Crysis 2 is most pirated game of 2011
EA has finished 2011 dethroning Activision's Call of Duty series. Just... not in the way it wanted to. Crysis 2 has won the "honor" of being the most pirated game of 2011.
Even pirates are the controller
Available 2012 legally; now illegally
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Shacknews
replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Crysis 2 is most pirated game of 2011.
EA has finished 2011 dethroning Activision's Call of Duty series. Just... not in the way it wanted to. Crysis 2 has won the "honor" of being the most pirated game of 2011.-
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que dantastic and scener
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No it wasn't. But supporting that many titles costs money. The a-holes reporting bugs which can possibly be related to nocd cracks and other piracy measures. It's one thing to sell a million copies then on patch day have 4 million people jamming servers.
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Probably never (I didn't read the article, but already saw the chart). But "pirated units are lost sales" is always point one out of the mouths of publishers, and to a lesser extent, developers. They need to stop punishing paying customers. I don't care much about the rest; stop punishing paying customers.
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Hmm, I didn't perceive crysis 2 as having any such harsh DRM. Point taken though, I find stupid DRM (ubisoft) annoying
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Loss of sales wasn't mentioned in the article. Either way I think its disgusting that so many people think that there's absolutely nothing wrong with downloading whatever they want when they want.
I definitely don't support the machine (RIAA, MPAA) but piracy has definitely affected the hobby I love, PC gaming. Most games are multiplatform ports now instead of PC titles because of this nonsense, its sickening.-
I think part of the issue is that the entertainment industry as a whole has spent far too much time trying to guilt folks into paying for their products. People who do it KNOW its wrong but that doesn't stop them. At some point arguing over morality is a waste of time. The cold hard fact is that distribution is essentially free. Every part of the entertainment industry needs to figure out a NEW way to monetize their products. You can't make something that's infinitely reproducible, scarce. DRM has been an abysmal failure. The current change going on is equal in impact as the automobile was on the horse & carriage industry. The latter either had to come up with new ideas they could apply their skills to or they went tits-up.
I think most people do agree that creators should be paid but thats something the marketplace decides. Valve has shown that there IS a profit to be made but they had to completely re-think their business model to get to where they are. The problem is, most of the industry wants things to remain EXACTLY the way its been all along. Thats not going to happen. As Newell said, Valve concentrates on serving their paying customers.
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pirates would have you believe that absolutely none of them are lost sales.
I can say absolutely without a doubt that there are pirates who will buy games they can't pirate (swtor) but if they can pirate a game they would otherwise buy, they will. -
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If 20% of the pirated copies would have translated to sales, with a 20:1 pirate:legit ratio that would quadruple the sales.
If as little as 5% of the pirated copies would have translated to sales, that would have doubled the number of sales.
With download/piracy rate what it is, you don't need a huge percentage of them to translate to sales. Even a 1% conversion rate would be a significant increase in sales (~20%).
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So what you're saying is, you feel entitled to pirate something you won't buy? Or am I reading this wrong?
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its ridiculous. I cant buy a new car every year but I'm not going to go fucking steal it.
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Whether its tangible is meaningless because you're comparing something that can be traded digitally to something that cannot. It is the same in that at the end of the day, you're fucking stealing something if you're pirating.
The important distinction to be made here is that with a Car, you're paying for what you see. With a GAME, you're paying for the motherfucking blood sweat and tears that the developer PUT IN :( You're not paying for a medium of tangible item. You're paying for all the overtime they worked, all their wages, and I can almost assure you that most game developers aren't rich cats. :(
Sorry if this comes across as a rant, but I really dislike people pirating shit.-
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Well you summed it up. I mean how is it not stealing because it's not a tangible object?
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This argument is completely asinine. People have lost their jobs and companies have gone bankrupt because of poor sales. This may not be wholly blamable on piracy, but it certainly contributes. It could easily be the difference between a small studio staying in business or not.
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How about if you could magically create a copy of the car you wanted?
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It was crap. Worse in every way compared to crysis. AI graphics and the biggest thing is that powers and level design was garbage compared to crysis 1. Who wants to buy a sequel game thats not even half as good as the original or hell even far cry instincts/predator were better crysis games.
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If it's shit then why the fuck would you or anyone else download it. Just wait until it goes on sale. With all the sales these days and things like GoG there is absolutely no reason to pirate games anymore.
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"then why play it at all?" someone will ask. Some people have more time than money. As they grow up and get jobs, they'll have more money than time and piracy becomes less of a thing. Except that there are some people who pirate just because which makes me angrier than anything (see http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=26280731#item_26280731 )
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Those Porsche vanilla Boxsters are pretty fucking shit. We should just take them until Porsche learns their lesson.
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Whoa, did he say that somewhere? Have a sourcE?
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they definitely did.
http://kotaku.com/5020530/cryteks-ceo-piracy-threatens-pc-exclusivity
So I guess the message is: PC gamers, stop pirating and start snitching on your friends if you want more exclusives out of Crytek. And to show he's serious, he also tells IGN they're working on a non-Crysis console game.
http://www.destructoid.com/crytek-crysis-warhead-our-last-exclusive-pc-game-ports-will-be-unique-89716.phtml
Of course Warhead has been under development for quite some time, and we had no desire or intention to disappoint our loyal PC fans. So, after some careful consideration, we decided to continue our support for the PC Crysis franchise with this release. But yes, all new franchises we develop in the future will be created with a cross platform strategy in mind.”-
wat? Both of those examples are threatening to stop making PC exclusives, and focus on cross-platform. He was saying they'd make games for consoles too (which they did) and not stop developing for PC entirely
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Considering those graphic upgrades and such along with the mod tools that Crytek released exclusively for PC. I know that I read the forums and a good number of console gamers were butt hurt about that. I'm honestly thinking that they still see the PC as a viable source of income, but find that multiplatform can get you more money across the board.
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show of hands who would download a car???
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me.
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Does the car run or will I have towed off my property?
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Your only download choice is a Prius. Hot pink.
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Does it transform into an unkillable scorpion?
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Sure, if the police are looking as hard for this theoretical car as they are for some pirate copy of Crysis 2.
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You've discovered the basis for human morality.
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Well, we did say a downloaded car, so I assume no other poor sod is missing the one I now have.
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Hell yea I would, but only, uhhh, to try it out and see if I want to buy it or not.
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Not a lost sale! :D
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Car would probably put me over my badwidth cap, but I'd pay for extra to download a car
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I never bothered to play it. Still sitting on my Steam account. There were far too many good games to play a mediocre one that didn't even look as good as the original.
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You should try it out. I really enjoyed it. The haters tend to be more vocal though :)
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I'd put video games low on my list of the greatest things of the modern age.
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Sup Алты́нного во́ра ве́шают, а полти́нного че́ствуют.
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i'm inside your xbox taking your games
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I have a modern pc.
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And my definition of modern age is a bit larger than 7 years.
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Well, if you're applying that to computing technology then you're doing it wrong.
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I think you'd be looking at it in the wrong way, then. They kinda represent a nice culmination of technology, art, and entertainment.
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Agreed with that whole statement. Also a consumer speaking with their wallet kinda looses it's power when that said consumer pirates the software instead.
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Pretty much humanity summed up if you haven't noticed already...
We consume.
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Im not going to say I pirate or not. Im saying I wish I did, the game was not worth the money and I feel ripped for the 5 hours I got out of the game. Hell I get more time out of MW3 and BLOPS.
Company's wonder why people Pirate games, well stop releasing broken over priced games and we will buy them. I actually own almost all of the games mentioned in the article.-
Let's pretend you couldn't actually download games to steal them. Let's say you had to walk into a store and take it from the shelf, put it in your coat and walk out.
You think that because you're poor and the game is bad that it's okay? I posted this above, but you've lost touch with reality. People pirate games because they're pathetic, no other reason.-
I often wander how many pirates are so poor that they have the latest iPhone and just got that 200 pair of Oakleys. Your last statement along with Chipwarriors comments pretty much sum up my feeling on this.
You know I did pirate Crysis 2 a month before I bought the game full price on release say and I can still say that the game was disappointing in some cases but fun enough that my only regret is that I should've waited for a sale. Bad decision on my part on paying full price, yes, but I'm still glad that I paid for something with my hard earned money as oppose to stealing it.
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if only it was available on steam....
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Technically it is at least for those that bought it before the EA/Valve dust up over DLC delivery rights.
Piracy probably would have never got a foothold If the publishers and to an extent the game developers weren't so slow to adapt to the internet age and actually had legal solutions to what the consumers wanted. Most industries put their heads in the sand and hope the new technologies go away as seen time and time age like the VHS/DVR, digital music, digital video, and so on. They cry foul because they initially had no clue how to deal with the new technology.-
but people bootleg tapes and record films in theatres and have been doing this stuff since the 70s at the least. the sad fact is that human beings are unscrupulous, and if we're given the opportunity to get something for free instead of paying for it, if the work required isn't back-breaking, people are going to take that opportunity.
even if developers came up with some insane ultra-strong non-invasive copy protection, there would still be people out there working to beat it and once they did, the floodgates would be open once more. what's required is a shift in cultural attitudes away from entitlement and towards appreciation for creators, where people acknowledge that music/movies/games are entertainment products created by a group of creative professionals and they should be compensated accordingly for their work, and that piracy directly affects their industry and their livelihood. developers, publishers, musicians, filmmakers, and executives have all tried to address this issue in a variety of ways - from really reasonable, level-headed approaches like Louis CK's to shit like "BITTORRENT KILLED ROCK AND ROLL" being thrown around by the RIAA, but the public at large are really stubbornly entrenched in the entitlement philosophy that's at the heart of the issue.
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It absolutely has to do with price. I agree that convenience is probably more prominent than pricing, but you're basically saying that if the pricing was right, no one would pirate. Which is clearly wrong, if you price correctly, you'll see an increase in sales, but not a complete absence of piracy. There are those who will pirate regardless of price, and there are those who will buy something for cheaper that they would otherwise pirate.
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While price is a tiny part of it, it has way more to do with accessibility and convenience. Quite frankly, it's easier, faster and there's less hassle for people to pirate games than to buy them. It's available instantly the second they decide they want it, they don't have to fish out their credit card and they don't have to deal with crappy DRM shit. Games could be $0.10 and people would still rampantly pirate them because it's easier and people are lazy. They'd come up with some retarded justification for it anyway and continue on with the status quo.
Until the industry finds some way of making it just as easy (or easier) to download and purchase games as it is to pirate them then they will continue to fail at monetizing people playing the games. And just a quick note, that's what a "lost sale" actually is. It's not whether or not you would have purchased the game in the first place, it's the company not generating income from someone playing the game.-
That's what a "lost sale" is to a publisher, because they want to blame lower revenues on piracy rather than other factors. And it's a convenient scapegoat to say "gee boss, it's not my fault, look at these torrent numbers!"
In general, it's already is easy to download games legally. How many modern games are not available in digital stores? Although it would be nice if I could fire up Steam and have access to every publisher's catalog, I've given up on this ever happening. Quite frankly, Steam was 100% right to take a stand on DLC being sold through their service as well. It is not convenient for me to jump through hoops on websites and buy XX points then purchase DLC.
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It's easier to pirate a 99 cent song at a higher bitrate not tied to any stupid itunes library than it is to go buy it.
It's significantly less hassle to buy a game on Steam than to pirate it, and when it's 75% off or just really cheap in the first place, it's much more convenient to buy it and know you have an easily accessible from anywhere genuine version for life.
If this was on Steam it would've sold a lot more.-
You say that like Portal 2 wasn't #5 on that list at 3.2m copies. Crysis 2 was on Steam for several months too. Maybe not a great game, but people need to stop hiding behind Steam as if it does a great service at anti-piracy. It's great for customers for multiple reasons and that's why we like it, but it doesn't really do shit against piracy.
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Steam absolutely curtails piracy every single day it exists and continues to offer games conveniently and cheaply.
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Hi there, I'm a pirate. I pirate all my music. I hacked my Wii and I pirate all my wii games. I used to pirate all my PC games.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Alexrose
"View all 318 games"
I am living proof that Steam prevents piracy.
I used to buy all my Wii games, but it's significantly less hassle for me to put some wupload URLS into FRD and walk off, then stick that on a hard drive with WBFS manager and then on my Wii I just boot up my Configurable USB launcher and it has EVERY ONE of my Wii games on it. No changing discs, I get my games months before they come out in the UK, all Rock Band DLC is free and I don't have to wait for my games to be mailed to me. -
I used to pirate games all the time, because I had no money. I also had lots of time to play many games and I didn't have any consoles. Now I have money, and much less time, so I buy all my games, but only those that are on Steam (and for the most part, on sale - with a few exceptions). I just can't be bothered to get them any other way, as any other way will ultimately be less convenient.
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with how much money people throw at games, who really gives a shit anymore. so some are pirated. it's not changing the massive money being made by the industry is long as they stick to simple notions like not treating gamers like shit.
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So where is my justice when I buy a 60 game on the PC and then play the pos for 5-10 minutes and realize it won't work. Looking at you Rage. Or how about any other game with no demo that I pay full price for and don't like?? No aftermarket for PC. I buy all my games on steam when they hit a low price point. I buy maybe one or two games full price anymore. I have been burned to many times and rarely finish games anymore. I know where the pirates are coming from though. Most PC publishers have taken a steaming shit on their PC users and the ones that become early adopters usually have to take a double dose of that shit because the game won't work or needs a patch or is just subpar to the console version. Don't sit there and act like these people"pirates" are the only evil of PC gaming. Thank God for Valve or I would have taken up a lesser hobby like reading by now.
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You're getting away from the OP's point. He's trying to argue that piracy isn't really affecting the creators of these works, because the modern way creative works are distributed allows for super moneyhats unheard of in past eras.
I think it's an interesting argument, and probably mostly true for some massive games. Unfortunately, since this industry is retarded, neither you nor I can speak to the truth of this claim with any kind of hard evidence. All we have to go on is the word of the publishers that piracy is murdering them, and fuck believing those dudes.
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It is greatly affecting the quality of products if you're a PC gamer. Whether downloads are lost sales or not, developers / publishers certainly perceive a problem and won't risk making a PC centric title. 10 years ago there were plenty of PC specific titles, now most AAA PC titles are multiplatform ports.
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This is the most stable this industry has EVER been. How about a story about that. Do you not recall the 90s, and 00s how many established, awesome developers would go out of business all the time?
Now you can make a really crappy indie game with a cute character in it and make a living because of XBLA and Steam and things like that. That's awesome. What's to complain about? The only losers are the ones that get so corporately driven that no one has fun with their games and they stop buying them.-
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Huh? I don't care about stability, and i'm not sure I buy that argument -- devs still go under today like they did in the past. Compare PC titles from 2004 or 1998 to the titles we get today. There should be no question that the quality of what we get now is substantially - games with hard coded 30 fps caps (la noire), mouse lag issues with vsync, and bad ports (GTA IV), etc. 10 years ago games were created specifically with the power of the PC in mind with big production values...not anymore. Even ID software has jumped ship because of fucking pirates.
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So what i'm saying is that pirates are the AXIS OF EVIL. Watch out , GWB and Dick Cheney are coming after you!
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well your last example of id software says it all. their games have lacked fun for about a decade. people didn't rush out to buy a buggy 7 hour game that was beaten to market by a bunch of other post apocalyptic games like Fallout and Borderlands that had 50 hours of content each? wow, must be pirates. fuck sakes it's not that simple.
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I'm pretty sure id has gone on record saying Q3 didn't sell that well, because it was multiplayer only. JC also said in an interview that he doesn't have complete control over products now because last time he exercised that right was Q3.
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So how do you explain things like Deus Ex:HR, or The Witcher 2?
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If you're a developer that makes PC games then the piracy thing is a big problem for you. Notice how the most pirated PC game was pirated almost 4.5 times more than the top console game. All other things being equal, wouldn't you pick the development target that has smaller piracy numbers?
If you're a developer that makes multiplatform games that include the PC then the piracy is a big problem for you since some number of console gamers who would buy your game on a console will instead just pirate it on the PC. That number is impossible to determine but it could potentially be actual lost sales.
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It's odd to me that Crysis 2 is the most pirated game since usually the most pirated game is also the most popular game of the year and Crysis 2 was far from that.
Makes me wonder what the other factors are. Could it be that most people didn't think it would be as impressive in SP as Crysis 1 was due to the multiplatform aspect and so they pirated it to see? Could it be a fuck you for the on-again, off-again Steam bullshit EA pulled? Could it be a perverse "fuck you" to Cerli over his piracy concerns or multiplatform aspirations from vengeful PC gamers?
I figured that Skyrim would be the most pirated, what with it being SP-only and all.-
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People are downloading everything thinking they're entitled to it with no remorse--- and that is bullshit whether it is #1 or #20.
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I think that has a lot to do with it. Many people believe in giving Bethesda hard-earned cash.
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yeah, and it seems like some people find it easier to do with Crytek / EA. Some people will always find an excuse, but I'm not going to dismiss the possibility of a population that finds it easier to pirate from certain scapegoat companies
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As a former person who used to do this, yeah, I gave a shit about it. I always bought Blizzard stuff because their products were always good.
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Not really.
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You make it sound like it's an addiction. THEY JUST HAD TO HAVE THEIR FIX OF PIRACY. THEY DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO PLAY THE DAMNED GAME, THEY JUST COULDN'T RESIST LAUNCHING MUTORRENT.
I used to pirate all my PC games, and it was always down to convenience and lack of money, and I'm sure it's much the same for lots of people. And there's one point noone seems to latch onto, and a big point of my piracy: Your PC specs.
I pirated Oblivion years ago. I've purchased 3 copies of Morrowind (Disc (lost), disc again and Steam) and 2 copies of the Bloodmoon/Tribunal pack (disc and Steam), but I didn't have a clue whether my PC would even run Oblivion, I'd have to wait for my game to come in the mail, and moreover, it'd been out for so long by the time I had a PC worthy of running it that Bethesda would never see any income from me purchasing that game. It wasn't being printed anymore. It was more convenient for me to pirate it, and it didn't make a difference to Bethesda if I did.
A year and a half later I bought it on a Steam sale, and I preordered Skyrim in advance.
Piracy can be for a variety of reasons, and you cannot examine the number of pirated copies of a product for indication of revenue lost, because you just don't have any idea how many of those would have been sales, and how many will become sales later on.
The point here, though, is that Skyrim sold way more than Crysis 2, and it's a single player game, but it was pirated less. That can't be portrayed as some coincidence. People bought Skyrim because they had confidence that it was going to be high quality gameplay and worth every pound. Crysis 2 got pirated more than Skyrim because Steam got removed as a platform, because they didn't know what to expect from a game that was made on consoles, because other people told them it wasn't worth it and because they didn't know if it would be a quality title.-
This.
I used to pirate a ton of games as well, just from sheer convenience. If someone LEGITIMATELY BUYING their game and then sharing it on the internet with you counts as stealing, then don't any of you EVER borrow or accept as a gift a used game from a friend, because you're not compensating the developers for their work and you are stealing! Because getting or playing a game for free is theft no matter what, right? ;)-
1 person buying a game and letting someone borrow it isn't the same as 1 person buying a game and letting 4 million people borrow it.
In many cases stealing is dependant on the reaction and implicit or explicit guidelines of the person being stolen from.
Going into a store and walking out with two cokes on a 2 for 1 offer doesn't mean that you stole the second can for example.
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Crysis 2 was pirated more because it came out 8 months earlier than Skyrim.
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This is really surprising to me too. But I think it's related to people pirating the game to "check out the graphics" and to see if they were really better then Crysis 1 even if they were not entirely interested in the game (personally I think Crysis 1+2 receive way too much hate for a game that lets you play it how you want. I guess those who don't enjoy it have themselves to play for not playing it in a way they would enjoy it).
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Thats completely subjective. Plenty of people enjoyed it (including myself) and it received generally favorable reviews. I know reviews aren't always the best indication, but to say its just the crappiest game of the year isn't true, IMO.
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I with you man, C2 was an awesome game the stupid media made cracks at it and people listened and the beef with no DX11 at launch was mental or that it looked like ass and Crysis 1 is better. :( made me sick.
Even when it launched the DX9 was impressive(best DX9 game possibly(graphics)), the main thing was the gameplay was rad and the game was well built. I had no beefs.
I blame the media they shit all over it and made people go "can it really be shitty?" This is why the numbers are so bad not because its a shitty game people did not want to commit to it. Of course that's wrong and the people that did that are whack but that is the sign of the times. Media yet again showed their power off, it worked wonders :( -
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examples? I'm not saying you're wrong, its just that my experience with C2 was completely different. I didn't experience any bugginess.
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When I play fps I just want good weapons, good graphics and plenty of shit to blow up. Uhh, C2 satisfied me ;)
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Crysis 1 most definitely looked better then 2. You're under the assumption that because it's newer it looks better. It doesn't.
Crysis 1 was designed for computers after consoles were released, Crysis 2 is designed for consoles which came before Crysis 1. Even with everything turned all the way up it still looks worse then the first one.
I don't think there is any excuse to see AI doing tactical rolls in the middle of a open area, spinning around twice although while you're shooting at them, and then firing two shots at you before dieing. It looks like a silly ballet.-
I just don't see this. Are you comparing this to C2 with all of the addons? DX11, HD textures, and tessellation and such? I thought C2 looked better.
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Look up a review on C2 tesselation on Techreport. All the extra textures are added to completely retarded items in the game, including overly tesselated road barriers and planks of wood(most things aren't tesselated), and a tesselated water mesh that you can't see when you aren't anywhere near water, but is still rendered in full.
Part of what I meant about buggy and glitchy.-
True, but since tessellation was added after you can't really pick and choose where its done. They just applied it everywhere, thats my understanding.
Most devs can't build a game with tessellation from the ground up because the market is catering to xbox 360/ps3 -
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I disagree with it looking 'worse' . Technically it looked fucking amazing. Yes it didnt have the tropical island/mountain/beach/wide open vista's but this doesnt mean it looks worse, it just means its not set on a fucking island.
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This. Also even if it were "crappy", that isn't a justification to steal it.
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To stick it to The Man for ruining his life with such crappy games, of course.
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Lets see... crappy AI, crappy graphics, crappy gameplay, crappy storyline, glitches and bugs (which I would call crappy all around), lack of mod support (which is crappy considering the first one), crappy drm, it was heavily consolized (also crappy).
Metacritic gives it a 86... surprise surprise considering how much they dumped into marketing. Users give it a 65... Hrmmmm...-
abrasion where ya been bro ;)
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Dude I was joking. Chill out!
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I remember a lot more dislike when it came out. Are we all white knighting it now because we feel bad about how many people pirated it? I sure got the idea that it was bad.
Anyway, I do think this particular title was somewhat doomed. People wanted to see how it stacked up to its predecessor, especially in light of what many assumed to be consolization, and because of said (feared) consolization didn't trust it to actually be good. Wanting to see + not really wanting to play probably contributed to its unfortunate piracy. It was (to a degree) like asking people to pay for a benchmark or a scene demo-
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Agreed.
I bought the game and was disappointed with it. It was extremely buggy and linear. I was hoping multiplayer would be good as it looked very COD like. Unfortunately multiplayer was boring and also had lots of bugs.
I told a few friends not to buy it, and am quite sure they pirated it instead.
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Lol PC gaming is dying. Not like I've heard this for the past TWENTY FIVE YEARS.
And yet, the Witcher 2 sold great.
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Crysis is cursed. There is this stigma, this mojo that floats around it. Crysis 1 was a great game. Dont argue with me on this dudes. But it got super hyped as this technological bleeding edge iD hayday reborn thing that required a super computer to run at playable settings. This all happens during the era of the console, when people are not buying and scrabbling for the 5000$ PC any more, and modest machines can run everything on the market and run it well.
Who the fuck wanted something that would not run unless you had an absurd machine? Not many people, not enough people. But the kicker was, that it would run just find on a modest machine, and look great, and was fucking awesome. But Crytek had built this hype around it as the system killing behemoth, hoping to ride this no-longer-existent wave of PC horsepower addicts who would go out and build a new PC for this one game and fellate CERVAT YERLI all the way to the bank. It didnt work. In fact, people resented it. So us PC games, being the entitled pricks we are, demonized it. It was the only way to cope. We hiveminded this fucker into some kind of shitty corridor shooter set in the woods with horrible AI, terrible controls, stupid storyline and graphics that did not justify the requirements (requirements that were largely not true, due to the aforementioned hyper hype that had been built around this game).
It got pirated. It still sold really well, damn well IMO, but it got pirated probably more than most games because noone with a modest machine was going to risk 50 bucks on this game that would probably not run and was just a shitty game. So people pirate it, so they can see how it looks and check out the bleeding edge and see what the most advanced system killer in over a decade would look like for themselves without the cost. Then along comes CERVAT YERLI, standing with his cock un-fellated in the corner with a pile of cash that was simply not high enough to suit him. Bitter unfellated CERVAT YERLI then does his shit talking on the PC community, while dreaming about the money and bitches he will get from crysis 2 on consoles. He goes on and on, and says mean things, and blames his not quite highly successful enough PC game development house's woes and lack of cocaine on the PC PIRATES that are keeping his dick dry. Crysis 2 comes out, and the bitter entitled pricks that we are, well we dont purchase the game. And also, vast quantities pirate it, largely out of spite. Just look at the metacritic.com reviews of bitter hate. Look on any gaming message board at the raging firestorm of shit about Crysis 2. Look at the general internet hivemind bile about this game, and be not surprised.
Basically, its all Cryteks fault, and mainly CERVAT YERLI. -
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With that mentally, what specifically do they really think is worth paying for?
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How does your grandmother not buying compare to my case at all? I would have bought it and was vaguely interested in it but since it was on Steam I didn't have the temptation to buy it so I didn't. Point being they can fight all they want about pirates but when there's a market for sales from impulse buys (from a digital distribution system they do not want to use) and they don't take advantage of it then they're shooting themselves in the foot.
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I think Chipwarrior is more commenting on someone having legitimate reasons on not buying a game as oppose to piracy as a reference to lost sales.
If you look at his first statement, "If it doesn't appeal to you to the point where you don't buy it, that's fair enough." He's saying that you have a valid reason as to why you don't buy it, but regardlelss, if someone uses similar reasons, yet still pirates then it makes their whole reasoning moot.
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What, no one mentioned Origin yet?
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Origin slapped my Mom?
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I don't know why people are saying things like "oh well come on, only 1 out of those 20 pirates ended up not paying for the game". A pirate is a pirate, they will download a game, try it, and if they don't like it they don't buy it, and if they like it they just think, "Well shit, I'll play it for free then!"
I don't care what people say, it DOES hurt sales for a developer. Imagine if Notch the minecraft developer had 4 million copies of his game pirated. Don't you think they would be a substantial loss?
However, I do hate DRM punishing the good customer, but that is how it has always been. The law abiding citizen gets the shit end of the stick when criminals cause problems.
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That's probably why I ran into 20 cheaters in every online MP session. Fuck them for not caring about their own game enough to actually have some anti-cheat protection. And double fuck them for using gamespy. I know it's depressing it was pirated so much but perhaps they should look at why that was and improve the player experiences in their future games so there's more incentive to drop that $60 as I did. It had plenty of DRM and we know all the good that does. I know bad word of mouth isn't the reason why this game was stolen so much, but it probably didn't help.
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The worst part is, the best way to say "Fuck you" to Crytel et al. would have been to not buy it, and not pirate it. Then we wouldn't be having this discussion, and they would know they shipped a turd.
The fact that pirates took time to steal it means that it actually does have tangible value, and unfortunately gives them a scapegoat.
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The best anti-piracy is multiplayer and server-sided games. Even for single player it can work, e.g. Diablo 3 even in single player spawns the enemies/items/quests on the server-side, so it will be extremely difficult to "crack" something like that.
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The best anti-piracy is making a game people will want to pay for. Crysis 2 was not that game.
Everything Valve makes, on the other hand...-
I hate this game so much i'm going to steal it
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I don't understand this post.
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People honestly shouldn't have to even explain it to you, Your statement along with his response speaks volumes.
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Yeah, I don't think creeping-death's post had anything to do with what I posted. And I think 'condensing' logic to the point where your new statement is unrecognizable from the original is ridiculous. Why not just argue with what's there, instead of inventing shit?
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no, that's good anti-piracy. the best anti-piracy is that which is unpirate-able =P
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I kinda agree with that statement, but the issue is that there will always be people who still refuse to legitimately purchase something if they can steal a digital copy.
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Certainly, It's pretty hard to beat free!
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Yes but then we get back into the downloaded =/= lost sales argument ad infinitum.
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The initial download to legitimate sale ratio for Crysis was 20:1. If even 5% of those downloads were a lost sale, then Crytek could have doubled their sales figures.
With piracy rates as high as they are, you don't need a huge conversion rate to see a significant bump in sales. Even a 1% conversion rate would equate to 20% more sales, which is fucking huge.-
Pretty much this. If you (kershner) are saying that absolutely none of it is a lost sale, i'd say you are off your rocker. Aside from the fact that sale or not -- pirates have no fucking right to steal shit -- The reality is, a percentage of it is lost sales. If 10% of the C2 downloads were converted into real sales that would easily hundreds of thousands of units.
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Notice how both yours and walker's arguments rely on a pretty heavy "IF". This is where we get the ad infinitum.
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What?
Your initial statement was that downloads do not equate to lost sales. My statement was that, given reported piracy figures, even a percentage generally considered within the noise in basic statistical analysis is converted to sales, then sales figures would double.
How is it that you are completely oblivious to how monumentally huge that is? In industry, where groups are looking at ways to increase sales by 5-10%, you have a group of people already consuming your product where converting 1 in 200 of them would meet that goal. That's why piracy is such a big deal.
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Yes, but how about we look at it from a different perspective. How many more legitimate sales could this game have gotten if there was no option to obtain an illegal digital copy? You can look at this much like Walker270 and Creeping-Death have responded. There are other factors to consider about this issue. Downloaded =/= sales is just one factor, you can't omit the others to truly understand the whole situation.
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Actually, I believe you are 100% wrong. I'm sure it doesn't seem like it since this is the stance the industry generally takes toward pirates, so maybe that makes it seem like an accepted norm, or something. Once the industry learns how to properly deal with pirates instead of the current black and white bullshit, I think you'll change your tune.
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Well, the more intelligent part has. See: Valve and Blizzard. Both have different ways of tackling it. Valve provides an excellent product that is more convenient than the pirate releases, they support their games, they're helpful and friendly to their PC crowd, and they release stuff for free just to support their existing base.
Blizzard also releases an excellent product, but it is all based on dumb-client smart server design. Everything happens in the cloud, so it's much more difficult to steal.-
From what developers have been saying, battling piracy is mostly about stopping pre-release and Day-0 releases. Valve's solution combats both, and allows legitimate customers to play quicker by preloading the bulk of the game.
The idea that portal is so awesome that people are just begging to buy it is kind of funny. The unfortunate reality is, if portal was released by another company in the same way, it would have been pirated to hell & back, and now people would be claiming it was a shitty game that deserved to be pirated.-
Portal 2 was pirated to hell and back, just like every other game this year.
Were you not able to preload Crysis 2 on Steam?
I think the key difference between these two games is the same as it always has been in these kind of debates: perceived quality among the consumer base. More people want your game, more people buy your game, regardless of how easy media is to pirate.-
Your argument is so full of holes its ridiculous. Skyrim, MW3, SR3, Batman: AC are being torrented to hell and back with hundreds of thousands of downloads.
Obviously quality isn't an indicator of downloads.-
It's even more silly if you follow these threads over the past few years.
When Carmack made a statement about Doom 3's piracy, people (on this and other) forums were claiming Doom 3 was complete shit and deserved to be pirated. When Doom 3 came out, people griped about a few things but generally had favorable impressions of it.
When Iron Lore shutdown, people were saying similar things about Titan Quest. When Crytek first started talking about Crysis popularity, people said the same thing even though it was favorably received.
This whole piracy discussion is about as stupid and ignorant as you can possibly get. People ex post facto assign quality based on whether the developer says anything about piracy, independent of actual reviews, impressions, and quality.
Yes, good games can still sell a fuckton of units, but they still get pirated a fuckton more. If even a small percentage of those turn into additional sales, then it's a huge boost to the developer. That's why combating piracy is so important in the industry right now.-
A great example is Witcher 2. How many people legitimately bought it? CD Projeckt interviews have always been great and pro PC community in general. I think that the vast majority of the people here on the Shack would say that they've overally really enjoyed the game. CD projeckt even reasons favorably to the PC community despite saying that 4.5 million copies were pirated. Imagine how more more budget CD Projeckt can put towards future games if even 500k of those were ligitimate purchases.
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The actual, raw statements from Crytek, Ubisoft, and EA, when taken in context, aren't bad either.
The real problem is video game bloggers are a complete joke and spin a simple response to a straight forward question in an interview as an attack against the entire pc gaming community, and the community isn't intelligent enough to read past the ridiculously sensationalized headline.-
Sadly that's how it is. People are reactive. We get so caught up in emotion that we fail to rationally read and understand informtion.
I also agree that the statements made, when interpretated in context, do put forth the gravity of the situation. At the same time, companies like Ubisoft prefer to punish legitimately paying customers. Like the new Ghost Recon Future Soldier. I was going to buy it day one for PC, but now that they've pretty much been douche bags about the game, I'm not purchasing it for any system at all and I do have the option to purchase it for any system. Now this is truly a lost sale.
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Both opinions will always exist about a a game, some will think its good some will not.
The core of getting good revenue is to tip the balance in the developers favor step by step.
By making a good game, AND (would put that "and" in 38 letter size if i could) make the people feel its a good game.
By giving good support after the sale.
By using an adecuate price.
Etc, Etc.
There will ALWAYS be pirates, there will always people that wont buy it, and there will always be people that buy it.
It doesn't matter if there are a lot of downloads of pirated games, what matters is that the revenue from the sales surpass the money invested by a good chunk.
In resume, some developers are getting it wrong, they are fighting against an unbeatable enemy that is piracy, instead of caring for the customers and making they feel the game is worth buying; see the half life games, we crave for them xD, because they are good, we know they are good, and that its going to have a good post sale support.
And if games just as good as Half life get pirated, it just shows that the pirates will always be there, and that some people will not stop pirating even if they will get AIDS when pirating a game.
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Dude how many times can you misunderstand my posts?
The post you responded to is in 100% agreement with your last sentence here.
The part that you're missing is that I suggest that quality is the determining factor of which games survive piracy, and which games become Crysis 2.-
But you're ignoring the counter arguments that several others have responded in which they stated that quality isn't the only determining factor in why a game is pirated. It's like you're only selectively reading what other people have replied in this subtread. YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHEN YOU'RE ONLY LOOKING AT BITS AND PIECES INSTEAD OF THE WHOLE PICTURE.
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This is what I'm getting at. I don't even think solutions like what Valve and Blizzard have arrived at are necessarily the best possible solutions. You can add CD Projekt into that list as well. These companies thrive in the modern era of rampant piracy.
The point is, they're willing to experiment and work with their consumer base and not 100% against it.-
That's what I'm getting at. They're looking at providing a product for their customers who are willing and happy to pay them. The Indy Games Bundles are doing the same way. The problem is that the conversation is flawed, which is what Valve has been telling everyone for years.
You're not in a battle with customers unwilling to pay, and making life more difficult for the people who DO want to pay is a losing proposition. The correct solution is to address your paying audience by offering a good product at a good price and treat them with respect. Exactly as Gabe says: http://games.ign.com/articles/121/1213357p1.html
"Our goal is to create greater service value than pirates, and this has been successful enough for us that piracy is basically a non-issue for our company."-
Absolutely, this is the case. Gabe gets it. These other companies don't have the type of culture that accommodates this type of response to piracy.
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It's like that Star Trek TNG episode: "More shields!... the tremors are increasing, MORE SHIELDS!"
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this happens a lot in europe because people just arnt prepared to wait 6 months for their favorite show to be shown on tv over here.
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The entire release window idea is utterly retarded in the Internet age. Movie companies need to mature.
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Yeah, I know plenty of people who I work with, who are well off yet are unapologetic about pirating games/movies/etc. Now i'm pretty chill in person and just laugh it off and joke about it but, there's plenty of people that have the means but just don't want to pay for stuff that they don't have to.
Some would argue that piracy isn't a lost sale. I would argue that 15-20% of that is probably lost sales, if piracy was wiped off the planet i'm certain sales numbers would be far different.-
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That's the sad thing. People are more than able to pay legitimately but they would rather put their money towards something else while still enjoying the fruits of someone else's labor. While I totally detest SOPA, I can understand why content producers want to protect their IP.
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I didn't buy it but I would have considered it on a 50 - 75% off Steam xmas sale. Anyway, Crysis and Warhead were enough Crysis for me.
So, what ever happened to Nomad and the squad leader guy who went back to the island before the nuke went off? Did they finish the Crysis story? C2 was in NYC or something iirc; so was it a completely different story?-
Well, if you really want know... I actually haven't finished the game yet, but Prophet, the one who went back to the island, dies in the opening levels. He became infected with a disease of some kind that had an adverse affect with his nanosuit. You spend a good bit of the first parts of that game in his suit, and everyone thinks you're Prophet as a result. And for some reason the PMC group who's been sent to clean up the invasion is after you. I'm not 100% on the situation, but that's the basic stuff. Nomad hasn't shown up yet, and I'm not sure he will at all.
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Here's a quote from Cevat Yerli almost 4 years ago, after the first Crysis sold 1 million copies: http://www.shacknews.com/article/52457/crysis-developer-moving-away-from
"We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore," Crytek president Cevat Yerli told PC Play. "Similar games [to Crysis] on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won't have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future."... "We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis," he continued. "We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable."
So, they did that, and here's the headline: "Crysis 2 most pirated game of 2011". How much more can Cevat Yerli ratchet back Crytek's efforts in gaming?-
I wonder how many people that pirated Crysis did so just to benchmark their computer? For awhile it was the game that tested all new video cards and CPUs.
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Portal 2 sold in over two million units in the first quarter. On catalogue, Crysis 2® sold in approximately three million units life to date; Dead Space™ 2 and Dragon Age™ 2 have both sold in over two million units life to date.
http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=594196
So, about four months for Crysis 2 to hit 3 million against five or six months for Crysis to hit 1 million.-
Crysis 2 sold 3 million across three platforms, Crysis sold 1.5 million on PC, I believe was announced in an EA conference call soon after the release. That is not an apples to apples comparison. I don't see a point from you without development and marketing budgets to compare with.
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npd says 650k
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for crysis part 1 that is, worldwide sales.
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which is about the same as what crysis 2 sold on pc....
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From when to when? From release to how long? Which platforms? PC retail? Steam? EA store? Look:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/62617-electronic-arts-f3q08-qtr-end-12-31-07-earnings-call-transcript
Crysis was released mid November (a release stretching from 13 to 23 of November worldwide), the conference pertains to a period between then and December 31st. And while that 1.5 figure is not mentioned there, it is described as being amongst the titles that exceeded the 1 million sales mark that year. Doing that in a month and a half. Crysis definitely would have continued to sell into 2008 so it's fair to say that probably within three months of release Crysis sold 1.5 million copies. Certainly not implausible. It's lifetime sales as of May 2010 are 3 million copies. http://www.zuse.hessen.de/mm/Konrad_Zuse_Kongress_Yerli_Final.pdf
Are EA lying? What's your point.-
Also of interest:
http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/1603892940x0x349568/926ad1a5-25cd-49f6-9737-3dc2351742b0/ERTS_News_2010_2_8_General.pdf
Shipped three million copies from Nov (3-6 release window) to Feb 8 time of publication, which would be about 3 months of sales. In that same time, from March 8-11 to July 26 which is almost five months, Dragon Age 2 sold 2 million copies.
Hahahaha, fart on Mike Laidlaw and his retarded CoDbro targets.
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Crytek said (in May 2010) 3+ million for Crysis and 1.5+ million for Warhead.
http://www.zuse.hessen.de/mm/Konrad_Zuse_Kongress_Yerli_Final.pdf
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Piracy Related Hijack:
Is there a Steam equivalent for movies? I like watching movies, but I'll be fucked before I walk in to a store buy some shitty physical media that I would just end up ripping to my hard drive. I don't even have an optical drive in my computer any more because I don't want to deal with it.
I would like to download (not stream) movies, legitimately, conveniently, quickly, at a price that isn't stupid (like 10 dollars or less). I don't want any DRM, and I want to be free to put it on whatever watching device/software I desire. Does such a thing exist? Because it would stop me from going to isohunt.-
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It'd be cool if there was something like Netflix (given how it seems to exist on every device capable of playing movies at this point), but where you could buy movies (any movie, not from some small list) and own them forever, streaming them with nothing more than a log-in and using the appropriate app for it on whatever device was convenient.
And by it'd be cool, I mean that's the only way I'm likely to buy movies in any kind of significant quantity ever again.
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One of these again.
Ok let me start by saying : PIRACY IS BAD
Now. Do we know how many sales they had on the PC? If they sold a million or 2 copies that's about all you can expect on the pc these days (Unless you're Valve or Blizzard). I'd also like to know demographically where the pirating occurred. I'm sure a lot of it is in western world but a significant amount would be in the developing world.
Being very familiar with the way of life in the developing world the people will go out of their way and save to afford a computer as it's seen as an "educational" tool for their kids. The kids (or parents) will not be able to afford the games so they'll pirate them. With the availability of fast internet increasing in these places it's only natural to see the increase in piracy.
Not all of the people in the developing world will pirate and I'm not trying to reinforce the stereotypes, but I have lived there and I know how it works.
What people don't report as dramatically as PC piracy is the console piracy. You can buy modchipped consoles and pirate games sell everywhere for a $1. That doesn't get reported as flamboyantly as PC piracythough. I personally think console piracy is much bigger than PC piracy overall (there's just more games for consoles).
If Crytek feels that this is not worth their time or money they should stop developing for the PC and focus on what brings in the money. People will be upset and bitch but they got to look after themselves. They don't owe us anything and I'd rather see them abandon PC as a platform than close the shop or continue to work on a relationship that doesn't work for them.-
"These days?" Why do people say this like PC games were selling millions left and right in the past? They certainly weren't outside of a few hit titles.
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Nuttin' much
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Oh shit! Preorder UNCANCELLED
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I think that there are a diverse amount of reasons to pirate. When I was younger, it was all about the hunt. Currently, I almost never pirate a game. The only reason I ever consider pirating a game anymore is when the game comes out 1 month to 1 week earlier than the release date. Especially if I already preordered the damn game.
I really dislike the idea of someone else getting to play the game before me even though they didn't pay for it; or because brick and mortar stores won't allow digital distribution before the physical game hits stores. -
I'm sure they lost 10x more sales due to pulling it off Steam than they did from piracy.
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I would buy it if it were on Steam. That's how I ended up getting Crysis... as a matter of fact I bought Warhead solely for being able to play the mechwarrior living legends. So you can also throw in supporting a mod community to increase sales for your products. Something else Devs hate to do because they feel it threatens their DLC sales.
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ok hot shot pop quiz time. so u DL'd a car and a bear i guess but would you download a sandwich??? u wouldn't dare cheat antonio out of the opportunity for you to pay him for making you his famous BiG Beefer Italian meat'o'ball'o pepporonio special would u?
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obv. subway is EA, jimmy john's is valve, quizno's is blizzard, and antonio is notch so in the end Gabe eats us all anyways ∴ imhotep is rainbows
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Don't forget about the part of the story that EA made crytek build the game's DLCs in a way that specifically conflicted with the Steam system, to favor his download system "origin". Althought they deny it ofc.
So Crysis 2 isn't exactly the best example for piracy.
And in my opinion, if you look close at the game elements (developer relation with customers, DRM, quality of the game, features etc, etc) there is always a reason to why it's pirated a lot, and why some are pirated drastically more than others. -
They need to stop developing shitty Singleplayer games ( RPG EXCLUDED from this statement ).
As a General rule most PC game BUYERS want Multiplayer.-
And yeah Crysis2 had Multiplayer but it was some shit bastardised COD close thing that nobody wanted.
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No, the general rule is pirates buy when pirating is problematic. Multiplayer games are harder to pirate, QED.
Piracy = free stuff, nothing more, and nothing to do with the quality of the stuff.
There may be a few weirdos who have some sort of moral crutch, who kind of feel bad about piracy, so they buy one or two "good games" in order to prove to themselves that if only the games were good enough they wouldn't pirate them. But that's laughable bullshit.
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