Dev Says Piracy Prevents PC Exclusives

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Ever wonder why we are seeing fewer and fewer PC exclusive games? Well, according to this developer, piracy is to blame, not the allure of big $$ on the console. :(

The PC, with piracy being as rampant as it is, is really hard to make money from. My first game was Titan Quest, a hack ‘n’ slash RPG, which was PC only but the amount that it was pirated was the difference between us staying in business and going out of business," he tells them. "It’s really, really hard to be profitable by concentrating only on PC. Unless you’re an MMO."
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I'm sure piracy makes a lot of people wary, but it's complete bullshit to say it is entirely pirate's fault. Consoles have a much higher potential to make money than PCs just by nature of the user-base. That combined with piracy and the ever raising cost of development is likely the real reason. If piracy was the only reason we'd see a lot more PS3 exclusives since it is the least pirated system on the market. In most cases for retail titles it makes little sense to develop an exclusive these days.
 
have a hard time agreeing with his logic.

pirates don't buy games, probably ever. They were never the target audience, nor should they actually have an appreciable effect on sales.
 
Titan Quest just suffered from poor marketing. For a Diablo clone, it was probably the best. I didn't even know about it until 2008 or so. There are plenty of devs who are successful on PC, you just have to have the right balance of substance, quality and advertisement.
 
stealthy123 said:
have a hard time agreeing with his logic.

pirates don't buy games, probably ever. They were never the target audience, nor should they actually have an appreciable effect on sales.
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Iron Lore's problems with piracy and how badly it hurt them are pretty well known. Iron Lore really is the perfect example of how bad piracy can be.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Titan Quest just suffered from poor marketing. For a Diablo clone, it was probably the best. I didn't even know about it until 2008 or so. There are plenty of devs who are successful on PC, you just have to have the right balance of substance, quality and advertisement.
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A lot of the PC exclusive devs make smaller/cheaper titles. Witcher 2, for example, is extremely profitable at a million copies. CDP RED doesn't have the overhead of many hundreds of people working on their games like a lot of big budget titles (Amalur had a team of 400 working on it). Marketing is insanely expensive too, companies don't market game is there is little hope of them making back the marketing costs. Besides isn't the argument always "good games sell"?
 
Kind of strange that the rest of Iron Lore Entertainment (now crate entertainment) who made Titan Quest chose to work on a PC exclusive called grim dawn...:p
 
Derangel said:
Iron Lore's problems with piracy and how badly it hurt them are pretty well known. Iron Lore really is the perfect example of how bad piracy can be.
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when a dev provides empirical evidence that piracy impacts sales, I will change my tune.
 
I dunno, personally I thought Titan's Quest sucked. I picked it up for like $5 on Impulse and I feel it was overpriced. I'm not saying that was all of their problem, but I think it might be related.

Some companies seem to be able to do PC games. The one that most readily comes to my mind is Firaxis with the Civ series.
 
I did not like Titan's Quest. Tried it, and just couldn't get into it at all. So for me, I don't think that piracy's the problem, at least with that game.
 
titan quest didn't suck and was well worth 5 bucks.

if you aren't into diablo style games that's one thing, but the game most certainly didn't suck.
 
stealthy123 said:
when a dev provides empirical evidence that piracy impacts sales, I will change my tune.
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images
 
They should probably make demos for PC as easy to try before you buy like you can with redbox and a console. Not that I pirate anything, but by the time I get around to buying a new game its already on sale because I have been burned by so many $60 PC duds.
 
DeathPrincess said:
Kind of strange that the rest of Iron Lore Entertainment (now crate entertainment) who made Titan Quest chose to work on a PC exclusive called grim dawn...:p
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I love what Crate is doing for Grim Dawn. They're pretty much guaranteed to make money or at least break even since buyers are directly funded development.
 
Derangel said:
A lot of the PC exclusive devs make smaller/cheaper titles. Witcher 2, for example, is extremely profitable at a million copies. CDP RED doesn't have the overhead of many hundreds of people working on their games like a lot of big budget titles (Amalur had a team of 400 working on it). Marketing is insanely expensive too, companies don't market game is there is little hope of them making back the marketing costs. Besides isn't the argument always "good games sell"?
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Not all marketing is the same. Know your demographic, know how the demographic gets its information, have a direct line of commnication, under promise - over perform.

Not every type of game warrants huge banner ads on every forum, commercials with "edgy" guitar riffs, trailers with explosions and bad acting. Give forums and sites that have a large following of whatever demographic you're going after as much honest info as you can, answer questions and concerns in forums, know what that core audience will and will not accept.

Titan Quest could have sold quite a few more copies with the right focus.
 
I won't hide myself i was a huge game pirate 5 years ago, but I am a converted to steam or other dig distribution service now, since 5 years i haven't downloaded illegally a game so its not true that pirate never buy games. I know at least 5 friends who do the same as me now
 
Titan's quest was an amazing game, better than diablo IMO. I'm sure piracy hurt ironlore to some degree, but they still sold over a million copies if I recall. This idea that X number of people pirated a game, means X number of lost sales is stupid. I admit, I pirated it back in the day, but I also bought it as soon as I played it and saw how awesome it was. In fact, I've bought it twice, because I lost my original discs. Had I not pirated it to begin with, I would have probably never bought it...twice.
 
Problem is they are Making mediocre games , with long developement cycles and poor storys. Then they compare their sales to AAA best seller tittle selling figures and argue that they should've had sold as much and the culprit is piracy.

Stop copying and releasing clone games of last popular title and innovate on new ips.
Stop investing on making buggy engines you'll only use once and spend most your time tweaking.
Stop making games where the story is an afterthought that was stitched on to said engine.

and for god sakes stop arguing that selling 1million + copies at 60$ is a failure.

With digital distribution , and games still selling for the same price as a hardcopy, you can't argue that they are not making more money now than years ago.

Best example is Alan wake, they said they only sold only 300k copies so it wasn't worth bringing it to
pc ... they only forgot to count the 900k digital copies oops.

http://www.vg247.com/2011/12/02/report-alan-wake-sales-figures-close-to-1-5-million-units/

1.4 million copies...

Would it have sold as many on the pc... maybe, maybe not. After the max payne series, alot of people (including me) would've bought it on day one.
Now years later, when it will be released on pc it won't have the same sales figure, don't blame piracy Remedy! this is your own fault.

Adapt or shut down game developers! :mad:
 
how many copies did crysis 2 sell on pc despite being pirated to shit?
is there data on that ?
 
"Prevents PC exclusives"....LOLOLOL

What a load of horseshit. I don't think piracy is all that cool, but the way these money-grubbers justify their actions and blame piracy is even more absurd.
 
dr.kevin said:
how many copies did crysis 2 sell on pc despite being pirated to shit?
is there data on that ?
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Didn't sell all that well. Only like 14% of the sales were on the PC (This is from March 2011, though). It's probably sold better since then with sales. Frankly, the game wasn't worth $50-60 or whatever it released at.
 
And there was only one game I know of that was made for PC that was not leaked...and our friend Royal provided the digital content delivery method for it. I think he needs a hand and I think the other game devs should use his tech.
 
The problem with Titan quest was the horrible DRM that caused the game to break because of a bad crack.. news of all of the issues with the game surfaced and hurt sales of the game.

Piracy hurt them, sure.. but so did their DRM.
 
Oh great. Stereotyping MMO to the PC again? What about simulations? IL-2 Sturmovik anyone? Battle Fury: Kharkov?! Sims man!!! Most console kiddies can't handle hardcore sims with that controller. And even if there's a sim for multiplatform... Let's face it. KB/M beats it hands down in a sim.
 
I call bull on this one.

Titan Quest was a fine game, but was quite expensive for a Diablo clone when it released. As others have said above, it had the world's worst marketing. It also just happened to be a great game.

Also, I think it's time for them to shut up about it, since I'm willing to be they have made another 100g on selling the game at sale prices on Steam. I bought it last year, and so did at least 3 of my friends.

And look at Skyrim... it was BOTH heavily pirated AND sold enough copies on Steam to sit on the top three games played list for months. They're doing fine. And as the patches come out and the game matures, more people will buy so their mods continute to work easily and properly.

Things are going find with PC sales just like always. And it can't have passed developer's notice that console systems are not being released with the regularity they used to. The 360 and PS3 are OLD now. PCs have absolutely rocketed past them in performace, even more than usual between new generations and there is still no real word on the next gen consoles yet.

PC is making a huge comeback right now, not dying. And piracy isn't growing, it's the crappy economy SHRINKING.

That and no one wants to talk about digital distribution, or the fact that we are a decade late in getting games cheaper through digital distribution than in boxed form. The big publishers just aren't ready to go there.
 
Andrmgic said:
The problem with Titan quest was the horrible DRM that caused the game to break because of a bad crack.. news of all of the issues with the game surfaced and hurt sales of the game.

Piracy hurt them, sure.. but so did their DRM.
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I had forgotten about the DRM.
 
Andrmgic said:
The problem with Titan quest was the horrible DRM that caused the game to break because of a bad crack.. news of all of the issues with the game surfaced and hurt sales of the game.

Piracy hurt them, sure.. but so did their DRM.
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It had bad DRM? I played it a few months ago and had zero issues starting it up and playing.

I loved the game, except that I didn't level enough I guess or leveled badly and was so fucked when it came to the end boss(I raped the cyclops easily though :S)
 
#1 Piracy is just as rampant on console as it is on PC. The difference in piracy remains on where the difficulty is. Each game on the PC needs to be hacked, while only the console needs to be hacked. Blocking people from services like Xbox Live won't work, as anyone smart enough to hack their Xbox 360 would own a second one for legitimate use. Which can be stupid when Microsoft was losing money for each sale on the Xbox 360.

#2 There is a likely chance that console systems will fail in the coming next generation. Meaning that developers will have to move over on to the PC, and learn to work around piracy better. Adapt or die. Right now the 3DS is not doing very well, and PS Vita is doing poorly in Japan. Portable consoles could be an indication of things to come on the home console.

#3 If you stopped making games for PC, pirates will migrate. I see this happening more and more lately, and I can't imagine pirates won't be lured over to console instead. If that were to happen, you could see tools that allows for "jailbreaking" console's to appear. Tools that are simple and easy to use. Right now anyone smart enough to pirate, will do so on a PC. Not because it's easier, but because PC games are better.
 
Steve said:
the amount that it was pirated was the difference between us staying in business and going out of business
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No, that amount that it sold was the difference between staying in business and going out of business.
 
stealthy123 said:
titan quest didn't suck and was well worth 5 bucks.

if you aren't into diablo style games that's one thing, but the game most certainly didn't suck.
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I dunno if it "sucked" or not. My friend loves it. However I found it quite unenjoyable. I actually like those games as I loved Diablo and Torchlight.
 
BDS23 said:
Oh great. Stereotyping MMO to the PC again? What about simulations? IL-2 Sturmovik anyone? Battle Fury: Kharkov?! Sims man!!! Most console kiddies can't handle hardcore sims with that controller. And even if there's a sim for multiplatform... Let's face it. KB/M beats it hands down in a sim.
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Lies:



Not for cooking simulators! :D
 
Serpent said:
I dunno if it "sucked" or not. My friend loves it. However I found it quite unenjoyable. I actually like those games as I loved Diablo and Torchlight.
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totally different view on it, I don't really care for torchlight. I have many more hours on titan quest than torchlight.

I will buy torchlight 2 on release because I like the company, but I got bored in torchlight pretty quick.
 
Companies need to get their heads out of their fucking asses, that's my problem with them

Hell, let me give today as an example. I load up steam, hey look! Space Marine is $17! Why, instant purchase!!!

Meanwhile I look at steam front page, Skyrim is $60, the new king arthur game is $60, Deus Ex is $50, Saints row 3rd is $50, The Darkness II is $50, blah blah blah

These games aren't worth these prices, I admit as a kid, I didn't understand the actual value of money, as an adult though, and given that PC gaming's demographic is people aged 20-55, I have a much, much deeper understanding of how I spend my money and make ends meet for bills etc

I bought Titan Quest gold when it was $10 for both, cause hey, AMAZING deal, but as it was, nobody wanted to buy it at full price. It was too expensive full price, and instead of publishers adjusting prices to suit the market and thinking "Our game is a AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA+ title, it deserves to be $50!" and sell next too NO copies, price it at $30 and sell millions and millions of copies

Sins of a Solar Empire was $30 in the stores, had no DRM at all in it, and sold millions and millions of copies, it was an absolute success, they didn't stick their heads up their fucking asses and think that their game was the epitome of gaming excellence, and people were being given a "SERVICE" to buy it at $50, cause "The game is so awesome it could be $100!"

Like I've read all the reviews on Darkness II, and the game is -ASS-, total and complete ass, and instead of the publishers taking that feedback, and lowering the price of the game to generate sales, they instead stick to the $50 sticker and pretty much guarantee that NOBODY buys their game

Piracy, does not, affect, game sales. Its a bullshit excuse I hear day in, day out. Publishers when a game performs poorly blames pirates, because investors are stupid braindead inept fucking retarded gutter tripe with money who believe anything they are told, and pirates is the easiest scapegoat out there right now

And even THAT isn't enough, now companies like Bioware when they can't blame piracy, are blaming sites like 4chan etc for spreading around "Bad comments" about their games, and thats why they don't sell, like jesus fucking tap dancing christ, fucking suck it up and fucking admit you released a piece of fucking dog shit and eat it like a fucking man. They blamed both pirates AND 4chan for Dragon Age 2, when its been internationally known as a pile of shit compared to the first game

And I honestly don't blame them, I mean, these publishers don't give a shit about the small fodder workers like the game programmers etc, its the CEO's etc that fucking lavish their positions, and anything that takes attention away from their total lack and inept managing of a game's design and they way they told developers to make it, when that piece of shit game bombs, they blame everyone else OTHER then themselves, because if they make it known they are the ones to blame, any fucking SMART investor would be calling for their heads in an instant

Piracy is a scapegoat, hands fucking down, hell even GSC Game World for STALKER -CREDITS- Piracy in making the game so well known and selling so well, -CREDITS- for christ sakes! Even Notch credits piracy in getting the word of Minecraft around, like god dammit, these guys made untold millions off these franchises, and they never -ONCE- blamed piracy, they openly admit piracy is what made them well known

In short, Piracy is the biggest fucking scapegoat of this decade, game sells great, hugs all around, game sells poorly, OMG PIRATES!!!!
 
socK said:
vgchartz is literally useless for PC numbers
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Don't know why but those are the only sales numbers for crysis 2 ... others are vague 14~% of sales .... i think they just don't want us to know the real sales number...
Probably would make their arguments less dramatic.
 
Serpent said:
I dunno if it "sucked" or not. My friend loves it. However I found it quite unenjoyable. I actually like those games as I loved Diablo and Torchlight.
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Odd, because it is a LOT like Diablo 2.
 
dr.kevin said:
how many copies did crysis 2 sell on pc despite being pirated to shit?
is there data on that ?
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Crytek have disclosed that Crysis 2 sold 3 million copies across all three platforms, compared to the 3 million copies sold of Crysis 1 which was PC exclusive at the time.

The irony of course is that Cevat Yerli bitched and whined about piracy of Crysis 1, projected that Crysis 2 would sell 7 million copies because it was being released on consoles, and ended up selling the same number of copies as the first PC exclusive game.

Just goes to show that consoles are not the land of milk and honey for developers. What matters is making a good game which people consider is worthwhile paying for.
 
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