"They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More"

[TopGun]

Heres the problem:

The publisher is greedy. 5 bucks isn't enough. They want more. They want 8000% profits. This is the kind of shit that needs to stop. Its wrong to assume that its alright to charge the end user a fixed, inflated amount of money for a copy of a game, that cost practically nothing to copy/distribute. Especially once the cost of initial development is covered.

I'm not saying they shouldn't make any money for developing/publishing the game. I'm just saying it should be reasonable. $50 per game copy, is totally unreasonable, greedy and downright wrong.

Agreed, Considering I spent about 350-400ish total to build my computer it doesn't
make sense to spend $1000 on games to play on it.

 

[TerranUp16]

Pirating isn't going to bring game prices down- quite the opposite, actually.

 

[JohnShaft]

Also, is there really a way of tracking people that pirate console games? There are a lot more single-player games on consoles (Like the Wii) that can be played without being online, so how would there be any way of tracking that?

 

[Kiggles]

Did anyone even read the article? I will not dispute CoD4 may have been pirated in great volume, but the linked article and the [H] news snippet (since it was copy&pasted) are utter bullshit. There are no numbers or evidence to support the assertion.

It is one thing for some random blogger to post this, but how in the world did this end up as front page [H] material? I had some degree of respect for the news posted here, but this is terrible journalism. Tell us why we should care and give you the befit of doubt when you simply tell us how things are.

Again, this is regarding journalism, not so much the validity of the argument. Like I said, CoD4 may very well have been pirated to excess. I am arguing this sort of crap shouldn't be posted on Hardocp. Give us numbers. Give us examples. Don't give us word of mouth, or you might as well quote every "insider" and "authority" on the net.

Otherwise, here's another one for the front page. "Gaming is awesome. I don't know if I can post the number or percentage of awesomes, but I'll check and see; if I can I'll update them. As the amount of awesome that is game is astounding. It blows me away at the amount of awesome that is games (or anything) simply because it's the freaking cool."

Thanks [H]. Glad to know I have to verify your sources instead of taking them at face value.

 

[TerranUp16]

Did anyone even read the article? I will not dispute CoD4 may have been pirated in great volume, but the linked article and the [H] news snippet (since it was copy&pasted) are utter bullshit. There are no numbers or evidence to support the assertion.

It is one thing for some random blogger to post this, but how in the world did this end up as front page [H] material? I had some degree of respect for the news posted here, but this is terrible journalism. Tell us why we should care and give you the befit of doubt when you simply tell us how things are.

Again, this is regarding journalism, not so much the validity of the argument. Like I said, CoD4 may very well have been pirated to excess. I am arguing this sort of crap shouldn't be posted on Hardocp. Give us numbers. Give us examples. Don't give us word of mouth, or you might as well quote every "insider" and "authority" on the net.

Otherwise, here's another one for the front page. "Gaming is awesome. I don't know if I can post the number or percentage of awesomes, but I'll check and see; if I can I'll update them. As the amount of awesome that is game is astounding. It blows me away at the amount of awesome that is games (or anything) simply because it's the freaking cool."

Thanks [H]. Glad to know I have to verify your sources instead of taking them at face value.

It's rather apparent the posting was meant to spark a discussion on pirating games- an excuse more or less, to speak about something that needs to be addressed.

 

[CaptNumbNutz]

I have yet to see anyone explain to me what harm is being done if I were to theoretically pirate a game that I either cannot afford, or would not have purchased in the first place.

Can anyone explain what harm is being done in that situation? And by harm I don't mean "Its technically illegal.", I mean actual tangible monetary loss for the company who made or published the game.

Your propogating piracy, and by doing so your not just affecting the particular game developer and/or publisher, your affecting an entire industry just a little bit. Multiply that by several million people, and you get huge monetary loss. If you use a P2P software program to download it, your usually making it easier for someone else to download it that might have actually purchased the game by giving the host a reason to continue serving up the file, and/or uploading it yourself via the P2P program your using. If you cannot afford the game, but still wanted the game, you might be able to actually save a few dollars and buy it in the future. If you had no intention of purchasing it in the first place, you either (1) can't afford it and want it, refer to previous reason, or (2) don't really want the game in the first place, you may be propogating it by downloading it through P2P (or a website, or other, etc. etc.), and why the fuck are you downloading it in the first place?

That a good enough explanation?

How about the fact that people pirating PC games in the first place is why they are so goddamn expensive, and why so many great game developers have slowly gone out of business or switched to consoles or making horrid games for cell phones?

Quite Frankly, your reasoning sounds like a child who can't seem to see beyond himself.

 

[TerranUp16]

Your propogating piracy. Your legitimizing it. If you use a P2P software program to download it, your usually making it easier for someone else to download it that might have actually purchased the game by giving the host a reason to continue serving up the file, and/or uploading it yourself via the P2P program your using. If you cannot afford the game, but still wanted the game, you might be able to actually save a few dollars and buy it in the future. If you had no intention of purchasing it in the first place, you either (1) can't afford it and want it, refer to previous reason, or (2) don't really want the game in the first place, you may be propogating it by downloading it through P2P, and why the fuck are you downloading it in the first place?

That a good enough explanation?

How about the fact that people pirate PC games in the first place is why they are so goddamn expensive, and why so many great game developers have slowly gone out of business or switched to consoles or making horrid games for cell phones?

QFT

 

[Denki]

But despite Infinity Ward's complaints, CoD4 still managed to be the #1 PC game...

 

[TopGun]

Your propogating piracy, and by doing so your not just affecting the particular game developer and/or publisher, your affecting an entire industry just a little bit. Multiply that by several million people, and you get huge monetary loss. If you use a P2P software program to download it, your usually making it easier for someone else to download it that might have actually purchased the game by giving the host a reason to continue serving up the file, and/or uploading it yourself via the P2P program your using. If you cannot afford the game, but still wanted the game, you might be able to actually save a few dollars and buy it in the future. If you had no intention of purchasing it in the first place, you either (1) can't afford it and want it, refer to previous reason, or (2) don't really want the game in the first place, you may be propogating it by downloading it through P2P (or a website, or other, etc. etc.), and why the fuck are you downloading it in the first place?

That a good enough explanation?

How about the fact that people pirating PC games in the first place is why they are so goddamn expensive, and why so many great game developers have slowly gone out of business or switched to consoles or making horrid games for cell phones?

Quite Frankly, your reasoning sounds like a child who can't seem to see beyond himself.

It may be true but if people want to pirate they'll pirate.

 

[NKDietrich]

How about the fact that people pirating PC games in the first place is why they are so goddamn expensive, and why so many great game developers have slowly gone out of business or switched to consoles or making horrid games for cell phones?

I've never seen any hard data regarding piracy and lost sales. When the recording industry attempted to blame their lost sales on piracy, they got laughed at. Despite declining piracy due to lawsuits, their sales continued to drop. The point I am trying to make here is that they need to stop making excuses and change their business model, just like the record industry. You can't shove sub-par crap down consumers throats for years and expect them to keep paying.

Lets face it, if people bought every game that came out that they liked the demo of (if there was even a demo to begin with.), they'd found out very quickly that they regret 9 out of 10 game purchases. Make the games worth buying, and people will buy them! As much as businesses need to make money, customers need to get something for their money. We have just as many rights as they do. We aren't here to be exploited, like people seem to think, we are here to be served, we are the customer.

I also find it very intriguing, the discrepancy between how the game industry, and music/movie industry are treated in this community. If this were about the RIAA's latest whining and complaining people would be going "LOL maybe its because 99% of the music that comes out is utter crap that your stuff isn't selling!". But since we're talking about the game industry, it's just a bunch of renegades burning and pillaging the homes of starving developers.

 

[Lodrin]

When a game is priced at 50 bucks or so no wonder people say to hell with that, it should be 5. I view this as a fault of the publishers, not the developers..

Why do you think it should be $5?

Do you live in a third world country where you have absolutely no understanding of the value of an American Dollar? Completely disregarding the payrolls that span over 3 years and 30+ people to design the game in the first place... lets just look at what you can comparitively buy with an American dollar.

It costs $10 to go see a movie that provides 2 hours of passive entertainment, and you expect a video game that provides 5, 10, 20, sometimes even 50 hours worth of interactive entertainment to cost half as much? What about an arcade where 1 play that can only last 30 seconds costs you 50 cents, sometimes a sold $1? You can piss through $5 in 5 minutes in an arcade.

Why do you think you deserve a top notch game for only $5?

 

[InorganicMatter]

Yeah, that's really sick. I'm a firm believer in trying before you buy, but I do pay for all games that I decide to keep. I paid the full $60 for Crysis, and got Quake Wars for Christmas. Yeah, they were expensive, but they are good games and it was worth it.

My point is not advocating forced trying before you buy via illegitimate methods (though I see nothing wrong with that if no demo is offered). Pirating is wrong, and makers of good games deserve your money, but the problem is twofold. A lot of games my friends pirated just weren't that good, and were quickly deleted and forgotten before the first level was even finished: STALKER, FEAR, Prey, etc. Studios have themselves partially to blame for this due to putting out crap games, or failing to offer a demo.

I do realize that CoD4 offers a demo, I'm speaking about PC games in general. For the record, my copy of CoD4 is 100% legitimate; it is a good game and the developers deserve your $50 for. What is $50 these days anyway? You can't hardly buy a tank of gas for that much any more...

 

[TheNuker]

How about theoretically stealing a car that you either cannot afford or would have not purchased in the first place?

Queue the argument: It's only 1s and 0s and it's not like anyone is missing a copy.

Worst analogy ever.

 

[ianken]

The old "it's too expensive so I'll steal it" argument.

Bullshit. They'd steal it anyway. The only reason people DO steal it is that they won't go to jail for it. It's all just self delusional justification for their theft.

It's like the old "all music today sucks, that's why I steal it." Why steal it if it sucks? Oh...that's right....just another bullshit justification.

 

[NKDietrich]

The old "it's too expensive so I'll steal it" argument.

Bullshit. They'd steal it anyway. The only reason people DO steal it is that they won't go to jail for it. It's all just self delusional justification for their theft.

It's like the old "all music today sucks, that's why I steal it." Why steal it if it sucks? Oh...that's right....just another bullshit justification.

I don't think its necessarily a matter of price for most people. I believe most people are willing to pay $50 for a good, quality game. But the chances are very high that your $50 is going to get you 6 hours of gameplay, and maybe the game wont be a bug riddled pile of crap if you're lucky. And if there was any doubt, the last few scandals have proven that you cannot trust most of the game reviews on the net. They are all bought and paid for. If only there was a site like the [H] for game reviews.

Piracy isn't to blame for why companies sink millions of dollars into a game and it still ends up sucking. If your customers stop buying your product because the risk of it being horribly disappointing is so high, you've got a serious problem and it isn't pirates.

 

[TerranUp16]

Certainly, publishers should focus on putting out more and more extensive demos- if you have both singleplayer and multiplayer, put out a demo for each. However, increased piracy is likely only to hurt that sentiment- in publishers' minds, people will just dl the MP demos and play those w/out buying the games.

Anyway, the BIG difference between the RIAA's fight against piracy and PC gaming's fight against piracy is that I doubt music pirating (disclaimer- I don't support music pirating, but I don't support the RIAA either- they need to get their act together) is affecting the quality of music, whereas PC game pirating is a factor for why many developers who formerly concentrated solely or primarily on the PC are increasingly looking towards consoles- and that is flat-out hurting the quality of PC games. Thus, by not pirating, the PC gamer does have something to gain- a better game for when you do spend the $50.

 

[WebFusion]

Originally Posted by Elipsn
When a game is priced at 50 bucks or so no wonder people say to hell with that, it should be 5. I view this as a fault of the publishers, not the developers..

Wow...it always amazes me how people are so willing to devalue other people's work, yet place so much value on their own. How much do YOU make for your work product? think you should be paid fairly for your work....even if I think you're work is substandard?

When it comes to these issues of online theft, be it music, movies, games, etc. etc., I always think that people SHOULD choose the moral right. It comes down to wants and needs. people that were called "looters" after hurricane Katrina who were stealing food/diapers/baby formula...while technically wrong, were not (IMHO) morally so. They NEEDED those things to survive.

People who are ripping off the game companies don't NEED to, they simple want to - hence a moral wrong. Sure, games are expensive, but like anything else....sometimes you have to actually WORK from things you want. This sense of entitlement being expressed (i.e. I wouldn't have paid for it anyway, so it's ok if I steal it) is ridiculous at best. Further, it demonstrates just how much of a lack of integrity so many people openly express.

The fact is....when you steal these games, you are stealing someone's work product.

Would you work for free?

 

[Drudenhaus]

I'd buy more games if I didn't have to deal with copy protection and all that junk that requires me to have the disc in the drive or disable my virtual drives (Daemon Tools/Alcohol). I still buy the games I play, but I play alot less of them because of the hassle.

In my eyes, all this 'protection' just hurts the people that actually pay for the games. It's far easier to pirate the game than it is to legitly go out, buy, install, and play the game with the protection.

 

[InorganicMatter]

I'd buy more games if I didn't have to deal with copy protection and all that junk that requires me to have the disc in the drive or disable my virtual drives (Daemon Tools/Alcohol). I still buy the games I play, but I play alot less of them because of the hassle.

In my eyes, all this 'protection' just hurts the people that actually pay for the games. It's far easier to pirate the game than it is to legitly go out, buy, install, and play the game with the protection.

Good point. I'm running cracked version of a lot of my legit games simply because the protection schemes are such a pain. I mean for serious, Crysis wants you disc in the drive to play; hello, they're still using that scheme?! Like that ever did ANYTHING but cause the customer a pain by having to search around for the disk to play.

 

[ShagnWagn]

I question why this would be considered "news", especially on the front page. I also question the blog on what they consider an "illegitimate copy". What is there on a console that tells them it it's authentic or not? Again it's a blog and nothing about it is factual (which leads me to my first sentence).

If a non-purchased copy of the game works on multiplayer, what would be the incentive to reinstall the game with a legit key? I would not deal with that hassle unless I had to, which would only affect an honest purchase. I would keep using the non-purchased copy and file the purchased one away. That would save some hassle (especially some installs taking an hour+). I wonder how many of the assumed (if not made-up) non-purchased copies would fit this scenario. And how many others can't afford it because every game is $50+. Which leads to the next paragraph.

I agree with the other posters in this thread. The inflated prices of games is its own deterrent. The game industry seems even more greedy than the music industry let alone the movie studios. The reason I think this is because even when you buy a game directly from the manufacturer, they still charge the same price as going to the local store. They cut out the "fat cats" and middle-men, why is it still $50-$60?? This would be like music artists getting the full $15 from a music CD instead of the <$0.10 they are getting now. Movie and music studios pay their actors and artists tens of millions of dollars let alone everybody else in the food trough. But they are charging 3-4 times more for games?

 

[epblash]

Easy fix - just release the game only on GFW Live or Steam next time around (physical CD's come with CD keys that would be punched into a Steam account identically to how HL2 physical copies are registered). Considering how hard/impossible it is to get multiplayer working on hacked copies - BF2/BF2142 being prime examples - it would definitely cut down.

I doubt hacked servers are worth it anyways. Whenever I feel like getting a pirated game - and I usually don't, just use Rapidshare for movies and music mostly - I only get it for SP.

That being said, if devs didn't make PC games anymore - you can bet your sorry chops console piracy would jump overnight, and people would find a way to get pirated copies past XBL authentication and the like.

 

[krameriffic]

Good point. I'm running cracked version of a lot of my legit games simply because the protection schemes are such a pain. I mean for serious, Crysis wants you disc in the drive to play; hello, they're still using that scheme?! Like that ever did ANYTHING but cause the customer a pain by having to search around for the disk to play.

Even better is the virulent copy protection programs like SecuROM and Starforce that also don't do anything but fuck games up for people who actually purchased the game.

Easy fix - just release the game only on GFW Live or Steam next time around (physical CD's come with CD keys that would be punched into a Steam account identically to how HL2 physical copies are registered). Considering how hard/impossible it is to get multiplayer working on hacked copies - BF2/BF2142 being prime examples - it would definitely cut down.

I doubt hacked servers are worth it anyways. Whenever I feel like getting a pirated game - and I usually don't, just use Rapidshare for movies and music mostly - I only get it for SP.

That being said, if devs didn't make PC games anymore - you can bet your sorry chops console piracy would jump overnight, and people would find a way to get pirated copies past XBL authentication and the like.

Now that they have most of the issues with Steam ironed out (when CSS first came out, you could play the MP on a pirated version for a considerable length of time) it is a very good system for this sort of thing.

 

[NKDietrich]

Copy protection to me seems like a seperate issue. I see no reason to have it. It doesn't deter anyone or reduce piracy, it just raises the cost of the game because they have to license that crap.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Pirating isn't going to bring game prices down- quite the opposite, actually.

Curious, how do you come to this conclusion?

They're selling less product, so they're going to raise the price of it? Is this the iPhone business model? Rape those who support them?

The problem is the companies that toss up all the money, the EA's of the world, they fix the price of games across the board simply so that if one game tanks, no biggy there are others that will make up for the loss. Since the car theft analogy is being thrown around, how fun would it be if all cars were roughly the same price regardless of quality? Quite a few high end cars would be sold, the good ones, some middle class ones would because you can't fit a 5 person family into a porche 911 (that's the kiddie game analogy in case you're not catching up)... and the crappy cars would make a few sales, they'd drop into the "bargain bin" for cars, and that auto maker would never make that car or any sequels again.

Ok fuzzy analogy, but how many times have you (or seen someone) in a store deciding between a couple games, because they only have $50... why does the game that has millions of dollars of advertising thrown into it cost the same as the one made by the small developer company? It's all the fault of the money backing the games.

 

[jaegertech]

I've always wondered if PC devs realize there can be a positive side to piracy as well as the obvious negative side. To the best of my knowledge, there is no PC demo for Test Drive Unlimited. Without bittorrent, I would have NEVER tried the game. I also wouldn't have bought a copy or sold a couple friends on buying their own copies. Ditto for Stalker, Temple of Elemental Evil, and a bunch of other games (and other forms of entertainment) I've bought over the years.

Beyond that, it is only basic economics that one pirated copy does not equal one lost sale. As the price for a good/service goes down, demand goes up. The number of people willing to play a game that costs $0 (pirated) is going to be much greater than the number of people willing to pay for a legit copy at ANY price. I'm not condoning people who never pay for a product they use, but I also don't think the problem is as simple as its usually presented.

 

[NKDietrich]

Ok fuzzy analogy, but how many times have you (or seen someone) in a store deciding between a couple games, because they only have $50... why does the game that has millions of dollars of advertising thrown into it cost the same as the one made by the small developer company? It's all the fault of the money backing the games.

Better analogy than some of the others being tossed around here I'd say.

I agree completely. One price doesn't fit all.

 

[TerranUp16]

I agree with the other posters in this thread. The inflated prices of games is its own deterrent. The game industry seems even more greedy than the music industry let alone the movie studios. The reason I think this is because even when you buy a game directly from the manufacturer, they still charge the same price as going to the local store. They cut out the "fat cats" and middle-men, why is it still $50-$60?? This would be like music artists getting the full $15 from a music CD instead of the <$0.10 they are getting now. Movie and music studios pay their actors and artists tens of millions of dollars let alone everybody else in the food trough. But they are charging 3-4 times more for games?

The answer to why publishers charge the same amount as retailers is obvious- if they didn't, the retailers would have to lower their prices, which defeats the purpose of the MSRP.

 

[sfsuphysics]

How about the fact that people pirating PC games in the first place is why they are so goddamn expensive, and why so many great game developers have slowly gone out of business or switched to consoles or making horrid games for cell phones?

"Fact"? ?? How much do games cost today? How much did they cost back in the day? Are PC games really that much more expensive than console games? How about the FACT that console games have risen in price at about the same rate as PC games since the cartridge days, but instead of needing expensive memory chips for each piece of product they only have to stamp a piece of fucking plastic. At least with the PC side of things the media that games were put on hasn't ever been that expensive.

I'd actually like to see some numbers on piracy, since it seems that console games if anything would be easier to pirate, the hardware that they run on is fixed, and as such so the security is more or less fixed. A mod-chip later, and all games can be played. With PCs at least they have the option of running whatever protection schemes they want. Also I seem to recall (maybe not this game) that a company was basing the number of pirated copies (9 to 1?) off the fact that there were 9 times as many patch downloads as their were sales.

Don't get me wrong I'm not condoning piracy, but crying that pirates are ruining it for everyone mentality does get a bit old. Hell didn't microsoft drop the cost of Windows Vista in china to like a couple bucks to combat piracy? Obviously they're not hurting that much if they're selling copies for that cheap, so let us good ol' Westerners pick up the slack!

 

[CaptNumbNutz]

I've never seen any hard data regarding piracy and lost sales. When the recording industry attempted to blame their lost sales on piracy, they got laughed at. Despite declining piracy due to lawsuits, their sales continued to drop.

The point I am trying to make here is that they need to stop making excuses and change their business model, just like the record industry. You can't shove sub-par crap down consumers throats for years and expect them to keep paying.

Lets face it, if people bought every game that came out that they liked the demo of (if there was even a demo to begin with.), they'd found out very quickly that they regret 9 out of 10 game purchases. Make the games worth buying, and people will buy them!

As much as businesses need to make money, customers need to get something for their money. We have just as many rights as they do. We aren't here to be exploited, like people seem to think, we are here to be served, we are the customer.

I'm interested why you decided to quote the lamest part of my post?
I stated the simple answer to see if you even paid attention to the rest of the post...

You make a valid point here, but your previous post has very little to do with this one. I tore apart your previous post because it sounded extremely juvenile.

As far as changing a business model in regards to games...what else do you think they should do? Most companies do provide demos at their own expense. All they are is a form of advertisement. That usually does a good job of reeling in the customers. You don't see any try before you buy on toys at Wal-Mart do you? All you get is advertisements and lots of happy colors on the box...yet every year there is even more shit for parents to buy.

"Fact"? ?? How much do games cost today? How much did they cost back in the day? Are PC games really that much more expensive than console games?

It seems like you fell for it also. If you had read the rest of the post, you would have seen that this last part of my post is the sarcastic "simple answer."

 

[TheNuker]

I don't care paying $50 for a game as long as:

1) It works out of the box (counter example: a game is released yesterday, you go to the nearest store today and as soon as you get home there's already 2 patches out and another in development because they rushed the game out);

2) It's not a rehash of the previous installment with prettier graphics (*cough* CRYTEK *cough*);

3) Does not contain draconian copy protection schemes (yes STEAM, I'm talking about you! PS: I now steam works and it's all nice and blah blah blah but I completely disagree with it's methods. It should not require someone to connect to the internet to install a SINGLE PLAYER game. Same goes to Starforce/Secucrap and all others);

Besides that, other things that pisses me off with gaming companies nowadays:

* the fact companies are releasing extra content for online distribution only. NOT EVERYONE IS FROM THE U.S. neither do we all have/are willing to use an international credit card;

* a game that's been out for longer than a year sometimes completely vanishes from every store everywhere and there's no way to get a legitimate copy besides stuff like EBAY (where most of the time you get scratched discs or missing manuals yadah yadah), or, again, online distributions. It's like every Elvis/Beatles discs went poof from stores because they are too old. On these occasions I don't regret getting it the alternative way;

*overall poor quality of games backed up by demos that show the single interesting moment it will ever offer. This should be classified as scam;

 

[Sniviler]

Pirating....why buy something you can get for free. Thats how a simple minded dishonest person thinks .....not reliezing its not really free if they were to look at the big picture.

 

[d3viant]

Im not a supporter of Pirate software or anything like that , but I know pirating of
software has been around for probably 20 or 30 years , Maybe its time for the developers
to find a way so that the software can't be pirated.

 

[archevilangel]

I question why this would be considered "news", especially on the front page. I also question the blog on what they consider an "illegitimate copy". What is there on a console that tells them it it's authentic or not? Again it's a blog and nothing about it is factual (which leads me to my first sentence).

If a non-purchased copy of the game works on multiplayer, what would be the incentive to reinstall the game with a legit key? I would not deal with that hassle unless I had to, which would only affect an honest purchase. I would keep using the non-purchased copy and file the purchased one away. That would save some hassle (especially some installs taking an hour+). I wonder how many of the assumed (if not made-up) non-purchased copies would fit this scenario. And how many others can't afford it because every game is $50+. Which leads to the next paragraph.

I agree with the other posters in this thread. The inflated prices of games is its own deterrent. The game industry seems even more greedy than the music industry let alone the movie studios. The reason I think this is because even when you buy a game directly from the manufacturer, they still charge the same price as going to the local store. They cut out the "fat cats" and middle-men, why is it still $50-$60?? This would be like music artists getting the full $15 from a music CD instead of the <$0.10 they are getting now. Movie and music studios pay their actors and artists tens of millions of dollars let alone everybody else in the food trough. But they are charging 3-4 times more for games?

Its not greedy, its business as usual, besides games offer a very good value for the price per time played.

Example:
I spent 5 hours beating cod4 single player, and 30 hours playing multiplayer in the last 2 weeks alone. $45/35 = $1.28 per hour, even less considering that I'm still playing the multiplayer.

 

[Chombo]

To me a lot of games are released at the usual $50 price of admission whether they are worth that price or not. Now I have paid full price of admission for a product that should ended up being what should have been a budget release *cough* Force Commander. There are games that are old that I would still pay full price for if I could find the, like Monkey Island 4.

Not that I advocate game piracy but if publishers released what they knew was a subpar game for a budget price they might get a bit more business. I won't purchase CoD4 until its cheaper, since I don't play online, full price for a short single player is not for me.

Also I can't believe the number of crap titles that get released a full price on consoles.

 

[TroubleMagnet]

Pirating on the PC is a lot more common because it is easier than for consoles. I'm also betting it's a lot harder to detect successful pirates on the consoles since they have an incentive to care if they get caught as their hardware will be banned if caught. For a PC all they need to do is generate a new key and maybe reconnect to get a new IP.

Another thing to consider is the radically different return policy for PC games vs. console. Once you break the shrink wrap on a PC game it's yours. No return, no refund, no resale. Well, you MIGHT be able to ebay it to someone but probably not if they want to make sure they are getting a legit key for on-line play. For consoles you can return it at most stores for a full refund in a reasonable time or resell it later if you want. You also can't rent PC games, at least as far as I know. It only takes a few awful PC games before you start thinking maybe you should download a copy and try it out before getting the real deal. The cracked versions also have the advantage of having the crappy CD verification software removed so you can play it without having to fish around for the disk every time you switch games. I've downloaded hacked copies of games I DO own for this reason, once just to get it to work at all. I'd think most people would get a legit copy of any PC game they want to play on-line so they have a good key so they can get on servers with the anti-hack checks enabled. I know the people I game with get legit copies for this reason. Perhaps if they released more high quality single player games at a reasonable price via download like Portal then they would see less piracy on SP games too.

 

[Dr.LaRd]

heres a little more "flames for the fire"....where can you RENT a pc game?

how about a console game?.....how can a person play a game before they buy it? can't rent it...usually doesn't have a demo (at least if it's coming out on a console at the same time) so whats left?

console game piracy isn't as rare as you'd like to think....BUT you can at least RENT games for them before buying them

 

[CodeX]

I understand it cost money to produce a game - However, the business model that is used in the production and distribution intellectual property is flawed.

The only reason the idea of "lets charge a lot of money per copy" is accepted, is that its the way its always been done. As I stated before, thats totally, utterly fubar.

First and foremost, the publisher (ubisoft/activision/etc) sees the majority of the profits, not the developer.

Secondly, profits can easily be made by lowering the cost of the game to a reasonable level. If I were to be able to walk into a store, and pickup a copy of cod4 for $5 I would do it, as it would be fair.

It would be fair for two reasons:

1. I wasn't overcharged.
2. The developer and the publisher both made a profit, because the cost of game reproduction and distribution, as well as intitial production investment could be covered by the $5-10 dollar figure (actually, their total profits would likely increase, due to economics of scale and the fact that as cost go down, total units sold will increase)

Heres the problem:

The publisher is greedy. 5 bucks isn't enough. They want more. They want 8000% profits. This is the kind of shit that needs to stop. Its wrong to assume that its alright to charge the end user a fixed, inflated amount of money for a copy of a game, that cost practically nothing to copy/distribute. Especially once the cost of initial development is covered.

I'm not saying they shouldn't make any money for developing/publishing the game. I'm just saying it should be reasonable. $50 per game copy, is totally unreasonable, greedy and downright wrong.

Elipsn...

Who the hell are you to say how much a game is worth? Modern games take MILLIONS of dollars to develop and market. The average PS3 game costs 15 million to produce (citation), In order to break even at $50 each they would need to sell 300,000 copies... MANY games do not sell that well. Only 2 games for the PS3 have sold more than a million copies.

It doesn't even matter, consumers decide the price point of everything, not the developers or producers, look up capitalism. Games are sold at $50 each because LOTS of market research has shown that that price is the most efficient price, the best balance of number sold vs. price per unit to maximize profit (take some economics)

My point is, you're just another internet moron that thinks they know everything and are entitled to everything.

 

[101998]

In this thread we are all North American consumerist assholes who think the world owes us something. I love these bullshit arguments you chodes put out.

BUT TEH GAME HAS TEH BUGZ
You play old school cartage games? Shit was riddled with bugs and horrible translations, and there was no XBL to download patches, you just dealt with it. This isn&#8217;t exactly a new problem, and demanding a perfect product is unrealistic. You can name anything and someone somewhere can bitch about it.

OMG 50$ SO MUCH MONEY
Get a real job, shut the fuck up. I go out with my friends every week, and I will spend >50$ on drinks and food, and don&#8217;t get nearly as many hours of entertainment out of it. It is just money, go make more.

GRR COPY PROTECTIONZ
Wah wah wah, my pussy hurts. Take some mydol and get over it. You spend more time spanking it to net porn each week than the time it takes to install some patch or get the game to work. Your time isn&#8217;t that fucking valuable. Quit playing a victim and man up.

 

[Chombo]

Easy fix - just release the game only on GFW Live or Steam next time around (physical CD's come with CD keys that would be punched into a Steam account identically to how HL2 physical copies are registered). Considering how hard/impossible it is to get multiplayer working on hacked copies - BF2/BF2142 being prime examples - it would definitely cut down.

Thats definitely the worst idea ever. The only reason I haven't purchased Half Life 2 Episode whatever is because it requires registration and I will not pay any ISPs for their overpriced service.

 

[Chombo]

OMG 50$ SO MUCH MONEY
Get a real job, shut the fuck up. I go out with my friends every week, and I will spend >50$ on drinks and food, and don’t get nearly as many hours of entertainment out of it. It is just money, go make more.

I guess when you're intoxicated its easier to handle getting screwed out of $50 on a worthless game.