Epic Says Piracy is Killing PC Gaming

Bahamut said:
If piracy was so bad, how come Epic is still around, eh?

EPIC FAILURE... from a different perspective. I mean, the Unreal engine has kept them alive all this time with a few modifications tossed in here and there. I can almost hear Steve Jobs in the background asking "By the way, what have you done that's so great?" :rolleyes:
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Yeah. The GoW franchise is a COMPLETE FAILURE. :rolleyes: right back at ya.

Their POINT is that dollar for dollar you get more back on your INVESTMENT developing on the console. It is a BUSINESS DECISION. Your hobby is not their fucking charity.

Anyone who thinks only suck games fail or lose money due to piracy is either being disingenuous or is an idiot. Pick one. The best games are pirated the most. Sure. Pack rats will torrent anything with an installer, but the big titles are the one that move the most bits.

I concur with the folks that they just need to move to Steam. Shiny discs in a box are dead.
 
Met-AL said:
On the PC side of the coin... I feel that for every 5 honest customers, there is a dishonest one.

For example.. I told my friends about BC2.. guess what half of them that got the game did.. they pirated it. LOL. WTF?
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did they pirate their online account also? how many of them paid so they can play online? How many of them will pick up the game in a future sale?

companies can choose to look at pirates either as scumbags or as future customers. I'd rather buy products that don't imply that all their customers are scumbags so they have to use invasive DRM, otherwise their product will get stolen.
 
phide said:
That's all it's about, huh? I wonder how many Ferraris and Maseratis Mr. Capps has in his stable.
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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.
 
4saken said:
I dont see why its not hard to believe. If PC dev was very profitable for them, they would be concentrating on it. Piracy, is ridiculously rampant on PC. Only people who dont seem to think it is and only blame it on shitty games are pirates trying to make an excuse.
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I agree with you 100%.(and im a pirate too at least i admit it unlike 99% of hardocper's are in hideing)
 
jiminator said:
did they pirate their online account also? how many of them paid so they can play online? How many of them will pick up the game in a future sale?

companies can choose to look at pirates either as scumbags or as future customers. I'd rather buy products that don't imply that all their customers are scumbags so they have to use invasive DRM, otherwise their product will get stolen.
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There are work arounds for the online play.. I didn't say it wasn't a hassle for them. I got replies like "Yaa, got that BC2 game you told me was awesome, it sure is. Snagged a torrent of it this afternoon. Cya later....."

2ndly, EA/Dice/Steam did a great job on the DRM in my opinion. If you buy the Steam version, there is no securerom or safedisc (can't recall which it was) anymore, they removed it about a week or so after the game came out. How much more hassle free can you get?
 
4saken said:
I dont see why its not hard to believe. If PC dev was very profitable for them, they would be concentrating on it. Piracy, is ridiculously rampant on PC. Only people who dont seem to think it is and only blame it on shitty games are pirates trying to make an excuse.
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The PC isn't profitable for them because they haven't made a good fucking PC game since UT2K4! UT3 was shit until the Titan Pack and by then it was far too late to make anything of it. Gears was an utter piece of shit port with a lot of problems and saddled with a service that originally required a $50 a year fee to be useful. Fuck Epic. They're a bunch of fucking whiners who lost touch with the consumers who made them ages ago.
 
ianken said:
Yeah. The GoW franchise is a COMPLETE FAILURE. :rolleyes: right back at ya.

Their POINT is that dollar for dollar you get more back on your INVESTMENT developing on the console. It is a BUSINESS DECISION. Your hobby is not their fucking charity.
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I don't play games, and I don't own a console, but I get the point. Now, in my experience of knowing tons and tons of people that ARE gamers, not one of them owns Gears of War on their PCs - they all own the console versions of the game, PS3, Xbox 360, etc.

This is about "Killing PC Gaming..." iirc...
 
Met-AL said:
There are work arounds for the online play.. I didn't say it wasn't a hassle for them. I got replies like "Yaa, got that BC2 game you told me was awesome, it sure is. Snagged a torrent of it this afternoon. Cya later....."

2ndly, EA/Dice/Steam did a great job on the DRM in my opinion. If you buy the Steam version, there is no securerom or safedisc (can't recall which it was) anymore, they removed it about a week or so after the game came out. How much more hassle free can you get?
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SecuROM. Safedisc is dead.
 
ianken said:
They'll go where the money is.
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Then if they want to abandon PC games, fuck 'em. We don't need 'em. They haven't made a decent game in a long, long time. But don't use piracy as a scapegoat to excuse your inadequacy.
 
Ah yes this argument again....

PC Gamers live in a box, they think that PC gaming is simple, but in reality to the AVERAGE GAMER/HUMAN it is a pain in the ass. Install game, shit its crashing.....update video drivers, search for patch etc etc etc. Oh I see that game X has a known issue with my particular video card shit.... The list goes on, but some of you will respond that these are easy issues.

Again...to you they are, you and I are in the upper 5% of PC knowledge. Most people have a hard time keeping spyware off their PCs.

Consoles offer simplicity, buy game, insert, play. Oh and these graphics that you drool over, yeah most people don't give a shit if you can count the freckles on Neiko's face. Graphics and eyecandy are overrated to the GENERAL GAMING PUBLIC.

Open your box, step out, sniff, and then you will realize that the decisions for most of these developers to leave PC gaming is money based. It is simplier to program a AAA title for hardware that is the exact same accross the board.

Of ALL of the developers who started on the PC their are TWO left, Blizzard and Valve....and even Valve has put their stuff on the consoles.

Keyboard and Mouse that you drool over, yeah to the average gamer this sucks to. Gamepad on the couch is what most want when they play a game. Be happy with what you get and step outside your box and you will realize were the industry is going.

Betamax was better than VHS to.
 
ianken said:
Yeah. The GoW franchise is a COMPLETE FAILURE. :rolleyes: right back at ya.
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Gears is the best thing Epic's come up with since UT2004 (if not longer).
I love Gears. No other series has a better cover system, active reload+reward is genious as well.

I bought Gears 1+2 on the 360 and can't wait for 3 and whatever else they come out with; they can whore out Gears all they want, I'll pay the fee. Best series on 360 bar none IMO.

Not that I've looked into it much but I find it hard to believe that Steam stuff can be pirated. Games can be pirated but when they are integrated like Steam titles are, I find it hard to believe Valve's stuff is massively pirated as badly as Epic's [apparently] is. :rolleyes: You have games tied to accounts, you have online checks, VAC etc. I'm not saying it's "impossible", but I'm damn sure it's harder to pirate a Valve/Steam protected title than it is something with a CD key, online key or other stupid DRM measure (cd check/SecuRom etc).

Secondly I will admit that in the past I've DL games but I haven't in at least 5 years, why? I don't need to. If I want a game bad enough today, I buy it, otherwise I wait til it's on sale on Steam for a ridiculous price either during the weekly sales or the holiday ones. I spent more money during Steam's holiday sales last year (09) than I have on games in any given year in probably years. AA/AAA stuff comes out I buy it on day 1 (Darksiders and God of War 3 were the only 2 new games I've bought this year), otherwise I wait til it hits the bargain bin.
 
What annoys me about this attitude is that if it really is true, that piracy on the PC kills all your sales, ok fine then stop making PC games. I mean I wouldn't stay in a market where I lost money. However, that's not what happens. Companies keep making PC games. They release their console games on PCs as well, they make PC versions that are improved, they make PC exclusives, etc. Why do they keep doing this if they aren't making any money?

The answer is, of course, that they ARE making money. They make plenty of money, making it well worth releasing PC games.

In Epic's case, they make tons of money on PC gaming in the form of engine licenses. Unreal Engine 3 is one of the most popular engines out there (it is an extremely good engine) and a lot of those licenses are for PC games.

So really, I wish companies would stop whining. If piracy really is killing PC gaming, then stop making PC games. However I don't want to hear you bitch about it, but then keep wanting all the money you can make from it. It either is or is not worth it. If it is, then make PC games and shut up. If it's not, then abandon the PC.

To me this bitching is the same as the MPAA and RIAA. "Oh well we made more this year than ever before, but we should have made even more had it not been for the evil pirates!" Rings very hollow to me.

Finally, if they are pretending that they don't have piracy problems on consoles, they are playing the ostrich game. TPB has a whole section for the Xbox 360. Piracy is a fact of life when it comes to software. Despite that, companies make plenty of money. They just need to accept it and STFU.
 
Let's summarize here:
1) DRM hurts the PC game industry
2) Piracy hurts the PC game industry, regardless of how good/crappy a game is
3) Game makers still need to focus on the quality games. Crap isn't going to sell, regardless of piracy.

anything else?
 
XvMMvX said:
Ah yes this argument again....

PC Gamers live in a box, they think that PC gaming is simple, but in reality to the AVERAGE GAMER/HUMAN it is a pain in the ass. Install game, shit its crashing.....update video drivers, search for patch etc etc etc. Oh I see that game X has a known issue with my particular video card shit.... The list goes on, but some of you will respond that these are easy issues.

Again...to you they are, you and I are in the upper 5% of PC knowledge. Most people have a hard time keeping spyware off their PCs.

Consoles offer simplicity, buy game, insert, play. Oh and these graphics that you drool over, yeah most people don't give a shit if you can count the freckles on Neiko's face. Graphics and eyecandy are overrated to the GENERAL GAMING PUBLIC.

Open your box, step out, sniff, and then you will realize that the decisions for most of these developers to leave PC gaming is money based. It is simplier to program a AAA title for hardware that is the exact same accross the board.

Of ALL of the developers who started on the PC their are TWO left, Blizzard and Valve....and even Valve has put their stuff on the consoles.

Keyboard and Mouse that you drool over, yeah to the average gamer this sucks to. Gamepad on the couch is what most want when they play a game. Be happy with what you get and step outside your box and you will realize were the industry is going.

Betamax was better than VHS to.
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PC gaming has always been a niche. The fuck is your point?
 
The day PC gaming dies is the day I stop building a new machine and just go back to text based gaming instead. Consols suck they don't have anywhere near the graphics that PCs do and we're just all going to go back to standard HD on a console?. Can a console do eyefinity or even 3way displays, consoles are so far behind the times it's sad.

Can't wait till someone makes a console virus :)

Like others said fuck epic, who cares, there's so many shitty game developers out there, just let them go out of business they won't be missed.
 
Has PC's gaming market share really shrunk that much, or is it just that the consoles are raking in that much more these days?

And FFS stop sucking on Steams balls everyone. I use it too, but it pretty much single handedly killed off the used PC Game market.
 
pigwalk said:
And FFS stop sucking on Steams balls everyone. I use it too, but it pretty much single handedly killed off the used PC Game market.
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How so?
Unless they put a sale on a game you're trying to sell at the same time, I don't see where they killed used PC games.

Stores like Gamestop haven't sold used PC games in god knows how long.
 
jbailey said:
They should stop making the same game over and over.
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QFT.

It wasn't piracy, because Unreal Tournament 3 wasn't a success on the consoles either. It's the game, not the pirates who are responsible for its failure to achieve high sales.

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.
 
zero2dash said:
How so?
Unless they put a sale on a game you're trying to sell at the same time, I don't see where they killed used PC games.

Stores like Gamestop haven't sold used PC games in god knows how long.
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Yaa no shit.
 
Who needs the used PC game market when you can get good to excellent games on sale 3-12 months after they come out for 50% to 75% off on Steam? Used games generate zero profit for the game makers, so in a scenario where the used gaming market thrived, the new gaming market on the PC would be all but dead.

People need to stop thinking like monkeys - or more appropriately, like computers. Guess what: none of the points made here are exclusive or binary. They are ALL true.

1. Yes, piracy is a serious problem on the PC. If you deny this you are either retarded or blind.
2. Yes, some multiplatform games are shitty on the PC with inexcusable issues (Gears of War, Borderlands).
3. Yes, PC games can look better, but it will always be easier and more profitable to make the equivalent game on a console.

The main problem is that everyone just talks out of his ass because we have no fucking data. Steam for whatever inscrutable reason does NOT release sales figures for games, and the data tracking firms take no account of ANY digital sales for PC games. So all we have to go by, aside from random people on the internet, is the trend - which in this case is the stampede away from PC-centric game development.
 
ianken said:
That's right Einstein.
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"That's right Einstein"? Is this owning me?

ianken said:
It's not a charity. They set the price. You pay it, or don't. They'll go where the money is.
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Yeah, they'll go to the market awash with braindead consumers who'll simply buy whatever looks shiny and is chock full of impressive-looking explosions and loud noises. Contrary to what Mr. Capps would like for you to believe — that they make amazing, hugely-desirable games and the reason for their failures on the PC platform is due solely to "piracy" — I would suggest that it's due to other reasons entirely. Chief of which is, of course, their inability to produce games that PC gamers actually want. That tends to hinder profit potential, as you might imagine.

With the insatiable appetite for money comes the absolute absence of integrity. You can choose to respect that if you'd like, but don't expect me to.
 
pigwalk said:
...And FFS stop sucking on Steams balls everyone. I use it too, but it pretty much single handedly killed off the used PC Game market.
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ROFL!
when I can get an old game for 1/2 the price of GAMEwherever, Steam is a no brainer
 
I love a CEO who effectively blames his customers/market for their woes. If you're too focused on piracy, you're doing it wrong.
 
XvMMvX said:
Of ALL of the developers who started on the PC their are TWO left, Blizzard and Valve....and even Valve has put their stuff on the consoles.
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Two left? Clearly you either know nothing about what you speak, or you are lying to prove a point.
 
I think they need to have a word with Valve on how to rake in boatloads of cash in the pc gaming market; because they know how to do it without crippling their games with DRM. They're also a great place to pick up newish games at a discountas well as older games for dirt cheap. All you have to do is wait a month after release and keep an eye on their sales items.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by XvMMvX
Of ALL of the developers who started on the PC their are TWO left, Blizzard and Valve....and even Valve has put their stuff on the consoles.

Two left? Clearly you either know nothing about what you speak, or you are lying to prove a point.
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Please educate me on all of the AAA studios left developing only for the PC.
 
Piracy is killing PC gaming, just look at STEAM, it's totally going bankrupt, despite it's being the #1 platform on PC...

Notice how Epic is completely abandoning PC gaming? They have been "releasing" the Linux binaries for UT3 now for 3+ years...
 
While there is an increase in cross platform developers and a decreasing amount of PC developers in the AAA games market, I think people are attributing the wrong causes to this situation.

For one examine the the costs involved in the creation of a modern AAA title. The actual coding portion of any game, which would have to be optimized and platform specific, would not represent the largest cost in development. Art assets (such as the the design work, modeling, textures, level design, sounds, music, and etc.), and things like marketing, which are essentially platform independent, would be the much larger portion of development costs, and already paid for regardless of whether you are making a game for the PC, PS3 or Xbox360 only. Therefore it would not make much sense from a profit perspective to not cross platform a game.

The reason there are exclusives however for consoles such as the PS3 and Xbox360 despite this however, is due to the fact that Sony and Microsoft have strong vested interests in the success of their console, and influences certain developers to stay exclusive or give exclusive content. Nvidia and AMD/ATI for instance would not benefit from game sales on the PC like Sony/Microsoft do on the consoles, for one they do not take a licensing fee per title sold.

The business aspect of the console and PC games market has very large differences because of this. Can you imagine for instance the cost of PC hardware, if Intel and AMD and Nvidia decided to sell hardware at a loss, and how this would effect the PC games market? What if those same 3 companies paid for marketing in the media, or gave incentives to developers to develop for the PC only?
 
I just realized something else stupid that this idiot said. (same article)
Epic douche said:
“We still do PC, we still love the PC, but we already saw the impact of piracy: it killed a lot of great independent developers and completely changed our business model.”
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I find the opposite to be true; I would say that Steam bends over BACKWARDS for indie developers. Hell the guy that came up with Audiosurf will probably defend PC gaming and Steam until the day he dies for making his dream come true.
 
What will all those PC game pirates do when gaming is dead on the PC? I doubt they will stop pirating. More than likely they will move to pirating games on consoles. The mod market for consoles will take off and the Devs will complain about pirating on consoles. Anyone see where this is going....DRM for consoles, console updates that brick 3rd party hardware, etc. to try and stop it. Pirates may put more effort into getting console games to work on PCs, thus making pirating console games even easier, thus avoiding the above mentioned updates.

I just don't see that killing PC gaming is going to fix pirating at all, just move its focus from one system to another. Just my 2 cents:D
 
zero2dash said:
I just realized something else stupid that this idiot said. (same article)


I find the opposite to be true; I would say that Steam bends over BACKWARDS for indie developers. Hell the guy that came up with Audiosurf will probably defend PC gaming and Steam until the day he dies for making his dream come true.
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Agreed entirely. Steam did to the PC platform what Apple's App store did for the iPhone. They've made it so much easier for small developers to bring games to market.
 
it wasnt that UT3 was fucken terrible was it? it was piracy

eat a dick you loon, its all digital now
 
I'd think they would have made a bucketload of money if they'd gotten the last Unreal Tourney game right. Instead, it had lots of issues, and high-end graphics that weren't really called for / easily scalable , and too much emphasis on the console versions (which didn't do that great either).

I know people argue that the used PC game market wasn't helping them, but what about trade-ins? There is some decent evidence floating around that folks trading in old games towards new ones helps to drive sales. I know I've funded new game sales in the past by selling my old ones on ebay/amazon/etc.

I think all of the registration-key and DRM lockdown type stuff and killing the used PC game market is part of the reason it is in the decline. No one counts on being able to resell a game any more, and you can't return it - it makes buying one a very permanent decision. I know I am much more careful about $60 when I know I'm basically stuck with it.

And you Steam-hugging guys - ugh. I'm an oldschooler who won't tolerate buying games that call home somewhere to approve if you can play it. I can still play Pool of Radiance and Betrayal at Krondor and Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - imagine if they had call-home-installation checks? Yeah. 3DO - gone. SSI - gone. Sierra On-Line - almost gone. If I buy something, I don't expect any proof of ownership of my own product except for the disc itself.

I buy digital from Stardock and Good Old Games, and that's it. I'll do Steam and XBLA for $10-$15 tops, because in my mind, there's no proof I'll still have ownership of those games in X amount of years.
 
I think Epic has it right to some extent and they are very conspicuously not alone with their complaints. I think piracy plays a part significant enough to be mentioned along with publishers rushing developers (or buying them and producing endless sequels), high hardware costs, DRM and poor games.

Basically, it all results in less of a cushion for developers and occasionally a poorly received (or plain poor) game will ruin a developer that may still have potential (Troika, Ion Storm etc.)

I think there are enough people addicted to 'free' to make a difference in developer's profit margin, which is already slim if they are controlled by a large publisher. Taking the attitude of "fuck [dev|publisher]" and the piracy route winds up with me seeing less games, and potentially missing the next gem that will occupy far too much of my time. I'll stress again that I don't think it's *all* piracy.

I'd love to see more large distribution models like Steam that developers can use directly and maximize profits. As we move closer to a complete online distribution system we can lose the publisher parasites, and imho that will make a huge difference--as long as the Valves of the world don't get too greedy.
 
GreenMonkey said:
And you Steam-hugging guys - ugh. I'm an oldschooler who won't tolerate buying games that call home somewhere to approve if you can play it. I can still play Pool of Radiance and Betrayal at Krondor and Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - imagine if they had call-home-installation checks? Yeah. 3DO - gone. SSI - gone. Sierra On-Line - almost gone. If I buy something, I don't expect any proof of ownership of my own product except for the disc itself.
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Hasn't been a problem yet with digital distribution. The customers of the one digital distributer that went out of business so far all got boxed retail copies the the one game they were selling at that time, Prey.
 
XvMMvX said:
Please educate me on all of the AAA studios left developing only for the PC.
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Ah, AAA eh? You made a point of caps'ing ALL before. I must not have read my EULA because your terms have changed :p There are still quite a few PC exclusives, but the AAA publishers have mostly gone multiplatform for the obvious reason of wide market penetration.
 
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