Stop stealing games - Page 2

**PANDAmonium** · 05-15-2008, 06:04 PM

The problem with saying "grow a pair and stop complaining" is that you're encouraging an issue that could be tackled if more people stopped being so apathetic. It's like leaving the shittiest part of your city shitty, when history has shown that even the minutest of changes can dramatically lower negative quality of life issues like crime rate.

I can understand that you should know what you're getting in to, but it's certainly not out of the question to offer an explanation for the bombing of your company, especially when by most accounts the game itself was pretty interesting.

I buy much more easily into what Zoopy is saying than simply saying that the developer is full of shit, especially without numbers to the contrary to prove he's making it up.

**Hidus** · 05-15-2008, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PANDAmonium

Wait, where are there numbers of people playing on consoles versus PC? I just want to see where he's bullshitting.

I'm just saying, not everybody strikes it rich just because they make video games. You're not being a big man by pretending that one less rich dude doesn't make you care - especially when you're an independent developer, it's not always a question of developing one game and suddenly becoming Bioware or whatever.

I'm not pretending I don't care, I really don't care. Cry me a river. I spend plenty of money on gaming and I'm not interested in hearing developers cry about how it's so tough out there.

Where is he basing his sales numbers off of anyhow? NPD retail reports?

Quote:

There are NPD numbers, of course, but Lombardi says they don't tell the whole story. "They report on something really specific and people are taking that and saying that's the whole industry. There's nothing wrong, per se, with NPD's retail U.S. report but that's a really specific thing...For example if people looked at the retail sales of games in Germany, a different story would be written. PC sales crush all consoles in Germany with the possible exception of the DS. Maybe sometime [Valve will] release some sort of figure from our side to help broaden that picture and the perspective people have, but Valve is a privately-held company so we don't do reporting or any of those kinds of things."

I can't remember the last time I bought a game in a store. I bought CoD4 on steam. That doesn't show up in his airtight little assessment.

**Gnoma** · 05-15-2008, 06:29 PM

I understand what you are saying about trying to solve the problem of piracy. I agree that if there are some small changes to the way things are done that could reverse or reduce the efforts and effects of piracy as well as other lifes problems. But the main thing is in capitalistic society the companies dont care if they reduce the price per unit it could reduce the piracy of items. All the company cares about is money, do I agree that money should be the driving factor, NO, but that is the simple truth.

If he is making the statement that piracy was the leading cause to the companies downfall what does he suggest we do to change it. Pointing out a flaw without some help trying to fix it is not very productive. If a company took some initiative and said hey we are getting hosed by pirates. Lets try to give them some of the things they want (no more $50 games that are worth $25). I dont know how to solve the problem mainly the reason I have not brought it up before. I am sure if a group of people sat down and worked on it they could find a way but they would need to have a reason to invest time to try to solve it.

There are lots of issues going on with the economy right now, and I just don't think putting all the blame on one aspect of PC gamers is the right way to solve this problem. It would be nice if there wasnt any piracy in gaming but I dont think that will ever changed unless we call piracy something else such as shitheading. Even than people will still try to find ways to get stuff for free, society is cheap, lazy, and doesnt care. It sucks but I dont know how we can fix it.

The main point of my arguement with this is I dont think every problem with companies can be brought completely down on one aspect. There are way to many things that influence companies success or failure and to target just one is crazy.

**DugLess** · 05-15-2008, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PANDAmonium

Wait, where are there numbers of people playing on consoles versus PC? I just want to see where he's bullshitting.

I'm going to try to be polite, but I already wrote the answer. I'll be more verbose. Anyone could find totals playing multiplayer on either platform. Although this number isn't by itself conclusive, comparing games sold for console vs. pc is idiotic to say the least without including this and several other metrics. Metrics like how many PC's will actually handle the game are out there in production. Also, looking at the number of people who tried to connect and failed because they had the cracked version. Another metric to look at is the number of similar genre games on either platform and looking at their correlative sales. There are many, many other metrics you can look at. This guy did a quick google search and used the most helpful numbers he could find and used those as the foundation of his argument.

If you read some of the responses to the guy, people bring up a lot of great counter points, granted a lot of stupid ones, but there's a lot of good counter points.

I buy all my software, including operating systems. I don't condone piracy, and think that it is a major problem. However, piracy has not killed every other company that puts a game out like TQ. I get the guys ranting, and I empathize to some degree, but don't use one statistic, completely out of context, to base your entire argument on. Sure it sucks that they went under, but lets remain within the realm of facts when we speak about it.

**DugLess** · 05-15-2008, 07:38 PM

Oh ya, and the bullshit numbers I was refering to are the ones that estimate the percetage of people playing a particular game that pirated it. That's a lot more pathetic than just pulling a misleading number out of context.

bleckuhffinity · 05-15-2008, 09:31 PM

Really the shoddiness of the products released has much more of an impact than piracy. We all saw this happen with FFOW and various other games. The simple fact is that developers treat their PC games as continued works in progress, and so a lot of people don't want to shell out $50 for what basically amounts to a beta.

I think another big problem is the gray area as far as what videogames are: toys, art, or akin to sport. Whydo they create the games, just to make money, or to actually make something meaningful? I mean, it's pretty obvious that most game companies don't give a shit about the gamer or their developers, and the ones that clearly do (Valve) are performing very well. It's a pretty corrupt industry, with review websites paid off by game companies to give favorable reviews and various other shitty business practices.

So yeah, in short, fuck 'em. If you're working with a medium whose very base is tech-savy people, expect those people to use that technology to their benefit. There's no real reason why a game should cost 49.99, especially given digital-only distribution.

PC gaming is significantly worse right now than it was two or three years ago, and it's the developers' fault, not the pirates'. I've been playing my Wii much more than my PC lately simply because there's much more innovation and creativity happening on that front.

**Embiggener** · 05-15-2008, 10:16 PM

When was the last time the price has gone up for pc games though? The price seems to have stayed steady for a long time, considering inflation the real cost is going down. I would agree that the downloaded games shouldn't cost the same but it may just be saving us from an actual increase in the price.

**icky** · 05-15-2008, 10:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Embiggener

When was the last time the price has gone up for pc games though? The price seems to have stayed steady for a long time, considering inflation the real cost is going down. I would agree that the downloaded games shouldn't cost the same but it may just be saving us from an actual increase in the price.

Packaging and other overhead costs have plummeted thanks to CD's and standardized small boxes. But yes, the prices have been constant for as long as I can remember, and that is a freaking long time.

I'm of the opinion that they should lower their price, but I would be really shocked if it affected piracy in any measurable way.