5 ms·

This is too bad since giving pirates and hackers their own space would be vastly better than them being on GTA Online!

by bitJericho 11y ago

Frenchgeek 11y ago
More importantly, it could give them a metric on piracy for their game.
- anon4 11y ago
  90%. You can expect that about 90% of people who play your game have pirated it. This figure has kept constant since the day Doom 1 was new. There are exceptions of course - when the game is tied to hardware copy protection, the number can go down to 0%, but for a PC game with purely software copy protection that is already cracked, the figure is 90%.
  - dijit 11y ago
    anon4 will be chastised for not providing citations, but I work in the games industry and I can confirm this level of piracy. Only on PC though. Publishers realise though that Playstation and Xbox exclusives get cracked significantly less often. It helps when there is no PC version to "unlock" secrets on either. So.. it's a hard sell to management: the least selling platform which also weakens the copy protection of the other platforms (often resulting in lower sales), which additionally; releases to the most vocal and entitled group with an ever increasing amount of issues because of hardware incompatibility or unrelated uncontrollable problems. I understand the frustrations of consumers, but realistically, if you were the publisher- you probably wouldn't be so generous in releasing PC editions of certain games. :\
    - saiya-jin 11y ago
      well, you could just release the game say 6 months after PS/XBOX launch, so it wouldn't eat their sales at all. and, you could spend that time to make the game actually better, ie higher-res textures, and the most important - horrible console controls. it seems this is what is done usually, but the result often feels like 1 developer was dedicated to this effort, for 50% allocation.
      - dijit 11y ago
        You're right, which is why it's becoming a trend to release PC versions late.
    - anc84 11y ago
      How do you confirm that? How do you count the number of pirate players?
      - dijit 11y ago
        They're not very good a nulling callbacks, once most crackers get the game to run they call it a day. Also, there are many things like in game news feeds which are required for the game to work, which send back a unique user agent. (and crackers don't want to slow down their releases because the event feed has to time out before the game will continue). Also, it's not like we, as a publisher will punish players for pirating the game, we'd rather stop the people who crack it.
    - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
      >, but I work in the games industry and I can confirm this level of piracy. How do you confirm it? Word of mouth at the water cooler? Am I the only rube who pays for games? Hell, because of the way Steam manages family sharing, there are dozens of games on that platform which I own multiple copies of. Caveat: if it weren't for the low prices in Steam sales I probably wouldn't own a second or third or fourth copy of any of these games. As far as the subject of OP's post, I expect this to encourage more piracy, since the anti-piracy measure also affects paying users.
    - ionised 11y ago
      Honestly, if games stopped being released on PC I'd just stop playing games altogether. I bloody love games too.
    - wolfgke 11y ago
      On the other hand: There are people who would never buy a game console (I've heard that in the US owning/playing on a game console is a lot more common than in Germany, where PC gaming is much more preferred). > So.. it's a hard sell to management: the least selling platform which also weakens the copy protection of the other platforms I'd thus (see above) say that console and PC players are two very distinct audiences. Thus it is a reasonable assumption that even if the copy protection is weakened (reducing sales) the sum of the sales for both platforms increases. > I understand the frustrations of consumers, but realistically, if you were the publisher- you probably wouldn't be so generous in releasing PC editions of certain games. On the other hand: If you don't release PC editions of the games that consumers want, the PC master racers will hate you as publisher, leading at least to bad publicity. Thus in my opinion being generous in releasing PC editions is a really (business-)wise decision.
  - akerro 11y ago
    >when the game is tied to hardware copy protection This just delays piracy, doesn't prevent it. It took crackers few years to mod ps3, but it's there.
  - anc84 11y ago
    Where are the citations for that number?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

This is too bad since giving pirates and hackers their own space would be vastly better than them being on GTA Online!

Frenchgeek 11y ago

More importantly, it could give them a metric on piracy for their game.

anon4 11y ago
90%. You can expect that about 90% of people who play your game have pirated it. This figure has kept constant since the day Doom 1 was new. There are exceptions of course - when the game is tied to hardware copy protection, the number can go down to 0%, but for a PC game with purely software copy protection that is already cracked, the figure is 90%.
- dijit 11y ago
  anon4 will be chastised for not providing citations, but I work in the games industry and I can confirm this level of piracy. Only on PC though. Publishers realise though that Playstation and Xbox exclusives get cracked significantly less often. It helps when there is no PC version to "unlock" secrets on either. So.. it's a hard sell to management: the least selling platform which also weakens the copy protection of the other platforms (often resulting in lower sales), which additionally; releases to the most vocal and entitled group with an ever increasing amount of issues because of hardware incompatibility or unrelated uncontrollable problems. I understand the frustrations of consumers, but realistically, if you were the publisher- you probably wouldn't be so generous in releasing PC editions of certain games. :\
  - saiya-jin 11y ago
    well, you could just release the game say 6 months after PS/XBOX launch, so it wouldn't eat their sales at all. and, you could spend that time to make the game actually better, ie higher-res textures, and the most important - horrible console controls. it seems this is what is done usually, but the result often feels like 1 developer was dedicated to this effort, for 50% allocation.
    - dijit 11y ago
      You're right, which is why it's becoming a trend to release PC versions late.
  - anc84 11y ago
    How do you confirm that? How do you count the number of pirate players?
    - dijit 11y ago
      They're not very good a nulling callbacks, once most crackers get the game to run they call it a day. Also, there are many things like in game news feeds which are required for the game to work, which send back a unique user agent. (and crackers don't want to slow down their releases because the event feed has to time out before the game will continue). Also, it's not like we, as a publisher will punish players for pirating the game, we'd rather stop the people who crack it.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    >, but I work in the games industry and I can confirm this level of piracy. How do you confirm it? Word of mouth at the water cooler? Am I the only rube who pays for games? Hell, because of the way Steam manages family sharing, there are dozens of games on that platform which I own multiple copies of. Caveat: if it weren't for the low prices in Steam sales I probably wouldn't own a second or third or fourth copy of any of these games. As far as the subject of OP's post, I expect this to encourage more piracy, since the anti-piracy measure also affects paying users.
  - ionised 11y ago
    Honestly, if games stopped being released on PC I'd just stop playing games altogether. I bloody love games too.
  - wolfgke 11y ago
    On the other hand: There are people who would never buy a game console (I've heard that in the US owning/playing on a game console is a lot more common than in Germany, where PC gaming is much more preferred). > So.. it's a hard sell to management: the least selling platform which also weakens the copy protection of the other platforms I'd thus (see above) say that console and PC players are two very distinct audiences. Thus it is a reasonable assumption that even if the copy protection is weakened (reducing sales) the sum of the sales for both platforms increases. > I understand the frustrations of consumers, but realistically, if you were the publisher- you probably wouldn't be so generous in releasing PC editions of certain games. On the other hand: If you don't release PC editions of the games that consumers want, the PC master racers will hate you as publisher, leading at least to bad publicity. Thus in my opinion being generous in releasing PC editions is a really (business-)wise decision.
- akerro 11y ago
  >when the game is tied to hardware copy protection This just delays piracy, doesn't prevent it. It took crackers few years to mod ps3, but it's there.
- anc84 11y ago
  Where are the citations for that number?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]