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Infinity Ward Amazed by Rampant PC Piracy
by Chris Faylor, Jan 15, 2008 11:18am PSTCall of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC, PS3, X360) developer Infinity Ward was shocked to discover an unexpectedly high level of piracy in regards to the PC versions of its acclaimed FPS.
After using his blog to reveal that the developer is quite happy with the recent number of PC owners playing the game online, the studio's community relations manager fourzerotwo expressed amazement at how many of those players were running a pirated copy of the game.
"What wasn't fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen / cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only people playing online)," he posted under the heading "They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More."
Renowned development houses id Software and Epic Games chimed in on the matter last year, with both noting that they were pursuing multiplatform development due to piracy of their PC titles. Two of last year's biggest PC titles--Epic's Unreal Tournament III and Crytek's Crysis--both made low retail sales debuts, though the effect of piracy on those numbers is unclear.
"I've seen studios close as the result of it, I've seen people lose their homes.," former Ritual QA manager Mike Russell told Shacknews when discussing the effects of piracy. "I guess I'm more vocal than a lot of people because I've seen the personal side of it, and it's just sad that we have so many people looking for a way of justifying it.
Irrational Games' 2K Boston and 2K Australia's attempts to protect the PC edition BioShock from piracy, meanwhile, caused a very vocal community outcry when the game was released last August.
Exact figures regarding the piracy of Cod4 were not disclosed, though fourzerotwo promises to provide them if able. "It blows me away at the amount of people willing to steal games (or anything) simply because it's not physical or it's on the safety of the internet to do," he concluded.
Comments
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A new game costs twice a newly released DVD, and thrice a paperback novel, while offering far less mature content in most cases, as both mediums have had far longer to mature and evolve than the relatively young gaming industry.
But that's not all, it's the fact that after a gamer has somehow manages to afford the ridiculous hardware he needs to get a fully enjoyable experience out of a game, without it looking like pixellated putty, he probably doesn't want to shell out yet more just to play said games.
Trapping gamers on consoles will not win out, it will only encourage the growing popularity of free/low priced indie games and digital distribution systems.
Many people would rather pay £5-£10 for a game via Steam than go through the trouble of finding a reliable torrent, cracking it, hoping it won't be full of child pornography or viruses, and finding himself without case, manual, or the right to patch it or request support.
But rant number 2; Who gives a fuck about support? It's always the community who come up with the answers! Leaving ignorant publisher callcenters to handle every problem these rushed games inevitably present does not make for happy gamers!
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That being said, it's ridiculous that games still range in price from 60 to 80 dollars. Games are no longer a niche market. There is enough PC and console saturation now that jacked up prices aren't needed. People may argue that it costs millions of dollars to develop games. It costs a hell of a lot more to develop most movies too.
If people didn't have to budget for their game purchases, and could more easily factor multiple game purchases in because of lesser cost I think an equilibrium could be reached.
Developers also need to learn that "credit development" is studio killer. If you can't afford to make a title on your own, then don't do it. Concentrate on smaller, quality stuff and grow accordingly. Living from milestone to milestone only to fall into a shitstorm of layoffs and legal proceedings when a title doesn't do well is not a logical way to do business.
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You know, if you wait 9 months to a year after release you can almost always pick them up new (read: don't buy used games) for $25 to $35 and the developer and publisher still make their money.
Stealing is stealing. Whether it's you walking into a grocery store and hiding a steak under your shirt and walking out or you downloading COD4 from a torrent. It's exactly the same thing. There is ABSOLUTELY no justification for it whatsoever. Any attempt at justification is a cop out and, in my eyes, admission that you personally are a fucking theif.
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NPD chart detailing the best selling PC games in the USA for the week ending January 5:
1. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Activision
2. World Of Warcraft - Blizzard
3. The Sims 2 Deluxe - Electronic Arts
4. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest - Blizzard
5. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade - Blizzard
6. The Sims 2 Teen Style Stuff - Electronic Arts
7. The Sims 2 Bon Voyage - Electronic Arts
8. Crysis - Crytek/EA
9. Half Life 2: Episode 2 The Orange Box - Valve/EA
10. The Sims 2 Seasons - Electronic Arts
CoD4 is number 1 in the USA alone. What does he have to complain about?
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TL:DR when im playing cod4 the screen flashes, game runs shitty for 30 secs, then flashes again and runs fine. Repeat until death.
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1. I require a Linux version. I could play games on WINE, but why would I waste money on a game if I'm not even sure about how well it will work?
2. Ridiculous "copy protection" schemes such as checking with a server before playing a single-player game (Steam) are not okay. I am 100% fine with a CD key being required to connect to an internet server, though. I just don't want to be inconvenienced for being a legitimate customer.
3. I'm not going to pay $99 AUD for a game, with the exception of (see below) id games. I don't mind waiting for a good game to drop in price, but if only games were priced more sensibly around $50 AUD or even $60 AUD, they'd be much more purchasable. (Hint: At $20 or $30 AUD, I am willing to impulse-buy games on the spot!)
If game developers want people to purchase their games, they should probably look into making them more purchasable.
I never hesitate to buy id Software games because they are always the very best at customer friendliness. They generally disable any kind of CD check with a patch after a reasonable time period, they always offer a Linux version, and after a few years they even release the source code to the game under the GPL, which I think increases the value of the game quite significantly because it keeps it playable (both technically and in terms of still being interesting) even years later. I've got much more out of each DOOM or Quake game than I have out of any other games.
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1. Going to the store, wasting gas money
2. Its easy to download them on some torrent site (If i wanted, i don't though cuz thats bad)
3. The box pollutes the environment, jk i don't think i really care but I should i think to
4. Games usually take up 2 to 3 days of my time unless its like Guild Wars or Oblivion or Counter Strike Source which kind of are endless and those games I like to buy because replay value is so high
5. There's so many freaking games already and free ones to on the internet that aren't half bad...there's just too much to do man...movies last like 2 hours and I might rewatch it a few times but games can last years ....if i move to another games its like i'm sort of divorcing my old game...which one will i give more time
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Maybe at one point there was a good reason not to rent PC games, because it made copying easier or whatever, or because PC games get "installed." Nowadays that's a joke. Everybody has broadband and online piracy is made so easy by the people packaging the releases that it's only a step or two harder than getting a game via Steam or something.
Steam could be a good way to do the rental thing, actually. You'd have a few game slots, and you wouldn't have to manually uninstall stuff, Steam could automatically hold onto your savegames but delete game data files when no longer used, etc.
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I'd get your house in order before whining about piracy. None of the figures released by publishers or devs ever reflect reality, especially combined with stupid moves like this.
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Even though this guy works for Infinity Ward Im suspicious of his comment considering he has a shit load of console games and a smidgen of pc games. He has what, 4x mores 360 games than pc games? SHENANIGANS I SAY! I smell bias.
Im not going to pay £30-£35 for 4-5 hours worth of scripted "gameplay" I also find it hilarious that they programmed a game that doesn't need a unique CD key to play online with.
Well done guys. maybe next time, spend less time creating shades of brown and more time protecting your Quake 3 mod.
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Give it a few years for the little jimmy halo tards to grow up and get a soldering iron.
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They'll pull mythical monetary losses out of thin air with no proven data released as usual. Something not selling right? Must be piracy. I've seen that arguement for the past 20 years with various forms of copy protection proclaimed to be useful/needed but in the end ineffective. They'll never face facts that some releases are just pure crap and pirates weed out the junk. Go after the real pirates selling the copies on the street corner instead of blaming the online ones. Look there's a reason linux is popular, it's cheap for the cheapasses out there.
On the cost arguement let me bring up that yes the cost of releases overall are up there now but when Origin released Strike Commander the cost of it and the add-on speech pack pushed it to around 80-85. So until games reach that price you can't complain.
Bluntly put you want your title to sell release a bulletproof A+ title that people want not a production beta that'll be fixed once it's out in the marketplace and pimped by paid "community/fanrun" sites. Otherwise maybe your backend costs are too much so instead of spending a day to play nerf blaster whatever the hell develop the commodity your there to do.
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lol even Q3A has an effective online cd auth system
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Lets say 5-10 years from now i buy crysis, does crytech or EA benefit from that at all or is just gamestop who benefits from it because it was just collecting dust on their shelf but now they made some money on it?
At the same time, If I buy Crysis now, would that benefit EA or Crytech or just Gamestop once again, what i really mean is, do retailers say ok you get 50% of our profits on this game when it sells or do publishers set a number that they want for the game and the retailer pays it and then tries to make a profit on it, (and of course if the retailer runs out of stock then they must buy more from the publisher thus increasing profits for the publisher)
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