Epic Says Piracy is Killing PC Gaming

eggrock said:
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.
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Publishers are required to fund the games as well. Do you really think most developers can afford the budget of a big title? They have to borrow money from publishers to do it.
 
Anyone who thinks there isn't going to be piracy on anything digital is out of there fucking minds.

You know what else? Consoles will eventually see debilitating piracy also, if they haven't already. If I really wanted to, I can go to torrent and usenet websites and find more Xbox and Playstation titles for download than I can PC games.

Locking out hacked consoles can only go so far, especially since it has been proven time and time again that people are willing to buy multiple consoles either for replacement or one to keep backup games on.

The sad fact is that one of the only effective (barely at that) method of forcing people not to pirate is multiplayer games with server side authentication. It just so happens, that is also where the demand is.
 
I also find it sad that Epic's games are what got me to switch from consoles to PC gaming in the first place. Yet time and again the CEO of Epic has shit on the gaming community with his comments.:(
 
Not sure who Epic is pandering to. It's not the actual other publishers out there, that's for sure.

The real decision to fund and produce a game, be it console, mobile or PC is with whatever company decides to do that with. And trust me, those people know the real numbers. And the real numbers are a lot different than what a handful of people will try and have you believe.

For every joker that comes along and tries to fool some of you that the PC is doing badly and not making any money, piracy this, piracy that and all that hogwash, you can find 10x the stories out there about how well the PC is doing.

I just read a story the other day that PC sales are now 1,000,000 a day worldwide. I'm sure many of also read the same story.

There was a story last year how the PC is doing so much better taken into account the past 10 years. And it will only get better.

There are rumors that the next Sony console will be a multicore Intel part / AMD part, aka x86. The next Xbox with no doubt be x86. People don't realize the scope of not only the software tools that are out there for developers to use, but companies in the hundreds worldwide who's business is to ease and speed the process / dev across multiple platforms to bring applications and entertainment software to again, console, mobile and pc.

I read something not long ago in PC Format, a UK gaming magazine where one dev said even with piracy which is factored in, companies doing PC ports of their console titles are still making very good money.

Piracy is a huge issue for not just PC but consoles and mobile devices as well.

Don't be fooled in the least that PC gaming is dying. Not with 1,000,000 personal computers being sold a day worldwide. And with the bar being raised constantly on video performance, even at the low end, we will see equal video performance to that of current PS3 and Xbox 360 in the next few years.

I also read a story not long ago that showed total PC dollars for entertainment for 2008 earned was 600% higher than consoles combined. This was online gaming, virtual sales, casual gaming, e-tail and retail sales and a few other areas.

Yes, piracy is a huge problem worldwide, with music, movies and software. A closed system like consoles will always fair better than an open system like the PC.
 
Piracy is just being used as a convenient scapegoat. The truth is that console gaming is more profitable because console gamers are, on average, morons.

It is a hell of a lot easier to milk console gamers than PC gamers. Console gamers will lap up whatever shit DLC comes out because they're spending "points" rather than "real money." On the other hand, there is a more widespread sentiment among PC gamers that when you buy the game, you should get the entire game. Two bucks for a new hair style? Console gamers are down. On the other hand, the only PC games where microtransactions thrive are those with a less sophisticated userbase similar to console gamers. Games like Sims and Facebook games.

PC games also have a much longer time horizon. It is much more common for people to spend months or even years playing a single game. Multiplayer communities thrive for much longer whereas console multiplayer is flavor of the month. Then there are also mods and user levels. Ironically game companies don't want you to spend a lot of time playing the games they make because it keeps you from buying other games.

PC gamers are also much more sophisticated and activist. Rarely will you see console gamers band together to try to punish companies for misdeeds. PC gamers however have revolted against Supreme Commander 2, Assassin's Creed/Splinter Cell, MW2, Spore, etc all in a short amount of time. Console gamers often display aggressive anti-intellectualism. "y do u care about dedicated servers, p2p is good enuff 4 us and its good enuff for u too." These are the same people who don't understand why aim assist is bad or how someone could be unsatisfied actually paying for matchmaking and having most multiplayer games be 8 v 8.

Then there is the hardware aspect of PC development...so many variables to account for. And PC gamers are largely schizophrenic here. Make a direct copy of the console game. Bad Port. Add a whole bunch of improvements but with the side effect of making poors feel bad bacause their card can't max it. Bad Port. Make a game ahead of its time that people can keep coming back to as GPUs improve to experience it in greater and greater glory. Unoptimized. As PC gamers we do a pretty poor job of signaling what we want, probably because everyone wants something different. But I for one would greatly prefer more PC-pushing games like Crysis and GTA IV, and less console-copies like Call of Duty.

In short, console gaming is more profitable because console gamers are easier to milk. But saying that isn't good for business, so instead its better to appeal to the moral superiority of console gamers and let them look down on PC "pirates."

*note that while I harshly criticize consoles, I do own all of them. The only nice thing I have to say is that the X360 helped bring a high quality standardized controller to PC gaming. That was something PC's had been missing for a long time and it greatly helps in PC-enhanced ports of console-style games like Just Cause and Batman.
 
anonmoniker said:
Piracy is just being used as a convenient scapegoat. The truth is that console gaming is more profitable because console gamers are, on average, morons.

It is a hell of a lot easier to milk console gamers than PC gamers. Console gamers will lap up whatever shit DLC comes out because they're spending "points" rather than "real money." On the other hand, there is a more widespread sentiment among PC gamers that when you buy the game, you should get the entire game. Two bucks for a new hair style? Console gamers are down. On the other hand, the only PC games where microtransactions thrive are those with a less sophisticated userbase similar to console gamers. Games like Sims and Facebook games.

PC games also have a much longer time horizon. It is much more common for people to spend months or even years playing a single game. Multiplayer communities thrive for much longer whereas console multiplayer is flavor of the month. Then there are also mods and user levels. Ironically game companies don't want you to spend a lot of time playing the games they make because it keeps you from buying other games.

PC gamers are also much more sophisticated and activist. Rarely will you see console gamers band together to try to punish companies for misdeeds. PC gamers however have revolted against Supreme Commander 2, Assassin's Creed/Splinter Cell, MW2, Spore, etc all in a short amount of time. Console gamers often display aggressive anti-intellectualism. "y do u care about dedicated servers, p2p is good enuff 4 us and its good enuff for u too." These are the same people who don't understand why aim assist is bad or how someone could be unsatisfied actually paying for matchmaking and having most multiplayer games be 8 v 8.

Then there is the hardware aspect of PC development...so many variables to account for. And PC gamers are largely schizophrenic here. Make a direct copy of the console game. Bad Port. Add a whole bunch of improvements but with the side effect of making poors feel bad bacause their card can't max it. Bad Port. Make a game ahead of its time that people can keep coming back to as GPUs improve to experience it in greater and greater glory. Unoptimized. As PC gamers we do a pretty poor job of signaling what we want, probably because everyone wants something different. But I for one would greatly prefer more PC-pushing games like Crysis and GTA IV, and less console-copies like Call of Duty.

In short, console gaming is more profitable because console gamers are easier to milk. But saying that isn't good for business, so instead its better to appeal to the moral superiority of console gamers and let them look down on PC "pirates."

*note that while I harshly criticize consoles, I do own all of them. The only nice thing I have to say is that the X360 helped bring a high quality standardized controller to PC gaming. That was something PC's had been missing for a long time and it greatly helps in PC-enhanced ports of console-style games like Just Cause and Batman.
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This man nails it. Console's are easier to make money on because the expectation is lesser. What you pay $10 as DLC for on a console, PC gamers expect for free, and not only that, PC gamers want the map editor and mod maker ready asap too. It's hard to convince someone to blow $15 on 5 crappy maps on the PC, when you have entire total conversions and expansion to games being released as free mods.

Modding is killing PC gaming far quicker than piracy ever will.
 
You guys always have these passionate arguments and most of you are pc fanatics I can tell, but no matter how articulate and Walt Whitman you sound still doesn't change the fact a lot of PC developers are jumping ship more to consoles. This is becoming a pretty familiar trend we're seeing here, and this story with Epic comes to no surprise.

This is perhaps the 4th or 5th article I've read regarding some company blaming piracy so you can't deny those claims if many more are coming out of the woodwork. Fact is it's way easier to go to a website and click a torrent than it is to mod a console, period. You guys give way too many people credit at being skilled in hardware modification, I've traveled enough to see that people all over the country still lack a decent computer let alone own one, and to actually have the ability to open up their console and start modding away, yea right, not everyone is as intelligent as half of you guys, so at least be intelligent enough to understand that a lot of you guys are completely wrong in your opinion.

Bottom line, a gaming company is still a company and if they're not making money, they fold, plain and simple. Doesn't matter how many forum posts are put at who or what's to blame in their point of view, if things continue on this trend, more and more companies will continue to jump ship to consoles and most of you guys won't have the Activision/Blizzard excuse which I've heard plenty of times before, to argue that PC sales are still growing, 1 company doesn't speak for the whole PC industry, it can't. My job involves among other things the AMEX, and the numbers I've seen the past 5 years don't sing the same song some of you guys are preaching, so consider that next time you do a console/pc comparison next time.

All I can say is it sucks for PC software developers because yea piracy is seriously hurting their sales, and at the moment nothing the RIAA or MPAA has done can stop this, and don't get me started at the DRM fiasco, we all saw the fall out of that and ultimately the additional pirates it created by pissing off legit customers. Steam is a great first step, but not everyone has internet running in their homes still (yes they do exist) but until every home has open access in the country, even a fully functioning system such as system won't prevent a mass exodus of small developers and probably even the big ones.
 
weebling1 said:
ROFL!
when I can get an old game for 1/2 the price of GAMEwherever, Steam is a no brainer
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It's great for budget and older games, but if a new release ties to Steam, I'm definitely NOT going to be buying it for 50 bucks.

Luckily the PC game market is so fucked up that I know I'll be able to get it somewhere for 20-30 bucks literally a month or two after release.
 
Epic games blaming piracy. maybe I'm showing myself as out of the loop when it comes to
the whole 'warez' scene but aren't Epic games built typically about the multiplayer online experience? sure they have a single player component but normally if you buy an Epic game it's for the multiplayer. far as I know all those pirated games worked fine on single player mode but practically useless for net play (may still work for LAN games but really how many of you still play on a LAN these days).

I've bought several Epic games in the past and they've steadily gone down in quality sadly. But the fact that they're blaming piracy is quite disingenuous. Good PR I guess to cover up for their dropping presence in the PC market. Epic is fast becoming irrelevant in the PC gaming industry and no amount of piracy imagined or not is gonna hide that truth.
 
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.
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You're comparing apples to oranges; anything with online has the capability to phone home. In the old days, online was computer only; a ridiculously small fragment of what it is now. All of the old CD based systems were easily copyable; hell you could make a straight dupe of a SegaCD, TurboCD or NeoGeoCD game *now* and play it in any system because back then they didn't have copy protection like now and people didn't have the capability to copy those games. If the SegaCD came out yesterday and every new computer had a burner and the Genesis had online capability other than the X-Band, I guarantee you every SegaCD game would have some sort of protection on it.

You're trying to compare two different points in technological time and that just don't work especially in this regard.

GreenMonkey said:
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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Again - you're comparing technology then to technology now.
CD/DVD games usually have original disc checks/verification at a minimum. Then you throw in CD keys or SecuRom. Others phone home. I'd be willing to bet more games phone home than we think, but who's to say? It's not like game companies are going to just come out and say it without being somewhat caught redhanded first. If no one's the wiser, they won't say shit about it and if they ever do get caught, they usually just play dumb.

GreenMonkey said:
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.
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Steam, XBLA, PSN all tie the game licenses into your username and you can freely download any titles you've previously purchased at any time. Instead of playing "the sky is falling", take into consideration what massive of a catastrophy would have to happen for Steam to "forget" millions of gamers' purchases and the lawsuits that would ensue. I'm pretty sure there's some business basics 101 in there enough for them to make sure that information is permanently backed up or recorded somewhere.

I used to be pro-physical copy, anti-digital copy unless there was a choice. (For instance - Audiosurf was the only game in my Steam library for a long time, other than the Orange Box which ties into Steam even in physical copy form.) Now, I honestly don't give a damn. I'd rather DL all my Steam titles, back it up to a HD, and in the future be able to re-DL or reinstall without having to hunt all over the house for discs and boxes and CD keys. But eh, whatever floats your boat. :)
 
There's nothing wrong with a sequel...... if it's well made and a good game in it's own right.
 
I laugh at this shit now is so fucking old. Personally I spend more money than EVER on PC games and hardware, thousands every year. Yeah you have volume in the console market but the deep gaming pockets are on the PC and as long as there's a decent population of people like me and judging by the number of PC sites dedicated to gaming hardware I'd say that's more than two, PC gaming isn't going anywhere. If PC gaming were to die people like me would be lost customers FOREVER. I'll NEVER game on a piece of shit console. Fucking NEVER.
 
Piracy is here to stay , stop the DRM crap that prevents the majority (I'm talking the 90+ precent of us that PAY for our gaming hobbies) of us from enjoying are gaming experience that we paid good hard earned money for.

DRM is bad enough now that its starting to be just as responsible for piracy as piracy is responsible for down sales.

Epic has a half point they just choose to neglect all the current amazing PC developers that are thriving in there business , everyone jumped ship to consoles because its the easy money avenue right now and its trendy.

PC gaming isn't going anywhere.
 
@Ski

Seems you've been brainwashed. No, a lot of companies are not jumping ship. You do the HardOCP community a great disservice when you spread this kinda of disinformation.

Also, "one" company speaking for the whole PC gaming industry? lolwhat? No, all these companies, in the hundreds speak for the PC anytime they release a title. Do not purposely be so narrow minded as to serve some personal agenda. Please, if you must share your opinion, do so unbiased and factual.

What I find really Ironic is that the personal computer is Epics biggest client to date. Visit their web site and those of their partners / clients to gather this info yourself.

A quick look at all the big publishers show that all of them have huge PC titles out now with newer titles coming out soon. In fact if you pay attention to investor reports like I do where they all disclose their business plans, upcoming titles, they all, again have tons of PC titles coming out.

According to many reports out there Ski, and all you have to do is go and look and educate yourself, PC gaming is growing at an unprecedented rate unlike anything seen. Sure, part of that area is web / casual gaming but at any rate.

I can count all the PC naysayer clowns on both hands still. You guys pop out about 8 to 10 times a year. However, most gamers are not fooled. And any real dev will always know the real numbers. That's all that counts.
 
Galvin said:
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..
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Yes, they can do up to 4 screens, just need 4 machines and 4 copies of the game but they can do it.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/15/vrxs-triple-screen-racing-simulator-uses-xbox-360-elite/

Video of a triple setup,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CVe2JszalI
 
zero2dash said:
Steam, XBLA, PSN all tie the game licenses into your username and you can freely download any titles you've previously purchased at any time. Instead of playing "the sky is falling", take into consideration what massive of a catastrophy would have to happen for Steam to "forget" millions of gamers' purchases and the lawsuits that would ensue. I'm pretty sure there's some business basics 101 in there enough for them to make sure that information is permanently backed up or recorded somewhere.
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Oh yeah? You know what happened with the MSN music debacle? "You have your music, you just can't move it to another PC." They were SOL on music they 'purchased'. Laws aren't on the side of consumers these days, and thanks to the DMCA, it's not even legal to crack the DRM in situations like that.
 
Ski said:
Fact is it's way easier to go to a website and click a torrent than it is to mod a console, period. You guys give way too many people credit at being skilled in hardware modification, I've traveled enough to see that people all over the country still lack a decent computer let alone own one, and to actually have the ability to open up their console and start modding away, yea right, not everyone is as intelligent as half of you guys, so at least be intelligent enough to understand that a lot of you guys are completely wrong in your opinion.
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I and many others don't give the console pirates any more credit than the PC pirates. All but one person that I know has a modded console. Of those people, only one of them did the mod to his own console. Guess what? These non-tech savvy console pirates are paying other people to do the hard work for them. In many cases, its just friends helping friends, and the work gets done for free. It gets even easier when Microsoft does another round of xbox live banning. Then a flood of pre-modded consoles go on the market for cheap. These people then have their cheap secondary console they play their pirated single player games.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
I and many others don't give the console pirates any more credit than the PC pirates. All but one person that I know has a modded console. Of those people, only one of them did the mod to his own console. Guess what? These non-tech savvy console pirates are paying other people to do the hard work for them. In many cases, its just friends helping friends, and the work gets done for free. It gets even easier when Microsoft does another round of xbox live banning. Then a flood of pre-modded consoles go on the market for cheap. These people then have their cheap secondary console they play their pirated single player games.
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Pretty big market on places like craigslist for modded 360s and modding services. Im waiting for the next mass banning to get myself a cheapo 360 i have no interest in live.
 
Ski said:
Fact is it's way easier to go to a website and click a torrent than it is to mod a console, period. You guys give way too many people credit at being skilled in hardware modification,
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Didn't 1 million 360s get banned due to modding? Doesn't exactly seem like a small amount of folks doing that.
 
Considering the ease and accessibility of pirated software online, it's very surprising how few games have come out over the last few years that I'd consider downloading for free much less risk wasting money on. The last relevant PC game that Epic released was what, UT99? They're in the same boat as Id software when it comes to PC games. They've failed to innovate and have been left behind.

I moved from the SNES to PC gaming because of the games. Most of the games out on PC now are not PC games, they're console games with added mouse support. The actual PC games I'll continue to support.

And PC gaming will never die. At worst (or best) all the big publishers will move away and we'll be left with smaller independent studios actually designing the games they want to make.
 
The industry should stop caring about piracy, so we can move into a model where everything is pirated, like in China.
 
If piracy on consoles were as easy as the PC, you can bet the piracy rate on consoles would be as high as the PC, if not higher.
 
Idiot developers implementing idiot DRM that doesn't work is killing PC gaming because the average gamer doesn't want to jump through 10 fiery hoops to get their game working.
 
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.
 
I would say DRM that causes you to be online constantly or else the game stops working is the fault of pc gaming dieing. When all it takes is someone to DDOS the server and no one can play the game, why would you ever want to buy another one?
 
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.
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In some was it is and in some was it isn't.

Things like Steam, Eyefinity, multi-GPU didn't all exist 5 years ago. High-end gaming on PCs is very intresting and powerful, there's still plenty of games and the experience blows consoles the fuck away.

In many ways the gap between PCs and consoles has only widened considerably in the PC's favor. Yes it costs more money but it's a HELL of a better experience,
 
Piracy is just a scapegoat for the industry. They use the same thing in Hollywood and the RIAA. They just won't get it through their thick skulls, that they are producing garbage.... They ASSUME that we all fit the "Field of Dreams" theme... Just because you make it, doesn't mean we will come.

Here is a freebie for the PC makers. Stop porting bad console game controls on to PC! I have a keyboard with more than five keys! They will never learn...

End of rant.
 
nerdydesi said:
If piracy on consoles were as easy as the PC, you can bet the piracy rate on consoles would be as high as the PC, if not higher.
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That's just it. IT IS JUST AS EASY. The method is different. The only difficulty for pirates on consoles is the initial mod, which hardly any of them do themselves. Just because you can't solder in a mod chip or figure out how to install hacked firmware does not prevent average joes from pirating games. They just get someone else to do the work for them. It is just as easy to go to ebay or craigslist and purchase a pre-modded console. Hell, you can even find people selling (albeit illegally) the boxes with the games pre-loaded. Few clicks and I'm done. Same thing with pirating a PC game. The wealth of knowledge on the subject is huge and there are plenty of noobie guides available.
 
-edit to post above-
I said "few clicks and I'm done" does not mean I do it. I meant to imply that if I were to actually do this, it would only take a few clicks for me to accomplish.
 
It seems like everyone here is agreeing with Epic's implied premise that PC gaming is dying.

Instead of piracy - it's just that basically very few studios are capable of producing anything worth buying on the PC? Am I summing that up right?

Regardless of the root cause, a handful of successful game examples does not a market make. If you watch game company stocks you'll see that developers are indeed dissolving or migrating to console territory. It is a shame to see how things have changed. I still remember when the PC came first, and consoles got ports afterwards.
 
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.
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That's one of the many nice things about steam, everything is patched automatically and it take's away one of pc gamings biggest problem and that was patching. Your average joe may have had a gaming capable computer but searching around for the latest patches is a bitch and can be confusing. That is no more.

I have re-purchased game's on steam because of that reason. Every time I wanted to install and play Company of Heroes it was such a pain in the ass to download 10+ patches just to get the game up to snuff. I said fuck it and I now own the retail copy and the steam version.

Driver's aren't really an issue anymore really. I know people who have been running the driver's that shipped with their cards and have no problems playing the latest game. That may not always be the case but really downloading and updating driver's isn't really all that hard anymore. ATi and Nvidia have both pretty much stream lined the process on their respective websites and with ATi it's even easier cause you can just install the new drivers over all the old shit.

PC gaming is not dieing and I think we're gonna see an even larger increase in gaming ready machines once fusion hits. It's not going anywhere folks and as far as that bullshit line about Indie developers getting the shaft that's fucking BS. Casual games (indie) are all the rave now. There was just that charity thing for that indie game collection and they raised over $1 million dollars by donations alone.

The problem is, they wanna push piracy as an excuse for poor programing and straight console ports. It's better now than it was in 2007-2009 but those two years are really when PC gaming hit it's lul.

Look at CD Projekt red. The only release they've had in the past like 4 years is The Witcher and they're continually supported the game and added content and it sold oodles.

UT3 is a great game but out the door it was a fucking mess and it's ultimately what killed the game. The game wasn't ready for pc. Managing and running a server at launch was so convoluted and confusing mess. Epic burned their fucking bridge with that, and while the "Black Edition/Titan" patch fixed a majority of the glaring issue's with the game by that point it was already too late and the hardcore fan base had already jumped ship.

If people make good game's they will sell. Perfect examples of that are BC2, L4D 1/2, TF2 and so on.
 
nerdydesi said:
If piracy on consoles were as easy as the PC, you can bet the piracy rate on consoles would be as high as the PC, if not higher.
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Don't worry, once they go to consoles, they'll start complaining there. They'll complain about low sales, cause used games are being sold at Gamestop, Ebay, Craigslist, etc.

Hell, I usually only buy 1/2 the games I want to play on consoles. Why bother, when I just borrow them from friends.

Borrow a PC game nowadays from friends. It's a pain in the ass and sometimes simply impossible.
 
Azymn said:
It seems like everyone here is agreeing with Epic's implied premise that PC gaming is dying.

Instead of piracy - it's just that basically very few studios are capable of producing anything worth buying on the PC? Am I summing that up right?

Regardless of the root cause, a handful of successful game examples does not a market make. If you watch game company stocks you'll see that developers are indeed dissolving or migrating to console territory. It is a shame to see how things have changed. I still remember when the PC came first, and consoles got ports afterwards.
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It's just a see-saw effect. We had PCs, then consoles, then PCs, now consoles again. In a few years, PCs will be the rage again.
 
hughJ said:
Considering the ease and accessibility of pirated software online, it's very surprising how few games have come out over the last few years that I'd consider downloading for free much less risk wasting money on. The last relevant PC game that Epic released was what, UT99? They're in the same boat as Id software when it comes to PC games. They've failed to innovate and have been left behind.

I moved from the SNES to PC gaming because of the games. Most of the games out on PC now are not PC games, they're console games with added mouse support. The actual PC games I'll continue to support.

And PC gaming will never die. At worst (or best) all the big publishers will move away and we'll be left with smaller independent studios actually designing the games they want to make.
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UT2K4 was Epic's last good PC release. Though some will argue that 2K3 was the better one. As for id...Eh. I'm going to avoid going a rant about "innovation" bullshit that people scream about. Doom 3's problem wasn't "innovation" it was just plain poor design.
 
Hop-Scotch said:
10 or so years ago I would pirate a game, but I've grown up, make a lot more money, and I don't mind plunking down first day prices for a new game. Problem is, nobody makes a game worth playing on PC anymore. My money now goes to Steam sales, or releases there since the prices are usually cheaper than me going to the store (store price + tax + gas + my time).

Solution: fix the delivery system, and make something that showcases the PC and what it can do. I built my sig rig to game. Most that's been done on it was allow my friends to oggle over Crysis.
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QFT
 
any developer or publisher that's only in it for the money is of less than no interest to me anyway
 
krotch said:
It's just a see-saw effect. We had PCs, then consoles, then PCs, now consoles again. In a few years, PCs will be the rage again.
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No, it will never be PCs again. The console userbase can be monetized and raped in a way PC users won't tolerate. Sure, PCs will continue to be the best platform for gamers, but consoles will get the bulk of the attention. 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. It's a lot easier to get away with this on consoles so we see corporate officers meeting their fiduciary duties by shifting to console development. Try to get away with bullshit on the PC and you'll get 1000 one-star Amazon reviews.
 
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