst.

As for being DRM happy, I dislike DRM as much as the next guy, but I do quite enjoy the negative reaction effective DRM causes.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: mindcycle
The reason big devs are closing shop on the PC games market is because console games cater to the lowest common denominator and thus make more money. It's no surprise that they'd want to focus on a platform that will make them more money easier. Hardcore PC gamers nowadays on average are typically older than the console crowd, as many of us grew up with PC gaming and have stuck with it through many generations of consoles. We demand smarter games, and don't tolerate shitty mindless console ports as much. The amount of PC games being released recently that actually fit that bill are few and far between.

Yes, lets make up reasons based on whatever we feel is true instead of direct quotes from those devs backed by actual sales data and piracy statistics. LOL.

Now, back to the argument at hand. I believe that just because the PC market is seemingly shrinking doesn't mean it's going away. Maybe no one here is arguing that it is going away, but it sure seems like it to me. My original post in this thread was that I don't care about MS dropping out of the PC games market, and I still stick by that statement. I just don't think it matters as there will be another dev to take up the slack.

Actually that link you provided earlier is a great example of how far the industry has declined, where the majority of titles are from a handful of devs/studios EA/Bioware, Activision/Blizzard and to a lesser degree 2K and Relic.

You can say you don't care about studios closing, but that doesn't get away from the fact there's going to be 1) less selection and variety and 2) little/no chance for closed franchises/licenses to continue going forward. Again, I'm sure there's plenty of people who enjoyed the AoE, MW, and FS franchises that will wonder every few years why there isn't a new version out.....

So yeah.. We could argue all day about the specifics, but none of this is really going anywhere. Chessewiz will continue his everyone is a pirate blabbering and how he's proved everyone wrong. But whatever. Have fun with all that.

Oh how clever. What's the point of arguing specifics when Hamster-poweredMindTri-cycle(with training wheels and handle tassles) will just ignore them? And I don't lump in everyone as a pirate, you just find yourself in the unfortunate position of being wrong and arguing in their favor more often than not.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: jbourne77

Originally posted by: mindcycle
All I know is that PC games aren't going to die off.

"Die off" is too strong of a phrase. Of course we'll always have PC games. The question, rather, is whether or not the selection of quality games will be at all comparable to what's available on consoles. If current trends continue, it doesn't make sense to be too optimistic.

It will still be a while before PC gaming gets as bad as console gaming. Example: Fallout 3 is my pick for PC game of the decade, but for Xbox it is so terrible that it's almost unplayable. There's a weight limit of about 250lbs, the gear that you wear easily takes up 100lbs of that, and you're left warping to town every 5 minutes to sell off the extra weight. Literally, every 5 minutes you need to warp back to town and sell everything or else you'll be overweight and not allowed to warp since every piece of armor dropped by an enemy weighs about 20 pounds. On Xbox you just deal with it and warp back all the time. On PC you install a mod that sets the weight limit to 50 tons and it's no longer a problem.

Until consoles reach that level of customization (ability to fix broken games)4, I don't think we have anything to worry about. There will be fewer PC games of course, but the quality will be ahead for many years.

You could at least admit that GoW was an awful port to the PC and that was probably the reason it sold so poorly.

I'm not the person you quoted but I'll reply anyway. I personally liked GoW on PC. The graphics are incredible, it's a very smooth game, the sound effects are excellent, and overall it was a very nice experience. I enjoyed the challenge and I played through the game several times.
The biggest thing against GoW is that the game did not work when I installed it. Even with the DVD in the drive it keeps telling me to put the DVD in the drive. This game absolutely does not work unless you crack it; there's no way around it. That is why this game failed on the PC.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Maximilian
Well i really dont feel the need to disprove what he says, i dont care, what effect will it have in the long run? Zilch.

It'll prove that I was right.

My view is the devs that can cut it in the pc gaming arena will succeed or continue to succeed, those that cant will go to consoles or go defunct. I have my starcraft II and diablo III, im satisfied with that. PC gaming is changing, not dying. Besides sales data... it dosent count digital distribution etc, plus theres 3 consoles so really its not fair to compare "consoles" to the PC alone.

Ironically, one of the major reasons SC2 and D3 are possible is because Blizzard has always had one of the most effective forms of DRM in B.net.

As for PC gaming changing, I'm sure you'll see this first-hand with SC2 coming in 3 installments. Its also unclear whether or not SC2/D3 will be completely free to play. If Blizzard says micro-payments and pay-to-play are required to keep these games viable on the PC, will you accept it as PC gaming "changing" or are you going to say you don't care about that studio?

Thats all im gonna say because its been done to death and its boring, im not retreading this again... As a PC and xbox gamer i can tell its not dying, like i said its simply changing, i dont need sales figures to form the backbone of my arguement :roll: Unlike the DRM happy chizow i actually am a gamer, not an EA shill.

Rofl, what was that about narrow-minded arguments? You don't need to rely on sales figures alone, you can look at numerous quotes from leading devs, actual title releases, future releases (Dragon Age delay as an example), and console exclusives as clear examples of the PC Game industry changing, for the worst.

As for being DRM happy, I dislike DRM as much as the next guy, but I do quite enjoy the negative reaction effective DRM causes.

Like i said you bore me, not retreading etc etc, so heres a picture of you. Enjoy

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
The biggest thing against GoW is that the game did not work when I installed it. Even with the DVD in the drive it keeps telling me to put the DVD in the drive. This game absolutely does not work unless you crack it; there's no way around it. That is why this game failed on the PC.

That's simply not true. What OS are you running? I was able to run the game through either the "Games" folder in Vista or by directly launching WarGame-G4WLive in the Binaries folder.

Originally posted by: Maximilian
Like i said you bore me, not retreading etc etc, so heres a picture of you. Enjoy

Picture of you roflolol dis iz funz :roll:

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
The biggest thing against GoW is that the game did not work when I installed it. Even with the DVD in the drive it keeps telling me to put the DVD in the drive. This game absolutely does not work unless you crack it; there's no way around it. That is why this game failed on the PC.

That's simply not true. What OS are you running? I was able to run the game through either the "Games" folder in Vista or by directly launching WarGame-G4WLive in the Binaries folder.

I reinstalled the game so I could make a video of this error, but now I have a completely different error altogether. It tells me the game files that I just installed are changed and that the game cannot run. There's a 13 page thread on the Epic Games forum about this and I can't seem to get it working again.
http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=583739
You'll notice that the first post in that thread is from November 2007. This is not related to the current problem this thread is about.

I'm using Vista 32.

 

[tigersty1e]

So what is this modifiable execute problem?

 

[JoshGuru7]

Originally posted by: chizow
It comes down to this, I got tired of seeing companies who produced and developed games I enjoy over the years close their doors or switch to consoles, then blame piracy as the primary reason. I also got tired of watching idiots who contributed to that problem openly admit to stealing those titles, then proclaim the real reason those companies went under was because their games sucked.

Once enough people realize pirates are in fact the primary cause of the PC gaming industry's decline, they'll more actively let those petty thieves know its not acceptable behavior and we may finally start seeing a change in the culture of piracy and PC gaming. Whether its too late or not...we'll see.

I would urge you again not to take statements from the industry as fact. Lets say that you were the project manager for UT3 and the sales under perform the projections made six months before release. Do you:
1) Blame your boss/finance divison for having unrealistic targets?
2) Take the blame yourself for poorly managing the project?
3) Blame piracy for ruining your otherwise perfectly executed project?

Of course Developers are going to shake their fists at the sky and blame piracy, it would be career stupidity to admit that UT3 failed due to terrible decisions you had the final say on. Dev/Publisher PR is the worst sort of data because it is biased, making it worse than no data.

I have yet to see unbiased data that demonstrates either that piracy or DRM hurts PC games sales. There are games that have succeeded by promoting they have no DRM (GalCivII) and games that have been wildly successful with the ultimate form of DRM (WoW). Arguing that DRM helps the industry more than it hurts it is simply conjecture.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
The biggest thing against GoW is that the game did not work when I installed it. Even with the DVD in the drive it keeps telling me to put the DVD in the drive. This game absolutely does not work unless you crack it; there's no way around it. That is why this game failed on the PC.

That's simply not true. What OS are you running? I was able to run the game through either the "Games" folder in Vista or by directly launching WarGame-G4WLive in the Binaries folder.

I reinstalled the game so I could make a video of this error, but now I have a completely different error altogether. It tells me the game files that I just installed are changed and that the game cannot run. There's a 13 page thread on the Epic Games forum about this and I can't seem to get it working again.
http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=583739
You'll notice that the first post in that thread is from November 2007. This is not related to the current problem this thread is about.

I'm using Vista 32.

It is actually the same problem, the initial thread was bumped by the recurring problem described in this thread. The original posters had issues that showed inconclusive problems and fixes, it seems many of them did fix the problem by simply correcting their date and time.

I just tested the work around by setting date to 1/27/2009 and can verify it does work, no additional hacks or cracks needed, launched from Games folder or WarGame-G4WLive in the Binaries folder. If you have issues running it, it could be a conflict with Securom and imaging software, but saying the game can't be run without a crack is just flat out wrong.

Command Console Date/Time Stamp at bottom left

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: JoshGuru7
I would urge you again not to take statements from the industry as fact.

Actually, when industry leads and devs say "we're not going to make games anymore for the PC because of Piracy", it is a fact that piracy is the cause of this decision. You can argue whether their logic, reasoning, and data is sound or not when coming to that decision, but the fact remains, piracy is cited as the main reason for their decision to focus on consoles instead of the PC.

Lets say that you were the project manager for UT3 and the sales under perform the projections made six months before release. Do you:
1) Blame your boss/finance divison for having unrealistic targets?
2) Take the blame yourself for poorly managing the project?
3) Blame piracy for ruining your otherwise perfectly executed project?

Of course Developers are going to shake their fists at the sky and blame piracy, it would be career stupidity to admit that UT3 failed due to terrible decisions you had the final say on. Dev/Publisher PR is the worst sort of data because it is biased, making it worse than no data.

UT3 is a poor example because it sold poorly even on consoles. I'd say Cliff's comments were based more on Gears of War's sale/piracy rates on the PC vs. consoles, which again isn't a perfect example since GoW released more than a year later than on the 360. Still, you have 5 million copies sold on the 360 (from Wiki) to-date, with at least 4 million in the first year on the 360, leaving a max of 1 million for PC sales. Now compare that to the number of pirated copies for both. Based on comparison piracy rates for other titles, I'd say that's what he based his comments off of, not the poor sales of UT3. There's certainly going to be duds from any studio, but that just places greater focus and emphasis on sales and piracy figures with the better titles.

I have yet to see unbiased data that demonstrates either that piracy or DRM hurts PC games sales. There are games that have succeeded by promoting they have no DRM (GalCivII) and games that have been wildly successful with the ultimate form of DRM (WoW). Arguing that DRM helps the industry more than it hurts it is simply conjecture.

I don't see how you can claim there isn't unbiased data when the torrent sites themselves track downloads and 3rd parties compile them:

PC Game Piracy Examined: the Scale of Piracy

When games on the PC see nearly 1:1 ratio of pirated copies to sales, with a much lower ratio than consoles, despite consoles outselling them....I'd say that's pretty compelling evidence. Again, COD4 as a perfect example as it was a simultaneous multi-platform release that most agree "didn't suck" and therefore falls into the "you should pay for this" and not the "pay for this only if you really want to because it sucks" category. You can piece-meal the actual quotes if you like but what you'll find is:

• Activision claiming 7 million copies sold on 360/PS3/PC in 2007, best-selling game of 2007.
• NPD listing ~800,000 copies sold on the PC in 2007, not counting digital distribution.
• Top 10 Pirated PC games of 2008 showing Call of Duty 4 with 830,000 pirated copies, and this doesn't even count the number pirated in the first 2 months after launch! Tweakguides shows about 1/10th the ratio for 360 and PS3, about 1/5th combined, so extended to those platforms, you'd have maybe 160,000 pirated copies on the consoles combined.
• Infinity Ward dev stating how they were appalled to find how rampant piracy was for COD4, even online, with nearly 50% pirated copies/keys.

Despite outselling the PC at a clip of 2 or 3:1, consoles still saw a piracy rate that was a fraction of that seen on the PC..... There's plenty of other data compared and available that show piracy is a major problem on the PC, and while its true there are going to be sucky games, the reality of it is that those sucky games will still be pirated less on consoles than on the PC.

 

[JoshGuru7]

Originally posted by: chizow
Actually, when industry leads and devs say "we're not going to make games anymore for the PC because of Piracy", it is a fact that piracy is the cause of this decision.

This statement is precisely where I believe you abandon rationality. How does saying something cause it to be true? These are people with heavy incentives towards bias speculating on the issue of PC game piracy. I wouldn't be impartial in their positions and I doubt you would either.

You like to link to articles that do not resolve this point in any manner, so I'll point out my concern regarding the TG article you linked as an example.

TG Article Quote #1
Cevat Yerli of Crytek, the makers of Far Cry, Crysis and Crysis Warhead has publicly stated: We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that?s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy, to the degree [that PC gamers who] pirate games inherently destroy the platform. 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.

A developer is explaining why their game flopped. Lots of people pirated Crysis, but there is nothing to indicate that without piracy this game would have been a success. I personally thought Crysis sucked, but the widely held review sentiment that you needed to have a top of the line system to justify the purchase seems like the obvious reason here. Of course, that's not the logic somebody directly responsible for high system requirements is prone to gravitate to.

TG Article Quote #2
John Carmack, often called the 'father of PC gaming', and co-founder of id software, makers of the Doom and Quake series, recently stated: It's hard to second guess exactly what the reasons are. You can say piracy. You can say user migration, but the ground truth is just that the sales numbers on the PC are not what they used to be and are not what they are on the consoles.

Here we have a quote from John Carmack saying that he doesn't know what the exact reasons are for the switch from the PC to the console. How exactly does this help your position that it is proven that piracy is the leading cause of PC game failures?

TG Article Quote #3
CliffyB: Here's the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC. Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.

Similar to quote 1 with the added "bonus" of coming from somebody from Epic. Xbox360 sales vs. PC sales prove absolutely nothing about piracy - people like the Xbox360 for lots of reasons that I find reasonable (xbLive, ease of use, great system for the buck) as well as those I find ridiculous (chasing achievement points, rather play from a couch).

I'll skip the rest of the article because it's just more of the same agenda-based arguments.

Originally posted by: chizow
When games on the PC see nearly 1:1 ratio of pirated copies to sales, with a much lower ratio than consoles, despite consoles outselling them....I'd say that's pretty compelling evidence.

Data indicating that games are most likely to be pirated on the PC platform is very compelling evidence that it is easier to pirate games on the PC platform than on consoles, nothing more. You're missing several key steps along the way to argue from this that piracy is the primary cause of certain developers saying they are going to abandon the PC platform. No matter what the Developers would have you believe, a pirated game does not translate directly to a lost sale on the books and I have yet to see any data that even demonstrates that they are positively correlated.

Bringing up UT3 again, compare UT'99 with UT3. UT'99 had practically no copy protection and was very widely pirated, but was wildly successful as well. UT3 had very effective copy protection and was a flop. I'm not arguing that DRM was the cause for the flop, but neither is it rational to argue that piracy was a factor, let alone the primary factor.

I agree with you that CoD4 is an example of a well executed game. However, read the following quote.

Robert Bowling
"Yeah, we're still extremely excited about the success of the game on PC. The game did phenomenal on PC and we still have a huge community playing on the PC. We're definitely not upset about that success. We do get upset when people pirate our games and it is something we track. There aren't any hard numbers that we can announce but it's something that's definitely disheartening when you put a lot of work and passion into a game and then realize that a large percentage of players are playing on cracked copies. But the PC game did tremendous sales so we're still very excited about the PC version."

Naturally he is concerned about gamers pirating his product, but he has no data to support that sales would be better (or worse) without piracy. Cracked keys in CoD4 have to play on cracked servers (a serious limitation as the cracked servers have no PunkBuster) and everybody I know who played CoD4 bought a legitimate copy so they could play on the vast majority of servers that weren't rampant with hackers.

However, the important line is the bolded phrase. The well executed game (COD4) had "tremendous sales", while the poorly executed game (UT3) was a flop. Piracy and DRM is an attractive scapegoat for the industry (and frustrated gamers) but execution is still what really matters.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: chizow
Picture of you roflolol dis iz funz :roll:

Haha, thats the first worth looking at thing you have ever posted. Grats :thumbsup:

 

[Canai]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Canai
Bunch of nonsense from an admitted pirate

Like I said in my previous reply, I have plenty of evidence comparing major releases on the PC and consoles backing my claim, if you're truly interested.

:laugh: not sure what you're 'quoting' here, since I hadn't made a reply to your last post.

Also, I buy my games now, and your holier-than-thou attitude makes me

So if piracy on consoles isn't so bad, how is it that Nintendo lost a billion dollars in 2007 due to piracy? http://news.softpedia.com/news...do-in-2007-78918.shtml

And I am interested in seeing your data, for a couple games if possible... GoW, UT3, CoD4 and CoD5 stats would be great. I'm specifically interested in seeing if there's a correlation between piracy rates and simultaneous launches across all platforms.

I'll come up with a fuller, more coherent reply to your other post at work, where the real internet arguments happen

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: JoshGuru7
This statement is precisely where I believe you abandon rationality. How does saying something cause it to be true? These are people with heavy incentives towards bias speculating on the issue of PC game piracy. I wouldn't be impartial in their positions and I doubt you would either.

Again, you can argue with the rationale of the decision, but the fact remains, they cite piracy as the basis of their decision. How is this hard to understand? You don't have to agree with their decision, you might not even agree with how they come to that decision, but the fact is, leading devs and publishers are in fact citing piracy as the main reason for shifting focus away from the PC to consoles.

You like to link to articles that do not resolve this point in any manner, so I'll point out my concern regarding the TG article you linked as an example.

They absolutely resolve the point by showing Devs, whether you agree with their analysis, or not, are choosing to focus on the consoles because of piracy.

A developer is explaining why their game flopped. Lots of people pirated Crysis, but there is nothing to indicate that without piracy this game would have been a success. I personally thought Crysis sucked, but the widely held review sentiment that you needed to have a top of the line system to justify the purchase seems like the obvious reason here. Of course, that's not the logic somebody directly responsible for high system requirements is prone to gravitate to.

Actually Crysis didn't flop completely, it sold over a million copies within a few months of release, but was clearly hurt by piracy with over 300,000 pirated torrents to only 86,633 sold copies in its first month. Yes, you needed the best video hardware at the time to run the game, but this data directly corroborates Cliff B's statements that a person who is willing to pay $600 for a video card knows how to download and run a torrent. Only after the mainstream caught up with the likes of the 8800GT and 3870 did Crysis' sales pick up and eclipse the 1 million sold mark.

Also, the already referenced Top 10 Most Pirated Copies of 2008 show Crysis with 940,000 pirated copies....again, very close to that 1:1 pirated to sales ratio you see so common on the PC with best-sellers, but never on consoles. Not sure how you can come to the conclusion its just Cevat Yertli explaining why his title flopped, when in reality, he's saying they took a gamble on a PC exclusive, failed because of piracy, and won't make the same mistake again. This sentiment is echoed in his statements that they'll no longer be console exclusive and that they're "linking themselves" to the consoles in general, and PS4 in particular, going forward.

Again, you can say you thought Crysis sucked, but that won't matter in 2-3 years when PC gamers are wondering why Crysis 2 isn't being launched on the PC at the same time as the consoles, or at all, when Crysis was a PC exclusive from a studio that used to be completely PC exclusive.

Here we have a quote from John Carmack saying that he doesn't know what the exact reasons are for the switch from the PC to the console. How exactly does this help your position that it is proven that piracy is the leading cause of PC game failures?

Actually he clearly states two possible reasons, piracy and/or user migration, then says its obvious PC sales aren't what they used to be. He goes on to say the PC will clearly take a back seat to consoles going forward:

"We still think the PC is a market worth supporting, but we're not making decisions around the PC," Carmack added. "It's probably more of the junior partner in the cross-platform strategy, although obviously, our day-to-day development is predominately on the PC."

If you bothered following and reading the linked quotes to their source, you'd see those statements were reiterated and emphasized by people within the company who are a bit more sure of the financial impact of piracy.

id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead at last year's Game Developer's Conference, where he claimed that that "piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform"

Similar to quote 1 with the added "bonus" of coming from somebody from Epic. Xbox360 sales vs. PC sales prove absolutely nothing about piracy - people like the Xbox360 for lots of reasons that I find reasonable (xbLive, ease of use, great system for the buck) as well as those I find ridiculous (chasing achievement points, rather play from a couch).

I'll skip the rest of the article because it's just more of the same agenda-based arguments.

Agenda-based arguments? Is this a joke? Their agenda is obvious, they want to sell video games and piracy directly erodes those sales, which pushes them towards platforms that do not suffer from piracy of that scale. Its simple cause and effect based on statistical evidence.

As for future agendas, its pretty obvious which way they're going, as Tim Sweeney, the other "Father of PC Gaming" recently stated Unreal Engine 4.0, will "exclusively target the next console generation. Of course this is where you claim you don't care about Epic games and UT3 sucked, but of course the repercussions of this decision extend far beyond any of Epic's IPs, as the Unreal Engine is one of the most licensed game engines on the PC, and UE3.0 is probably the most successful game engine of the DX9/10 generation.

Data indicating that games are most likely to be pirated on the PC platform is very compelling evidence that it is easier to pirate games on the PC platform than on consoles, nothing more.

Rofl. Again, all the statistics back up this reality, all you have in reply is that you're going to ignore it. I'm going to list off a few facts based on widely available market data, feel free to find evidence to refute it:

1. There are more high-end gaming PCs than consoles, at least 2:1 and possibly as high as 3:1 (see Nvidia DX10 Cuda 100million units, PC Game Alliance stats, 50million total 360/PS3 sold to-date.
2. Sales for multi-platform launches are higher on the consoles than the PC (see COD4, COD5, Fallout 3, any other simultaneous multi-platform launch)
3. Piracy rates and totals for these titles are also lower on the consoles than the PC (See Top 10 Pirated PC games, TG research/references)

So what you have is more games pirated on the PC despite more game-capable PC machines, yet far fewer sales on the PC compared to consoles. With this toxic environment, it would obviously be fiscal suicide to remain PC exclusive unless your product was an MMO or completely on-line based with extensive DRM.

You're missing several key steps along the way to argue from this that piracy is the primary cause of certain developers saying they are going to abandon the PC platform.

No I'm not, I've linked numerous direct quotes stating piracy as the primary cause backed by numerous statistics and widely available data that corroborates their claims.

No matter what the Developers would have you believe, a pirated game does not translate directly to a lost sale on the books and I have yet to see any data that even demonstrates that they are positively correlated.

It doesn't matter because the fact remains, there are fewer pirated copies on the consoles despite higher sales and fewer machines compared to the PC for multi-platform titles.

Bringing up UT3 again, compare UT'99 with UT3. UT'99 had practically no copy protection and was very widely pirated, but was wildly successful as well. UT3 had very effective copy protection and was a flop. I'm not arguing that DRM was the cause for the flop, but neither is it rational to argue that piracy was a factor, let alone the primary factor.

That's funny you keep bringing UT3 up, since it was apparently good enough to pirate, just not good enough to buy.....

• Epic?s Unreal Tournament 3 servers received over 40 million attempts at illegitimate access using pirate keys

I guess GoW wasn't the only factor in Epic's change in philosophy to shift development away from the PC exclusively......

I agree with you that CoD4 is an example of a well executed game. However, read the following quote.

Robert Bowling
"Yeah, we're still extremely excited about the success of the game on PC. The game did phenomenal on PC and we still have a huge community playing on the PC. We're definitely not upset about that success. We do get upset when people pirate our games and it is something we track. There aren't any hard numbers that we can announce but it's something that's definitely disheartening when you put a lot of work and passion into a game and then realize that a large percentage of players are playing on cracked copies. But the PC game did tremendous sales so we're still very excited about the PC version."

Actually if you bothered reading the quote, you'd see the underlined portion directly refutes your claims that devs don't have hard evidence about the extent of piracy. That quote along with others indicates the pirated copies were mixed in with legitimate users, something anyone at launch would've noticed. PunkBuster updates and game patches simply weeded those pirated users out, which contributed to some of the massive population drops seen within the first 2 months of COD4's existence. Again, I've seen estimates of pirated copies online as high as 50%, playing on the same servers as legitimate keys.

Naturally he is concerned about gamers pirating his product, but he has no data to support that sales would be better (or worse) without piracy.

Sure he does, he knows how many pirated keys there are on PC servers (as underlined above), then he looks at the number on the 360 and PS3 and realizes not only are there fewer pirated versions on the consoles, they also sold exponentially more copies as well.

Cracked keys in CoD4 have to play on cracked servers (a serious limitation as the cracked servers have no PunkBuster) and everybody I know who played CoD4 bought a legitimate copy so they could play on the vast majority of servers that weren't rampant with hackers.

Hacked copies/keys have absolutely nothing to do with in-game hacks, they're in no way mutually exclusive.

However, the important line is the bolded phrase. The well executed game (COD4) had "tremendous sales", while the poorly executed game (UT3) was a flop. Piracy and DRM is an attractive scapegoat for the industry (and frustrated gamers) but execution is still what really matters.

Tremendous sales that still fell well short of the inferior console versions along with exponentially greater pirated PC copies.

Of the 7 million copies, about 3.04 million sold were for the Xbox 360. According to the data, only 383,000 copies for the PC were purchased, but that does not take into consideration digital distribution sales via platforms like STEAM.

TG: 566K Pirated on PC compared to 110K Pirated on PS3/360

830K Pirated in 2008 alone, not counting the first 2 months after release.

You can claim piracy and DRM are scapegoats ad nauseum but the reality of it is, consoles have effective DRM limiting the impact of piracy and also enjoy greater sales and revenue. On the other hand, PC gaming is undoubtedly shrinking outside of the MMO market, which is largely dominated by a single entity in WoW.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Canai
:laugh: not sure what you're 'quoting' here, since I hadn't made a reply to your last post.

Also, I buy my games now, and your holier-than-thou attitude makes me

So if piracy on consoles isn't so bad, how is it that Nintendo lost a billion dollars in 2007 due to piracy? http://news.softpedia.com/news...do-in-2007-78918.shtml

And I am interested in seeing your data, for a couple games if possible... GoW, UT3, CoD4 and CoD5 stats would be great. I'm specifically interested in seeing if there's a correlation between piracy rates and simultaneous launches across all platforms.

I'll come up with a fuller, more coherent reply to your other post at work, where the real internet arguments happen

I was referring to the reply before the one I directly quoted, if you're interested in comparisons and actual data, feel free to read my reply to JoshGuru7, as much of the same data is linked there.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: JoshGuru7
This statement is precisely where I believe you abandon rationality. How does saying something cause it to be true? These are people with heavy incentives towards bias speculating on the issue of PC game piracy. I wouldn't be impartial in their positions and I doubt you would either.

Again, you can argue with the rationale of the decision, but the fact remains, they cite piracy as the basis of their decision. How is this hard to understand? You don't have to agree with their decision, you might not even agree with how they come to that decision, but the fact is, leading devs and publishers are in fact citing piracy as the main reason for shifting focus away from the PC to consoles.

You like to link to articles that do not resolve this point in any manner, so I'll point out my concern regarding the TG article you linked as an example.

They absolutely resolve the point by showing Devs, whether you agree with their analysis, or not, are choosing to focus on the consoles because of piracy.

A developer is explaining why their game flopped. Lots of people pirated Crysis, but there is nothing to indicate that without piracy this game would have been a success. I personally thought Crysis sucked, but the widely held review sentiment that you needed to have a top of the line system to justify the purchase seems like the obvious reason here. Of course, that's not the logic somebody directly responsible for high system requirements is prone to gravitate to.

Actually Crysis didn't flop completely, it sold over a million copies within a few months of release, but was clearly hurt by piracy with over 300,000 pirated torrents to only 86,633 sold copies in its first month. Yes, you needed the best video hardware at the time to run the game, but this data directly corroborates Cliff B's statements that a person who is willing to pay $600 for a video card knows how to download and run a torrent. Only after the mainstream caught up with the likes of the 8800GT and 3870 did Crysis' sales pick up and eclipse the 1 million sold mark.

Also, the already referenced Top 10 Most Pirated Copies of 2008 show Crysis with 940,000 pirated copies....again, very close to that 1:1 pirated to sales ratio you see so common on the PC with best-sellers, but never on consoles. Not sure how you can come to the conclusion its just Cevat Yertli explaining why his title flopped, when in reality, he's saying they took a gamble on a PC exclusive, failed because of piracy, and won't make the same mistake again. This sentiment is echoed in his statements that they'll no longer be console exclusive and that they're "linking themselves" to the consoles in general, and PS4 in particular, going forward.

Again, you can say you thought Crysis sucked, but that won't matter in 2-3 years when PC gamers are wondering why Crysis 2 isn't being launched on the PC at the same time as the consoles, or at all, when Crysis was a PC exclusive from a studio that used to be completely PC exclusive.

Here we have a quote from John Carmack saying that he doesn't know what the exact reasons are for the switch from the PC to the console. How exactly does this help your position that it is proven that piracy is the leading cause of PC game failures?

Actually he clearly states two possible reasons, piracy and/or user migration, then says its obvious PC sales aren't what they used to be. He goes on to say the PC will clearly take a back seat to consoles going forward:

"We still think the PC is a market worth supporting, but we're not making decisions around the PC," Carmack added. "It's probably more of the junior partner in the cross-platform strategy, although obviously, our day-to-day development is predominately on the PC."

If you bothered following and reading the linked quotes to their source, you'd see those statements were reiterated and emphasized by people within the company who are a bit more sure of the financial impact of piracy.

id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead at last year's Game Developer's Conference, where he claimed that that "piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform"

Similar to quote 1 with the added "bonus" of coming from somebody from Epic. Xbox360 sales vs. PC sales prove absolutely nothing about piracy - people like the Xbox360 for lots of reasons that I find reasonable (xbLive, ease of use, great system for the buck) as well as those I find ridiculous (chasing achievement points, rather play from a couch).

I'll skip the rest of the article because it's just more of the same agenda-based arguments.

Agenda-based arguments? Is this a joke? Their agenda is obvious, they want to sell video games and piracy directly erodes those sales, which pushes them towards platforms that do not suffer from piracy of that scale. Its simple cause and effect based on statistical evidence.

As for future agendas, its pretty obvious which way they're going, as Tim Sweeney, the other "Father of PC Gaming" recently stated Unreal Engine 4.0, will "exclusively target the next console generation. Of course this is where you claim you don't care about Epic games and UT3 sucked, but of course the repercussions of this decision extend far beyond any of Epic's IPs, as the Unreal Engine is one of the most licensed game engines on the PC, and UE3.0 is probably the most successful game engine of the DX9/10 generation.

Data indicating that games are most likely to be pirated on the PC platform is very compelling evidence that it is easier to pirate games on the PC platform than on consoles, nothing more.

Rofl. Again, all the statistics back up this reality, all you have in reply is that you're going to ignore it. I'm going to list off a few facts based on widely available market data, feel free to find evidence to refute it:

1. There are more high-end gaming PCs than consoles, at least 2:1 and possibly as high as 3:1 (see Nvidia DX10 Cuda 100million units, PC Game Alliance stats, 50million total 360/PS3 sold to-date.
2. Sales for multi-platform launches are higher on the consoles than the PC (see COD4, COD5, Fallout 3, any other simultaneous multi-platform launch)
3. Piracy rates and totals for these titles are also lower on the consoles than the PC (See Top 10 Pirated PC games, TG research/references)

So what you have is more games pirated on the PC despite more game-capable PC machines, yet far fewer sales on the PC compared to consoles. With this toxic environment, it would obviously be fiscal suicide to remain PC exclusive unless your product was an MMO or completely on-line based with extensive DRM.

You're missing several key steps along the way to argue from this that piracy is the primary cause of certain developers saying they are going to abandon the PC platform.

No I'm not, I've linked numerous direct quotes stating piracy as the primary cause backed by numerous statistics and widely available data that corroborates their claims.

No matter what the Developers would have you believe, a pirated game does not translate directly to a lost sale on the books and I have yet to see any data that even demonstrates that they are positively correlated.

It doesn't matter because the fact remains, there are fewer pirated copies on the consoles despite higher sales and fewer machines compared to the PC for multi-platform titles.

Bringing up UT3 again, compare UT'99 with UT3. UT'99 had practically no copy protection and was very widely pirated, but was wildly successful as well. UT3 had very effective copy protection and was a flop. I'm not arguing that DRM was the cause for the flop, but neither is it rational to argue that piracy was a factor, let alone the primary factor.

That's funny you keep bringing UT3 up, since it was apparently good enough to pirate, just not good enough to buy.....

• Epic?s Unreal Tournament 3 servers received over 40 million attempts at illegitimate access using pirate keys

I guess GoW wasn't the only factor in Epic's change in philosophy to shift development away from the PC exclusively......

I agree with you that CoD4 is an example of a well executed game. However, read the following quote.

Robert Bowling
"Yeah, we're still extremely excited about the success of the game on PC. The game did phenomenal on PC and we still have a huge community playing on the PC. We're definitely not upset about that success. We do get upset when people pirate our games and it is something we track. There aren't any hard numbers that we can announce but it's something that's definitely disheartening when you put a lot of work and passion into a game and then realize that a large percentage of players are playing on cracked copies. But the PC game did tremendous sales so we're still very excited about the PC version."

Actually if you bothered reading the quote, you'd see the underlined portion directly refutes your claims that devs don't have hard evidence about the extent of piracy. That quote along with others indicates the pirated copies were mixed in with legitimate users, something anyone at launch would've noticed. PunkBuster updates and game patches simply weeded those pirated users out, which contributed to some of the massive population drops seen within the first 2 months of COD4's existence. Again, I've seen estimates of pirated copies online as high as 50%, playing on the same servers as legitimate keys.

Naturally he is concerned about gamers pirating his product, but he has no data to support that sales would be better (or worse) without piracy.

Sure he does, he knows how many pirated keys there are on PC servers (as underlined above), then he looks at the number on the 360 and PS3 and realizes not only are there fewer pirated versions on the consoles, they also sold exponentially more copies as well.

Cracked keys in CoD4 have to play on cracked servers (a serious limitation as the cracked servers have no PunkBuster) and everybody I know who played CoD4 bought a legitimate copy so they could play on the vast majority of servers that weren't rampant with hackers.

Hacked copies/keys have absolutely nothing to do with in-game hacks, they're in no way mutually exclusive.

However, the important line is the bolded phrase. The well executed game (COD4) had "tremendous sales", while the poorly executed game (UT3) was a flop. Piracy and DRM is an attractive scapegoat for the industry (and frustrated gamers) but execution is still what really matters.

Tremendous sales that still fell well short of the inferior console versions along with exponentially greater pirated PC copies.

Of the 7 million copies, about 3.04 million sold were for the Xbox 360. According to the data, only 383,000 copies for the PC were purchased, but that does not take into consideration digital distribution sales via platforms like STEAM.

TG: 566K Pirated on PC compared to 110K Pirated on PS3/360

830K Pirated in 2008 alone, not counting the first 2 months after release.

You can claim piracy and DRM are scapegoats ad nauseum but the reality of it is, consoles have effective DRM limiting the impact of piracy and also enjoy greater sales and revenue. On the other hand, PC gaming is undoubtedly shrinking outside of the MMO market, which is largely dominated by a single entity in WoW.

BS

 

[Canai]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Canai
:laugh: not sure what you're 'quoting' here, since I hadn't made a reply to your last post.

Also, I buy my games now, and your holier-than-thou attitude makes me

So if piracy on consoles isn't so bad, how is it that Nintendo lost a billion dollars in 2007 due to piracy? http://news.softpedia.com/news...do-in-2007-78918.shtml

And I am interested in seeing your data, for a couple games if possible... GoW, UT3, CoD4 and CoD5 stats would be great. I'm specifically interested in seeing if there's a correlation between piracy rates and simultaneous launches across all platforms.

I'll come up with a fuller, more coherent reply to your other post at work, where the real internet arguments happen

I was referring to the reply before the one I directly quoted, if you're interested in comparisons and actual data, feel free to read my reply to JoshGuru7, as much of the same data is linked there.

Right o, I'll take a read through it when I'm bored at work tomorrow.