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Crytek CEO Estimates 20 PC Game Pirates for Every One Legitimate Buyer
by Aaron Linde, Jun 27, 2008 1:31pm PDTCrytek chief executive Cevat Yerli offered an assessment of piracy within the PC gaming industry, describing the market as "the most intensely pirated market ever."
"It's crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now," Yerli told IGN. "For one sale there are 15 to 20 pirates and pirate versions, and that's a big shame for the PC industry."
Yerli added that he hoped to see some change with the release of Crytek's upcoming shooter follow-up Crysis Warhead. When asked if the game would include anti-piracy measures similar to Electronic Arts' activation protocols in the PC edition of BioWare's Mass Effect, the CEO didn't directly specify but hinted at some new ideas.
"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. The effort is to make it more difficult to crack, and certainly we're going to make it more difficult this time with Warhead."
Echoing previous reports that Crysis Warhead would be Crytek's last PC-exclusive title, Yerli added that rampant piracy may lead to "less and less games appearing on the PC, or less and less games pushing the boundaries of PC gaming."
"I think our message is if you're a PC gamer, and you really want to respect the platform, then you should stop pirating... We would only consider full PC exclusives—if the situation continues like this or gets worse—I think we would only consider PC exclusive titles that are either online or multiplayer and no more single-player."
Comments
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.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 11 replies.
Black & White also had 9's and 10's. Now, looking back, did it deserve them?. Certainly not. The first 7-8 hours where spectacular, and then it got boring quickly (not to mention it was so buggy that you could not even finish it without a patch!).
Crysis was even more boring. Yeah, technically it was great, but as a game, it wasn't worth $10.
Cevat can cry all he wants, but the problem with Crysis was not piracy. And every time he pulls some stats out of his ass, I get less and less inclined to buy his next game. Certainly not Warhead, I'm not interested in more of the same.
Besides, they sold more than a million units. Way more than they deserved.
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