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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
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?
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.
Developers/publishers care about people illegitimately downloading games because they know that some of the people doing that would have bought the game otherwise. They don't care if people play the game without purchasing it, they care about the lower than necessary potential customer -> customer conversion rate. When you look at it this way, it becomes a marketing problem. What developers/publishers need to do is increase the value proposition in ways that do not apply to downloaded copies. A nice box, good manual, t-shirt, and poster would go a long way toward achieving that goal. Suing potential customers who you want to turn into customers isn't a great idea. Neither is scolding them.
Instead of scolding "pirates", this CEO should be saying thank you to all of the people who DID buy the game, so that they feel good. Even a sincere "thank you" to customers increases the value of the product.
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