They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More

Quote

Now you may think these rights/laws are outdated or not needed, which scares me even more, because that reminds me of communist regimes.

*sigh* Let's face it. It's the digital age. Music gets pirated en masse. Games get pirated en masse (not as much as music though). If you really want to criminalize thousands and thousands people, support surveillance over the citizens, help to suppress a libre, digital culture and set a base for totalitarian structures inside democracies and market economies, go for it. I can understand that it's hard to know that many people pirate your game or illegally make money out of it - and you don't even get a penny for that. It must be indeed frustrating. But instead of whining or pleading to the masses to do the morally right thing (although you know it's not going to work), why don't you think of ways to encourage people to buy stuff instead of pirating it? I quote:

Quote

Now PIRATING is an effect of easy access (read: modern technology) and way too high sales prices on games.

You're all on the same boat after all.

Quote

why don't you think of ways to encourage people to buy stuff instead of pirating it?

What do you think I am doing, have you read my last post till the end?

Quote

Moving forward here is an article on gamasutra about game personalization in order to create additional motivation for consumers to buy the game over pirating it: (...)

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?

Quote from zaphod

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?

I see what you did there.

Quote

VALVE UNVEILS STEAMWORKS

Complete Suite of Publishing Tools Available Free of Charge

January 29, 2008 - Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announce Steamworks, a complete suite of publishing and development tools - ranging from copy protection to social networking services to server browsing - is now available free of charge to developers and publishers worldwide.

Steamworks, the same suite of tools used in best-selling PC titles Half-Life 2 and The Orange Box, is available for all PC games distributed via retail and leading online platforms such as Steam. The services included in Steamworks may be used a la carte or in any combination.

Specifically, Steamworks offers:

· Real-time stats on sales, gameplay, and product activation: Know exactly how well your title is selling before the charts are released. Find out how much of your game is being played. Login into your Steamworks account pages and view up to the hour information regarding worldwide product activations and player data.

· State of the art encryption system: Stop paying to have your game pirated before it's released. Steamworks takes anti-piracy to a new level with strong encryption that keeps your game locked until the moment it is released.

· Territory/version control: The key-based authentication provided in Steamworks also provides territory/version controls to help curb gray market importing and deliver territory-specific content to any given country or region.

· Auto updating: Insures all customers are playing the latest and greatest version of your games.

· Voice chat: Available for use both in and out of game.

· Multiplayer matchmaking: Steamworks offers you all the multiplayer backend and matchmaking services that have been created to support Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2, the most played action games in the world.

· Social networking services: With support for achievements, leaderboards, and avatars, Steamworks allows you to give your gamers as many rewards as you would like, plus support for tracking the world's best professional and amateur players of your game.

· Development tools: Steamworks allows you to administer private betas which can be updated multiple times each day. Also includes data collection tools for QA, play testing, and usability studies.

"Developers and publishers are spending more and more time and money cobbling together all the tools and backend systems needed to build and launch a successful title in today's market," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "Steamworks puts all those tools and systems together in one free package, liberating publishers and developers to concentrate on the game instead of the plumbing."

"As more developers and publishers have embraced Steam as a leading digital distribution channel, we've heard a growing number of inquiries regarding the availability of the platform's services and tools," said Jason Holtman, director business development at Valve. "Offering Steamworks is part of our ongoing efforts to support the needs of game developers and our publishing partners."

Steam is a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC games and digital content. With over 13 million active accounts and more than 250 games, plus hundreds of movie files and game demos available, Steam has become a frequent destination for millions of gamers around the world.

For more information regarding Steamworks, please visit [email protected]

About Valve

Valve is an entertainment software and technology company founded in 1996 and based in Bellevue, Washington with offices in Irvine, CA. The company's portfolio of entertainment properties includes Half-Life®, Counter-Strike®, Day of Defeat®, Team Fortress®, PortalTM and Left 4 DeadTM. Valve's catalog of products accounts for over 20 million retail units sold worldwide, and over 80% of PC online action gameplay. In addition, Valve is a developer of leading-edge technologies, such as the Source game engine and Steam, a broadband platform for the delivery and management of digital content. For more information, please visit http://www.valvesoftware.com.

Display More

Frie - Get Crysis some Steam-Features. Now!

Seems like Steam can do a huge step in saving the PC-Games Market. All kind of security measurments against piracy and a complete system like windows live without paying and without any direct contracts to valve needed.

Great way to establish steam further.

Yeah, that's brilliant. Looks like games can make use of Valve's server browser, which alone is excellent!

Also great for anti-piracy while keeping prices decent.

Yay Valve!

Smart move!

Has anyone here got information on the prices involved in Valve's licensing scheme for Steam? Or are those only handed out as response to formal business enquiries and need to be kept confidential?

Steamworks is free. As far as I understand the termes you only share win with valve if you sell over steam?

Yes that's what I mean.

Valve for earth president!

Frie: Sharing rate or licensing costs are negotiated on single basis I think. Depending on how much traffic and what fund is involved / kind of company is using it. I doubt that Indie Devs pay as much as 2K Games.

(Okay, I've been wanting to post this for a while, but the forums have been shaky. Some of it might be slightly outdated, I've tried to renew it a bit. Also, this is not pointed directly at anyone in particular.)

You can generally tell before you buy the shit games if they're indeed that shit they're not worth spending money on. Whether it be an obviously milked out franchise, or just seems to have an incoherent story, bad controls in a demo, odd camera angles, bad graphics on screenshots, or whatever you'd reject a game by, by playing the full version pirated. All these things are usually really easy to tell if you take the time to investigate things a bit before just deciding to get hands-on with it.

Furthermore, though, games in Denmark are shit expensive. They are. But not in comparison to all the other shit in Denmark that's expensive. And I'd be willing to bet, that if you compared the same way everywhere else, the result would probably be the same - even moreso with the games that provide you with unlimited (as in - no end level) multiplayer fun.

And even with these prices, each day after school while in high school, I found myself lurking around the local gamestore to see if a new title had come out, or to see if the prices had lowered on another title I'd had my eye on for a while, but maybe couldn't afford. And you do a major service to the developers, the game stores and the PC as a platform to actually go out and buy those games that you've been wondering about for so long. And if you haven't, well, chances are they're not worth wondering about at all, and instead of pirating, just drop it.

And even with these prices, I never found myself doubting to buy a PC game I wanted, if I had the cash in one hand and the game in another. Hell, even if I didn't have the cash.

Just a while ago, I finally bought Mass Effect, which I've been drooling about even before the release but never got to pick up - despite the fact that I knew it'd mean I had to adjust my food budgets accordingly. And that's also despite the fact that console games are even more shit expensive than PC games - sometimes even double the cost, if you get the PC game at a good price (As I did with BF2142, which I got about $20, despite it being recently released).

And with that in mind, is it fair that people manage to buy their console games, but skip over the PC games that are, in fact, a lot cheaper?

Buying a good game is basically a major kudos to the developer, and it tells them it's actually worth continuing to develop the games like they do, make a sequel or a series or something else. I'm by no means a saint. But I'm sick of all the people trying to justify what they do. Because the only reason they do try to justify it, is to try and cleanse themselves of the uneasiness that comes with thinking about the fact that they're actually stealing the results of someone else's hard work. Because they know it's wrong.

And that thing they're feeling is guilt.

And sure, try justifying it. Sure, the staff gets paid no matter what. But the sales might impact a well deserved bonus. Or might mean that the same staff will not be creating an even more successful sequel to a successful game. Or in perhaps the worst case scenario cause a studio to have to shut down because they invested more in the game than they could get back, maybe because they were actually betting on making the entire series - leaving those very people without a job.

And sure, you buy what you like. But what about everything you didn't like, but managed to play through anyway and then bashed it for being shit? At least have the decency to buy it as a Best Buy title or something if you really crave it so much but are too cheap to pay for it. Because basically, you're cheating your way to something that wasn't yours in the first place. I find it hard to believe those $10 over steam or for a price-dropped title will set you back that much.

I'm a student, so I can't afford buying games all the time, and that's even with getting monetary support from the government. If I did so, I'd probably afford buying two games a month, but sadly, I have a bunch of other things I'd like to buy as well, and sometimes, you might just have to realize you can't own everything and prioritize. And when you do buy that game, make sure you know what you're getting, and get the title you want the most of them all. Chances are the rest will at some point drop, so you can get both for the price of one the next time you can afford it.

I know it's by no means fair to only get the bargain titles, anyway though, considering that at that point, the fate might have been somewhat decided anyway.

But I'd still say it's way better than stealing your way to it. At least you're paying some sort of respect, as well as supporting your local gamestore (or steam).

And even if you can't, it's not like all the titles released are all good. I'm sure there'll be plenty of time for you to catch up. And by the time you get down that list, maybe the stuff you do skip wasn't worth buying for you anyway, since you already got what you wanted the most.

And then there's the sweet joy of taking your hard earned money and exchanging them for something really, really awesome. So sweet that you can't wait until you get home and get a chance to pop in that disc. Maybe you even take a look through the manual first, if you're that kind of guy. And when you finally get started, chances are you'll get an awesome feeling of money well spent.

If you still feel like pirating.. Well, go ahead, be that guy.

But at least take responsibility for it, and stop trying to deny what you're doing is wrong. In fact, stop talking about it all together. It's not something to be proud of.

It's very much comparable to having to scamper around at a local market sneaking loafs of bread into your jacket pockets and

wandering off, thinking your leaving unnoticed. Not realizing everyone is looking down at you in pity and shame. And noone

would be proud of that.

Noone.

Quote from Cybbe

Because the only reason they do try to justify it, is to try and cleanse themselves of the uneasiness that comes with thinking about the fact that they're actually stealing the results of someone else's hard work. Because they know it's wrong. And that thing they're feeling is guilt.

The average Joe thinks downloading games or "sharing" games with friends is completely acceptable. There is no moral dilemmer or consideration for the game developer, only the money saved.

Quote from Cybbe

It's very much comparable to having to scamper around at a local market sneaking loafs of bread into your jacket pockets and wandering off, thinking your leaving unnoticed. Not realizing everyone is looking down at you in pity and shame. And noone would be proud of that. Noone.

Except that food is a necessity, expensive entertainment isn't. I wouldn't look down upon someone who had to steal to survive and it's in no way comparable to video game piracy (Reminds me of a funny Lars Ulrich sandwich/filesharing analogy). That's the sort of logic that has resulted in many problems with electronic copyright and the slow adoption of electronic distribution (for music, video, and games).

As mentioned by numerous people throughout this thread already, taking the moral high ground and telling people they are evil for pirating is futile. There are many more productive ways to reduce piracy and increase revenue already discussed in this thread.

I buy my games because I can, that doesn't make me better in any way than my friends who don't.

I'd rather not put myself on the same level as a thief to be honest. Also, 90% of US gamers use "DS piracy chip"... well apparently they do anyway, I personally have a hard time believing 10% of US gamers have even heard of it.

Quote

Claims software sales are lower than any other consoleELSPA has claimed that 90 per cent of all DS users in North America are playing pirated games via the notorious R4 cartridge.

John Hillier, manager of ELSPA's Intellectual Property Crime Unit, said that the R4 – a cartridge that plays hacked games downloaded onto a memory card – is harming sales for Nintendo and making it the least-profitable console on the market.

"The implications are massive. In America it's thought 90 per cent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s," said Hillier, talking to The Sunday Post.

"Takings from Nintendo DS games in the US are lower than any other console and no doubt it will have a similar impact here," he said, discussing the uptake of the R4 in the UK.

The R4 is available to buy over the internet and unlike previous chips and modifications for other consoles, requires no clumsy hardware modifications.

The biggest threat that the R4 makes to the piracy problem, according to Hillier, is that it allows users the freedom to download hacked games from their PC and import them straight to the handheld.

"That's the real danger – you may think you're getting a good deal but using the R4 is risking the future of the games industry."

"Crucially, the R4 has shifted balance of power in the piracy industry to the consumer – and that is hugely worrying," he said.

GamesIndustry.biz has contacted ELSPA for clarification of the quoted statistics.

Display More

yes, that story is ridiculous.

I'm not a big DS gamer but I have never heard of that thing. Maybe all those kids with DS's are little l33thxrs.

Well, I'm a huge fan of electronic distribution, save the fact that I really like boxes. But digital distribution is probably the only thing that can actually save the pc as a platform, and they need to get their asses spinning with it Availability is the key.

Anyway, glad somoene took the time to actually read it. It was quite a bunch. And while I do see your point, m8nkey, it doesn't really make it any less wrong. Just because it's available doesn't make it free for grabs.

Also, I'd like to edit my "your" to a you're. I really don't know how that one sneaked in there D:

Quote

I buy my games because I can, that doesn't make me better in any way than my friends who don't.

I'm not talking about who's better than who here. I'm saying that you should, ideally, leave stuff the fuck alone if you can't afford it. It's okay to go around trying out stuff you can't afford, pretending you can, but that's what trials are for, and a lot of people make do just fine with those. It's like.. "I kinda need to be entertained RIGHT NOW and it needs to be EXACTLY THAT, but I can't afford it. So I'll just help myself to it in some other means." Just because you don't have the money for it doesn't mean the entire society is going to go all "awww" on your lack of priviliged goods and hand it over for free as a sort of empathy reward.

It's not about taking the moral higher ground, it's about the way things are currently, and it's fact. Buying stuff like this is a luxury, and the way society's built, luxury is for people that can afford it, and, well, noone else. I'm not saying that's necessarily how it's supposed to be, but it's how it is.