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> Revenues peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100 million by 1985 (a drop of almost 97 percent) These are mind-boggling numbers I can'

> Revenues peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100 million by 1985 (a drop of almost 97 percent) These are mind-boggling numbers I can't imagine happening today in any industry. And this was before pirating. And despite growing up being an absolute fanatic about video games, like everyone else of my friends.

rplnt 8y ago
This was definitely not before pirating. Some C64 games came on cassettes and were extremely easy to pirate (compared to cartridges). And even before that, arcade games were "pirated", so instead of a license an operator would buy a clone. Of course the scale would be different than it was with the Internet around.
- amorphous 8y ago
  True, I meant large-scale pirating, torrenting etc.
- satsuma 8y ago
  the video game crash was mostly north america/usa though, wasn't it? from what i've heard europe wasn't as affected by atari's woes and kept chugging along with home computers over consoles.
- ChristianGeek 8y ago
  No kidding. I was working on a game for the Atari 800 in 1980 and got a floppy disk with a bunch of pirated games from a friend of mine that included a copy of my incomplete game! To this day I have no idea how that happened.
giobox 8y ago
> And this was before pirating. I'd be careful arguing that this period was pre-piracy, copying floppy disks containing commercial software/games was rampant in this period among many enthusiasts. Software piracy arguably came of age with floppy disks, and there was all sorts of weird and wonderful attempts to combat it. I still really miss the weird 'papercraft' contraptions that started to appear with many games in the mid to late 80s that had to be used to 'verify' you had a legitimate copy. As a kid I particularly enjoyed the "Grail Diary" that came with your 5 1/4 inch floppies for the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade adventure game, and required the use of red acetate cardboard glasses (also included!) to reveal hidden messages printed on the page. > http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/03/exposing-code-wheels-pc-game-document.html http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/03/exposing-code-wh... > https://www.wired.com/2009/07/grail-diary/ https://www.wired.com/2009/07/grail-diary/
- brobdingnagians 8y ago
  Ooooh wow, this made me remember Rails (Across America?) game with the questions you had to look through the manual about which train it was they showed on screen. If you guessed it wrong a couple times it would lock you out; we lost the manual pretty quickly, so every time we wanted to play we had to try to guess what the trains were.
  - giobox 8y ago
    Ha, I have fond memories of abusing school photocopiers to share these things, which I think is probably why some developers adopted the red acetate trick to obfuscate the answers to the copy protection questions. Color photocopying was obviously very significantly harder to come by back then, a B&W copy wouldn't work with the red lens. The design of the code wheels for those games that had them was often surprisingly elaborate as well.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    LHX Attack Chopper had a similar thing where you had to look up combat vehicle stats. Fortunately, if you kept restarting you would pretty quickly get something like "How many wheels does X armored car have?", which even a 12-year-old should be able to get in 3 guesses.
  - hakfoo 8y ago
    Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon did the same thing, except if you didn't correctly identify the ocomotive, it just dropped the game into a limp mode so you could still trial the experience without the manual. And also it didn't hurt that railway enthusiasts knew two-thirds of the locomotives by heart anyway.
- msla 8y ago
  Did the crash affect computer gaming, which was on floppies and tapes, or mainly console gaming, which was on cartridge? Because cartridges couldn't be pirated. (On a skim, the article cites computer gaming as a factor in the crash, stating that computers were booming when consoles were crashing.)
Tactic 8y ago
There were absolutely pirates around at this point. Complete with groups (MPG, Apple Bandits, etc.), warez sites (The Safehouse, The Curse, etc.) and whole distribution networks. Admitted it was more computer centered, but pirates still are. There were even distribution networks for pirated movies via VHS. I remember E.T. being passed around LONG before it was released on tape.
phjesusthatguy3 8y ago
Wikipedia says the ISEPIC cartridge was released June '85, so I could see that actually happening. There were very few games I ever saw that didn't have the ISEPIC fastloader. My favorite memory of that time was when I tried to duplicate my ISEPIC'd Beach Head II disk and saw the copy protection scroller instead of the game. Good times!

rplnt 8y ago

This was definitely not before pirating. Some C64 games came on cassettes and were extremely easy to pirate (compared to cartridges). And even before that, arcade games were "pirated", so instead of a license an operator would buy a clone. Of course the scale would be different than it was with the Internet around.

amorphous 8y ago
True, I meant large-scale pirating, torrenting etc.
satsuma 8y ago
the video game crash was mostly north america/usa though, wasn't it? from what i've heard europe wasn't as affected by atari's woes and kept chugging along with home computers over consoles.
ChristianGeek 8y ago
No kidding. I was working on a game for the Atari 800 in 1980 and got a floppy disk with a bunch of pirated games from a friend of mine that included a copy of my incomplete game! To this day I have no idea how that happened.

giobox 8y ago

> And this was before pirating. I'd be careful arguing that this period was pre-piracy, copying floppy disks containing commercial software/games was rampant in this period among many enthusiasts. Software piracy arguably came of age with floppy disks, and there was all sorts of weird and wonderful attempts to combat it. I still really miss the weird 'papercraft' contraptions that started to appear with many games in the mid to late 80s that had to be used to 'verify' you had a legitimate copy. As a kid I particularly enjoyed the "Grail Diary" that came with your 5 1/4 inch floppies for the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade adventure game, and required the use of red acetate cardboard glasses (also included!) to reveal hidden messages printed on the page. > http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/03/exposing-code-wheels-pc-game-document.html http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/03/exposing-code-wh... > https://www.wired.com/2009/07/grail-diary/ https://www.wired.com/2009/07/grail-diary/

brobdingnagians 8y ago
Ooooh wow, this made me remember Rails (Across America?) game with the questions you had to look through the manual about which train it was they showed on screen. If you guessed it wrong a couple times it would lock you out; we lost the manual pretty quickly, so every time we wanted to play we had to try to guess what the trains were.
- giobox 8y ago
  Ha, I have fond memories of abusing school photocopiers to share these things, which I think is probably why some developers adopted the red acetate trick to obfuscate the answers to the copy protection questions. Color photocopying was obviously very significantly harder to come by back then, a B&W copy wouldn't work with the red lens. The design of the code wheels for those games that had them was often surprisingly elaborate as well.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  LHX Attack Chopper had a similar thing where you had to look up combat vehicle stats. Fortunately, if you kept restarting you would pretty quickly get something like "How many wheels does X armored car have?", which even a 12-year-old should be able to get in 3 guesses.
- hakfoo 8y ago
  Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon did the same thing, except if you didn't correctly identify the ocomotive, it just dropped the game into a limp mode so you could still trial the experience without the manual. And also it didn't hurt that railway enthusiasts knew two-thirds of the locomotives by heart anyway.
msla 8y ago
Did the crash affect computer gaming, which was on floppies and tapes, or mainly console gaming, which was on cartridge? Because cartridges couldn't be pirated. (On a skim, the article cites computer gaming as a factor in the crash, stating that computers were booming when consoles were crashing.)

Tactic 8y ago

There were absolutely pirates around at this point. Complete with groups (MPG, Apple Bandits, etc.), warez sites (The Safehouse, The Curse, etc.) and whole distribution networks. Admitted it was more computer centered, but pirates still are. There were even distribution networks for pirated movies via VHS. I remember E.T. being passed around LONG before it was released on tape.

phjesusthatguy3 8y ago

Wikipedia says the ISEPIC cartridge was released June '85, so I could see that actually happening. There were very few games I ever saw that didn't have the ISEPIC fastloader. My favorite memory of that time was when I tried to duplicate my ISEPIC'd Beach Head II disk and saw the copy protection scroller instead of the game. Good times!