Nvidia VP: No Justification for PC Piracy

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Nvidia content relations VP Roy Taylor said that PC gaming has moved beyond reasonable justification for pirating PC games.

The executive suggested that it was unfair to steal content from the same developers who are struggling to keep the PC gaming market alive in a market dominated by surging console sales.

"I think that we've arrived at a point now where I don't know how anyone could ever possibly justify pirating a game," Taylor told Eurogamer. "I just don't know how anyone could consider that a cool thing to do - it's not. It sucks."

"One of the things that I find frustrating is that PC gamers tend to be very passionate, and they love the people that make great PC games. If you ask any PC gamer what they think of John Carmack, they'll say he's a hero. What do they think of Tim Sweeney? He's a hero. Ken Levine is a hero. And yet many of them, sadly, will go and steal from them. I just don't get that," he added.

Taylor believes that digital authentication and an increase of post-launch content downloads available to legitimate owners of PC gaming software would help combat software piracy. It was recently revealed that BioWare's Mass Effect and EA Maxis' Spore would make use of copy protection requiring online validation every ten days.

"I think that we're going to see more digital authentication, and we're going to see more of an approach that says that PC games aren't products—they're a service," Taylor said. "You're going to start out with a basic service, which is the game, and then increase the value of that service [through DLC]. That's the direction it's going to go, because the pirates are just killing the developers."

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 8, 2008 4:04 PM

    "I just don't know how anyone could consider that a cool thing to do."

    Yeah, it's also not cool to punish the people who buy your games with draconian DRM and call home schemes.

    • reply
      May 8, 2008 4:17 PM

      They're struggling to push first day sales of games. Bioshock wasn't cracked for a few days iirc. That's sales in some cases.

      I'm not going to complain about the DRM, since if I want a game I'll buy it and my internet is dedicated and rarely goes out. If it needs to authenticate, whatever. I know it sucks, but I also recognize if they didn't do that, the availability of pirated copies would be even greater.

      Or not, I don't really care either way. As long as they can keep making their games and I can buy them.

      • reply
        May 8, 2008 4:20 PM

        I'm pretty sure Bioshock was out on a torrent before I saw it on shelves, actually... as is the most case for all games and movies.

        But yeah, justify piracy? Not really, nah i don't even think I can justify it, but then again I can't justify sitting on the couch all weekend eating a bucket of icecream... yet I still do it...

        • reply
          May 8, 2008 4:45 PM

          No, Bioshock was pirated for consoles before it was for PC. For PC it took a while for torrents to show up.

        • reply
          May 8, 2008 10:17 PM

          Bioshock made it for thirteen days before the torrents went up. For comparison, Crysis was available a week before it hit shelves. The forced-online-authentication for Bioshock was successful in preventing piracy and promoting retail sales while the game was in its "hot" period (eg, everyone was asking their friends "Did you play it yet?").

          It also pissed the HELL out of a certain (small but very internet-savvy) percentage of paying customers. Was that trade-off worth it, to get the bigger initial sales at the cost of alienating some customers? I don't know. Many publishers apparently think so, because they're licensing the same SecuROM online-activation system for their new games.

          • reply
            May 8, 2008 10:25 PM

            Bioshock got leaked hella early for consoles, but for PC it was a good week before the crack appeared. It'll be a lot quicker for Spore and Mass Effect, now that the crackers are accustomed to the system.

    • reply
      May 8, 2008 4:18 PM

      Except he's saying this is in response to the pirates, even if it's not a good response.

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