PCGA: PC piracy is declining

[dpodblood]

Steam sales. Nuff said.

 

[BladeVenom]

It's not due to the reasons in the article. It's due to Shyte console ports/consolitis that no one wants anyway flooding the system.

I think it's the opposite. Bad games would tend to increase piracy. If you pirate a game and it's shit, you just pirate another. Or if you buy a couple of worthless games, then you decide they aren't worth paying for, so you start pirating them.

I think Steam, Impulse, and GOG are the reasons piracy is down. You can almost always find a good game on sale, or lots of mediocre ones for almost nothing. How many people here have already bought more games on sale than they have time to play. Once you reach that point, why bother pirating games.

 

[nitromullet]

Steam sales. Nuff said.

I think there is some truth to this. For ~$100 during the holiday season I stocked up on more games than I can play right now. Sure, some of the new titles coming out in March that interest me, but I have games to play while I wait for the price on these games to fall.

edit: not that I was a pirate before Steam sales, but I think lower legit prices have made piracy less popular.

 

[dpodblood]

Honestly I am just so used to buying to games from Steam now that I have forgotten about piracy as even being an option. Another issue is that typically pirated games are a copy of the product on release day, patches not included. Since a lot of games are unplayable until at least a couple of patches are released this leaves pirated copies dead in the water.

 

[sticks435]

Yea, I guess I didn't think about Steam, although I have like 10 games on there I need to play, even GTA IV and Force Unleashed, cause it was like 15 bucks or both or something. I just don't buy much from Steam I guess. Not sure why, I don't really resell PC games or anything. Guess it's because I still have DA: O and Fallout 3 to finish, so I figure I can wait.

 

[NoQuarter]

It seems the cost of PC games has actually gone slightly down over the years while the cost of everything else has gone up. It makes it easier for me to buy a PC game now than it was a few years ago, because the relative value is much higher.

Back when a PC game cost as much as 2 tanks of gas or 6 movie tickets the relative value was worse - but now I can get 1 tank of gas, 3 movies or a PC game, which makes it much easier to spend money on.


And of course, Steam and digital downloads in general have been huge.

 

[happy medium]

I know why, because people are buying the games now for the multiplayer which can't be hacked, not the single player which can be hacked. ANd another reason is, because the single player part of games usually suck, and they only have about 5 hours of gameplay.

So you either buy the game and get the shitty single player and the choice of playing multiplayer or pirate it and play the shitty single player for 5 hours and let it sit on your harddrive for benching puposes.

I don't know many games that are hacked that have multiplayer working.

 

[Oakenfold]

Steam sales. Nuff said.

And world of tanks!

 

[RockinZ28]

I rarely pirate anymore. Think all the games I've downloaded in the past year I never even got around to installing. And those were games I never intended to purchase, just check them out for an hour or less.

For me it was just about money. I was unemployed much of the time from 2004-2008, definitely didn't have the means to spend any amount on games. So it was either pirate, or not play.

Now that I've turned things around and make plenty of extra cash, I buy most games I want on release day, and have done so for the past couple years, including the collectors editions. Just my way of giving back, as many of the games are sequels to games I enjoyed, and I have bought most of the games I enjoyed during my tough times, albeit at heavily discounted prices.

Have $300+ in Amazon pre-orders. It is tempting to pirate still, knowing that it's all free, including MP on cracked servers. And some of these games don't make it any less appealing. I've almost had to download cracks to play games I own because of DRM, and know there are plenty of people that have had to do so.

 

[StinkyPinky]

PC Games are still the same price they were 20 years ago and people still complain about paying too much. Kinda funny if you ask me.

 

[Phokus]

PC Games are still the same price they were 20 years ago and people still complain about paying too much. Kinda funny if you ask me.

I do think it's kind of infuriating that many PC games cost the same as their console counterparts when they first come out, even though they don't have to pay console royalties.

 

[thujone]

PC Games are still the same price they were 20 years ago and people still complain about paying too much. Kinda funny if you ask me.

what?



show me which games cost $50-60 in 1991.

 

[LumbergTech]

steam is finally doing what i've wanted all along....charge reasonable prices and I will buy

games are just entertainment...you cant build a house with them..you cant feed a family unless you are making the game yourself..

now a bunch of other companies have jumped into the fray and are also offering deals.

its a good time for gaming...good time for developers..good time for players

no, steam does not always charge the cheapest price on day one, but you can be damn sure that they will offer a vast majority of games at a great price within a year.

I am a mature adult and am willing to wait if it is necessary for a developer to make their money by dropping the price over time.

 

[darkswordsman17]

what?



show me which games cost $50-60 in 1991.

Weren't half the games back then shareware?

 

[StinkyPinky]

what?



show me which games cost $50-60 in 1991.

Sounds like you are getting your games from the wrong place.

Picked up The Witcher 2 for $44. Dragon Knight Saga $40. New Vegas for $45. Mafia 2 was $45 for me.

In fact, it's even better as the competition means that if you wait 6 months most games can be picked up for close to half price. Back then they would stay $40 forever.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Weren't half the games back then shareware?

Shareware was just a fancy demo. You still needed to buy the game to finish it.

 

[motsm]

what?



show me which games cost $50-60 in 1991.

Not 1991, but I recently bought a big box version of Icewind Dale, and it still had a $49.99 price sticker on the front. It was the original release of the game, so that dates back to June 2000.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I call bullshit on that.

Pirates will download anything free.

Except it's not really free. It costs money to get an internet connection, and if you have a data cap, then the money it costs can be measured. Plus, it takes time and effort to find the game, download it, find a workaround crack if one isn't included, and install. For certain games I would not even waste that much time. They are just that bad. Whereas I pay full price for games that I think will give me value; games like Oblivion, and WiC (slightly disappointed there TBH...), and dozens of others.

Not 1991, but I recently bought a big box version of Icewind Dale, and it still had a $49.99 price sticker on the front. It was the original release of the game, so that dates back to June 2000.

I bought IWD, HoW expansion, as well as IWD 2 nearly 6 years ago...for $10 total. And even if I don't play games anymore, I remember those old Forgotten Realms RPGs very fondly.

 

[coloumb]

- Digital sales events [D2D discount codes, STEAM sales, GoG, etc]
- Multiplayer with a very short single player aspect
- Bandwidth caps - people are probably prioritizing their downloads elsewhere [movies, pr0n, music, netflix [if this calculates into the monthly bandwidth limits], etc] - games today typically are in the 5gb-12+gb range. However, this might not be the case as you still use the same amount of BW for downloading legitimate digital copies from D2D, steam, etc.

I like to read various scene release forums [out of curiosity] - lately the games have been more difficult to crack [they don't appear until after the game has hit the digital/store shelves] and/or the scene release groups are getting sloppy [they release a "patch" to fix an issue] or they wait until a major content patch is released [ie: Civ5 had numerous small fixes yet groups waited or didn't release any updates]

Or maybe the economy actually is rebounding and more gamers have the funds to purchase games...

 

[Wyndru]

Steam makes it easy to buy games. Plus multiplayer games don't work well when pirated.

This. And the # of people addicted to subscription based games keeps increasing as well.

 

[coreyb]

Not 1991, but I recently bought a big box version of Icewind Dale, and it still had a $49.99 price sticker on the front. It was the original release of the game, so that dates back to June 2000.

I clearly remember buying snes games for over $100 when I was a kid. Earthbound and a baseball game come to mind. This was around '95

 

[coreyb]

my friends and I all pirated games as teenagers, because we had no money. as adults, we all buy games now. I think the whole piracy thing is overstated.

 

[SolidSnake42]

So hopefully less bullshit countermeasures? Or am I asking for too much?

 

[shortylickens]

what?



show me which games cost $50-60 in 1991.

It depends on where you got them but a lot of people did pay 50-60 for the average game.
I didnt. I usually went to Target and Walmart (back before I hated Walmart) and got a decent game for 20 and a good game for 40.

To me the average game costs more nowadays but not by much. I think games are expensive because they are crap, and to me most of them are only worth about 10 bucks or so.
I got New Vegas on a Xmas special for 30 bucks and I feel ripped off. Its just Fallout 3 with some new models and a few new quests. The expansion is finally on Steam now, 10 bucks. I dont think I will pay that much. Gonna wait.


BUT, on the other hand thanks to Steam I just got 600 bucks worth of Square games for 70 fucking dollars! Awesome sauce to the max.

 

[paperfist]

I know why, because people are buying the games now for the multiplayer which can't be hacked, not the single player which can be hacked. ANd another reason is, because the single player part of games usually suck, and they only have about 5 hours of gameplay.

So you either buy the game and get the shitty single player and the choice of playing multiplayer or pirate it and play the shitty single player for 5 hours and let it sit on your harddrive for benching puposes.

I don't know many games that are hacked that have multiplayer working.

Private servers eliminate the need for a working key...

While I personally wouldn't want to play on a limited private server I see lots of people do.