MIG-31

Ubisoft Shanghai creative director Michael de Plater has told VG247 that a PC version of EndWar would most likely be shipping alongside the console SKUs if it wasn’t for rampant PC piracy, and that copyright theft is essentially destroying the PC games market.
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Source: Videogaming247

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Judas

you douche..


piracy isn't the cause..... it's piracy protection schemes that your implementing that are killing it.

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Mousey

Amen.

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SFOSOK

I never really listened to what Ubisoft had to say after R6 Lockdown was released. The company has gone downhill ever since and insulted the Tom Clancey universe of games.

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*Warning* - Explicit Content Preceeding



METAL!!

OmegaRED

What complete and utter bullshit!

By his logic why even sell PC games at all they'll just be pirated

It's becoming more and more obvious that one of two things is encouraging game developers to blame piracy:

1)games aren't selling as well (due to poor quality or a flooded market) and the developer needs a scapegoat
2)developers have a fundamental ignorance of how piracy works -they see a torrent for game downloaded 50,000 times and count each and every download as a lost sale

Whatever it is...it's annoying the hell out of me

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YAYitsAndrew

His argument is sound. Why risk having the PC version which is easy to pirate cut into your console sales? DRM or not, the PC version is going to be pirated at a far higher rate than the console versions.

Console piracy will never become as prevalent because the hardware is locked down and you need a hardware modification to play pirated games. No one is going to install those hardware devices for free and once you start charging money you put yourself within the reach of the long arm of the law. PC piracy exists because it's easy, free, and anonymous. The internet lets this scale to a humongous size that isn't possible in the physical world. Piracy isn't going to "jump ship" to consoles.

With that in mind, what Ubisoft is doing with this game to fight piracy is, I believe, interesting and worthwhile. DRM hinders legitimate users and has no effect on pirates. What's left to do except give them no software to pirate?

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"It is because the resistance to paying for copyrighted material, although often characterized as arising from a supposed technical burden or principled concern for the public interest, arises rather from exactly the same segment of the brain that is dominant in shoplifters."
- Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism

So you think piracy isn't hurting anyone?
www.yayitsandrew.com

SFOSOK

Wow, so pc game makers should just give up? Thats a great idea! Nevermind all the hardware that is here today and will be here in the future because of PC gaming.

Looks like Intel, AMD, ATI, Nvidia should just stick their thumbs up their asses and call it quits.




Consoles are almost PC's and you know what, I think if PC gaming ever "went out of business" (which it never will) Consoles are the next target.

and guess wut, instead of technological advancement (graphics and physics) being every 6 months it would be every 3-4 years.


So that means the shit feeling game of yesteryear is going to be the hot game for the next 4 years....

Did you ever look at games 4 years ago and wish WoW!! I think all games should like this from now on.




As for a practical solution. Ignoring a gigantic market is not one of them. Instead perfecting security and piracy prevention is the way to go, we just are not there yet.

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*Warning* - Explicit Content Preceeding



METAL!!

YAYitsAndrew

I don't think anyone counts a pirated game as a lost sale. What a pirated game is, though, is a lost opportunity to make a sale. There's no way 50,000 piracies would have been 50,000 sales. But each of those 50,000 people were at least interested enough in the game to take the time to search, download, and install the torrent. Do you really think all of those people would have completely ignored the game were an illegal free version not available? Thinking that way is as naive as thinking all 50,000 are lost sales. In reality, there IS some amount of lost sales. It's somewhere between 0 and 50,000.

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"It is because the resistance to paying for copyrighted material, although often characterized as arising from a supposed technical burden or principled concern for the public interest, arises rather from exactly the same segment of the brain that is dominant in shoplifters."
- Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism

So you think piracy isn't hurting anyone?
www.yayitsandrew.com

YAYitsAndrew

I don't think Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc make the majority of their money from the enthusiast gaming market. I would think being bundled by dell and friends into desktops and laptops is much bigger business. I could be wrong though, there may be someone here with enough knowledge to say for sure. You don't need top of the line hardware to run PC games.

Graphics hardware is used to watch movies and has many business applications (of which making games is just one of). There will always be a need for graphics hardware.

Consoles aren't almost PC's. They do PC-like functions, but they aren't open platforms like the PC is. By default the Wii can't play DVDs and there's nothing you can do about it. The 360 can't watch blu-rays. You can't install skype on your ps3. These things are all possible once you compromise the hardware lockdown on consoles. My first post covered why compromising a console can't possibly become as widespread as compromising a PC.

I don't think PC gaming is going out of business. It's evolving. The way we do things now, and the way things STILL work on the consoles, does not work for the PC. It's too big of an industry to not find a solution to the problem. Maybe someday we'll have the same problem with our consoles and it will go through the same crisis, but that time isn't in the foreseeable future.

We're reaching diminishing returns on graphics. My girlfriend is still perfectly happy playing the sims on her laptop. The friends I lost to world of warcraft years ago are still playing the game. Mega man 9 looks like ass but it's selling well. I think we're growing past the "ur game is ugly so u must suk" period.

My opinion on physics is that they'll never become an integral part of games. Some games need to do real physics simulations and others don't. It varies game to game.

I agree that PC games need to evolve. I see ubisoft's tactics here as a legitimate step towards evolution. It has people acknowledging that there is a problem and talking about it. We'll never have perfect security or piracy prevention on the PC or any other platform. The question is, when will PC find a way to regain its footing? The current system doesn't work.

Bed time for me, but I'll be back to fight piracy in the morning!

__________________
"It is because the resistance to paying for copyrighted material, although often characterized as arising from a supposed technical burden or principled concern for the public interest, arises rather from exactly the same segment of the brain that is dominant in shoplifters."
- Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism

So you think piracy isn't hurting anyone?
www.yayitsandrew.com

OmegaRED

I believe the loss of sales due to PC piracy is eventually going to be matched by the loss of sales on consoles due to the resale market. Only a fraction of the PC pirates would have bought the game whereas 100% of gamers who buy used games are willing to spend cash;cash that doesn't go to the game developer. It's just a matter of counting lost imaginary dollars vs real dollars. Ya, PC games be be bought used too but the market is much smaller because console games cost a lot more new. For once I'd like to see developers try and track game resales.

PS. Console games such as GTAIV, Halo3 and Fallout 3 hit P2P sites weeks before retail release and they were downloaded many times. The piracy of console games is a lot higher than people think.

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OldBuzzard

Well, we all know that Starforce, secuROM, and SafeDisk had nothing at all to do with their "Piracy Problems" did it?

I bought a couple of game with those, and still D/Led the pirated version to install, just because I didn't want that garbage on my system. The same with "NoCD Cracks". I use them not because I pirated the game, I use them so I don't have to keep using the CD/DVD, and risk buggering it up.

I started doing that after one of them trashed a prefectly good Plextor Burner.

They put "Protection" on the games that fuck with your Systems's security, and disable/destroy some of your hardware, and they expect you to just accept it?

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When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

Judas

The misconception is the orginally, Only the elite know it alls would pirate for PCs... oventually it's become fairly the norm that any user with a little bit of knowledge can manage that same thing today.

This will happen to the Consoles, as every new console gets a little bit more PC functionality and a little bit easier in the end to mod into an unlocked console, resulting in the enevitable outcome of any user oventually being able to mod it themselves. Specially considering on the guides.

It's quite serprising the number of console game ISO's all over the internet just like omega said.... Calling the PC the mass pirater is a bit of a joke based on simply currently being an easier method without any real modification to the hardware. ALOT of people do the moding for free, or for VERY few dollars. Hell some people are buying 2x the console, one with and without the hacks just so they can do whatever whenever they want.

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Vikingod

I still believe the inability of publishers/developers to develop new business models which would combat piracy and increase sales is what is "killing" PC gaming. Games like WoW, COD 4, and anything by Valve, serve as evidence to this. Sure, there is some piracy, but the vast majority of people buy these games either for online features, due to great digital distribution mechanisms (including discounts), or because of the promise of free additional content at some point in the future.

Most large publishers are basically using the same business model they were 15 years ago, not materially adjusted for the changes in customer base, tastes, technological advancements (including broadband internet, P2P), etc. Instead they band together and whine about it, enforce annoying DRM and turn to consoles, ignoring the fact that most people have PC's in their homes. Their refusal to change gears and adapt makes no sense to me.

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SFOSOK

Its not just the enthusiast market this would affect. If pc gaming became obsolete people would not need to upgrade any system component for a 4-6 year time period. While I know that sounds nice to our wallet computer technology would not be advancing like it used to. This technology not only affects gaming but the Medical field, architecture, and basically any field that still needs a computer to work faster and do more than it does now.

Business and movie applications have reached their peak in rendering uses but PC gaming technology is far from it.

More and more consoles are becoming PC's to try and better suit the consumers needs as an "all-in-one" system.

With the next generation of consoles I'm sure you'll various forms or media as an attachment for it. The only real reason to buy a PS3 is because it has a blue-ray player in it.

Consoles can now sync up to a windows based computer through media center to transfer music, videos, and even TV shows to be used with you TV or surround sound system.

The PC gaming is a lot more open than consoles. With consoles the developers are connected to Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo who can make decisions in the consoles best interest and can control that market.

There is no one person or company that can set a standard with PC gaming. Microsoft has the biggest say but anything the do affects their consoles sales.

Thats understandable, but everyone is not your girlfriend and not everyone plays wow. Its not a progressive standpoint.

I think my games look absolutely stunning now but 5 years down the line if I could have the hardware, technology, and coding put into those same games I would not turn it down.

So not every game could benefit from a more realistic environment? (in what ever setting the game is in)


Ubisoft are trying to cover their asses. That company started in PC gaming and they will probably be one of the first to jump ship.

As a company they have been getting lazier and lazier (mimicking EA). They only give you enough in a game to last you till next game. There is no creative standpoint just a cookie cutter piece of shit.

Honestly, I think there is a perfect solution for PC pirating out there. Just no one has discovered it yet.

I know some people may be content playing with their "Wii" but after playing WiC, Crysis, Cod4 (on PC), HL2 cinematic mod/smod, Resident Evil 4 PC the Wii doesn't hold me over for even a few minutes.

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*Warning* - Explicit Content Preceeding



METAL!!

BlueMak

Ubisoft didn't start in PC gaming. They did in Home Computers.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

YAYitsAndrew

Online games are selling a service, there is no problem verifying the authenticity of someone once you are selling a service. At that point you have the power to deny access on your end to the services you provide. You can also afford watchdogs. Single player games don't have this luxury because the content is all on the disk.

Consoles will never become as completely open as PCs. One of the very reasons for that is you open yourself up to large-scale piracy that has low borders. Sega's dreamcast died for this very reason. It didn't take any effort to burn a game and play it on your system because boot-disk swapping is an accessible technology. I could put up a website tutorial on boot-disk swapping for the dreamcast, and millions of people could learn the technique from it. Compare that to me opening up a mod shop that will mod xbox 360 consoles. Do you think I'll be able to mod a million xbox 360's in the same amount of time? Am I prepared to walk the fine legal line necessary to run such an operation? Now you can see how hardware modding will never compete on the same scale as software circumventions. There's significantly more risk.

In order to deliver a secure software product, you have to have control over some piece of hardware that is integral to the operation of the software. Activation is one easy way to get this control. You have to ask your users to connect to the internet (or hire call staff), though, which can cut sales. Activation is still circumventable if you don't require it to happen on a regular basis. This is how windows protects itself. You need to be genuine - verified during each update. As you add in these road blocks, they can still be circumvented. The cool thing is the more you add and the harder they are, the less and less likely someone is willing to go through the effort to pirate. You have to find a balance of what is acceptable to both the user and the developer.

DRM is another example of trying to gain control of the hardware. The only problem is, this is also an example of what users deem unacceptable. DRM is not a balanced compromise of control between the user and the developer. I don't support DRM (I still haven't bought Spore), but I also don't support piracy. You're allowed to hate both.

__________________
"It is because the resistance to paying for copyrighted material, although often characterized as arising from a supposed technical burden or principled concern for the public interest, arises rather from exactly the same segment of the brain that is dominant in shoplifters."
- Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism

So you think piracy isn't hurting anyone?
www.yayitsandrew.com

Bucketface

I can't play most new games so I'm not so savvy on copy protection etc., though I realise it is a deterrent to a lot of people. Game developers/creators/whatevers are more than entitled to protect their product but it wouldn't hurt them to have a little more insight into their customers and treating these customers as criminals and charging exorbitant prices isn't a very reasonable way of doing things.

Recent stories I have heard of the anticipated Spore are of general discontent after discovering you're limited to 3 installs! People don't have unlimited space on their hard drives and a bunch of other completely legitimate reasons to have to install it many times. In 5 years people who had bought this game are probably going to want to play it again and imagine if they have to find a crack for the game so they can play it after having paid for it! It's downright insulting! I'm also sort of averted to the onerous idea of having to leave your game disc in the drive after you have installed it and have the game taking up however many GB it takes up. This sort of thing is just such a burden...

PCs are my preferred medium for a lot of tasks whether recreational or for academic work or something like that. Console games are similarly easy to pirate and you can even bring your game to a friends house to play it on their console! What sort of depraved individual would even consider doing that I have no idea (sarcasm). I am finding myself more and more disappointed by these modern limits though I do respect that people need to make a living and pirating games is illegal.

EDIT: Oh no YAYitsAndrew made a much better post than mine whilst I was eating a sandwich :{

YAYitsAndrew

It seems to me that you are saying that Medical, architecture, digital design, etc, are all fields that happen to exist because gaming pushes hardware at a fast rate. I disagree with that completely. Without gaming those fields would still exist and they would still have the same hardware demands, but the hardware would be more scarce or more expensive. I agree that we would be buying computers less often, though. And those medical imaging computers would cost more money.

The enthusiast market is a small set of people buying cutting edge technologies. The majority of users are buying technologies that are slightly out of date but that fall into a specific price range that is acceptable to them. When you're outside the enthusiast's world, price becomes an even bigger concern.

Don't let blu-ray hear you say that I think monitors will get bigger and so will resolutions and this will continue to drive graphics hardware, once again, at the standard consumer level.

I've covered this a few times in this topic already. Why would a console need to become exactly like a PC? Consoles will continue to integrate multimedia functionality and other things that are beneficial to the living room. I'll never need to sit out in my living room and write code with an xbox controller or a dvd remote. I don't think photo editting (professional) will be on consoles either. They can play games, they can share digital data in exciting ways, but they won't ever need to do ANYTHING. A PC can do ANYTHING.

You mentioned that xbox can hook up through media center extender, but what is that exactly? Computers have been able to network for years. Media center extender is software that sits between the xbox and the PC and protects the xbox from the PC. All the software does is create a set of limitations on how you can network your machines together. This is to protect the xbox and keep the device locked down. Being open like a PC is a bad thing for most devices and most businesses.

Right. So maybe this is one of the problems with the PC market? It's like the wild west right now. Digital distribution has had some success because it carved its own little towns into the landscape and hired their own sheriffs; but no one is policing the bigger picture.

Fair enough. I don't think anyone has any data to really dig into this one. I personally believe that graphics are becoming less and less important.


I know this for a fact because I develop video games for a living. In most games, you want to fake physics because what the user feels is "right" is actually a lot different from what you'd get if everything was falling at 9.8 m/s^2. Realistic physics is like a spice that you can add to some games to enhance them. Certainly a lot of first person games can benefit from having realistic collisions at least with the boxes, walls, etc in a game. Mario on the other hand will never have realistic physics because they he can't decelerate in mid-air.

The other form of realism you may be talking about is graphics. I think if you're trying to make a photo-realistic game, then yes we need more graphics and more power to do that. Photo-realism is only one artistic style, though. Resolutions are large enough these days where you can create an artistic style for your game that looks good without needing photo realism. There are lots of cel shading games that do this. Another popular effect is hand drawing (The Behemoth games) and painting (Braid, Okami). Photo-realism means your games have to look like they're from the real world. Each artist has their own particular style, however, and that can only come through once you free them from the constraint of photo-realism.

This is a good point of view. Instead of unleashing anger towards the publishers, though, try focusing positive energy on the independent developers. They are the ones standing against publishers and making innovative games. They need your help to do it.

__________________
"It is because the resistance to paying for copyrighted material, although often characterized as arising from a supposed technical burden or principled concern for the public interest, arises rather from exactly the same segment of the brain that is dominant in shoplifters."
- Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism

So you think piracy isn't hurting anyone?
www.yayitsandrew.com

Bucketface

Might I just add that people who pirate games wouldn't necessarily buy the game; In the case of people boycotting games due to DRM or the such it does of course mean that they're losing sales though...