id: PC Manufacturers See Piracy as 'Hidden Benefit'

I think it's more accurate to say that consumers see piracy as a hidden benefit of PC ownership. That's pretty clear.

Once again, Hollenshead, the FAILED CEO of id, IS TALKING COMPLETE BS, making up his own FALSE SH!T without ANY RELEVANT, AUDITED study.

Well, why am I not surprised?

It's a FAILED CEO of a DERAILED company who, as an emergency measure to avoid closing shop, HAD BEEN FORCED TO SELL ITSELF along with its IP (the only real value in id.)

wait why am i posting in an old story? wtf

Maybe he's just mad because ID hasn't made a good game in years?

Thank you pirates! You help expand botnets!!!

I crank out a brand new piece of gnarly rootkit bot. I wait till the latest gee whiz game comes out and put my shiny new piece of malware in it. Since its brand new, virus scanners and malware scanners dont detect any monkey business. It will take at least a good 40 to 50 THOUSAND infections or more till the antivirus guys figure it out, but by then I'll have expanded my zombie net plenty.

So by all means, keep up the pirating. Argh Matey!!!!!!! :)

In other news, there is piracy on consoles too! More at 11!

Wasn't Id doing some patch / demo distribution through BitTorrent? Makes Todd's comments seem a little double-standard.

I just find it hard to believe that this is still an issue.
Valve have clearly demonstrated a way of making piracy a non-issue. Simply as.
Online authentication is clearly and obviously the way forwards.
Steam demonstrates this perfectly.
Why do other devs and publishers insist on using other draconian methods?! It makes zero sense. ZERO!
I reckon there is some dirty little secret behind all this. I reckon a lot of developers do want to see the end of PC gaming, and so keep pushing this shit out.
As I said, Valve clearly demonstrated and continue to show how to make piracy redundant in one fell swoop, and even went as far as to make the whole thing free for any other developer to use! WTF is going on!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Honestly, I dont understand what this todd hollshead guy is on about.. Epic built itself on the PC and now, when the slightest sign of trouble shows up down the street, he trashes it.

How the hell could a devloper be happy that their work is being stolen ? What the hell kind of a benfit is there in that?

I wonder how many people are against video game piracy but download pirated porn all the time.

This was just stupid, I'm getting really tired of seeing him make comments against the platform that made him who he is today. I get it, as a PC gamer you think I'm not worth your effort. Profit margins are much higher on closed platform consoles because it is harder to steal that stuff. No point in denying people steal PC titles, because they do So be it. Go make generic console titles and make tons of money, I'm happy you've found a way to make more profits as I realize you run a business. But dont expect me to give a god damn shit about your products anymore if this is the route you are determined to take. When a game is good I buy it. If its not good I ignore it because, logically, why would I buy games I dont want?

High quality, GOOD games sell. They sell because people want to support something that is genuinely good. Maybe those of us in the PC market are just more picky, and we only are willing to pay for content we think is worth it. I'm in no way saying that gives you the right to pirate a game, not liking something is not grounds to steal it. I think ultimately I am falling to the side as the target audience for game makers. Its the unfortunate side effect to having been a gamer for so damn long. I have high expectations, I dont run out and toss down 60 bucks on something until I'm sure I want it. My console game collection is in fact quite small because of this. Oh and I havent ugpraded my PC in two years now, so I dont think the hardware manufactures like me anymore than you do.

Blah the industry giants are becoming the same a-holes I despise running the music industry. I'm tired of feeling the need to defend the platform I prefer. I'm not a bad person for liking the PC platform damn it, I buy games that deserve my money! Stop making me feel as though I'm a fucking criminal for supporting a platform that also has many pirates. I truly believe that those pirates are not lost sales and counting them as such is BS. But sadly I cant prove that anymore than you can prove they are so we both lose. /rant

Piracy may be a big part of the recent loss in PC game sales.

But another big (maybe even bigger) reason for decreasing PC and increasing console sales is on the developers side.

Think about it:
You buy a new PC game, install it, and it doesn't work. You need to recheck the installation, download patches, reinstall and what have you. So now it's running, but you get bad framerates, or it doesn't look like you want it to. You have to check all your drivers, download more patches, play around with ingame graphic sliders.
And before you have even played the game, you are already tired of it.

Or you can just buy the console version of it, pop it in, and you start playing.

The fact that games look very close to each other on PC and consoles with the current generation, as well as the fact that consoles are also connected through the internet now makes the choice even easier.

The picture is great.

Those two pirates look like they have hidden beneifts

Well, Todd...

Just as you profit from Microsoft Windows piracy. And by extension, any kind of piracy, which pushes high bandwidth internet connections that people end up using to play your games.

So what's your point again?

I'm too lazy to pirate games, I find it easier to just buy them and plus I like getting a box and manual with it.

Let's face the fact. The enthusiast DIY hardware scene may be small in contrast of the overall PC marketplace, but it's not that small if you compare it to, let's say units of XO's sold worldwide.

The enthusiast hardware industry- the ~200$ MB's, CPU's, branded quality OC ram, and as icing on the cake, the overpriced enthusiast segment gfx cards, which nvidia was able to push up our throats all these years, until the release of ATI's HD 4XXX series, -is almost directly fed by pc games industry. If there had never been no AAA+ PC gaming pushing the envelope, there would never have been a hardware scene quite like we have today in US, Europe and Asia; including sites & forums like Xsys, [H], Anand, etc. etc.

There are a myriad of these sites, and I would argue that a vast percentage of the users who endeavor in DIY PC hardware are pc gamers, at least to a certain extent. Do PC game sales figures correspond this at all? No. But the amount of seeds and peers in torrent trackers do. Now I'm not saying that money put on enthusiast hardware is directly out of the game industry's pocket. Hollenshead doesn't argue this either. But the fact is that many people buy pc's, just in order to get online and steal shit. It's that simple.

And now, that AAA development is gradually leaving (or at least threatening to leave) the PC domain (once and for all?), many of these manufacturers might feel the sting. During 08, I've seen countless of posts on harware sites arguing, on how there's no longer point in updating gfx card, as all the AAA pc games that still do hit our platform are all console ports, and don't require all that juice. And sassy cards like 4870X2 are only usefull for a very small percentage of gamers who have the luxury of playing on their 30".
Which is the next problem ATI and Nvidia will be facing. How to push more pixels for gamers, when those pixels don't exist? I wonder if Nvidia will start so subsidize cheap 30" TN (urgh, what a horrid idea) panels for gamers. Also TWIMTBP has been an immensely important partner program in keeping PC gaming alive. And these resources come from the money gamers have been able to save while downloading games for free, and in turn investing into new hardware.

No? Oh ok whateva...

Yeah? And you're ugly!
So there!

Current games this PC owner has pre-ordered is Crysis-warhead,Farcry 2,Stalker-Clear Sky,Left 4 Dead,Dead Space, so fuck you very much Todd!!

I think that there's been this dirty little secret among hardware manufacturers, which is that the perception of free content - even if you're supposed to pay for it on PCs - is some sort hidden benefit that you get when you buy a PC, like a right to download music for free or a right to download pirated movies and games.

Nice Shark Jump, Todd.

Reminds me of articles like this on Slashdot:
"I knew this guy whose brother got sued by the RIAA for using P2P. Those money-grubbing bastards have no right to do that when P2P can be used to share things like Linux ISOs! Join with me in righteous indignation against our common foe even when my point makes zero logical sense!"

"trading content, copyrighted or not, is an expected benefit of owning a computer"

Well, sure? What should we do, remove all network and file access functionality from PCs? Shut down the internet?

I don't get it. He's either stating the obvious or complaining that the PC is not as closed as a console. What's the point?

As a PC gamer I hate getting lumped in with the pirate crowd by default. I buy my games 100% of the time. I know there are millions of others that do too. But I guess it comes with the territory.

If all these PC game companies would pull their heads out and go with a Steam style release method they would cure 90% of what keeps them up at night.

Sure, Todd, sure.

I bought everything id released up to Doom 3. You know why?. It was pretty good! (well, except Doom 3, which was barely decent gameplay-wise). After Doom 3 I waited before Quake 4, and didn't like what I saw, so I didn't buy it.

id never spoke about piracy before (BTW, Doom benefited a lot from piracy , as did Windows). It seems that the worse id's games become, the more they cry out about piracy when they sell less than expected. And it seems to be a growing trend in the industry.

You can't combat piracy. Make good games, they will sell (except BG&E). Make bad games, they won't sell unless they have a great marketing campaign. Consolize your PC games and you will lose your PC fanbase.

I'm not sure Todd has a wonderful point. It's not really actionable. I don't know what he's trying to accomplish with this statement other than try to sling mud. But I guess there's a lot of that going around these days. Try to find someone to blame for the decline in PC gaming...

You can't just pressure the PC industry to start closing the architecture and moving towards a console-like approach to hardware. If you did, it wouldn't be a PC anymore.

The PC never will be a totally secure format. It will never be as secure as a console (which isn't 100% secure either, but it certainly helps). There are just too many low-level tools and open standards to keep secrets hidden within code executing on the client. To kill that off would be to kill the PC completely.

I've thought about this before, and I think Todd's right. I've wondered what these hardware manufacturers are going to do to keep developers making games for the PC since they're the ones that benefit the most these days. I'm wondering if we'll see more free games coming with graphics cards - that sort of thing.

game developers should come to my country where pc piracy is decreasing dramatically (you can barely find any place that sell pirated PC games nowadays) and console piracy is on the rise (PS2 comes first, then the wii and finally the 360)

All car manufacturers knows that a *lot* of people drive their cars over the speedlimit. Yet many market their cars going very fast very quickly. What scum!!

Hahahahahaha what the fuck?

How does this even matter? THIS JUST IN: COMPANY LIKES SELLING THEIR PRODUCT! Those bastards!

Unless they are actually encouraging or helping users pirate games, then what the fuck does it matter?

Well if demos came out BEFORE the full game maybe, just maybe you'd get fewer pirated downloads because people would know whether the game was even worth buying or not? I've bought more than my share of crap games and have never pirated anything I didn't already own a legit copy of.

Oh lawd. It's a conspiracy! And not even by coders... by the hardware engineers!

The PC itself has been designed in a time before region code locking, TCPA, hardware dongles or online activation and call-home applications. Thus it just was not made with thought to keep content providers happy and this is a good thing imo. Of course some people are abusing that, but this is not the fault of the PC industry but of the users abusing it.

Personally for example I am very happy to have disabled the region code on my DVD player for example, elsewise I would have 400 € worth of DVDs I am not able to watch just because I wanted the english or original japanes version and not a badly translated and belated version that is cut and without bonus features (directors commentary etc.).

the truth is out there

Of course. Why do you think ipods sell so much? High speed internet? You don't actually think that 95% of their users are legally paying for content do you? Apple is more than glad people steal songs, whatever sells more ipods the better. Itunes is there for those who are honest, but the itunes downloads don't even BEGIN to approach the amount of ipods owners.

Same with highspeed internet. "I can download songs in seconds!" the commercials say. Oh really? Is this through itunes? I somehow doubt it. "I can download movies in no time!" from where? Is this streamed? No, you dirty thief - it's from bittorrent. Yet no one cares, because it's not the ISP's business. As long as you sign up.

It makes sense. It's the same reason we have region-free DVD players, MP3 players, etc. The hardware manufacturers sell more units when they allow you to do things the content producers don't want you to do.

I'm put the word hardware in the headline... PC makers isn't clear that it's not the developers.