Piracy ratio is about 20:1 ?!?

JDR13

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Very interesting link over at Gameguru Mania about PC game piracy. The link is to an interview with Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli that was done by PC.IGN.


The other critique outside Crytek was the fact that the PC industry is really, at the moment, I would say the most intensely pirated market ever. It's crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now. For one sale there are 15 to 20 pirates and pirate versions, and that's a big shame for the PC industry. I hope with Warhead I hope we improve the situation, but at the same time it may have an impact on [our] PC exclusivity in the future


I certainly don't think the ratio is anywhere near that high in the US, although I have no doubt it could be in some of the Asian markets and Russia.
 
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I certainly don't think the ratio is anywhere near that high in the US, although I have no doubt it could be in some of the Asian markets and Russia.

Yeah, not even close in the US, but maybe worldwide.
 
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78% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
 
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I think it is higher than that. At least in Sweden, the climate for PC games here are horrible. I once bought a PC game, and people said like are you stupid??? YOU BOUGHT IT? why didn't you download it? with this kind of attitude I doubt that anyone would dare to buy a game. I tried to explain to them that if they don't buy the game/movie/program/music the makers would be fired and have no work left and there'd be no new great games. They said like, wah what do I care the movie stars already earn too much, the musician too, and game companies do as well! I told them game companies keep going bankrupt but they still don't care!

so I gave up. WOW is selling millions here though, yeah cause you can't play without a serial number, guess why there are so many MMO's out for PC?
 
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People are used to getting everything free from internet. They just cant grasp the idea of paying for entertainment after pirating games/music/video for like ten years or more.

Some say piracy is stealing but I think its closer to leeching:
In computing and specifically on the Internet, being a leech or leecher refers to the practice of benefiting, usually deliberately, from others' information or effort but not offering anything in return, or only token offerings in an attempt to avoid being called a leech. In economics this type of behavior is called "Free riding" and is associated with the Free rider problem.
Free Rider problem

Suppose there is a street on which 25 people live. There is a chance to install a street-wide litter collection system to reduce unseemly garbage, the cost of which is $2,500. Suppose that each person is prepared (i.e., able and willing) to pay $100 or more for the benefit of a cleaner street.

If the system is installed everyone will benefit. However, it is possible that some people on the street will refuse to pay, anticipating that the system will be installed in any event.

Despite the fact they may be prepared to contribute $100, they will claim that they are not prepared to pay, and instead hope that others in the street will pay for the system anyway, and they receive the benefit for no personal expense.

The result is that it is possible no system will be installed, an example of market failure. This is despite the fact that allocative efficiency would be improved.

We the paying customers fund the games so leechers can play them for free. I dont know about the ratio except that its huge - p2p is very popular nowadays (and not just because of transfering linux distros) - its one of the first things teached to a new pc user - how to download warez.
 
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I think it is higher than that. At least in Sweden, the climate for PC games here are horrible. I once bought a PC game, and people said like are you stupid??? YOU BOUGHT IT?

[...]

so I gave up. WOW is selling millions here though, yeah cause you can't play without a serial number, guess why there are so many MMO's out for PC?

That's why : Community can't be pirated.

I fear - although I must say that i don't know either - that in Russia the "climate" for commercial games is as bad.
 
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That Linux game publisher announced this week they have decided to add CP to their games due to rampant piracy.
They´re a bit more careful about their chosen CP than the typical publisher though.
 
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I don't know what the real ratio would be -> 10 years ago I used to play games illegal too. I don't think I would have bought more then 1 out of 10. There's a difference for me when you're underaged and not getting any money yet, while I get paid for working today. So today I pay for every game I'd like to have. When I look around a lot of people are like me, only a few hardheaded people still use illegal games when they got their first paycheck.
 
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I think it is higher than that. At least in Sweden, the climate for PC games here are horrible. I once bought a PC game, and people said like are you stupid??? YOU BOUGHT IT? why didn't you download it? with this kind of attitude I doubt that anyone would dare to buy a game. I tried to explain to them that if they don't buy the game/movie/program/music the makers would be fired and have no work left and there'd be no new great games. They said like, wah what do I care the movie stars already earn too much, the musician too, and game companies do as well! I told them game companies keep going bankrupt but they still don't care!


Same here - in Poland. Most of the people just download games and don't ever buy any.
 
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There is an intresting debate abt diablo3 vs fallout3 that made think piracy and how it has made a difference
between those two games. The debate is abt who the first game is faithful to its roots while the second one is not: http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/static/EkEuylAZypsYwQhFvL.php

I think the difference is simply due to sales numbers. Both companies chose the biggest fan base

- Fallout2 (~0.4 million iirc)
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (1.562 million)
- Diablo II (4 million)

Bethsoft had two bases of fans which to draw upon - either the fallout fans (0.4 million) or ES fans (1.5 million) and they chose the bigger one. Blizzards diablo had much bigger fan base than either fallout or ES - a massive 4 million so naturally they chose that.

So the difference is that there is 10 times more of diablo fans than fallout fans. Thats why diablo3 was faithful to its roots while fallout3 was not. If fallout2 had sold millions im sure we would see a true sequel for it too.

But back to piracy. How did a simplistic game like diablo sell 10 times more than fallout? Its simple - effective DRM. People want to play diablo in battle.net but in order to do it they need access to battle.net - but thats only possible if they have bought the game (valid key).

Its ultimately piracy that what made fallout3 look like oblivion while diablo 3 stayed true to its roots.

EDIT: In a larger scale could it be that blizzard success is simply due to the fact that they make multiplayer oriented games that cant be pirated? Of course they have talent too but they also have almost endless resources - D3 started over 4 years ago and its still nowhere near release. No ordinary dev team could burn that kind of money.
 
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One of the many factors i think, ultimately it's the quality of their games make them well known and increase the sales. How many multiplayer games sell as good as Blizzard's?. More people willing to buy Blizzard's games so the number of pirates won't impact the sales.
 
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This 20:1 ratio was entirely made up. I know of no single study which would imply such a thing. In another interview some guy from Crytek said it's 10:1... Wow, piracy rates must have skyrocketed in the last few days. The problem with Crytek is that these guys are simply pissed at the moment because they did not sell as many copies of Crysis as they thought they would. The game sold "only" one million times, so they are also singing the "piracy is killing the PC Gaming" song now. Which is pretty interesting since they made quite a lot of money with that one million sold copies. Crysis cost about 54 Euros per copy until a week ago, the production cost was about 16 million Euros... do the math. I mean, what the fuck did they expect? That after Crysis, a stupid ego shooter which only runs on high end systems, they would be as stinking rich as Richard Garriott or what? Crytek's own behaviour is rather questionable to be honest. Recently they announced, that despite the multiplayer part still being extremely flawed (invisible players) they would no longer support Crysis. Good job, guys... that's exactly how you win a community that will actually buy your games. These guys have understood nothing of the whole illegal file sharing debate.
There are a lot of things that actually "kill pc gaming" and a content-industry that is constantly blocking co-operative strategies to get rid of the problem has most likely its fair share in it. Instead of working together with them, they are pissing off the remaining customers with DRM crap like SecuROM, poor quality games, and business models that haven't changed since good old C64 times. Oh yeah, and suing college students which have no money to buy all the stuff they pirate anyway, but which have "future customer" written all over them helps a lot as well I guess. Truth is... a ratio of 20:1 means nothing. The important question is - how many of these pirated copies could actually have been sold. Do they actually believe they ever could have sold 20 or even 15 million copies of Crysis? Hello? I almost fear that playing too many first person shooters really makes stupid, if I hear such a thing.
I'm not someone who is supporting piracy, but what the content industry does is just grotesque. We won't get rid of piracy in the near future, so why dwell on it? Have you ever heard someone from the games-industry saying that he's supporting some form of "culture flatrate" on broadband access? I haven't - interestingly nearly all experts think that this would actually be a good thing. Instead people like these idiots from Crytek still cling to the illusion that one day they'll be able to completely eradicate piracy, sell 20 million copies of a game, and become as fucking rich as Goldfinger.
 
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If you take into account the countries where publishers don't reach(like Lebanon), you'll have a much higher rate. When I was in Lebanon, I used to ask my sister in Danemark to buy me the games I want every 6 months and send them through DHL. But looking into most of gamers in the country you'll see that the ratio of piracy would be more of 100:1, in fact pirated games are sold in stores in the price of peanuts. But given that companies don't expect to make any profit in countries that these games don't reach (not even by shipping), it's not a big problem anyways.
 
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well I don't think the piracy ratio is that high.... maybe in some countries it can reach that value... even exceed it but that doesn't really matter since bigger countries like USA compensate for this thing... If a worldwide survey would be taken I don't think the value would go beyong 1:10... I don't think if it could reach that

also when you buy a game it has a different feel to it... you feel way different when you open the package than when you open the folder where you downloaded...
 
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I assume that it depends on the country.

Put all countries with ALL aspect rations into ONE pot, you'll get a certain "middle-value", as we say here, don't know what's the English word for that.
 
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Who care whether the true ratio is 1:10, 1:20 or 1:5? All of them are way too high. Even 1:1 is hardly tolerable.
 
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Who care whether the true ratio is 1:10, 1:20 or 1:5? All of them are way too high. Even 1:1 is hardly tolerable.

You're right, but I think there's nothing to do about that. The only way to make piracy lesser is to make games multiplayer oriented. Singleplayer games will be just pirated by most of the players. They even hacked Steam, so I do not believe the piracy ratio will go down, it's just going to be higher and higher, because today it's so easy to download a game even for a someone who use computer rarely, not like 10 years ago or so.
 
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