It seems that MW2 is the most pirated game of all time. Pirated over 4 million times on PC and 970,000 times on 360. If we add those two we have just on PC and 360 4,970,000 illegal downloads. If we multiply that by the cheaper price tag of the PC alone at $50 bucks that's a conservative guess of a loss of $248,500,000.00! WOW!
Juniper this is where you come in. I remember last year when Spore came out and had some anit pirating stuff on there that the PC guys went crazy! DRM or something? At that time Spore was the record holder of most illegal downloads, but aren't these numbers incriminating of the PC guys and that there should be more strict regulations? The cry foul while still stealing? I guess I don't understand how it works so if you could shed some light on it I'd appreciate it.
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Often times companies are aware of how much their game is being pirated and will do nothing about it. Sims 3 was downloaded millions of times, weeks before it was released in retail, and EA was quite aware of it. Why? Because it actually helped sales in the end. The pirated version of Sims 3 could not connect to EA's network, so the users couldn't buy extra items or visit new areas. Basically EA viewed these as demo versions of the game. Sometimes, developers will seed its own game on torrent sited for people to download, just to drive interest.
ReplyDeletehttp://kotaku.com/5399193/trials-dev-pirated-its-own-game-to-drive-interest
I downloaded MW2 for PC and beat the SP, and got a taste of MP, but it was more than enough to get me hooked. I went out to buy a legit version of it to play soon after the crack for it stopped working. So I can personally say that this method works in their favor sometimes, but who can say how many copies of MW2 were really "lost". Sometimes people download stuff and don't even play it. Sometimes it gets corrupted. Sometimes people lose interest after the first level and uninstall afterwards. But piracy is here to stay, so developers might as well try to find some way to take advantage of it.
Very valid points. Reading what you said reminded me of a pirated version of Arkham Asylum I read about where you couldn't do one of the more prominent platforming moves. In the story a kid actually was in the Rocksteady forums complaining that it was broke and an actual developer responded saying "No it's not broke. We designed it that way. Your moral scope is broke." Hilarious!
ReplyDeleteyea that Arkham Asylum priate version was rather clever, think they restricted the use of the bat cape which made it impossible to progress beyond a certain point, think other game devs should be applying such tactics, mind i'm sure there's porbably a fix out there already it's just one big game of cat and mouse.
ReplyDeletei say bring back the days of being asked to turn to page XX in the manaul to find a particular symbol.
which actually reminds me of another counter measure once taken by a game dev...Metal Gear Solid 1 on the ps1 you had a conversation with someone and they direct you to the back of the box/case of the game to find a codec frequency which you needed to progress, this one caught me out as i'd "obtained" a copy of a US import, luckily a PS magazine i had, had a screen shot of the codec screen illustrating the frequency...lucky.
Been on vacation and limiting my own internet time... :D
ReplyDeleteI say if people didn't download then it wouldn't be a problem and security features wouldn't be needed. But that would be a lovely place without car alarms and locks on your doors and DRM. I just don't download anything illegally, even to try out a game. I can play a demo or borrow from a friend or whatever. Occasionally I buy a crappy game but not very often. I have a job so I have money to buy games. That's how the process should work. I just couldn't bring myself to DL MW2 even though I HATE Bobby Kotick. And if a PC game doesn't have a demo, it might cost them sales for people like me.
Whatever somebody's justification or reasons, it's wrong. It's stealing. I used to DL music and I don't anymore. I still have some of the music I DLed years ago but I've gradually gotten rid of most of it over the years...
I read an interesting article a while back about how piracy in the music industry worked as a form of entertainment socialism. Download programs like Napster and Kazaa really hurt the profits of bigger bands (I think Metallica was the topic at the time) as their music is popular enough to get sold in a variety of fashions. The illegal downloads actually help smaller bands out there, because the digital distribution of their art allows them to be heard by so many people who wouldn't stumble upon their sound any other way.
ReplyDeleteI think the arguments for software piracy (no matter the scale) are justifications at best. The numbers are staggering to be sure, so I'm surprised that more legal action isn't being taken. It's interesting to hear how companies like EA handle these seemingly inevitable thefts of their creative property, but those can also only be seen as ways of coping with a problem outside their control, not an effective business decision to prevent piracy.