Gaming - Buyers, Sellers and Hackers

[Notnice]

you guys read this yet?

Let's not, however, forget the other side of the coin: the inexplicably delayed port. Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series, for instance, has been doing it for years – with speculative whispers chalking it up to piracy avoidance. But here's the thing: it only encourages piracy. If you treat people like second-class citizens, don't be surprised when they start doing whatever's necessary to get ahead.

Awesome you write this or what

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/12_ways_consoles_are_hurting_pc_gaming?page=0,0

[W1nTry]

LOL @ Awesome writing article.

I don't however agree, I think it fair to say that WORSE came to WORSE and developers were left with the decision to cut either console game development of PC (with the exception of WOW, nothing beats WOW), which do you think they will drop?

[TriniXaeno]

I'm with you on that w1n. Its unfortunate but true.

[Spazosaurus]

I agree 95% with that article.

It boils down to this simply. As i've said umpteen times before, 2 wrongs do not make a right. If you do CRAP for the pc, dont expect even semi impressive sales. To even have a chancee of doing well, you HAVE to make a better effort. I can stomarch console ports. Just put some more damn effort into it.

But at the end of the day, devs like that will see things one way, pc gamers will see it as i've said above. if they want to continue the lazyness, i'd HAPPILY skip their game and put my money towards one that delivers high quality experience on the pc.

I'd rather buy and play 2 EXCELLENT games (over a long perios of time) rather than 20 mediocre ones for maybe a few weeks a piece. Save some money in the process too.

Imagine $60us for a PEEECEEE game wey telling yuh press start to continue. I doh care if it fix now. It is a giant slap in the face. F***k em f**k em goddamn lazy greedy b1tche$

[TriniXaeno]

two wrongs don't make a right....they make a revenge.

yuh want to pirate? take start button iymc

[D2ultima]

two wrongs don't make a right....they make a revenge.

yuh want to pirate? take start button iymc

Wyatt you bringing this arguement again? I tired tell you, I will HAPPILY point you to a LARGE number of men that does pirate Xbox and Wii games. And PS3 too, seeing as you could hack it with a USB cable. And when a modder gets sued by Sony, hacker groups crash they websites. As in multiple websites. And Sony can't do crap about it.

And did I mention, they get free MULTIPLAYER ONLINE when they pirate it on a console? Because you know, on the PC, if yuh pirate a game you go hadda sit down and take single player only iymc. And as I said in an earlier post, a lot of people that pirate stuff like that and like it end up buying the game for online. So a man pirate a game, use the pirate like a demo, then buy it. He still pirate it. But they get money off him too. And the big corporations KNOW they could get pirated. Why you think Wii updates always trying to break men homebrew? Because they know they getting free online games, and they can't stop it. And you REALLY feel Microsoft doesn't know about J-tagging an Xbox? Console pirating is FAR worse.

The developers, JUST as Awesome said, just flickin lazy. They DON'T wanna put in time and effort to doing four things:
1 - Releasing a COMPLETED game on launch date. You know, like back in PS2 days?
2 - Actually test their updates/patches to make sure it has a high compatibility and doesn't introduce extra bugs.
3 - Pay ATTENTION TO DETAIL.
4 - Giving games little in-game cheats etc for single player to invite replayability.

The first one, unless the game's totally broken (like Black Ops on the PS3) at release, console users ain't caring. PC go crash their forums with traffic flaming their asses till their offices smell like burnt pork if they find three annoying bugs. ESPECIALLY in multiplayer. Requires extra work on their part.

The second, they just need to write a general patch code and it'll probably work for all the nearly-the-same consoles that run the game. PC requires thought and testing to make sure things are done as intended, and every man jack from the 6-year old borderline minimum-spec machine to the guy who could outpower your entire server room from he laptop can all run it without too many hitches.

The third... this is mostly in graphics. Consoles are just expected to look pretty as they are. People not expecting every doorknob to be well polished. Or all the grass in a level (even the way-way-way-outta-de-way bush in d corner of the level) to be sweet and springtime fresh. It's a console. Go on the PC and it have men trying to glitch the map and snipe fellas through a truck on the far side of the level. They gonna notice the paper-maché trees where the player wasn't really meant to go. They will say "wtf is dis" and the devs gonna groan, because their sloppiness was found out.

The fourth... this died with the PS2. I swear. Long gone are the days when doing something a certain way gave you advantages. Or even beating the game let you use cheats in replaying single player. Let you test this, try that. I played through Star Wars: Jedi Knight Jedi Academy must be 12 times. Each time doing different things. Giving myself max force from the start, turning myself into Luke Skywalker then back into me so I can get 200 max force the rest of the game, replaying one bess mission 5 times in a row so I could advance to the next stage of the game while getting to bubbalize MANY bad guys. Giving myself twin lightsabers before I need to reforge a new one? Oh those were good times. Now? It's like "here, play this. Oh when you're done, that's it. The next game will be out in 1-2 years, you can buy that then for more/variety."... Not good for the PC. Console users don't care, most of em ask mommy and daddy for a good few games each year. And I not only talking about 12 year old lil boys home from school to talk smack on Black Ops. It have 20-year old men does do the same. They in college, nuh wurkin, and everytime they need something they bawl "yo mind if I get this?" and mamy say "yeah no prob" because they have some money, and at least their son not becoming a drunkard. PC men? We rather one FANTASTIC game to collide us in maximum speed and knock us down (STILL not seeing that in Crysis 2 btw) and after three months we like "Holy damn, these guys just about made the best game I've played in years. Props to them man, they're getting my business in the future!" *goes off to recommend bess game to friends, maybe run some co-op or multiplayer if game has it*.

Developers just lazy. They aiming to the console platform because they DON'T NEED TO WORK. I have screenshots of playing in Extreme in Crysis 2, a couple doors at the back of a level look like yuh build them in minecraft, their doorknobs made of solid, set-in stone, and the same material as the door itself. And it fused into the wall, not even a door self. But the two of them were real far in the back of a part of the level, and the other doors along the main path? Nicely rendered. Pathetic.
I also buggin about how LINEAR the game is. "Go here, do X, continue forward". There's always an open playground to kill, sure, but everything follows one path. No open jungles of Crysis 1 (I'm assuming; never played) or Warhead (no assumption, have played & beaten 3 times) where, with a few exceptions, you could enter and attack people at a checkpoint from any number of angles. Sleeping darts if you didn't want to kill or cause suspicion, silencers, laser sights THAT LET YOU AIM DOWN THE SIGHT AND NOT GIVE ME A FALLOUT 3-ESQUE WEAPON ZOOM-IN, akimbo pistols/machine pistols? What did I get in Crysis 2? A noobtube on assault rifles we can take into multiplayer?

Oh please.

......
Ok, rant over. Hearing people blaming piracy for bad games on the PC annoys me.

[Spazosaurus]

Study wyatt nah, he just wilding me up.

Worry not though, next time he jump in bc2 is so much corn he go get he'll go directly to he console brethren for a reprieve

[shivanandrs]

I also buggin about how LINEAR the game is. "Go here, do X, continue forward". There's always an open playground to kill, sure, but everything follows one path.

For real...I'm not too far in and I'm bored already.

[TriniXaeno]

lol, correct.

d2ultima, you have it completely wrong.

The problem is this.

On PC: Crysis 1 sold 80,000, Pirated....100 million (bankrupt)

On Console: Crysis 2 sold 100 million, pirated 80,000 (cha ching)

Any questions?

Those are numbers developers can live with.

That is very basic math that both they and their accountants understand.

[shivanandrs]

Do the pirated figures really mean anything anyway? It's not like they lost customers/$$ to piracy. The way i see it, the people who where willing to purchase it in the first place would have.

[Spazosaurus]

EXACTLY shiv. And some people download 'trials' to help determine if they are going to buy it.

Like I said before, if when they do that and see that it is not worth it, they will pass on the purchase.

Not saying that pirating is justified or absolutely necessary, but in these times where money is tough, I cant fault a man for being sure he likes a game before buying it, ESPECIALLY when men calling $60 for titles that fail.

Listen, buying these people game is exactly like giving a piper money. You giving because you FEEL is the right thing to do but in the end, you're just feeding their crack habit.

In case you missed it, the crack habit in this case is doing lazy ass console ports and us buying them is saying hey, that is OK. I like it, keep on doin what you doin bro.

noooooooooooooooo, not THIS negro.

[TriniXaeno]

Do the pirated figures really mean anything anyway? It's not like they lost customers/$$ to piracy. The way i see it, the people who where willing to purchase it in the first place would have.

I'm a little surprised someone could still make this statement after all the healthy debate on the topic and tradgedy that is PC piracy.

That is precisely the kind of thinking that brought us to the stage where consoles have eclipsed the PC and is now the platform of choice for "PC" game developers.

It is one thing to say that a game did not sell well....it is another to say it did not sell well but their are 100 million people out there with a pirated copy.

Can you imagine the angst? Developers have lost their jobs, studios have closed down and great games have been shelved because of this. Families on the bread line. The industry has suffered and is now pulling every trick in the book to stimmy the tied of piracy. Led by the most ruthless CEOs who couldn't careless about the platform and are more focused on the sales figures.

Piracy created that monster. Make no mistake. Pure case of reaping what you sow.

That's a fact we cannot ignore.

[D2ultima]

Do the pirated figures really mean anything anyway? It's not like they lost customers/$$ to piracy. The way i see it, the people who where willing to purchase it in the first place would have.

I'm a little surprised someone could still make this statement after all the healthy debate on the topic and tradgedy that is PC piracy.

That is precisely the kind of thinking that brought us to the stage where consoles have eclipsed the PC and is now the platform of choice for "PC" game developers.

It is one thing to say that a game did not sell well....it is another to say it did not sell well but their are 100 million people out there with a pirated copy.

Can you imagine the angst? Developers have lost their jobs, studios have closed down and great games have been shelved because of this. Families on the bread line. The industry has suffered and is now pulling every trick in the book to stimmy the tied of piracy. Led by the most ruthless CEOs who couldn't careless about the platform and are more focused on the sales figures.

Piracy created that monster. Make no mistake. Pure case of reaping what you sow.

That's a fact we cannot ignore.

Now I know my post was a lot to read, but don't ignore what I've said. Men used to pirate PS1, PS2 and Xbox games like peas. And now men pirating Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii games quite often. And their sort of piracy is worse. Also, @W1ntry, AGAIN, since Steam, Direct2Drive, cdgamekeys.com, and all the other ridiculous numbers of digital download distributors most often do NOT give out their sales figures, you REALLY think only 80,000 men on a PC bought a game when 1 million buy it on a console? No. It STILL don't have pirated Black Ops where you could find online. I have had no less than 12 people on my steam friend list ALONE (non trinis) ask me if I know how to get online in BO for free. There's no way. But my partner download the game and throw it on a hard drive for his Wii, connect it and does bun it online like nothing. I'll repeat. With VERY few exceptions lately, if you want a game online for the PC, you BUY it. If you want a game online for the console, you CAN PIRATE IT.

You don't have the total sales figures for PC. There's no way to find them short of hacking each site that offers digitally downloadable games and finding their sales figures. These guys make a ton of money off PC games, more than you realize and/or will want to admit.

And piracy on consoles which IS rampant is a fact you ARE ignoring, while telling us we cannot ignore PC piracy. Get rid of ya double standard >_>. And most developers just use PC piracy as an excuse; they know full well the piracy of the consoles. Like I said. They just lazy and rather put in the minimum amount of development required for a game.

[TriniXaeno]

ultima, you are very wrong.

Digital sales are only just equalling the brick and mortar sales of PC games.

Brick and Mortar sales of PC games is very low. Say about 10% of a given title compared to its console version.

So lets be generous and give it 20%.

The math goes like this.

1 PC Game Sold in the Store
2 PC Games Sold digitally
7 Console Games Sold in the Store

Now lets say piracy is rampant on both platforms and forces you to be very cost efficient in the production of your game. That is, you can only afford to focus on one.

Which one will you focus on?

The one that sells 3 copies, or the one that sells 7?

[Redlum08]

Wyatt, you beating a dead horse man...I think this topic has been beaten so much, is only pulp left...Piracy will always be denied as the cause because nobody wants to take blame. As long as men playing the game, they happy, they doh care how they get it. FREE? Even better. More money to go out and spend on UPGRADES to play more FREE games. I not pointing any fingers in here, but who on this forum has never "acquired" a game or two, or three....let that person cast the first stone. Point is, the gaming industry is a BUSINESS. They in it to MAKE MONEY and LOADS of it. A few pirates here or there is no big deal, but when a game they make and hyped up, and spent millions on advertising ends up being pirated by most, then really and truly, why would they waste money working on something that will end up being stolen anyway? Yes, Stolen, as in, they work hard on something, invested alot of time and energy and money on, only to see no profitability. PC gamers have gotten the short end of the stick due to their own arrogance and pirate ways. Yea, I had to "TRY" it out first before buying...yes, its ok to do that, but when that "TRY" turns into "I HAVE THIS GAME AND I GOT IT FOR FREE" and word spreads and Peter tells Paul how to acquire the game...what you think happens?

[Czar]

There is no doubt that piracy touches consoles as well, but it quite obviously doesn't affect the developer's bottom line near as much as on the PC - one need only look at the published sales figures for evidence of this. Even if we doubled or tripled PC sales figures to account for digital distributors (which I think is a far stretch), PC sales are often, still paltry, at best.

Further to the piracy argument on consoles, it's not as accessible to the everyday Joe, and in the case of the Xbox, it's predominantly used for offline play (I can't speak to the other consoles) as it's widely known and expected that the Microsoft banhammer will catch up with you if you take them online. That's not to say that there aren't any modded Xboxes on Live, but they are more the exception than the norm. Of all my friends that I know with modded Xboxes, none of them dare go online with them and only use their Live accounts on their legit Xboxes. I know a guy who's selling modded Xboxes here in Calgary, and he says you can go online with them, "for now", but then goes on to say that you should setup a separate Live account for them and he can't guarantee how long it'll be good for.

[TriniXaeno]

well said....red and czar, well said.

It is a little worrying that something that is so clear and obvious to me, is escaping my fellow comrades.

I know some men will say stuff in joke and we will all laugh, not calling names (notnice cough cough, warone) but it looks like a few of us are still oblivious to this reality. Piracy is the white elephant that trampled all over PC gaming.

[Spazosaurus]

So let me pull out meh hoss Bad Company 2 on the pc.

All I have to say is this...

With all the piracy on the pc, look at them numbers to the side. There are ALWAYS more ppl playing on the pc than any other platform.

This is living proof that if developers even take half an effort to deliver a polished experience on the pc, it can do as well as and even BETTER than other platforms.

I rest my case.

[D2ultima]

So let me pull out meh hoss Bad Company 2 on the pc.

All I have to say is this...

With all the piracy on the pc, look at them numbers to the side. There are ALWAYS more ppl playing on the pc than any other platform.

This is living proof that if developers even take half an effort to deliver a polished experience on the pc, it can do as well as and even BETTER than other platforms.

I rest my case.

Lemme help you with that. Yuh cannot crack CS: Source. Yuh cannot crack Team Fortress 2. They have no single player; it'd be pointless. Those are games that men does KILL. Every day, the peak bunning numbers at the same time for those games does be like 70,000+ for Counter Strike AND Counter Strike Source (I.E. 140,000+ total), 50,000+ for TF2, etc etc. Valve cares about its PC players. People love Valve's games. They love it so much that their users BEGGED Valve for the Mann Co. store for TF2, for hats and other such worthlessness that they could buy and have fun with. For no reason. They ASKED for useless DLC. And other companies pushing out DLC that people groaning to buy.

But doing the PC its proper dues has no merit? It don't look so to me.

[shivanandrs]

It is one thing to say that a game did not sell well....it is another to say it did not sell well but their are 100 million people out there with a pirated copy.

I understand what you are saying, but I'm sure most of the 100 million pirated copies were downloaded only because it was free. I bet most of them still wouldn't have bought it if a cracked version wasn't available. I believe that this 100 million is in no way a potential sales figure, 10 million is still far-fetched imo.