1:44 PM on 07.08.2008
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PC piracy has always been a hot-button topic. Most recently, it was Crytek CEO Cevat Yurli who said his game Crysis had a 20-1 ratio of pirated versus purchased copies. For Yurli, the answer to the issue of piracy is to abandon PC exclusivity altogether. BioWare believes they have a different answer. That answer would be to actively engage the consumer in the game and provide content to continue to serve the consumer.
Multiplayer recently had a talk with BioWare co-CEO Ray Muzyka about the rampancy of PC piracy and how to avoid it if at all possible. To this, Muzyka stated: We think it’s a good thing to encourage players to make them want to buy a PC title. That’s ultimately the best, most successful path to prevent piracy is to have players that want your games, want to believe in them and think they’re high-quality and realize they’re going to get a lot of value out of them as platforms for long time afterwards.
Unfortunately, this may not be as rosy as it all seems. Mass Effect had some hiccups with the copy protection, as it went from bad to still bad when EA postulated quite loudly to consumers about what exactly to do with the title. Also, content costs money just like games do. While I would love to sit back and say that this would fix the issue, I wonder what exactly DLC or quality is going to do to fix this matter. Muzyka’s comments are a welcome addition to the dialogue, but I’m afraid it will fall on deaf ears. |
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52 comments + 134338 views
I got Crysis for Christmas and I hate it, one of the worst FPS games I have played. I wish I would have dowloaded it to try it before I asked for it. :(
I usually DL PC games and try them out, then if I like it I go out and buy it and if it sucks I delete it.
@mix - Yeah, and that's exactly what Bioware is probably going with here. It makes sense, but I don't know how many converts they can create.
It doesn't help that you need a power plant to run Cysis..
Funny you should mention pirating Crysis mix. I tried the demo for Crysis, loved it, and preordered the full version from Gamestop.com. I got the package in the mail shortly after the release date, but to my surprise they had sent me two copies of the extra disk with art and videos and what not, but no game. NO GAME. I called them and they said they'd send me a copy of the game, but I was still annoyed that I'd have to wait a day or two.
So, I pirated the game I'd bought, then played the pirated copy until my real copy arrived, backed up the save file, reinstalled the legitimate copy and went back to playing. I have absolutely no regrets.
Uh huh... riiiiiight
I actually agree with Muzyka. I do pirate games but I also buy a lot of games every year. I'm not ashamed to admit that I tend to buy games from certain publishers and pirate from others. The publishers whose games I tend to buy are publishers who I feel confident will deliver that bang for my buck.
@Brad
Yeah, I don't like buying crappy games!
I mentioned on a previous topic that you get to test drive a vehicle before you buy it so why not a video game?
All of my PC games have been purchased and if I do want to try a game beofre I buy I do DL it and if like the game I will buy it.
I despise the fact that some people/companies that want DLC for entire games as really I <3 my tangible video game cartridges and collections.
@FrogWholsFinal
I've only gotten about an hour past the "alien" stuff and I gave up, I might pick it up again sometime.
I kind of missed out on commenting on the whole Crysis thing when that comment was first made (the 20-to-1) but I wanted to chime in now.
If you make a game that's a tech demo people are going to pirate it "just to see how it runs." Next time try making a game that people will want to own rather than a $50 tech demo/stress test.
Its Bioware. They have a new IP involving RPGs and Dragons coming to PC. I'm buying it.
@frog
why reinstall the game? You already bought it, it's no different. And now you have to put the CD in when you feel like playing. Unless there's some patch that adds features, there's no reason.
I know it doesn't help with compelling 1-player only experiences, but the "access to multiplayer" aspect of copy protection mentioned in the article can be pretty powerful.
Case in point: I was getting all nostalgic about Diablo 2 the other day so I reinstalled it and loaned out my disks to a few friends that somehow missed out on the game the first time around. With the latest patches, you don't need disks in the drive to play. You just can't have two games with the same CD-key logged into Battle.net at once. With single player mode acting as a "demo" of the multiplayer experience, two of my freinds of them went out and spent $30 each on an 8 year old game so we could play together.
User management via multiplayer server control with persistant stats/gear/etc isn't a perfect answer (pirate-only private servers and all that jazz, aforementioned 1-player only experiences) but it's good for deterring piracy without making life hard for people who legitimately purchased a copy.
A quality game for your money?! What is this a market economy?! Who needs customer satisfaction, you'll play what they tell you to!
did they ever think that maybe dlc and quality arent that important to pirates. shaky cam vids and cutscene-less games have been around for years.
I would think that just releasing quality demos would be enough to curb the "I just want to try it first...really I do" pirates.
However, demos can be completely impractical if not properly built into a development schedule.
Do you really think a demo has something to do with it? Someone pirates a game "just to try it out". They like it so next do they A.) keep playing the game or B.) stop and go buy the game that is already on their hdd?
Even the people that do eventually buy it, most likely wont pick it up unless there is a significant price cut.
The game industry seems to have gotten a hold of the MPAA and RIAA play books. Let's be honest here. A lot of games are crap and not worth $40 to $50. Just like most mainstream music is crap these days, and most movies are crap as well. I'm in no way advocating or justifying stealing people's work. But if people feel they are getting a good value, they will buy your product! I buy all my games, but I don't end up buying too many because I only like to invest in the really good titles. The bottom line is this. People are always going to pirate. Every copy protection scheme will be broken. DRM only hurts the honest consumer. The pirate is never inconvenienced or deterred by DRM. Period. So what will start happening is companies will start losing the business from the honest customers because they are going to decide the DRM hassles are not worth dealing with.
I don't really subscribe to the "most people wouldn't have bought it anyway because most games are crap" argument, but the issue really is mostly about unserved customers.
20-to-1 ratio of crysis legit to crysis pirated? Ever consider where those pirated copies were obtained? Places like China, Eastern Europe and Vietnam, where Crysis just isn't sold in any meaningful numbers.
Obviously SOME sales are lost to piracy, but even implementation of 100% perfect DRM will only result in a token increase in sales, because the vast majority of people who've pirated the game wouldn't have been able to buy it in the first place.
DLC will be pirated all the same. DLC is not the the answer. DLC does not show your customer that you aim to please. If you aimed to please, you wouldn't use shitty intrusive and restrictive copy protection. This is called punishing your customer, as well as giving the piracy groups bragging rights and other rewarding sensations when they crack your shit in 4 seconds. Good job.
How about a decent patch for Mass Effect so the game doesn't constantly crash? That'd be enough customer satisfaction for me.
"I wonder what exactly DLC or quality is going to do to fix this matter."
If your game 'protection' is so fucking retarded people wo buy the game are worse off than people who pirate it, that would be where quality comes in. Part of quality is not being a moron and making your paying customers jump through hoops just to play the game they paid for.
I think his comments are more in relation to Bioware's other releases. You can't really fault the post-release support of the Neverwinter Nights games and if it's DLC you're after then there were masses and masses of free, well-designed levels, campaigns, whole new stories from the community and Bioware themselves (which cost a few dollars).
DLC isn't new, the likes of EA and MS leaving things out of games to extort money at a later date is.
Oh and Cevat Yurli is a goddamn fucking retard if he thought that spouting a 20-1 ratio would do anything other than make him look like a dick. So 20+ million people pirated Crysis/ Suuuuuuure...
Usually if I like a game I buy it via digital distribution. I live in south america and still buy games, I do my part in the war against terror.... I mean, pirates.
But Iam a pirate, I pirate games because not all of those games are worth 50 dollars, some of them I just play them a little and then delete them because they are a waste of space in the hdd.
I would have bought crysis if the game was on digital distribution, but it was not so maybe they forgot that a whole continent exists. Thats my problem with companies that dont go digital distribution, they blame people who wouldnt be playing their games anyway if they were not for pirating, they dont send copies to this side of the world anyway, so they dont loose money with us if they dont put the content on digital distribution.
I live in Argentina, and you know, I recently went to this place (Musimundo), wich surprisingly had GTA4 for the 360. The price tag was 352.60 pesos, my countrys currency.
So.
Customer Support.
Yeah.
I'm not buying any fucking games.
(It applies to pc games too, they're also 60 bucks right? Plus, my pc can't handle anything new, so if i download anything it will be old...ish)
Brad Nicholson, why are you such a negative nancy?
Instead of worrying about the status of deafness of ears upon which this comment may fall...why not look at the industry? Besides The Sims, PC games which sell well and continue to sell for months and years after their release ALL OFFER ONLINE CONTENT.
I was all set to purchase spore and sims3, but now there is no way because of the retarded protection on mass effect and probably carrying to spore and sims3- the funny thing is that I do pirate a lot of games (PC, DS, PSP)- mostly because most of them suck- I can really point to a handful of games on each platform that I love- a few more that were fun for a time and the rest that suck ass. I like to play games though so I try whatever to see how I like it- I am though a lot more particular on my console games- the funny thing is that I recently got a ps3 and low and behold- I bought 3 games that I played pirated on PC (orange box, assassin's creed and overlord)out of the first 5 games that I bought- on my PSP I bought every game that i really wanted and ripped them, because I hate playing from UMD- I have pretty near played the entire psp catalog though and the 20 or so games that I did buy were to this day the ones that I liked the best. on the DS I have not bought a single game, but there were really not that many titles I like on it- I mostly use it for homebrew and to play multiplayer games like skip bo w/ my GF
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