RS1

@Spunky Monkey 190906

You ( and others to be fair ) are making a number of assumptions which are frankly wrong. This is the fatal mistake the developers are making.

The first assumption is that every game downloaded is a sale lost. This is incorrect. Every game I've downloaded was a game I had no intentions of buying...perhaps because I wanted to trial it, or because it didn't rate high enough up the priority list compared to other games, or household bills.

Anything I rated highly, I bought.

I pirated CoD4 because I wasn't a huge fan of FPS games but was told by a friend that it was great. Without pirating I'd have just said "Sorry mate, I can only afford one game this month and that's not it". I'd have missed out.

However, I played it, bought it, recommended it to my friends and between us we picked up about 14 copies. I pirated CoD 5, played it for an hour and discarded it.

Due to our enjoyment of CoD 4 my friends and I also picked up CoD 6 ( we all bought it on faith - another 14 copies sold ) and after a horrible multiplayer experience felt as if we'd been burned. Now, as a leader of a fairly big Warcraft guild I do accept I have more infludence in terms of word of mouth than other players but that's 28 sales for Infinity Ward from 1 pirated copy of 1 game.

And whilst I agree there's a lot of people out there that refuse to pay for quality products when they can avoid it, you might be surprised to find a lot of pirates like me.

When I look at the list of games I've downloaded I've got bored within an hour and never gone back. What has cost those games a sale wasn't my piracy but because the game was shit. I don't decide a game is shovelware and download it. I download it, decide it's shovelware, and don't buy it.

But let's look at what I did buy outright.

Starcraft 2, Bad Company 2, Worms Reloaded ( off Steam ), Left 4 Dead 2, and an upcoming pre-order of Civ 5. I never even thought of pirating them. Because the companies involved make good quality games and they support them from start to finish. And this is my point...give players incentive not to pirate and they'll still pirate it but nowhere near as much. Release endless iffy, bug-ridden pieces of shite which get 3 patches to remove the game-breaking bugs and then get abandoned whilst the companies work on a sequel to take more money and you're probably going to lose a lot of sales either way.

I don't intend to justify my stance to you but simply state this;

If the developers were to enter into communications with the pirates instead of demonizing them then they would have a better understanding of the industry and the quality of games would be better for us all.

Sorry but I call bullshit.

1. If it's a choice between selling 1m copies of a game and having .5m pirated or selling 0 copies, you take your 1m copies.
2. There are plenty of DRM solutions out there already. None of them are perfect but it's as if they aren't even trying.

The combination of the two tells me that there is something else stopping the release of this game and blaming piracy is a convenient scapegoat.


I have the piracy argument with a friend of mine regularly ( He's a developer, Im a pirate ) and as persuasive as his arguments are he's always missed the point. Look to the reason why people pirate and eliminate them. The least pirated games use the carrot before the stick.

But the fact is there's far too much shovelware out there that isn't worth our money and the sooner developers start making quality titles worth playing, worth paying, the more money they will earn.

@ll features ll

"your ignorant".

This always makes me smile.

@rorshac

Sorry but Robert Bowling is just about *the* worst community manager there is. He's so bad that he never even posted on his own website, forsaking it instead for his twitter page and his own personal blog. Really, nobody wants to have to sort through family pictures to find information on the latest Modern Warfare.

If you want to donate money to charity, do it. If you want to inflate the ego of Robert Bowling join the psychofants on the many pages he abuses.

This is what happens when developers, community managers, and fanboys put their fingers and deny that their is an issue.

Here is the forum script for the last 6 months.


Pre Launch

Constructive Beta Tester : Your game has a great deal of potential but has a number of design issues. Here is a detailed post explaining a number of flaws which are hampering enjoyment of the game.
Avid Fanboi : GTFO. Da gaem is awesumz!!.
APBMonkey : Thanks Avid Fanboi. We agree the game is awesome and we're really looking forward to the advancements we'll be making with the game after launch.

Constructive Beta Tester : Err...sorry but you aren't understanding. The game is in an unfinished state and will fail without some changes to both the game and the payment model.
Rabid Fanboi : GTFO. Da gaem is awsumz and teh payment model is teh win.
APBMonkey : Thanks Rabid Fanboi. We really appreciate your support,


Post Launch

Nolonger Constructive Beta Tester : Your game has totally failed and most of you have been made redundant. You need to make some serious changes before we buy the game.
Fanboi in Denial : GTFO. You don't even play da gaem. It is awsumz.
APBMonkey : Thanks Fanboi in Denial. We're really pleased with the success of the game.

Incredulous Beta Tester : You took a game with great potential and you killed it. Your servers will be shut down before Christmas.
Fanboi in Denial : GTFO. Itz people like you dont unnerstand how great this gaem is. There may not be many of us but we keep playing and it will awesumz after next few patches and moare playerz join.
APBMonkey : Thanks Fanboi in Denial. We've got some great things coming up in our next patches.

Laughing Beta Tester : Oh...your game failed. You've lost a huge amount of money and now the servers are being shut down.
Fanboi in Shock : GTFO. It's peeple like you who didn't even buy the game who ruined it for everyone else. It would have been awesumz!!
APBMonkey : So..I sign here right and I have to agree to apply for ...how many jobs per week?

I'm totally not worried by this and neither should the rest of you.

A time may come when the Developers & Distributors win this argument. There may come a time when you aren't legally able to resell the games you bought.

When that time comes many people will realise that they cannot afford to buy as many games as they once did because they'll not be able to mitigate the costs.

At that point game sales all over will fall and they'll only have themselves to blame. Then they'll change their mind and we'll all wonder what the fuss was about.

The bigger issue is games like Mass Effect 2 which give you a one time code for addon content. When you buy a pre-owned copy you have to fork out $20 or so just to be able to download the DLC,

Can someone please tell me what the X-Box Live Gold service actually gives you.

If you can let me know what it gives you over and above both Silver and Playstation Network then I'd like to know.

Sorry but if you read the small print you'll see that family subscription is based off 4 players on the *same console*. Not buy a family deal and sell it to all your mates.

For all those commenting on how you can buy discounted subscription cards...please understand the concept of supply and demand. The price of those discounted cards will also go up because the cost price will be higher and they will have more room for a profit margin.

So...no matter where you buy your sub from...it's going up.

This for me is the decider. I very rarely play online as most of my multiplayer games are on PC. However, both my wife and I have a subscription on the off chance that we'll pick something up. With a price increase we'll both drop down to a silver subscription.

So they just lost £70 p.a. from my household. It will take 7 more of you to continue paying just to cover the money they lost from me.

I have a PS3, and my multiplayer is ( currently ) free. More importantly it's free for the whole family. I know X-Box Live is a better service but it's only marginally better and no longer worth the money.

Actually it is going up in the UK.