DNF leaked early...with a twist

pxc said:
Naw, these kinds of threads just try to deflect the 90%+ piracy rates on PC games, which led to the decline of PC gaming caused by too few paying customers. It's not a major problem on current consoles. They get sore because developers and publishers are capitalists and not communists, or because every developer hasn't gone bankrupt yet trying to make PC games. Or something. It never made much sense. ;)

(Seriously, the situation is awful for the small minority of honest gamers. No one cares what the rest think.)
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XvMMvX said:
This.....just wanted to repost it to make sure everyone read it.
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You want us to read the arbitrary number he pulled out of his ass that that has no foundation in anyway?

ummm OK.....
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
after playing the demo, quite frankly i hope to god they don't do another game. the demo was garbage and i don't trust 2k games to actually release a duke nukem game thats worth a damn either.




if it has a multiplayer thats worth playing, people will buy it. most people pirate games for the single player and if the multiplayer is good then they buy it. if not then they just stick with the single player. no way in hell i'd pay 50-60 bucks just for the single player. i'll wait til the games 10-15 bucks before i buy it if thats the only thing worth playing in the game.
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totally pulled that out of your rear end didn't you?
 
well, I happen to know someone that had access to this 'early' release. I got to play it for a few hours yesterday and there is no doubt that this is a Duke Nukem game. Tons of interactivity (you're actually rewarded for interacting with the environment), a lot of laugh out loud one liners, scripted events and pop-culture references/easter eggs. The maps are also really well designed and detailed... the entire game screams duke nukem 3D with a facelift.

Anyone that enjoyed Duke 3D is going to like this game a lot. If you're expecting state of the art graphics or a serious tactical shooter, it's not going to be your cup of tea.

I can't wait to get my pre-order. I really want to try the multiplayer
 
cannondale06 said:
please not that old idiotic excuse. if it was not possible to pirate then most of those pirates would probably buy the games at some point if they wanted to play them. money has little to do with it because most of the people that steal do so because its easy and they can get away with it. either way if you did not legally obtain the game then you should have no right to play it at all. :rolleyes:
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XvMMvX said:
They may say it is a problem, which it is. But you guys like to ignore that fact that a high piracy rate in a small market is a MAJOR problem.
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This is a common problem of addressing the piracy issue when focusing on 1 game, like X did badly because of piracy. It's not an accurate model of what happens in real life and so leads to bogus reasoning. In real life people have fixed amounts of money to spend over fixed amounts of time and have a choice of many different pieces of media to pick from.

The point is that piracy is an issue up to a point, past that there is a diminishing effect on the industry. If Mr Joe Average can afford 2 games per month, and buys those 2 games but pirates another game, does it matter if he then pirates another game, 100 more games? Well no not really, what is the industry losing here exactly?

People have finite money they can spend on luxuries like entertainment in any given period of time and there is a continual stream of games. Generally speaking peoples capacity to consume entertainment FAR exceeds their ability to pay for it all.

I've stopped thinking about piracy effecting just 1 game at a time, thinking of it in terms like that wont get you anywhere, you need to consider the industry as a whole.

The KEY question is "Are gamers paying money into the industry?" Well yes, the industry is growing, in fact it's the fastest growing entertainment industry and now exceeds music and movies etc. It's still a healthy industry, gamers and game fanatics are paying for games they like, there is absolutely no doubt about that.

In fact there is good evidence to show that people who pirate media actually spend more money on legitimate media than the average consumer. It's a case of people having a passion for games or music, buying what they can and then pirating the rest, people doing that KNOW they're not doing harm to the industry it's common bloody sense, a lot of these people go back and buy games they pirated and enjoyed when the price drops and they can afford them.

The problem really is with the people who pirates absolutely everything and never pays for anything. Does anyone actually know anyone that does that? I think them people are pretty rare.

No only would I argue that 1 pirate copy != 1 lost sale, I would probably go as far as to say that a large percentage of pirated media can be classified as "not a lost sale".

It's not possible for piracy to be this rampant, out of control, industry killing, black cloud of death that we're constantly worried about, and at the same time the industry is making more money each year, growing, exponentially improving succeeding.

All that matters in my opinion is that people give their money to the people who do the best job possible, support the better products in order to encourage more of the better products and less of the worse products, and in this regard piracy actually allows gamers to make a more informed decision about what they should and shouldn't buy.
 
dwk said:
Modding you 360 is a lot bigger deal to your average consumer than it is to install a game and drag and drop a crack file into it. If you screw up on the PC you just delete the game were as if you screw up modding your console you could be out a few hundred bones. That is going to scare away a lot of people from modding the console.
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Have you been to South America, South East Asia or Eastern Europe? I would hazard a guess that the piracy rates for consoles in those areas of the world exceed 90%.
 
cannondale06 said:
please not that old idiotic excuse. if it was not possible to pirate then most of those pirates would probably buy the games at some point if they wanted to play them. money has little to do with it because most of the people that steal do so because its easy and they can get away with it. either way if you did not legally obtain the game then you should have no right to play it at all. :rolleyes:
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I accept it's not exactly the same, but this indie developer reckoned that eliminating 50,000 pirated copies with DRM might only produce 50 additional legal copies.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350

Is such a statistic applicable to AAA titles? Who knows, but it would be interesting to find out. No doubt developers/publishers have such figures but for whatever reason do not wish to release them to the public.
 
That gamasutra article is interesting. It backs up my point that I suspect a great deal of the pirate games are actually not lost sales.

Again people think about piracy on the scale of 1 game which makes their perception very skewed, the temptation is to think "someone pirated the game and they would have bought it if they couldn't pirate" but in reality what is really happening is people have a choice of many games and limited funds they want to buy the best games to get best value for money, if you're not representing best of class quality you're not going to sell as much, but isn't that how industry works naturally anyway?
 
defiant007 said:
Have you been to South America, South East Asia or Eastern Europe? I would hazard a guess that the piracy rates for consoles in those areas of the world exceed 90%.
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All piracy in those area are absurdly high not just consoles.

Look there is no doubt that consoles have piracy problems just like PCs do BUT at the end of the day the console version will sale more copies.
 
LeviathanZERO said:
You want us to read the arbitrary number he pulled out of his ass that that has no foundation in anyway?

ummm OK.....
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Umm you should read up more on the topic, World of Goo experienced a 90% piracy Rate.


This topic has been hashed over and over. I do find it a little amusing that the idea of there being piracy on the console somehow makes the piracy on the PC ok..

For some reason when i read this thread all I could think about was some teenager pointing his finger and saying

"See , See, They are doing it Too!"
 
H-street said:
This topic has been hashed over and over. I do find it a little amusing that the idea of there being piracy on the console somehow makes the piracy on the PC ok..
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As the thread starter let me say that certainly not my angle or message.


For some reason when i read this thread all I could think about was some teenager pointing his finger and saying

"See , See, They are doing it Too!"
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In my case, if you read the thread, you can see where I admit that I honestly didn't know about some of this. I really don't follow the hack'n'crack scene closely at all so some of this was news to me.

I don't think anyone can deny that a lot of the times the PC piracy thing is overstated and the console piracy thing is apparently understated.

That's what I get coming away from this thread myself. YMMV.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
If Mr Joe Average can afford 2 games per month, and buys those 2 games but pirates another game, does it matter if he then pirates another game, 100 more games? Well no not really, what is the industry losing here exactly?
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If he has no problem with pirating 100 games, he's got no problem with pirating 102. If he's willing to download one, he's probably not going to hesitate at one more. If he's only got enough money for two games, chances are he's going to spend it on something he can't get for free.

PrincessFrosty said:
The problem really is with the people who pirates absolutely everything and never pays for anything. Does anyone actually know anyone that does that? I think them people are pretty rare.
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Yes, tons.

Reminds me of a LAN party I went to where 30 people spend an entire night burning CDs, and not an original disc in sight. I was actually laughed at when I pulled out an original copy of RtCW.

This was back when most people were on dial-up, so I can't imagine things have gotten any better.
 
H-street said:
This topic has been hashed over and over. I do find it a little amusing that the idea of there being piracy on the console somehow makes the piracy on the PC ok..
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I don't think anyone is saying it's OK, I think the point is that a lot of devs are fleeing to the console platform to escape from piracy (epic, Crytek and the rest) and that's probably not a good solution in the long run.

Piracy may be less (as a percentage) on consoles but it's still a growing problem, the cracked PS3 scene took off like wildfire the moment the PS3 was jailbroken.

It's a temporary fix at best, as consoles become more like PCs they start to inherent more and more of the PCs problems and one of them is piracy.

LuminaryJanitor said:
If he has no problem with pirating 100 games, he's got no problem with pirating 102. If he's willing to download one, he's probably not going to hesitate at one more. If he's only got enough money for two games, chances are he's going to spend it on something he can't get for free.
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Actually you're wrong. There has been numerous studies that show people who pirate certain types of media like music actually spend more than average on the legitimate sources, that's something that's been studied a good number of times now, you can google it and find the sources.

And again this doesn't fit with a growing industry, you can't have such high piracy numbers like we have now and expect the industry to stay healthy yet it's growing at an immense rate overtaking all the other entertainment industries.

Reminds me of a LAN party I went to where 30 people spend an entire night burning CDs, and not an original disc in sight. I was actually laughed at when I pulled out an original copy of RtCW.
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The problem with LAN parties is that people often play games multiplayer they wouldn't otherwise play and people aren't likely to splash out for just a few hours of play, the sad truth is that at our LAN parties we simply cannot match up everyone into our games because not everyone owns the same games yet we want to play together for a few hours, so cracked games are used.

Quite frequently this leads to people later buying the games because they enjoyed the LAN and decided that the game was worth getting, this happens quite a lot actually, so it's not all bad.

Actually the last LAN we all bought a risk game from steam, mainly because it was cheap so we could justify the cost with only a few hours of play, which is good evidence to show that it's really value for money that affects likelihood to purchase. if we're playing something old like half life deathmatch and someone doesn't have it if it's £0.99 on steam, likely they'll buy it.

Let me ask you, the people coming to that LAN party, do they buy any of their games, or are they ALL pirated. I bet not one of them people had pirated all of their games.
 
LuminaryJanitor said:
If he has no problem with pirating 100 games, he's got no problem with pirating 102. If he's willing to download one, he's probably not going to hesitate at one more. If he's only got enough money for two games, chances are he's going to spend it on something he can't get for free.


Yes, tons.

Reminds me of a LAN party I went to where 30 people spend an entire night burning CDs, and not an original disc in sight. I was actually laughed at when I pulled out an original copy of RtCW.

This was back when most people were on dial-up, so I can't imagine things have gotten any better.
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Yeah, back in late 90's early 2000's piracy was nowhere near as bad as today. on 56k modems it took almost a week of to download a game. With today's broadband speeds it takes between 10 minutes and two hours. Also back then the only choice was really eDonkey and Kazzaa, which were filled with viruses, deterring even more people. Today you got bittorrents, all you do is go to a popular site and you're almost guaranteed to be virus free. And if you take it one step further and just skim the comment section that seals the deal.

And the faster speeds get, the worse pirating will get
 
Digital distribution is ramping up piracy as well. Lack of physical media is helping increase it. Fast connections have always been around, they are now just more affordable for the general public to get at home. Its the ease of acquiring software that is making it more rampant, you used to have to be pretty savvy to quire some of the newer cd rom based games back in the day. Not everyone had burners etc. Now that this stuff is common place and affordable its easier to do.
 
LuminaryJanitor said:
If he has no problem with pirating 100 games, he's got no problem with pirating 102. If he's willing to download one, he's probably not going to hesitate at one more. If he's only got enough money for two games, chances are he's going to spend it on something he can't get for free.
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This really depends on the person. There's people that'll pirate everything because to them it's stupid to pay for something that you can get for free. There's people that'll pay for everything, and there's people in-between that'll pirate things to try them out, will pirate them to get a copy without DRM, will pirate games if they're too broke and pay for them if they can later, or maybe there's people that'll just buy the 2 games they can afford and not pirate anything. There's a lot of different people and different situations in this world and that was a pretty sweeping generalization to make.

I really don't want to get into another piracy debate, but there's more here than just economics and I'd like to point that out.
 
Andrew_Carr said:
This really depends on the person. There's people that'll pirate everything because to them it's stupid to pay for something that you can get for free. There's people that'll pay for everything, and there's people in-between that'll pirate things to try them out, will pirate them to get a copy without DRM, will pirate games if they're too broke and pay for them if they can later, or maybe there's people that'll just buy the 2 games they can afford and not pirate anything. There's a lot of different people and different situations in this world and that was a pretty sweeping generalization to make.

I really don't want to get into another piracy debate, but there's more here than just economics and I'd like to point that out.
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its funny, just today I also concluded that i think some do it as a hobby.. In the fact that they've done it for so long that the idea of not pirating feels strange. Its sad to think about though..
 
Tell me what these have in common (without taking a dig at the people who play them):

Starcraft II
World of Warcraft
Starcraft Brood War
Diablo 2
Diablo 3
Minecraft
Warcraft 3

Now add in the following and tell me what they have in common:

Battlefield 3
COD Series
Counter Strike
Quake

I let a few people answer (which some will try to be clever smartasses) then I will see who gets it.
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All this BS and not one person tried to answer my question.
 
One thing I think the companies have not figured out is that if you make something a very reasonable cheap price they have a chance of selling so much that you make more at the lower price. I guess valve gets it. they now like to give away games like TFC, Portal, Alien Swarm and many others. The next version of the game will cost money and they will make millions. They create a following and interest then charge the next time. The deal is who is going to risk piracy, viruses and so on if they can get the real item so easy. The movie industry has yet to learn this but the music industry sort of has with the $1 per song model. The sad thing is this was only possible because Apple forced them to accept those terms and only apple had the power to force them.

That said at the end of the day sometimes you need a total reset in your companies image in order to change things. That is really what consoles offer companies. They open them up to a huge market of young ignorant consumers. Then they change their pay system. The problem with PC users is we were used to getting content for free, mods and such and maps. But console users were ignorant they were new to these companies so they could come in with their expertise they built on the PC and do things differently and make more money.

You see this in business too alot of companies we consider the bottom of the barrel for quality are considered high end in other countries. When the company went abroad they had a reset a new ignorant consumer base and they used that to carve out a more profitable business model leveraging their expertise in what they do.

Any game can make money back on opening day just because so many people now view a game the same way the view a movie. It is just a temporary fix , just get through the single player. Spend a short time on the multiplayer then move to the next game. So games are made crappy, short and bugs are not worth fixing. TBH FPS gaming needs a pay to play system that is the only way you can make enough money to keep up quality and improve the product. This is what WOW showed was possible and it is HIGHLY profitable on the PC.

Now we get back to my original point though. Most FPS players simply will not accept the pay to play model even though in the end it would be best for them. So you need a new ignorant customer base to do this on.
 
True, it's why games like Dragon Age don't get made very often.... after all, total crap in a shiny box takes 1/10 the time and reaps half the profit. It's not art anymore, it's about money.

That's why I find the name "Electronic Arts" so funny now. Back in the 80s, they did promote and make true electronic art. Those days are long gone.
 
kingsleytim said:
Seriouslly? You do know that the people who pirate the software are doing so mostly because they wouldnt have bought it in the first place. They are not robbing the creator of sales being as they wouldnt have bought it anyway.
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That's not entirely true...

A lot of people wouldn't pay say $49.99 for Duke Nukem Forever for example. However, offer those same people Duke Nukem Forever for $29.95, $19.95, $9.95 or even eventually $4.95 and at some point, a lot of gamers might 'splurge' for it. After all, a game that provides 10 hours to 20 hours worth of gameplay is probably worth at least $4.95 consider the entertainment to value proposition.

The problem is, a lot of cheapo pirates like yourself will claim that 'Ohh DNF is not worth $49.99 but there's a torrent! I'm going to just PIRATE DNF and give the developer $0.00. Its ok though, b/c I would never have bought the game for $49.99.' Ironically, once you've pirated the game b/c you were too cheap to pay full price, it's not that likely your going to 'buy' a game you've already played when the price reaches $29.95, $19.95, $9.95 or even $4.95. Why? People generally don't buy games they've already passed/played. Thus, the developer has lost a potential 'small' sale-price sale of his title because you were too impatient to wait for the price to come down and just 'WANTED IT NOW'!!. You used othe justificatoin you'd never pay for it, when you probably would if the correct price was applied(after all you were willing to pay for it for $0.00. I wouldn't be surprised if you'd be willing to pay $0.10 for it or $1.00 or even $4.95). You just didn't have the self-control to wait for the price to come down so you pirated it.

I want-it-now and I-want-it-for-free combined together results in a lost sale because had you had patience, you would have eventually bought it at a cheap price. Congrats on ripping off a developer and encouraging a developer not to produce games for whatever platform you would have eventually bought the game for. Your a real asssset to the gaming community for pirating.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
The point is that piracy is an issue up to a point, past that there is a diminishing effect on the industry. If Mr Joe Average can afford 2 games per month, and buys those 2 games but pirates another game, does it matter if he then pirates another game, 100 more games? Well no not really, what is the industry losing here exactly?
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This is a fairly poor example. More often, one someone becomes acustom to the idea of paying $0.00 for a service or product, if you attempt to then charge money for the said free product, people just simply won't do it. It is more realistic that Mr. Average Joe tries pirating games for $0.00. Realizes how easy it is and stops spending the value it costs to buy 2 games each month.

Another limitation that your system does not consider is that games release dates tend to be end-of-the-year loaded towards christmas/fall. Leading up to Christmas, you'll see 80% of the games released. If average Joe says, this month I only have enough money to buy '2' games and purchases 2 games out of the 12 available during the Christmas season and pirates 10 games. How many games will be purchase in January when no new games come out? February? March? April? May? June? July oh look the first decent game of the year! He may have had money in all of those months but had no games to purchase because he pirated all 10 back in Christmas.

Had he not pirated those games, he might have finished his 2 x-mas games and in January or February purchased some more games as opposed to having a backlog of games to finish thanks to his 'piracy'. So yes, it does make a difference how many games he pirates if he's bought '2' games. Keep in mind, if he didn't buy those x-mas games right away, chances are Mr. Average Joe might be able to pick up '4' of those 12 games he wanted to play for the price of '2' come March thanks to sale prices and graduate depreciation. In addition, he'll have better reviews to rely on to determine what games are worth paying for and less chance of getting burnt.

A fine example of what happens when the cheapos pirate games is looking at pirated music and mp3s. Once people get used to the concept of 'Oh look, I have a music library thats 20GB containing over 5,998 songs that I paid $0.00 cents for' and they look a CD for $19.95 where they are interested in only three songs and realize they can download the album art, cds and bonus features online in 3 minutes of time, they won't purchase that CD. They'll just go home, search their favorite _____ site or newsgroup with the artist name and poof.

Mr. Average Joe pirate once he starts pirating will likely almost completely stop purchasing games --except-- those requiring cd-keys or serial-keys to play online/create an online account were the online/multiplayer component seems compelling enough to warrant a purchase: Read mmorpgs, bf3 or other games with good multiplayer.

Your justification of piracy is part of the problem and definately not part of a solution. When Mr. Average Joe buys 2 games and pirates the rest, it makes a difference. If Mr. Average Joe wants to pay 8 games for the price of '2' games, so he can game 'more'; he can do that. He just plays games from last year.
 
Why argue over piracy its wrong. I admit I download game disks, but thats because my legit disk is damaged aka got cracked or scratched and can't read properly, but I have the key and for older games without a key I keep the Original disks to prove ownership of the game. As for pirating if you pirate a game because our not sure if its good enough wait for it to go on sale. I got COD4 when it dropped to 19.99 same with COD WaW and Mass Effect and alot of other games. I dont pirate ever, I will wait for a price to come down, or go look at Half Price books, got Red Faction Guraillia at HPB for 4.99 unopened 3 months after release.
 
Jaerb4 said:
Spoiler!!

It's really, really awful.
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^^ That's mostly the feedback I'm seeing looking at overseas gaming forums and reviews. Mixed feedback would be a very generous assessment.


I take it you don't subscribe to the "the final game is way better than the demo because the demo is some old alpha from a year ago and Gearbox put it out as a 'joke' " theory? ;)
 
This isn't a new thing. 360 games ALWAYS get leaked the friday before release if not earlier.
 
Q-BZ said:
^^ That's mostly the feedback I'm seeing looking at overseas gaming forums and reviews. Mixed feedback would be a very generous assessment.


I take it you don't subscribe to the "the final game is way better than the demo because the demo is some old alpha from a year ago and Gearbox put it out as a 'joke' " theory? ;)
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If they released the original version from the 2001 trailer, I'd pay $40 for that.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDlB2P1leRM"]YouTube - ‪Duke Nukem Forever - E3 Trailer 2001‬‏[/ame]
 
I've recently come the the realization that I firmly believe consoles no longer need to exist. Gone are the days where affordable computing hardware is single purpose. Consoles today are more PC like than ever, but the specs are solidly in the low-mid range. All consoles do is take common off the shelf parts and throw them together with proprietary hardware and software, generally taking AWAY features rather than giving them to you. Look at the Xbox360 Wireless and HDD - they COULD have used Bluetooth and the ability to attach any old SATA HDD, but they chose not to, for instance. Despite the fact that the PS3 was made of some pretty standard kit, its software prevented the user from having full control over that power.

Consoles today are a relic of the past that basically make it easier for the industry to exert control over your gaming experience. If you want to use MultiMan on your PS3 to play Final Burn Alpha, Mplayer, and keep your game rips on disc, well you're kicked off PSN. Somehow, we've come to the point where anytime you pay money for entertainment, you own a very limited license to it - its "THEIR" console, THEIR online service, THEIR game etc... and this really needs to stop. Walled gardens are springing up everywhere now and everything from OnLive, to Ubisoft DRM, Apple's iOS and Xbox LIVE etc... are basically there to restrict what you can do.

I'm so bloody tired of this. I'd love to see a world where all games were developed for the PC with tools that made them relatively easy to port to various operating systems. Hardware peripherals could be sold with the PC in mind - MS already does this with the X360 controller - and Kinect, WiiMote, and Dual Shock 3 can call be connected with some minimal hacks. Is there any real reason that Valkyria Chronicles and Metal Gear Solid 4 couldn't have been developed for the PC instead? Is there any reason that Gears of War couldn't run on PC? Sure, consoles provide a relatively stable hardware platform, but the PC gaming industry has gotten around that for years with some basic requirements. Developing entirely for PC means freedom - freedom from licensing fees and increased cost for access to proprietary hardware (Originally, the additional $10 for X360/PS3 titles was the kickback to MS and Sony), freedom to run/connect to any network you choose to play, and freedom to select whatever options you wish for your game.

Things are going the other way, and quick. More lockdowns, higher prices, and attempts to "consolize" more open systems by taking away user choice and power. Its time we start demanding fair an open access to entertainment we pay for, without all these needless proprietary encumbrances that raise the price and distort the user experience.
 
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