Crytek CEO Estimates 20 PC Game Pirates for Every One Legitimate Buyer

So in reality there are 200 million WoW players? Interesting... Make accessible video games and people will buy it. The game was a tech demo with high system requirements 80% of the their user base couldn't use. Imagine how insane any console company would be to release a game for the Playstation 4 or the XBOX 720 (Just making up names), now. The game was not accessible to the market where most people have 3-5 year old systems, Spin it however you want it. Valve has demonstrated otherwise.

Cevat should shut the fuck up.

Your game is a glorified tech demo that people who spend their money on rent, food and families can't afford to run at a level deemed acceptable.

I didn't pirate it, I didn't buy it. I played a demo, wasn't impressed and moved onto something I could play on my mid range rig.

Stop blaming evil pirates for poor sales records. I bet Limbo of the Lost creators will be on soon blaming piracy for their poor sales.

I sympathize with dude having his product used, unpaid... But the things he is saying are total bollocks.

-you know how many copies you sold (decently well for a PC game btw, especially notable for it's market fracturing hardware requirements)
-you can assess some torrent sites. But you can't assess casual sharing, irc, ftp, web, etc.
-you have zero data on what people did when they torrented. Did they even play it? You talk warez, I think some 17 year old kid in a basement with barely the disposable income to order pizza, a cd-r stack of games most of which he's never played, or if they did it was 5 minutes to call it crap because they're burnt out from their cavalcade of sampling every fucking thing that comes out. Never mind the fact that some people will warez, then buy. Or warez and have a copy that isn't security locked all to hell.
-you have zero data on what people would have done if they didn't torrent. Would they have bought it? Would they just have ignored the game? I played the demo, saw that I was Playing A Solider, Shooting Some Foreign Dudes, and got pretty bored. I guess I could have warezed to try more but why waste my time?
-warezing is hard work. Or at least it takes some modicum of skill and time. You know who doesn't have time? People with jobs. What do people with jobs have? Money. This isn't universal, sure, but most people do not want to fuck with the bass ackwards hoops one must do to play a warezed game. Never mind that they are often inferior. It's moneyless kids who warez.

tl;dr There's no hard statistics to draw any sort of conclusion from, and research into behavior is sketchy if it at all exists. I'm not even saying warez isn't an issue, but this is sensationalism that does no service to the discussion.

General Eskimo estimates Crytek CEO 99% crazy.

No, seriously, this is stupid. Yes, piracy is a problem, but not THIS big of a problem, at least, not for most. There will always be a constant base number of pirates, people who do not buy these games with cash, and never will. You shouldn't even think of these people as lost customers, because you are never going to get their money. Then, there is the variable number, the people who MIGHT buy your game, but also might pirate it. Those people are what we are talking about. True, Crysis got record high numbers of these types of pirates, but the question is why? The answer is the high system requirements. People aren't going to shell out $50 for a game that MIGHT work on their system, or will work like crap. The "variable" group who pirate games generally have budget-to-midrange systems, and so they are often on the edge of this gap. So, they pirate Crysis. While Crysis did work on lower end systems, it did so just barely, and often with very low performance relative to how good it looked (on low settings, not that good). If Crysis were to scale a lot better, you would have far less of this type of piracy. Its that simple. Then, as far as copy protection, the answer is NOT to adopt technologies which annoy the crap out of many legit users (like Mass Effect's CP did to me), but instead to use more traveled routes. I am talking STEAM. Steam is a great distribution system, it is VERY effective at fighting piracy (although not fool-proof, like any system), and it has stood the test of time. If you are going to adopt CP, adopt Steam.

Well, I bought Crysis -- So fuck all you pirates, he's talking to you.

No matter how you rationalize pirating, it definitely affects sales. I would be pissed too if my hard work was posted for free on the internet. These artists invest a lot of time and money into their work. If we just take it for free then eventually those artists will lack the resources to bring us quality games in the future.

So, once again, fuck all you children who stole it. And fuck all you people who are going to respond to this post with some kind of romantic vision of software theft -- no one likes getting shit stolen from them, period.

http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/crysis-warhead/preview/crysis-warhead-first-look/a-2008062711373466094/g-20080609143756441028/p-3

PC Gamer US: Recently, you’ve said that Crysis was [among] the most pirated games. How do you know that?

Cevat Yerli: Well, we went into the Torrent statistics and there were charts for this. We learned that [piracy] harmed Call of Duty 4 quite a bit, too. We were hit even stronger because our spec requirements were, when we released, pretty high. There was a statistic that there were around 15–20 [pirated copies] per one copy sold; it doesn’t mean we would sell 15–20 times more, of course, but at least if piracy was lower, we would double our sales. For the PC this is a big issue, because if [piracy] continues like this, you will not see PC exclusives happening, because it’s prohibitively expensive.

I think people here need to give the developers a bit more credit. There's nothing wrong expecting decent system requirements, but loosing millions of dollars due to pirates isn't "whining." Its inidcative of a serious problem in the industry.

There was a tremendous amount of hype sorrounding crysis and it should have sold better. Contrary to popular belief, crysis doesn't require a super computer to run, and I dont see how this could affect sales. If you can't run a game, how could accquiring it illegal change that fact?

The system requirements made it clear that the games doesn't need vista or a $500 DX10 card. That said, in my opinion, its unreasonable to expect amazing graphics from a 4 year old card.

Crysis is not a bad game. Just because it has awesome graphics, doesn't mean the gameplay is terrible. I actually own it myself and I think its great. Its actually gotten some pretty good scores across the board.

People who are claiming that crytek pulled stats out of nowhere are in denial about problems that the pc faces. PC simply aren't the most popular gaming platform. Thre is a good reason for that. I love how people think they know more about piracy yhtan the actual developer.

Don't get me wrong, the PC is my favorite platform hands down, I just think people need to accept the problems that it currently aces instead of denying them.

Again this is something that I think is over exaggerated over and over again. I do not doubt that there are people playing pirated copies of Crysis out there, but what they also need to realize is that their game didn't exactly get amazing reviews. I've noticed more and more that if a big game goes bust with reviewers apparently they say the piracy is up. I think it's just their way of saying "well we didn't get the number of sales we would have liked so lets blame it on something else other than weak storytelling".
All games on all systems can be pirated, plain and simple. It's never going to stop unless something truly revolutionary happens.
I am tired of companies complaining about their games getting pirated due to them being on PC's. Maybe if more companies took the time to come out with quality products for the PC people wont feel the need to pirate your products.
Steam is the wave of the future, and more companies need to employ this business model towards PC gaming.

I think a great point here is that you CAN make a game that can resist pirates...its called splinter cell chaos theory. I tried getting that game forever when it came out, but i was never successful in my efforts. Why? They actually made a game with decent protection that didn't fuck you over even if you bought it. Granted there might be a crack now, but I don't really care anymore and the point is that I gave up trying to crack it because I didn't want to play it THAT bad...and that is also why I didn't buy the game.

I also think that something everyone, including crytek, is forgetting is that Crysis was one of the FIRST titles to use directx 10. The thing about that is that most people who are casual gamers never figured out that even if you have a DX9 system you could still play crysis. I know a lot of people (casual gamers) that were saying "Shit, I can't play crysis cause I need to 1. upgrade my rig and 2. have vista to run it. Plus why would I want to play a game that was made for DX10 on DX9?" In fact, I was one of those people who was reluctant to play crysis because I couldn't play it in DX10 awesomeness...which really isn't that awesome.

AND guess what? I still can't play ANYTHING in DX10.

My thought is that crysis was ahead of its time hardware and OS wise...because we all know vista blows chunks. My other thought is something that no dev or gaming company wants to admit to. Why the fuck do I want to support an industry that partners with hardware companies to make me upgrade so I can play some game that may or may not be worth any part of my time?

Crysis, in the end, was a game that made me say 'meh' when I was finished with it. It wasn't awful and it wasn't amazing. I say they should make a game that is amazing...then bitch about their shitty sales due to my internet connect.

BTW, and most will agree with me on this, if I am not going to play a game online...I'm not going to pay for it. So those 'statistics' this guy references on COD4 are pretty much a crock of shit. I swear to you most of the people who bought that game didn't buy it for the single player experience. In fact, I downloaded it, played through the single player and then went out and bought it so I could play it online. If I felt the same about crysis I would have done the same thing.

ALSO I don't pay for console games either. I trade with my friends who trade with their friends...and the beat goes on. OR I rent. So go ahead make your games for the next gens. You still won't get my money unless you make something worth playing online.

Where the hell are his numbers coming from? His gaping asshole?

Ya know why everyone points to Stardock, and Valve for being a shining example of "Why piracy isn't that big of a problem"? Yet ignore Infinity Ward and Crytek?

-BECAUSE THEY HAD LEGITIMATE FIGURES AND NOT RIDICULOUS STATISTICS PULLED OUT THEIR ASSES!

Guess what will happen when there are no more pc games, everyone will pirate console games and then you'll hear consoles devs bitching about console piracy, which already exists and somehow everyone manages to ignores it.

Maybe they should stop wasting their time making games which need a $300 video card and annoying copy protection crap (that's cracked 2 days after release) and make better games with lower requirements.

All you asses STEALING pc games need to stop it already!

I can't but help but think a good majority of it is from multi platform gamers. They save money for their console games by not paying for the pc titles. True pc gamers with money don't mind paying for a good game.

what about games that there are no demos for? download a game and play it for half an hour and see that its completely rubbish and that you would never ever spend your money on it and delete it from your drive because its a huge waste of space...

is that a lost sale? probably most of the publishers will say yes... cause you can't return opened games ;)

so if you buy a game that is rubbish, that's your problem!

1 to 20 is bullshit!!! I'd say it's 20 buyers to 1 pirate. This CEO is way off in left field.

I keep hearing "pirated copies != sales" over and over here.

What about the simple concept that someone who steals the game doesn't have the right to play it?
Reguardless of whether or not he would have bought it/could afford it/the game sucks/all the other excuses - he didn't pay for it. Why shouldn't Crytek do everything they can to stop that?

At some point, I stopped seeing "ceo complaining about piracy" and my brain put in "whiny troll". There is no way in hell to get a real, definite number on the "ratio" and these bitches are getting on my nerves. I estimate these people suck themselves off everytime they can, and swallow.

Oh my, our game didn't sell like we wanted it to, it must be pirates!

Or maybe your game wasn't really what we wanted. I loved far Cry but i didn't buy Crysis till it came down to the bargain bin.

Cue a buch of retarded comments from a bunch of retarted people saying piracy != lost sale.

The debate is not "does piracy exist?", or "does it hurts sale?", the debate how much does it actually hurt sales.

That said, do you think more than half the people who pirated the game would have bought it had it not be easily warezed? Using Crytek's "low end" 1:15 sold to pirated ratio thats 1.5 million sold to 22.5 millions copies pirated. If piracy wasn't a option do you think they would have converted half that figure to sales, 11.25 million copies sold?

Every game faces piracy, but not every game "fails" with Crysis' paltry 1.5 million sold either. So for those games that sell better than Crysis, how come the piracy bat didn't keep them in the basement near the ~1.5 million mark?

Someone should ask this guy this question.

"So Mr. Yerli, you claim you lost a lot of sales due to piracy? Can you then explain why developers for the Sega Dreamcast still prospered quite well even though the Dreamcast was the most easiest pirated system by a mear boot disk?"

I'm tired of hearing about piracy as the reason for lack luster sales. Piracy is going to happened. Factor that into your sales goals and move on.

I wish someone would show some tangible figures.

My guess is, they can't. That's just their reasoning as to why their game didn't sell well.

I think the obvious fact that the number of PCs in the world is magnitudes larger than the number of consoles in world, yet console versions of games outsell their PC counterparts tenfold is pretty significant evidence that there is a piracy problem.

I personal buy the games I play on the PC and rent the ones I play on console, but man this guy is starting to sound like the Lars Ulrich of the gaming world.

For all you pirates who need "proof" that your actions are indeed destroying PC Gaming, perhaps you might consider asking yourselves why Cevat would not offer proof if he had it.

Remember when the MPAA complained that Pirate Bay was promoting piracy? What happened to PIrate Bay's traffic after that? Remember?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080417-bittorrent-use-soars-as-mpaa-fights-on-against-p2p-sites.html

So why would Cevat offer proof when all it would do is cause more people to act like turds?

people can hate on the guy all they want, the fact is piracy on the pc is insanely huge. It IS a huge reason why developers are moving to safer forms of medium to deliver their games, regardless of what a few people on the internet may think.

It's actually not that hard to find some numbers on the amount of copies pirated for a single game. You won't get accurate numbers but u'll be able to get a good estimate. And i can guarentee that it is not a 20 to 1 ratio. Its actually much more close to 1 to 1 or possibly 1 to 2.

Also console piracy numbers have started to overthrow PC numbers for the top end games.

Wow... that means there are about 950 million pirated copies of the Sims out there...

=(

A company called Crytek, crying that the intarwebs isn't showering them with moneyhats fast enough?

Well a big hearty fuck you to you too. See if I purchase anymore of your half-baked games, assholes...

These days, piracy should be like fight-club. You don't talk about it. Because...it is, in fact, bullshit.

Piracy and terrorists....2 words I'd like to NEVER hear again.

If the ration is 20 to 1 doesn't that indicate that the DRM was pointless?

My point of view is that the anti-piracy countermeasures have been and will continue to be immense failures. Their own figures and analysis indicate that, FFS.

"Effectively, if the game isn't an online game or multiplayer game—there are challenges regardless of what you do—the game can be cracked." He almost nailed it there, but he should have said "regardless of what you do the game WILL be cracked." What are they trying to gain? If they are trying to goose initial sales, then they should patch out the DRM after a few weeks. If they have some other goal, then I'd like to know WTF it is.

"...we're going to make [cracking] it more difficult this time with Warhead." Translation, we're going spend more of our limited resources on this fruitless pursuit, so, it'll take them 4 days to crack instead of 3 and the ratio will still be 20 to 1, hopefully we'll piss off more of our legitimate customers.

Piracy may be a big problem but treating the (few?) legitimate customers you have like criminals isn't exactly encouraging them to keep paying for PC games. Two wrongs don't make a right after all.

Why bother following the rules if you're gonna be branded as a pirate either way? Might as well honor the title and download it. I'm not saying I do that, but I'm not gonna buy a game that has install limits or shoves spyware onto my harddrive. If I pay for the game I expect to be treated appropriately. The pirates will get their warez version regardless, so why punish the only ones who are legit?

I mean, if the anti-piracy stuff actually [i]worke/i] I might have been able to tolerate it, knowing what good it does for the developer. But yeah.

Out of all the people that chose do pirate Crysis, you don't think at if least 10% of them would buy it? If it were not so easily available there would be more sales. That's the whole argument. It's obvious that some people will download the game instead of buying it despite the means and the desire for the game.

Those are the lost sales he's referring to.

Oh hey, it's that guy from crytek talking about piracy again. ZZzzzzzzzZZZzzz.z..

Fine, Geez, i'll buy your fucking game already, stop crying! Then we can go to McDonalds for supper, how does that sound?

I believe it. Check out a torrent site right now and look at the stats. Thousands of people are downloading right now. How many people do you think are buying it right now?

"I think our message is if you're a PC gamer, and you really want to respect the platform, then you should stop pirating..."

I am sorry, what? Did he just say that if you don't buy this game, you hate PC gaming?! I am not such a sucker to fall for that logical fallacy. That is the false dilemma.

Per Wikipedia:
False dilemma (false dichotomy): where two alternative statements are held to be the only possible options, when in reality there are several

"Crytek complains about piracy again without providing reliable evidence"

I wonder what ratio they were expecting when they made the game. They must have accounted for that in their sales projections, right?

I mean, they can't be surprised that people pirated the game. That's just the market they are in.

Extra extra!
Crytek cries unvalidated bollocks again!