Epic Says Piracy is Killing PC Gaming

I for got something, on the PC, multiplayer is still free, also Mods are free. DLC is a new concept to the console market, it takes things like mods and remove them and replaces them with the mostly terribly sold add on pack. Now with your money already in the system ala tokens you impulse buy things that were once free or better made by the people from goodness knows where.
 
Meanwhile in the real world: Square Enix reports record profits

Epic barely made any PC game since UT2k4 and pretty much all of them were a complete flop just what kind of piracy they are complaining about? Who pirates their online-only crap anyway?

Nonsensical whining from a loser after several royal failures.
 
Piracy doesn't really explain why multiplayer focused games like Unreal Tournament have recently done poorly. Very few people are able to pirate a PC game and still be able to play it online.The current console and handheld market also contradicts this. The ease of pirating a game on a console or handheld is pretty much equal to how easy it is to modify right now.

Handhelds in order of units sold/ease of pirating:

1. DS - about 15-50 dollar card and a memcard and you can have hundreds if not thousands of games. Much smaller games than other handhelds and consoles so they are easy to download and store. Most cards use microSD which is much more widely used than Memstick Pro Duo. Most solutions don't need much technical expertise above draging and dropping files.

2.PSP - Depending on firmware/Motherboard may be done with no modifying or special hardware, needs modified battery, modchips available. Some motherboards/firmwares/models can go a long time without being hackable. I believe the PSPgo has not be hacked for piracy yet and isn't suddenly a big success. Sony often pushes out firmware so so user needs to keep up to date. Most modifications are more technical than DS. Larger games that DS. This is the only one that could be debatable since there is potential of being modified without any hardware other than Memstick Pro Duo which may have been included.

Consoles in order of units sold/ease of pirating software:

1/1. Wii - Various modchips and dvd-drive hacks, before needed Zelda: TP, but now can be hacked with no hardware and without modifying or opening the console. Games can be played off of usb harddrive, even online. Often smaller games than 360/PS3. People have been paying for Virtual Console games that all have widely available ROM files.

2/2. 360 - Various modchips and hardware modifications, almost all requiring modifying a console that often needs its warranty. Online connection puts harddrive, savegames, achievements and online ability at risk. Usually larger games than Wii due to higher resolution artwork.

3/3 PS3 - I know of no current way of pirating software and very few exploits for running unsigned code. Ability for much larger disks due to bluray and very few people with the ability to create Blurays.
 
Epic's SAL claims are especially funny after reading Bad Company 2 just sold over 5M copies worldwide in less than two months... how about making at least one good game again, Epic?
 
epic can suck my left nut after the CRAP that was unreal tournament 3. ut2k4 was my heroin, and I was hoping ut3 would take over. what a disappointment, my dealer was murdered and replaced with a retard.
 
Ender1183 said:
Same, haven't pirated a game in a long time and I don't bother with a game unless its on steam and at least a few of my friends get it.
Click to expand...


Steam and Itunes(somewhat) are examples of how you beat pirates. Companies, industries, and saints in glass houses can argue until they are blue in the face that potential consumers are pirates, thiefs, terrorists, unpatriotic, amoral and immoral people who risk incurring vengeance from gods,law enforcement, and lawyers and risk distain from community, friends and family without making any positive results fighting piracy. Offer people a reason and ability to purchase a product and suddenly you can be making a difference

Its often difficult to get patches or support for PC game that you have purchased these days and very few boxed extras, like such exotic items as a manual often missing. Steam may involve some negatives for a consumer like no physical item to collect, harder to share or sell a collection or game (like I can't play Modern Warfare while my wife plays Plants vs. Zombies), and the need for a internet connection to acquire games and the may need to think ahead if they want to be able to play a game offline. But Steam offers gamers a trade off for these such as not having to track down old disks and new patches, and ability to play games without a drive (I rarely have one on a PC these days), ease of patching, online community/achievements/stat tracking, cloud settings and saves, no driving, and often healthy discounts. I'm sure some people see an environmental advantage also. Its also easier to compare games, the consumer is much more informed on the reviews for a game and the DRM in use.

Lots of PC game companies put patches on third party sites with crappy bandwidth limits and waits for nonmembers and have websites that are often difficult to navigate and are often outdated. It seems like some companies don't even want to admit they made a PC version of a title.
 
kamm said:
Epic's SAL claims are especially funny after reading Bad Company 2 just sold over 5M copies worldwide in less than two months
Click to expand...

You mean that releasing a port or a PC version of your game more than half a year later only on Vista isn't the secret to PC success? Companies have already tried that and taking away features like dedicated servers and LAN support and upping the prices on map packs from free to 15 dollars each; what else is there to try?
 
rally9x said:
You mean that releasing a port or a PC version of your game more than half a year later only on Vista isn't the secret to PC success? Companies have already tried that and taking away features like dedicated servers and LAN support and upping the prices on map packs from free to 15 dollars each; what else is there to try?
Click to expand...

What other games out there besides Modern Warfare 2 charge for a map pack?
 
You know what, PC gaming hasn't even died. In fact, nearly every great game on consoles has been ported to PC. Go ahead and stop porting the games and see where all the pirates go to. They'll just find new homes on consoles, and the cycle repeats.
 
I haven't played a good Epic game since Unreal Tournament '99 so...
 
Boozer said:
What other games out there besides Modern Warfare 2 charge for a map pack?
Click to expand...

None that charge 15 dollar that I know of.

I thought it was obvious I was mostly alluding to Gears of War and Modern Warfare 2, both of which now have had publishers or developers blaming PC piracy for there problems. I haven't ever heard Valve, who have giving away tons of content for Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress, which was my point, complain lately.

I was hardcore enough to buy MW2 on both 360 and PC but I am not hardcore enough to spend 60 dollars for the first two map packs (15 x 2 x 2). I could get used to paying for downloadable content on PC, Fallout 3 had content worth paying for or if it leads to better ongoing support for the game.

Activision tried to push way to much at one time: Raising the price point, charging for map packs, raising the price for the map packs compared to the last version even on consoles, taking away dedicated servers, poor support on issues, and destroying the studio who made the product is a bit much to all do at once. All of these issues which consumers have had no problems letting Activision know about and the only one they can think of talking about is Piracy.
 
ianken said:
That's right Einstein. Waht else would it be about? Bringing world peace? Fighting genocide in Darfur?

It's not a charity. They set the price. You pay it, or don't. They'll go where the money is.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's right we won't. So maybe they'll stop fucking bitching over it. Why is it okay for them to whine about piracy but it's not okay for us to demand good games? Just stop making them then. Their intent for making games is soley based on greed and not love then it has been shifted from what it was in the past if they can't sell them anymore. It's just like the movies; if they rehash the same tripe, people are going to catch on sometime. Something is obviously wrong. I haven't bought a game since Deadspace on PC because nothing has honestly been worth it. Demo's aren't even in abundance anymore. How about giving consumers a little of what they ask for?
 
I thought Steam solved pc piracy? I don't mean to sound like an idiot if this is not true, but seriously- doesn't steam nail pc piracy?
 
rally9x said:
None that charge 15 dollar that I know of.

I thought it was obvious I was mostly alluding to Gears of War and Modern Warfare 2, both of which now have had publishers or developers blaming PC piracy for there problems. I haven't ever heard Valve, who have giving away tons of content for Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress, which was my point, complain lately.

I was hardcore enough to buy MW2 on both 360 and PC but I am not hardcore enough to spend 60 dollars for the first two map packs (15 x 2 x 2). I could get used to paying for downloadable content on PC, Fallout 3 had content worth paying for or if it leads to better ongoing support for the game.

Activision tried to push way to much at one time: Raising the price point, charging for map packs, raising the price for the map packs compared to the last version even on consoles, taking away dedicated servers, poor support on issues, and destroying the studio who made the product is a bit much to all do at once. All of these issues which consumers have had no problems letting Activision know about and the only one they can think of talking about is Piracy.
Click to expand...

Better yet, jump into Bad Company 2... it's passed 5M copies recently and is every way superior to the old, boring, arcade-styled button-mashing MW2 p2p MP... ;)
 
iansilv said:
I thought Steam solved pc piracy? I don't mean to sound like an idiot if this is not true, but seriously- doesn't steam nail pc piracy?
Click to expand...
everything gets pirated, even for steam there are extensive hacks to play online. all the same, they want to blame the failure of sucky games as being due to pirates. like if a movie studio releases a dog probably a lot of people will see it anyway, but not so many people want to shell out 50 bucks trying to test drive a dog.
 
Epic is killing PC Gaming.

Gears of War is a great console game, online and offline, but a shit PC game, online and offline.

I'm sick and tired of big beefy broad-shouldered suits of armour, it's like a remnant from the early 90's era of Marvel comics when Rob Liefeld was considered a good artist and inventor in that field. Give us the first Unreal Tournament back.

Without blur and smear, bloom and poorly implemented proprietary physics, with fun gameplay and good music and fun level design. Motherfucking towers in a small space station hovering over a planet instead of tunnels I've been running around in since Quake 1.

Which happens to be a great PC game online and offline even today.
 
jiminator said:
everything gets pirated, even for steam there are extensive hacks to play online. all the same, they want to blame the failure of sucky games as being due to pirates. like if a movie studio releases a dog probably a lot of people will see it anyway, but not so many people want to shell out 50 bucks trying to test drive a dog.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. Well, is it true then that piracy on Steam is at least significantly less than other platforms?
 
Wizard220 said:
I do my homework before I buy and if it is found that the console is relesed "first" then I stay clear until I see some real reviews on it all. Also if you take a good look around all the big major gaming mags get PAID for doing a positive review. Hell IW paid these big gaming mag's big money to make MW2 the best thing since sliced bread.
Click to expand...

I heard that IW was behind 9/11 also. IW hasn't even gotten paid for MW2 for the most part but they managed to pay for good reviews ahead of time? I'm kind of surprised you didn't use the word sheep/sheeple in your post.

While I can think of a lot of problems with the game review industry I don't know what magazine you are thinking about that this would be widespread unless you live in Japan. Just because you don't like a game doesn't mean the review was paid for. In most cases its the opposite, with magazines and websites competing for coverage, or paying to use a companies name or be "official" (Games for Windows magazine, OXM) .

You really think that you would have to pay for someone to cover what would almost certainly be on of the biggest releases of the year in a franchise that has already had at least 3 huge hits? You could maybe make a case that a company shops early reviews to who they think will be the most positive, but at most that will only be a couple early reviews and you should be able to notice that a lot of sites don't have theirs up yet, not to mention that magazines tend not to be the best place for early anything.

They don't do it for hits either since you can get just as many if not more hits from being the lowest score in Metacritic. A lot of the websites and magazines have/had podcasts and I think it would be pretty obvious if the people were just lying for money. These are also good places to get opinions from more than just one reviewer at a company and I have certainly heard people have negative things to say about MW2. Not to mention that there would be a lot more profitable magazines and game reviewers would be doing a bit better financially.
 
MrLonghair said:
Epic is killing PC Gaming.

Gears of War is a great console game, online and offline, but a shit PC game, online and offline.

I'm sick and tired of big beefy broad-shouldered suits of armour, it's like a remnant from the early 90's era of Marvel comics when Rob Liefeld was considered a good artist and inventor in that field. Give us the first Unreal Tournament back.

Without blur and smear, bloom and poorly implemented proprietary physics, with fun gameplay and good music and fun level design. Motherfucking towers in a small space station hovering over a planet instead of tunnels I've been running around in since Quake 1.

Which happens to be a great PC game online and offline even today.
Click to expand...

Actually I think UT2k4 was AWESOME, far better than anything before, mostly thanks to its (almost) perfectly balanced thus uber-popular ONS mode.
 
A lot of the problems with PC right now is the same problem that Sony is having right now. Microsoft really shook up the gaming industry by offering a compelling online environment with much less(not eliminated) cheating/hacking and being the first to hook people with achievements; which while not my thing but it is for many and a lot of people have friends into them so they need to be on 360 to play games with them. People want to be on Live because its where there friends are.

Ironically I bought my 360 the day Gears of War came out since Target had deal if you bought both and a lot of the people I played online with for a long time were people I met playing it online (not random xbox live people, people from forums). I don't hold a grudge against Epic for for making a 360 exclusive but they can't go and whine that the PC version didn't sell well after they took a huge lump of cash to not release it at the same time. I think they then went and geared UT towards PS3 to try and be make Sony happy. It also had some of the worse marketing ever; its release caught even most podcasts and journalists by surprise.

kamm said:
Better yet, jump into Bad Company 2... it's passed 5M copies recently and is every way superior to the old, boring, arcade-styled button-mashing MW2 p2p MP... ;)
Click to expand...

I actually own that on PC and 360 also. It was pretty key in my decision (along with a bunch of backlog games I need to get to) in not getting the MW2 map packs. The main reason I got 360 MW2 was to play with a huge group of people I played 1943 with so a lot of them had moved on also.
I still haven't installed the PC version though because like I said I don't have a DVD drive in most of my computers, so I give MW2 credit for registering with Steam.
 
anonmoniker said:
People forget that publicly traded gaming companies have a fiduciary duty to screw you the customer as hard as possible. There is no obligation on them to release a quality product at a reasonable price. Instead, they are bound (by the corporate laws of whatever state they register in) to break the games up and milk you into paying as much as possible.
Click to expand...

You make some very good points I can't help but pick on the " fiduciary duty to make money" thing coming up so often on the internet. Its a pretty twisted interpretation of reality and has only gotten more twisted as it has spread by from person to person, in what is like a real world version of the game of "telephone"(do they still call it that?).

If anything upper management have a responsibility to bring "value" to a companies shareholders, usually in line with some mission statement. While sounding similar to money; value means something very different. In fact it can mean the exact opposite in many cases since short term profit usually involves a trade for long term growth which can hurt the value of a company.

Nintendo took the biggest risks of all recent console manufacturers. The DS, Wii, and Wii Fit were all very risky products. They are also the company that has had the most success and whos stock (last I looked) has done the best by far. Risk vs. reward is the cornerstone of business and investment. Its why you can make more on stocks than a CD, and why you can make more on a CD than savings account. Creating a new franchise has a higher risk but the reward of having a new franchise can also be higher.

Its my belief that as someone moves up in a company the more they need to think longterm so to have a CEO trying to make a quick buck is not the kind I would want to invest in.
There are many stock buyers who have no problem selling a stock when they see bad times coming, so these kind of mistakes can easily be reflected in stock value. A very large percentage of stock is investment for retirement so stocks that show potential for longterm growth can be quite popular.
 
ikarinokami said:
If anyone thinks the PC gaming scene is as vibrant and diverse as it was 10 years or even 5 years ago, is lieing themselves.
Click to expand...

Actually its so much more diverse now that you can't even recognize how diverse it is. There is a reason while a whole genre was called "Doom-clones" for a long time. Millions of people are playing flashgames, facebook games, European games, Asian games, independent games and free MMO's on there computers. Consoles have also spread there appeal to a wider audience and some of the hardcore PC gamers or people that otherwise would have been hardcore PC gamers have moved to them.

So what if people play games on there phone, it wasn't until I was about to go off to college that I owned a computer with about as much power that my phone does. My phone has almost a GHz processor and I got plenty of gaming done on an Apple IIgs and a pentium 200. I haven't stopped playing other games and why does it even matter. If someone plays a game on a laptop do you cry about how we lost a desktop gamer, how about if they use a tablet? I don't think their are people complaining about people using Twitter on there phone or 360 making the PC Twitter scene less vibrant and I doubt there are people complaining about people checking there email on there phone has killed the vibrant Microsoft exchange community.

Just because someone is playing the Wii or Farmville means we have lost a hardcore gamer for life. Thats like saying that anyone that owned an NES or played Number Munchers or Oregon Trail will ever play a more hardcore game. Peoples taste evolve and by exposing them to new things can only help them evolve. I'm guessing that most people here didn't just wake up one morning and say "I'm going to build my own watercooled computer and play Crysis and join a pro Counter Strike team even though I never played a game in life" they worked their way up from somewhere.
 
Epic blows.

Ut99 was awesome and unsurprisingly had a pretty good community.

Ut2k3 comes out. 4/5 of ut99 community refuses to switch to 2k3 because the game blows. How do you blame this on piracy? They had a pretty good community and release a piece of shit game which destroyed the community they built. Some hard core players kept with Ut99 but ut2k3 was just a joke.

Ut2k4 comes out. Not the same failure as ut2k3, but still not a GREAT game. Too bad after you go destroy your fan base you can't just release a 'okay' game and expect to get them all back.

Ut3 comes out... huge letdown. Epic first makes a good game engine. Then they half ass a game together to use as a tech demo. Its a great tech demo, but is a piss poor game. Proven by the number / size of patches they had to release that the game was not polished at all before being released. After some number of patches the game was decent. However by this time the game was dead. Any potential new players were turned off by rotting piece of shit they released and they gave up. By the time the game was decent no one was playing it and it kept slowly dying after that.

Anyways... gj epic, repeatedly screw yourself and your community over time after time, and then go blame piracy.
 
BladeVenom said:
QFT.

Being Microsoft's bitch now, also hurts them with PC sales. Gears of War was delayed a long time by Microsoft for the PC, and used the horrible abomination known as Games For Window Live. MS is trying to keep people from buying PC games, to sell more 360s.
Click to expand...

while the delay sucked ass and hurt them. I dont think MS is actively trying to hurt pc gaming. Yes the 360 is profitable for them, however they make money from PC gamers as well. it's win-win for them. games for windows live is a good concept with shit execution... i like the idea of having and xbox live-ish thing for pc games...but its not being done right. also with win 7 they have been trying to bring back more pc gaming as part of their marketing.


that all being said, yes there is piracy...however you have an open platform on the pc...which means anyone with some capital, an idea, and some friends can make an original IP game with no publishing company to tell them what they can or can't do. and they can distribute it themselves. will it be pirated? probably. But i really honestly and truly don't think piracy is AS ridiculous as people claim it is...i think the numbers are being skewed with a good number of variables.
 
Manaknight said:
while the delay sucked ass and hurt them. I dont think MS is actively trying to hurt pc gaming. Yes the 360 is profitable for them, however they make money from PC gamers as well.
Click to expand...

What he said is actually true. This was never more clear when Microsoft kept talking about how the latest Splinter Cell was "Xbox 360 exclusive" even though it was coming out on PC. Last E3 they barely mentioned PC gaming and did the "360 Exclusive" thing with at least that and Left 4 Dead 2. They push to have PC games be compatible with the 360 controller also. Its may not be there goal to "kill" PC gaming but its definitely taken a back seat to 360 development where they make a profit with each piece of software sold no matter who develops it.
 
Anyone remember the Gears of War DRM "your game is expired, you can't play this game anymore"? I know it was a glitch with their DRM servers, but that really drove home the effect of DRM in my opinion, they can literally kill the game, not because its pirated, but because its "expired". And they wonder why people are concerned and why some people that I know have gone the route of buying a game and then downloading it from pirate sites just not to deal with DRM.

Sadly the message was only heard by all of about 5 people that still played the game.
 
RangerXML said:
And they wonder why people are concerned and why some people that I know have gone the route of buying a game and then downloading it from pirate sites just not to deal with DRM.
Click to expand...

Why not just download the crack?
 
Lol I'm a PC gamer and don't own a single console...but damn, watching all the butt hurt people cry in this thread is hilarious. :p
 
There are 1-2 PC games that I play, and an occasional console game. I pay for my games, and I am apathetic towards the whole "piracy" issue.

If you guys aren't happy with the state of gaming, perhaps consider taking up a different hobby? -_-
 
My response is :

FUCK YOU EPIC.

I dont care if I get any more of your shit games anyway. You havent made anything worth playing since ut2004 anyway.
 
The last good Epic game was UT Gold

You know what, if this is indeed true that the money's on the consoles, then I vote to segment the console market in half: The "PC" console gamers and the couch console gamers.

Add keyboard/mouse support to console games rather than lame PC ports and put a filter to separate controllers vs. keyboard/mouse players. Sounds pretty simple no?
 
Conspiracy theory. Every so often these EPIC jerks come out of nowhere and give a PC gaming sucks and is dying interview. My theory is they are getting a kickback from Microsoft for these interviews. We all know Microsoft has had PC gaming in the cross hairs since they jumped in the console business. Microsoft wants all PC gamers to buy XBOX. Well consoles are feeble compared to PCs IMHO and its not going to happen. What better way to attack PC gaming that ex popular PC gaming developers that they pretty much own now. Its the old if you say it enough people will believe it trick.

I call for a thorough investigation between EPIC, Microsoft and these asinine interviews that seem to pop up every six months or so. Really there is no other logical reason why EPIC needs to continue to attack PC gaming repeatedly.
 
To gaming companies:

We appreciate your efforts, really, and we'll do our best to support you so you can feed yourselves and your families and the mortgages and your eccentricities. But do us, the gaming community at large, a big favor will you?

Stop milking your franchises with rehashed code and maps using the same basic engine for a decade or more.

If you want to do better, get rid of the old school people and hire fresh faces with new ideas and support them start to finish - until you do you don't have any right to complain about us.

Thank you.
 
Manaknight said:
while the delay sucked ass and hurt them. I dont think MS is actively trying to hurt pc gaming.
Click to expand...

MS has shutdown all their PC gaming studios or converted them to Xbox only studios. Even popular ones like ACES Studio and Ensemble. Flight Simulator was Microsoft's oldest title. They shut it down solely to harm PC gaming. Age of Empires was one of the all time most popular game franchises; that didn't stop Microsoft from shutting them down.

They buy the publishing rights to games and then cancel or delay the PC version. Mass Effect was delayed because MS forced them to delay it. MS decided delaying PC games wasn't going far enough, so now Alan Wake is canceled.

They buy PC game studios just to covert them to Xbox game studios.

If all that isn't trying to hurt PC gaming I don't know what is. Microsoft is the biggest enemy of PC gaming.


Yes the 360 is profitable for them,
Click to expand...
No, the 360 has still lost more than it's made. Don't forget the first two years it lost $3 billion dollars. The first Xbox ended up losing $4 billion dollars.


however they make money from PC gamers as well.
Click to expand...
From Windows sales, and they figure with their monopoly people will buy Windows even if they try to harm the PC gaming market. Do you see many gamers switching to Linux? They can screw PC gamers as hard as they want, and most will still be using Windows.

also with win 7 they have been trying to bring back more pc gaming as part of their marketing.
Click to expand...
I don't believe it. What PC games did Microsoft make that came out this year? What PC exclusives are they making that come out next year?
 
BladeVenom said:
I don't believe it. What PC games did Microsoft make that came out this year? What PC exclusives are they making that come out next year?
Click to expand...

Its funny, i dont know where people are geting the idea that microsoft gives a shit about PC gaming but i have read and heard a few people talking about how "microsoft is getting back into PC gaming because of or for windows 7" etc. Unfortunately the people that buy that crap need a reality check because the truth is completely the opposite.

There is one definite trend from microsoft over the last few years and thats that they are moving as far from PC game production and development as they possibly can. All of their big hits have stopped being ported to the PC entirely and they have nothing PC exclusive coming.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the next flight sim is a 360 exclusive too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top