200,000 PC Gamers Signed Petition Against MW2

[mirgro]

Jereel Hunter said:

mirgro said:

Yes yes it was a free download (I didn't have the good internet connection I had back then to get it and didn't wanna shell out 30 more bucks fr prophecy gold. However my main point is that EA put them out of  business, not piracy, as you seem to be blaming it a lot.

You're asking me to prove piracy's effect with statistics, but make claims like this unfounded? They put out quality games, and died - if their publisher ruined them, it wasn't because  they stopped putting out good games. You're just assuming that piracy can't have effected sales enough to kill them, but it doesn't take a lot when your margins are slim.

I also don't think companies know what consumers want since they keep adding DRM or features which no one wants, especially on the PC, I mea come on, no dedicated servers?

Also keep in mind Valve and Blizzard were small too one day, as was id (though their games have declined a lot recently, I think).

Then the people who dont get a game catering to them wait another year or two for another amazing game instead of settling for subpar games. They can play the one that came out previously. Notice how many successful PC franchises have installments that are years apart from each other. You know what keeps them afloat? Community content. The fact that the community comes in and makes maps, mods, whatever for the game all the way until the next intallment is released, free of charge.

Yes, and other than a few, companies that wait years and years between releases end up in financial trouble, and shut down.

As for the MW2 bullshit, face it they are NOT pirates. If anything MW2 is hacker and pirate HEAVEN. It has been very well known since forever you can crack Steam games easily so the whole IWNet thing was never meant to stop pirates to begin with. Also notice how pirates lpay on the official IWNET servers now too. They are complaning because it's a subpar PC game product. As I stated above, please stop using piracy as a scapegoat, because it's just that, a scapegoat.

My bad. Why on earth would I consider pirates a threat when clearly they are... um.. easily cracking games at will. Whoops, that shouldn't effect anything, then.

Piracy on consoles is a lot less common because console hardware is a lot less common than PC hardware out there. Also Sweden isn't made ut of money, I mean it is but they have huge tax rates, reducing the person's personal expenditures by a whole lot (they do get a lot back though so it's cool). lso believe it or not in plaaces liek Eastern Europe you CAN build a PC that plays Crysis cheaply, and if it can do that then it can play the latest and greatest easily. My cousins have just a PC which their father made for work. They pirate every single game, and if there's no torrent for it they just don't play the game since they do't ave the money to buy it. Ultimately there are a lot more people out there who have a PC for work and they do not have the money for entertainment, so whether they pirate or not, would have absolutely no effect on the gaming world.

It depends on what people consider having money for games. Growing up, I didn't have much money, so a new game was rare. maybe one every year or more. But since I didn't get anything illegally, I saved until I could buy one. it wasn't easy, but it was out of necessity. Once people are used to pirating, they usually won't bother trying to buy games. So maybe a lot of people can't afford many games, but a lot could afford a few, and pay for none, ever. And when everyone else gets everything for free, why not you too? So people in those areas who could afford it, don't bother.

If you want to prove to me piracy is a huge problem, bring out some piracy statistics about country regions, piracy expanding over the years (it has been around since FOREVER and the industry has only grown, how does that work if piracy is destroying it?), as well as jus overall piracy vs actual sales figures. Also don't use mediocre games statistics, give me the stats for starcraft, warcraft, or half-life (you can do TF2, diablo, or UT/Quake as well if you want to). Once you bring me concrete statistics from unbiased sources (a developer saying they get pirated, as I aleady stated, is just a scapegoat excuse as to why their sucky game isn't selling).

Piracy statistics are largely anecdotal. The idea of piracy is doing something illegal, there's not going to be a good way to track it accurately. There's also so many different ways to get illegal games, to tally them would be nearly impossible. And why shouldn't mediocre games count? Does stealing become less illegal for lower quality items? Stealing a KIA should be legal but not a BMW?

There's no such thing as an unbiased source on this topic, but guess what? Companies swinging at phantoms drain their time and resources and only hurt them. developers have no benefit of attacking someone who doesn't financially harm them. Most developers can list estimated piracy stats that damage their bottom line. The issue is, you've decided that the industry analysts and developers are all lying, and they some magic proof needs to be produced out of thin air. No, we don't have 24/7 surveillace of every PC user in the world to see who's downloading games illegally. But you need to open your eyes. Log onto any alternate server  available for ANY games. Wait until the game's latest patch comes out. And then watch as the server is fragmented into 2 groups - a small group that patches early because they have a real copy... and the masses that need to wait for the patch to get cracked too.

I think it's funny how everyone who actually has any stake, knowledge, or role in the industry fully accepts the effects of piracy, and yet those in a community of PC gamers that they KNOW pirate games can still try to make a defense that it's not having a financial impact.

 

 

Well I'm jsut saying that up until EA made them become a MMO only studio they were doing fine, 4 or 5 years after EA made them make only online games they got shut down. That seems like a pretty good linkage. I don't see where the Piracy plays any part in that either.

Only companies that make subpar games that wait years and years go under, the ones that make good games and support their community live on just fine. What do you think Valve did between Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2? They are also still independent developers.

As for the piracy thing, I'm just letting you know that the people who complain are the ones who buy the game, not the ones who pirte it since the pirated version actually has a whole lot more features than the leagal. The point is that MW2 is the EXACT SAME across ALL platorms, yet it is considered shitty n the PC platform. How does tht happen if not for the expectations and standards of the PC gamers?

The people in those areas do buy legal games, it's liek wearing Prade or Gucci, you show off your wealth by playing on the LEGAL LIVE WoW servers or you have the real copy of MW2 just to show it off. People there buy legal games the same reason people in the US spend money on Prada and other useless vanity junk. As for the others, they view games just like normal people view Prada in the US, a useless waste of money so I doubt they'd buy it even if they did have the money.

 

Finally, well going by anecdotala evidence I can tell you that the local Target has been selling hell of a lot more PS3 and 360s than Wiis for the past 2 years. Interestingly enough, the Wii is apparently selling as much as both of them combined.... There's a reason why anecdotal evidence is useless, it's because it's unreliable and does not in any way shape r form represent the general trends. Lower quality games shouldn't cout because they sell for the same amoutn yet they are exactly that, mediocre. Why would anyone in their mind bother paing full price for something that is half-assed?

Also fine show me the analyst statistics, the ones not funded by developers. I will even accept those. I also obviously don't know if I'm defending it like this.

 

@nightsurge

I just told you, Piracy has been aroud forever yet the gaming business has grown, that's proof enough that the piracy isn't nowhere neaar as bad as you think. Prove me wrong. As I said to Jereel show me statistics not fbricated by anyone in the pocket of the publishers. Also the reason only a handful of PC developers are having success is because they cater to their PC audience instead of trying to limit them and fuck them over or jsut dumb down their games, so they make tons of money, while the worse developers don't get anythign cause their games are just meh. If anything the PC market is governed by true capitalistic tendencies, where the superior products sell for years while the shitty ones don't sell at all.

 

 

To anyone else going on about piracy, I'm still eagerly awaiting figures from people who are not in the pocket of publishers. Also a reason why Valve and Blizzard have NEVER complained about piracy before. In fact Valve defended them. Here is a link:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/valve-not-concerned-about-piracy-in-pc-market

and a nice quote from the article:

"Rampant piracy is just unserved customers."

Edit: And another good link about this Valve vs Piracy:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090219/1124433835.shtml

That is a summary of the following:

http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/693342/Live-Blog-DICE-2009-Keynote---Gabe-Newell-Valve-Software.html

 

So yes, aparently it's as what I have been saying, developers who cater to people make tons of money, the ones who don't listen and dn't cater fail miserably. Also a final quote from the Live Blog:

"At 75% off, they are making 15% more money than they were at full price."