Yes it is fact but as I pointed out its everywhere NOT JUST THE PC. Its a excuse I'm tired of being used.
Absolutely true. It's not just PC games that are being pirated, but PC games are far easier to pirate than most console games, especially when you consider that PC users are far more likely to be older and more tech savvy than console users. Five minutes of googling turned up
this nugget on piracy and it's impact on the industry. In a nutshell, piracy is an obvious negative force in the PC games industry, but the lack of transparency by developers and publishers makes it hard to really quantify how much damage is being done.
This does not excuse developers and publishers from making over-intrusive DRM systems, or consolizing (as long as we're inventing words) most of their titles. However, we, as PC gamers, must also look at the culture to which
we belong. I buy all of my games, music, and movies. I know a lot of people here do as well, and I applaud you. I have however, received my fair share of "you're weird" looks from people who pirate just about anything they can get their hands on. I've also deployed to Iraq 3 times, and I see just how prevalent piracy is in developing countries as well. I've seen DVDs on the shelves less than a day after the movie hits theaters, and I've seen hundreds of cracked and duped video games. Of all the games that I saw, nearly all of them were for the PC, because that's where the market for pirated games is.
PC gamers, especially RPG fans, have a legitimate gripe with publishers and developers, and I sympathize with people like you, Couchpotato,
to a point. Games
should be made for the love of making them, and in a perfect world, the bottom line wouldn't be a factor. Unfortunately, video games is big business and a good friend of mine that used to work for Black Isle Studios, and then Pandemic, and then Microsoft was, for about a decade, just about starving, because he was making games for the love of making games. He didn't care about the pay, because he got to do what he loved. Once he got married and had kids, however, he had to start thinking about ways to keep a steady income, so that his family wouldn't be sleeping on a twin mattress bought at a garage sale, eating cereal and ramen noodles. I think that's where a major disconnect exists between developers and publishers, and gamers. This industry is one of the most competitive in the world, and the people who have the money to invest as capital only care about getting their money back, plus some. It's unfortunate, but it's a fact, that a dev could make a beautiful, incredibly well polished, balanced, engaging and smart (think Planescape: Torment) game, and be out of the business in a couple of years, because it didn't ship for shit. Games cost a TON of money to make, (especially for the PC, where there are a lot more hardware variables that you have to code, test, debug, test, and patch for) and when you only ship 750,000 copies total (what Planescape: Torment sold, including the recent release on GOG.com) it's hard to compete with the Final Fantasy and Madden series, which sell bajillions of copies when they're released. Now take into account the amount of piracy that exists, and where the largest concentration of piracy occurs (the PC) and it's no big shock that developers are hedging their bets by making games for the console and then porting them to the PC, if they port them at all.
Another factor in the decline of our - and by "our" I mean the people who frequent sites like RPGWatch - favorite genre is that a lot of us are as old, or older, than the "average" gamer's age. I believe the stats that the average gamer is in their 30's but I also believe that the data skews younger for console players, and if the money is in consoles, then devs and publishers are making games for what console players want. I don't need shit like HDR, bloom, anti-aliasing, lots of explosions, big, jiggly titties, or the option to nail someone of the same sex, complete with a PG-13 cinematic of the whole experience, but some kid who's just barely 20 years old might find that awfully interesting, and the sales figures prove it. I mean, ME2, Fallout 3 and NV, and DA:O sold
obscene numbers, so there's no way in hell that developers are going to change their tune any time soon.
It's easy to blame all of this on greed, capitalism, sellouts, and pandering to the lowest common denominator, and to a certain extent, it's a fair assessment. But piracy and development cost is a
much bigger issue for the PC format than it is for any other. Pointing the finger solely at faceless entities like developers, big-budget publishers, corporate greed, and bottom line strategy avoids issues on the consumer end of the spectrum, and does a disservice to people who pour countless hours into making games, only to see their product ripped off by another kind of ugly, greedy, soulless parasite. If this were a perfect world, big developing houses would be creating thoughtful, mature, sophisticated titles across
all platforms, and websites like The Pirate Bay and bitjunkie wouldn't exist.