Piracy isn't so much the problem. Piracy has been there since the beginning. I think the biggest issues are:

1. Big corporations running the show. They need huge returns. PC gaming roots has come from the small developer creating new unique "fun" games. These long time developers who have tied themselves to big name publishers have lost sight of that. How much overhead is involved with a company like ID or IFW. PC games have never known to be multi million dollar endeavors well in the olden days anyway. Big corps expect to get gallons of blood from a stone when it was never there to begin with.

2. Lack or originality. Again big business churning out the same old same old stuff. How many times can people go on military missions before they are sick of it whether it be WW2, current day, future?

3. I believe it was an Epic dev who said Intel hurt pc gaming the most with the weak 3D performance of its onboard video chipset. The forums I perused flamed him. I think he had a point. In order to be a pc gamer these days you have to at the minimum make sure you have a decent videocard. The majority of systems the average person owns have weak gaming performance. Why do you think Sims continues to sell well. It doesn't require much video power to run it. Bascially the hardware has outpaced mainstream. Guess we have Nvidia and ATi to thank for pushing upgrades every 6+ months.

With that I still believe pc gaming will survive. Last year was a fantastic year for pc gaming and the year ahead looks as promising. The current consoles, the ps3 and xbox 360 are nothing more than snapshots of pc hardwares past. If nothing else these "dedicated gaming pcs" are pc gamings future. The only sad part is the hardware is stagnant for 4+ years. Boring to a hardcore pc gamer who also enjoys the process of upgrading/building/modding/tweaking their pcs along with gaming aspect.

I owned every console except for the 360. There is a reason pc gaming survives. Its just a much more enjoyable platform to play on. I continually try to play my consoles but I end up playing on my pc 95% of the time. The atmosphere and control scheme is so much better. Plus the cost of pc games being up to half of what it costs on the consoles also help :)

Not gonna lie -- I'm not a PC pirate, and I am easily frustrated with people who are.

I hate consoles. I loathe them with a burning passion. I am generally an objective person, willing to see the merits and downfalls of various pieces of IT hardware and software... but I... hate... consoles.

The PC is the perfect console. It can do anything a console can do, and it can do it better. It can provide that ten foot experience of gaming with Xbox 360 controllers, and it could just as easily do it with Wii-like controllers. It could very easily provide the community, achievements, automatic game updates that the Xbox 360 provides to it's users. It can do anything that any console can do -- and it can do it better. It can do this, while retaining the best of it's own, unique, gaming capabilities. Where you use a precise and deadly interface -- the mouse and keyboard, where you have literally thousands of options from hundreds of hardware makers at your disposal. Where, when playing multiplayer online, you play against 64 other people while getting all 2,304,000 pixels of your LCD screen to yourself. Where you *could* never have to put a CD in the tray to play your game -- you'd just sit down and enjoy some gaming. Where you can download many, many high-quality third party mods for your various games free of charge.

That is why the PC, despite numerous predictions of it's death, has yet to die. It is a versatile, capable, device. And yet, I believe it is probably closest to it's death (as a gaming device) than it has ever been. Is it because of PC pirates? Partly. But it has every bit MORE to do with un-innovating PC game developers. Game developers are software makers, at heart. Software can be made to do many things. Like Steam, over at Valve. No doubt they got tired of dealing with stolen versions of Counter-Strike... so while making the source versions of their games... they decided to fix that little piracy problem. Props, Valve. They took action, rather than whined.

So, when game developers come out and bitch about PC gamers pirating their game, and this being the reason behind their abandonment of the PC for the console, I am inclined to be a bit mad at PC pirates.

HOWEVER!

Infinity Ward speaks out as if they're the victim. Respectfully, they're partly to blame. If they don't want a game to be pirated, maybe they should... make it hard to pirate, rather than releasing it on a CD/DVD with a key printed on the jewel case. This formula of "optical media + serial key" is the gold standard upon which PC game pirates... pirate their games. Infinity Ward wants to have revenue for their PC games, and their solution to this is... don't release games for the PC! Yeah! That'll work! And that won't piss off a million frigging loyal PC gamers who enjoy real gaming platforms and do, in fact, pay for their games!

Stop bitching. Start innovating. I, for one, am tired of putting my CD's in my optical drive to play games. That's why I bought Call of Duty 4 on Steam -- because I'm on a PC, and Steam is probably the penultimate realization of the true gaming experience.

I watch anime, and you see alot of this exact same piracy in that genre as well. I suspect alot of pirates are teenagers or younger who have no job and parents who aren't willing to buy the games for them (but are perfectly willing to buy them bleeding edge computers). If they are ever called on their behavior, the usual response is: "LOL! Well, I'm broke, so downloading is the only way I can get stuff!"

If you're broke, how do you have a computer? How do you have high-speed internet to download your stuff?

>>I do the same actually, crap gets deleted, and what I enjoy, I buy.<<

This sounds okay, except the vast majority of pirates don't do this. They delete the crap they don't like and just keep the stuff they do like, they never bother to buy them (why would you when you already have it?). Supporting the industry isn't something that concerns them because the 'industry' itself is irrelevant, its only what the industry spits out that they care about (the games). This applies equally to PC, console, music, and whatever else. If the PC industry collapses (which...I don't know, I doubt it) because of this, it'll simply move over to console more. I already see dozens of PS2 and PS3 disc images floating around BT sites all the time.

Its been suggested that services like Steam are a way of stemming the tide. Providing content online, for download, at a cheap price. This makes alot of sense, but I'm still skeptical as to how many people simply wouldn't share the content on BitTorrent or IRC after getting it.

Solution: release through Steam. You can't pirate Steam, unless you physically steal a valid key. But piracy is impossible through Steam. That's why Orange Box hasn't been pirated : P

If Steamis the future, I prefer the past. I've recently received The Orange Box and, as I had Half Life 2, I gave it away to a neighbor, but he has to jump through a lot of hoops and pay again to play.

It's my property, I paid for it, I should be able to give it away if I want. But no, Steam prevent me to do it. Those abuses turn you to piracy...

Edit: Steam for Valve

You buy what you can pay for. If someone pirates a game and they don't have money for it, they don't buy it. If someone likes a game they'll buy it if they have money for it. If someone doesn't have money for a game then they won't buy it.

Even if someone likes a game and doesn't have money for it, they wont buy it. If they have enough money for it they will buy it. Publishers aren't losing money where there isn't money in the first place. It's like saying they'll get money from nothing.

There is a small percentage of people who just steal cause they can. Most aren't in a financial position to own the game. Poor college student, kid living in parents basement, what have you.

What game developers truly underestimate is the amount of advertising and spread of mouth they get from people just playing their game. I know for a fact that I wouldn't have played Dawn of War (cause I never heard of it) in the first place without randomly downloading the 'demo'. I now own the game and play it with my friends quite often.

Then again piracy also seems spread the word that a game sucks balls like wild fire, cause people don't buy a game randomly and play it for five minutes, then going "wow, this game sucks" and feel like they were cheated out of their monies. There are countless PC games which just suck and aren't worth my greens. I never would've known if I didn't try the 'demo' first.

Piracy isn't the problem.

The problem is that basically the PC gaming industry has overshoot its market.

The majority of former PC gamers (people that grew up with 80s-90s PC stuff) no longer have the time or $$$$ to spend on games, tweaking rigs and such.

They settle for a PS3, 360 console that provide good enough IQ, framerate without the hassle of having latest drivers or getting that latest generation of GPU for $200-599 every six months to a year. Their PC converts to a general purpose rig that may do some emulation with some ancient gaming titles. They may even get an Apple!

The current generation of young gamers (teens and young adults) grew up with N64, PS1 and PS2. They have more of a connection with gaming consoles then with gaming PCs. It is really no surprise that current console marketshare by far outweights PC gaming market.

It is a big win for developers to focus on gaming consoles. They have predictable hardware which makes far easier to make a stable, relatively buggy-free code without spending tons of time and $$$$ on QA.

The largest problem is what I call a "Creativity plateau" which affects both console and PC gaming industry. It is the same thing that also affected music and film industries for years.

It because very difficult to innovate when there are already ton of ideas that are already been used and copyrighted. The risk involved in innovating is far too great for larger companies to stomach. They rather keep recycling and rehashing the same crap for safer means of revenue. The little guys that can risk it have a lot of trouble to get enough marketshare to get into the spotlight.

My girlfriend gave me Dark Messiah as part of my Christmas box. The stupid Securom prevented me from replaying after I quit. I had to restart the PC to play again. As you can think it can get quite annoying, especially if you are busy tweaking the game (my GFX card is an old creaking AGP GF6800). So I HAD TO go to a website (with 'world' in the title) to get the cracked exe. Problem solved. I don't have internet at home (it is impractically expensive around here), but I think Steam is a good idea, only if you don't need to download a lot of updates, just activation (I use my cellphone's 3G to activate other software).

How about Microsoft creates a plugin in their next DirectX that creates an online activation service like Steam? The games on Steam needs it to run, how about they create the games to need their service to run? Or how about everyone just use Steam, but once again, only for activation, the updates should be optional, the games come playable out of the box save for activation. Steam/DXplugin could be implemented to notify you of new drivers/patches and such. The service should be lightweight and stoppable through its interface. Parental controls can be in this service too. I know Vista has such an option, why don't MS expand on that? Put this in the next DX release for XP too.

I mean Steam is quite difficult to crack, why don't publishers run with that concept? Why don't they create such a system. They should have a unified system, that is why I suggest MS, since Windows & DirectX is the common denominator.

I challenge their statistics, simply because as we all know there are only 3 types of lies; lies, damn lies and statistics. First and foremost a cracked copy of the game != a lost sale. Many people myself included routinely have to turn to cracks to be able to play the game without the damn DVD or CD in the drive. Also not to mention, Wii, PSP, XBOX 1, PS2, PS1 have had mod chips and the ability to play copied games for years and that clearly hasn't made the consoles less lucrative. Basically it's a bogus argument they are making. It's true there may be "pirated" copies of the game out there but it certainly isn't a PC only thing. I live close to the pacific mall and I can tell you when it comes to consoles there is large scale commercial piracy taking place. You can walk in the mall and by burned copies of games and movies, that is rather common place, but you can also buy fully pressed shrink wrapped copies of games that unless you looked closely you wouldn't be able to tell are pirated copies. To this date I have yet to see any PC games get the same treatment.

Of course they like the console platform better, they can charge the double for their games and get away with it.

They release games for whatever console(s) which is a) closed platform, thus usually much easier to develop for, and b) hard to "pirate". Two good reasons to LOWER the price they charge, but do they? Nuuh-uuuh. They almost DOUBLE it! A good pointer to where it's heading, should piracy be completely irradicated.

There are several developers for PC that survives. They might not make millions of millions on every title, but they're efficient enough, and releases good enough games, to survive and make a buck. Maybe some developers are just *that* bad. Maybe their business models is just bloated and extravagant?

I think PC games today is at a price point, where worth and price go together, thus the last couple of years I've been buying a whole lot of games. But, there are *very* few games on any console platform that I feel is worth the money they charge for it.

Yes, I am an apologist. But I think it's pretty obvious why they rather develop for consoles, and blaming it *all* on PC piracy is just wrong.

Also, I wonder... If they can identify people using pirated versions when playing on the net, why are they allowed to?

i pirate all my games. if i play through the entire game, i go buy it. but if i play a chapter or two, than why would i. There are hardly any games worth buying. The same can be said for movies. i havn't bought dvd in 5 years, what a waste of money.

the last game that i bought was orange box, quake wars, and about to buy UT3, bioshock, and crysis. and soon to get starcraft 2

doing a quick search on [known bt search engine] shows that at this time there are ~85000 people downloading the image of call of duty 4 for pc
count the seeders who have finished downloading and this number goes to ~90000
this says nothing of how many people that have already finished downloading it and are no longer on the trackers
it's impossible to tell how many of those people would have bought the game had that version not been made available (big business would says all of them. i would say 1 in 50)
but either way when you look at those numbers and think of the private trackers that don't allow scraping, what else can IW do but cry about the fact that releasing the game on the pc was quite futile

All I saw here was, "BOO HOO, BOO HOO HOO, BOO HOO HOO HOOOO!".

Who friggin cares anymore. Really.
I don't pirate or condone it, but when the industry constantly charges 50/60$ for a pile of steaming beta crap, what do they expect?

Most new games have no replay value, no COOP, poor gameplay, dumbed down content, chock full of nasty spyware/DRM/in game ads/cd checks/activation,(which makes it far more appealing to just pirate a cracked version), and are released full of show stopping bugs (eg: Supcom:FA's AI has severe issues), etc.

I could write a huge essay on all the stuff I don't like, and frankly I don't care for the way the industry is now.
As long as they keep screwing paying customers, and charging high prices, they aren't going to get any sympathy from me.
I buy most of my games used/on sale now, since they certainly aren't worth the 50-60$ retail.

ps. How hard is it for them to properly implement a cd-key check for multiplayer?
Talk about total beta release, they should fire the guy responsible for the faulty key-check.

Why not just require a dongle to play instead of a console?

What, like it's hard to pirate games for consoles now?

Preventing piracy, for PC games, MUST go the way of the distribution model where EVERY connection is authenticated before playing (similar to Steam).

Each time the user starts the app, a series of checks are made on local resource to ensure they don't have "unauthorized addons" and prevent them from playing.

IW is in the business of making a game -- they are NOT in the business of monitoring it's piracy, authentication and how current the client is. Maybe they should consider a distribution method for the next game -- it would help cut down on the # of pirates playing their title.

How can pirates play online? Why would game developers allow that? Shouldn't they confirm the CD key with their database or something?

It blows me away at the amount of people willing to steal games (or anything) simply because it's not physical or it's on the safety of the internet to do.

Doesn't matter if it's PC or console, people will always pirate games. This isn't news.

There is an extremely successful game on PC that continues to make monthly profit, and doesn't have a single lick of piracy. It's called World of Warcraft.

MMO games are the future. Crappy over played single player games with even crappier multi player are not the future of gaming. Every time there's a new FPS game the only thing that changes are the maps, the models, and maybe the guns. Essentially all FPS games are Quake Team Fortress with modern graphics and sound.

It seems to me the gaming industry would want a pile of fuel dumped on it, and a match thrown at it. The truth is people do play PC games and lots of them do but most of them are pirating the games. So the move to console just makes too much sense. Unfortunately console gaming has it's own problems with game rentals, and resale valve of old used games which quickly drop the price of the game in a matter of months.

The harder the gaming industry strives to defeat piracy, the faster they'll deliver the pirated games into their hands. The move to console isn't going to make things better. Every PC game must be cracked, but you'd only need to mod the console to play every game made. On the console you put all your eggs in one basket but on the PC the eggs are in many baskets.

The reason console piracy hasn't taken off is because there hasn't been a need for it. To pirate on PC you just need a PC, but to pirate on a console you need a PC + console. The moment the gaming industry stops making PC games is the moment everyone starts buying Xbox 360's and mods them. From what I hear modding an Xbox 360 isn't that hard and may not even require a mod chip.

The future of gaming is going to be MMO. Where servers check constantly for a legit copy and even require a monthly fee. A single good game could have constant reoccurring revenue as opposed to one time bought $50 games. Though unfortunately MMO's are only PC friendly and not as much console friendly, which maybe the reason why there aren't many MMO's on consoles.

Is it really the exact same thing as theft? Making a duplicate is not the same as taking the source away from the person who owns it. Not saying it's moral, but it's not the same thing.

Like I said, a thread full of rationalizing.

This sort of story just brings out the apologists and rationalizers. How many new ways can you excuse theft?

That said, I thought COD4's demo was great...played it for about 20 minutes, and it felt like a console port, so I didn't bother buying the game.

Wat's nice is the fact that they put so much effort into copy protection that at times works against them. I have played Gothic 3 from a cracked game. I liked it so I decided to buy it. To my surprise the disk failed to install the game and told me to contact tech support and obtain a new one. Needless to say I am playing the cracked game. Thats how effective these copy protections are at turning people into pirates. Why should I buy a game and be punished?

Why aren't they banning people (keys) who are copying their game? Why are they complaining if they voluntarily let these people play?

Does IW honestly believe they *could* sell that many *more* copies of CoD4? It has sold a few million copies and I'm betting it's already in an "elite" status of PC games that has sold as many as it has. They should be quite happy that it's sold as many as it has and it continues to do well on the PC gaming charts.

Each game *won't* necessarily outsell it's previous version. Not *everyone* is going to want this game, period.

They need to make more games like Fallout, Jagged Alliance, Baldur's Gate, Ultima, Freespace, Falcon, Star Control, Dungeon Master, Indiana Jones, Monkey Island, Thief, Deus Ex, Master of Orion, Transport Tycoon, Simcity and so on.

Nowdays legendary games with fresh ideas and innovative gameplay aren't really released anymore.

Only exceptions I can now remember are Dwarf Fortress and Disciples 2. Maybe Civilization 4 too, supposing they start producing console junk like Revolutions and forget PC like others.

Its amazing how huge COD 4 has become. I wouldn't have thought that it would be as popular as it is. I guess with the amount of advertising they did...

> amount of PC players

oh, did they stack all the pirates on a big scale and weigh them? *sigh* one would hope a PR-ish person would have a clue about the english language...

It's amazing to me how people continue to blame the ease of piracy on the reason people continue to pirate software. How about the fact that a lot of people want to play the game...love the game...but just don't have $50 to $60 to spend on it.

Also, you have to consider the price of a gaming computer required to play a game such as CoD4. Some people aren't will to spend the $50 on every game after shelling out $1400-$2000 on a system.

Drop the price of games from $50 to $30 and I guarantee you see a huge spike in sales. However, we all know that wont happen because developers continue to bank on making technological masterpieces. Cut your overhead, offer games at lower prices...watch sales soar.

Also...I agree with the post that MMOs are the future. Since getting into the MMO genre...the only other game genre I've bothered to purchase are RPGs and RTS. Why? Because I can't beat them in 8 hours and they offer far more replay value than any FPS.

I can see companies focussing on console games for sure because of the ease to get pirated games for the PC vs. consoles.

But people here have points.....

Why would the average user buy, besides morality (but we all know that most people don't care about that, come on now be real) a PC game for $40-60 when they can have it free of charge? People spend good money on their computers for playing these games, of course they want to save money and "stick it to the man" even if that means the developer may be losing "millions of dollars" causing people to lose their homes and businesses to close down.

I for one would be more into buying games if they brought down the price. I only play MMORPG's now and most of them are free to download and play with no subscriptions fees and such. (They offer in game items for real money that make your character stronger, ect. than other users who don't buy them and that's how they make money; as you would know if you play them too.)

If PC games went into the $20 range would that sell more copies? Maybe a bit more but I don't think enough to make an impact as far as cutting down on pirating them. Because again, the same people who use the pirated games are of course going to continue to do so, why wouldn't they. They don't have to spend a dime. (Well maybe on blank DVDs and CDs :) ).

The PC gaming industry defianitely needs to come up with a game plan if they want to continue to supply the market. Maybe, free download of the games, option to "buy" the CD/DVD if the person has a slow net connection. Then a $10-20 charge for the CD key and come up with a better way to not allow servers or people with bad/stolen keys to play. Of course as we all know, when any security measure is in place to stop someone from doing something on a computer is put into place, most of the time on the same day; there is a hack to get around it. But it's worth some time looking into if they are losing millions as they state.

I know with myself, there is a direct correlation between my income and my piracy level. This year, I'm in school with no job, and have pirated all the big games that came out. Last year, when I was on work term, I bought all the games I wanted to play, and a crap load of movies (probably close to $1000 worth). In years past, when I went to school and worked part time, I pirated a little, and bought a little.

Personally, I don't like pirating games, and will more than likely buy most of these games (UT3, Orange box, CoD4) in the summer when I'm finished University and working.

But puhleaaase, this comment about going to consoles? Those games are just as easy to pirate now.

I know people who blatantly copy games to their HDD's on consoles, it's hardly impossible.
On the other hand, if they can track CD keys like that, why are they not kicking known bad key's off the game servers? The next patch could outright disable the game for those key's as far as I'm concerned. I paid for my COD4.