It's an age-old debate, and one that Epic has been dragged into many times. Is piracy the cancer that is killing PC gaming? Ask Mike Capps, and he'll likely say yes. According to the Epic Games boss, it slaughtered several developers and changed his own company's entire business model.
"Piracy's already had its impact," laments Capps. "If you walked into this place six years ago, Epic was a PC company and always had been. We did one PS2 launch title, which was a port of Unreal Tournament, and everything else was PC. And now, if you read our forums, people are saying: 'Why do you hate the PC? You're a console-only company.' And guess what? It's because the money's on console.
"We still do PC, we love the PC, but we already saw the impact of piracy: it killed a lot of great independent developers and completely changed our business model."
It's interesting that piracy seems to be doing a lot of "killing" and yet Valve, still the last bastion of PC gaming, seems to have no problem selling its games, or indeed any of the popular games on Steam. While I am certainly not trying to downplay the fact that piracy is a real problem, I do believe there are solutions already in place, but publishers would rather mess around with customer-burning DRM and insulting restrictions rather than lower themselves to a more reasonable level.
Epic: Piracy has killed our enthusiasm for PC [CVG]
Contest:
9:20 AM on 05.18.2010 | 
Is it due to piracy? In my case, no. I bought nearly every flavor of Unreal they released.
gears is highly overrated and the last ut sucked balls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3xHJ_vhAkc&feature=related
It's like a child in school blaming an "F" grade they received on their test, on the shoulders of the teach. "Yeah mommy, it's the teachers fault! She didn't teach me, and she doesn't like me!"
Oh wait I know, didn't some other developer say this not too long ago? like.. id? or Ubisoft? Like,exactly that line.Its as if they've got a party line to tow or something.
In fact I'd have to say it's an over reaction to POTENTIAL piracy (not actual piracy), that has cause the issue and not actually piracy itself.
PC games are often not even in some game stores any more, only recently have I seen them start to go back on the shelves.
Due to lack of availability and accessibility you being to limit potential buyers, and being to force them to purchase through other means, such as console versions which are readily available and can be traded or even at least returned to the store. When you buy a PC game it makes you feel like you just purchased a condom, and any attempt to return it is looked at like it was a used condom.
When you have no readily accessible way to reach the games you want and have to jump through hoops to get what you want, I don't know seems to me that that kind of situation promotes piracy to me. The solution has always been worse than the problem, and has only hindered the PC gaming market.
This is why Steam is successful the games are readily available with a wide selection and even sales. Despite the fact that you can't trade them back in, you still have an overwhelming convenience compared to say Gamestop.
Oh wait I know, didn't some other developer say this not too long ago? like.. id? or Ubisoft? Like,exactly that line. Its as if they've got a party line to tow or something.
Eh, I guess I can scratch Epic off my "companies that want my money" list, I don't like it when they insult my platform of choice with the allusions they're making.
I dont. they brought this on themselves.
Take the new multi-only Shattered Horizon. Looks like a good game, but sadly, DirectX10/11 only, which would mean that I'd have to buy Windows 7 and upgrade my rig AGAIN.
If you spend more on your PC in 3 years that you would have spent had you bought EVERY SINGLE CONSOLE during the last 3 generations, how can you still be surprised that PC games don't bring in as much dosh as console games.
The PC suffers from many things. Companies are screwing over PC gamers, whether it's with new forms of DRM (UbiSoft, I'm looking at you) or by not completing a series on the PC (Fable, Gears of War, and some others), or if they do give it to us it's often a very poor port or comes later (Mirror's Edge came later, Saints Row 2 wasn't a great port etc).
What killer franchises do we have? Right now, none. The Sims has been on/off consoles in various forms, Civilization also. All we seem to have are MMOs, and they're not for everyone.
This is such a BS argument. There are LOADS of independent PC developers out there that are doing extremely well thanks to the internet. They can also thank consoles because their PC indie titles a lot of times get picked up for PSN or XBLA releases. All of Epic's mouthpieces need to STFU NOW. I am sick of hearing their greedy assholes fart excuses.
Also, no one bought GearsPC because of that Gold bullshit at that time.
Thats a pretty big and untrue claim to be making there. Not all pc gamers are pirates, and piracy is only one of the components of the problem.
As for the topic, I always find it ironic that people quickly default to piracy when talking about the issues with the PC market. Even if the entire pc gaming scene just dropped out and left one day, there would still be a good portion of people pirating console games. It's not that hard, and there are no doubt people who do it. The problem isn't with piracy itself (although i agree it is a big issue), its the way companies chose to handle it. On one side you have companies such as valve who, despite having their games pirated just like anyone else, uses a pro-buy campaign to give benefits to people who support them and buy the game, while on the other side you have companies that view piracy as their biggest threat and treat everyone like garbage just to try and stop a few people.
Gamers really are some of the most arrogant little pricks I've ever come across.
there.
Theres no doubt that piracy is a big problem with PC gaming, but the fact is that piracy is a big problem with anything. Everywhere you look you can find pirating: Console games, music, videos, movies. It is a problem for sure, but it is also a problem that cannot ever be truly stopped. We then reach another big problem with PC gaming which is almost as bad as piracy itself: The way companies react to it. As people have already stated above, some of the reasons pc gaming has become so unattractive is because of the mechanisms various companies do to defend their property. Is it fair for them to do so? Of course, but to what extent does it become so conflicting with the average user that its actually making piracy worse?
Epic makes their money on engine development nowadays anyway. Since it's easier to shovel out a game with a licensed engine, more of Epic's customers are focused on the console side of the house. Capp's big problem is that they didn't take any of the robust stuff from UT2004 with regards to multiplayer management and move it forward, otherwise the PC based results from their engine would be great instead of the relatively subpar efforts that did end up making it onto PC.
They do seem to be getting back on track with cheaper games (largely thanks to constant Steam sales) and almost no one pushing the technological envelope so that even a cheap computer (or one that is 3 years old) can keep up with most modern games.
Piracy always gets the blame but whenever anyone looks at it in a remotely scientific way it turns out that piracy (as should be obvious to any casual observer) is a symptom and not a cause.
damn them for making no impact...
... but they make great scapegoats!
Does the average consumer want to spend all their time and money continuously upgrading the hardware and software in their PC to keep up with system requirements on whatever the latest resource-hungry title is...or do they want to spend $400-500 about every 5 years or so (unless you own a red-ringing 360, of course) to buy a console that they are guaranteed will be able to ably handle an entire generation of games, requiring little or no technical know-how?
But yeah...it's piracy that's choking the PC gaming industry. Just like it's destroying every other industry and causing all global commerce to cease immediately.
Look at any torrent site on launch day for a 360/PC game.
There will be more active 360 torrents, that are leaked at least a week before release, nonetheless.
I played every game i had any vague interest in.
...A generation on and my console is all legit, but I still buy any game that i have any vague interest in, just rather than download it, I actually buy it.
So yeah, pirating got me into the mindset of "too much time, not enough games" which makes me spend far more than i should on games. Also games which i pirated now have sequels on the PS3, which I've bought.
so yeah, I stole a whole lot of PS2 games but they essentially worked as adverts for their PS3 sequels.
Also the fact that myself and 4 of my friends had modded PS2's which allowed us topirate, I'm assuming this practice was widespread, and PS2 gaming didn't die because of it.
Epic, make better games perhaps?
I'm passionate about this because it fucks me off, not because I'm some sort of troll.
Oh and Epic make very good games - stop with the flaming ;o)
it wasn't so long ago that PC games, period, were available only to the dedicated. Even though it is easier to pirate than ever, the industry is also larger than it ever has been, with a lower barrier to entry than its ever been. I remember having to screw around with command lines in DOS to get the original quake to run right, because it didn't work right with windows 95. nowadays, you just buy it from steam and don't even have to mess with installing it into the correct folder, or installers that couldn't work with your disc drive because it wasn't mounted as drive D!
It's been proven time and time again, if you release a good game for PC people will buy it.