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PC Dev: Piracy Crisis 'Overblown'
by Blake Ellison, Sep 04, 2008 3:30pm PDTPiracy is said to be public enemy number one in the games industry, if certain game studios are to be believed. It's been declared responsible for bad reviews, poor sales of PC ports of popular console games, and even shifts in business models. However, one strong voice of dissent has emerged.
"Rampant piracy is no longer the catch-all excuse it's often employed as," rebuts Penumbra (PC) game writer Tom Jubert in a blog for Edge.
Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crysis developer Crytek (PC), recently intensified the spotlight on the issue by claiming there were 20 pirated copies of Crysis for every one legitimate player.
The actual ratio, Jubert argues, is no worse than 1:5 in the Western world. To back up this claim, Jubert cites figures from GameShadow Metrics--a online service that automatically patches games and can detect altered .exe files--which show 1 pirated copy of Crysis for every 5 legitimate copies in the US and a 3:7 ratio in the UK.
"Of course, that's not to say that Yerli is wrong," concedes Jubert, "[it's] only that 1:15 is a potentially misleading statistic." He adds that it's difficult to measure the actual number of high-end gaming PCs in use, so claims like "consoles sell factors of 4-5 more" are equally unfounded.
Comments
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My view is that even if piracy didn't exsist at all, Crysis selling 1 million is still a fucking miracle!
Here is a game with, despite what the devs insist, needs stupidly high specs, which the majority of gamers do not have. For it to sell over a million and counting is amazing! I would never have imagined it would ever get that high.
Plus there are so many other factors, like when John Carmack blames less than stellar sales for Doom 3. No one seemed to ask him "Er, John, maybe it didn't sell well because your game was shit?"
But of course, these big swinging devs (I'm looking at you Epic) couldn't possible consider the notion that their game just wasn't very good *cough* UT3 *cough*
The debate continues
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And altered .exe file doesn't mean that it is pirated. There are a lot of people who use cracks, just so they don't have to use virus like protections or have the DVD in the drive all the time, which is completely unnecessary and annoying at the same time.
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Seriously, all due respect to Tom Jubert, who I've never heard of (and whom I'm sure has never heard of me), but regardless of who he is, Game Writer is in no way an authoritative position to speak about piracy/game sales/business models/game technology in general. Any CEO of a major game development studio is going to know 1000x more about game sales models than a writer. A producer? A programmer? A designer? Maybe they'll have more insight. But seriously, shouldn't the credentials of the person laying down the criticisms be drawn into question before giving them equal front page real estate? Isn't that required with some degree of journalistic integrity?
My only assumption is that you posted this article to insight conversation about the topic, which could have simply been done with a post in Latest Chatty called "I think Cevat Yerli is full of crap".
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However, the actual ratio of bad to good journalism, Rich argues with himself, is no worse than 15082:1 in the Western world. To back up this claim, Rich presented himself with the internet. Upon viewing this evidence, Rich decided to eat a bagle.
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Not for Valve, considering that they do the survey every year.
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Here's what the blog actually says:
> What that means is I can tell you the ratio of legal vs illegal Crysis installs in GameShadow's UK
> customer base is more like 7:3, while in the US it's closer to 5:1 - a far less bleak scenario.
So it's 5 legal copies for 1 pirated, not the other way around as the shack summary says. A *far* less bleak scenario indeed!
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If it gets any worse, every game will be a MMORPG. I know i dont want that.
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And I tend to agree. When I have pirated games, I generally did so because I couldn't afford to buy them, and in many cases, I found that I was glad I did, because the games were not worth the retail price. "The Punisher" is worth playing, but if I paid more than like $20 for it I'd feel robbed. Whereas, say, any of the Call of Duty series, those are worth the retail price.
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Most will probably go console, as the barrier of entry is sort of slight inconvenience. Most people are opportunists and are not willing to go through the inconvenience to get free shit. But the real lesson is that digital distribution is the way of the future, DRM is here to stay (just please don't fucking abuse it), and EA is kicking themselves because they didn't think of steam first. No surprise since they were a graveyard for new ideas until only a year or so ago.
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The two issues are not completely intertwined because there is a lack of direct evidence to support particular effects. I really think the reporting on this subject lately is just missing the ball in this regard. So again does this article.
But hey, most people won't care, because he must be a pirate!