Mac Version Of Halo Exemplifies Piracy Problem? 266
An anonymous reader writes "MacSoft takes popular games and ports them to the Macintosh for all the Mac users to enjoy, but according to a TwinCities.com article, apparently there are far more users pirating Mac Halo than actually buying it A MacSoft spokesman 'didn't release sales figures [for Halo] but said illegal downloads number at least in the hundreds of thousands.'" The article uses this specific game to discuss how PC and Mac publishers are "...making gamers enter special codes, authenticate themselves online and jump through more hoops." It ends by describing the pain of the developer in seeing their title pirated: "It was a dagger in the hearts of guys who worked 12 to 14 hours a day [on Halo]... We're on an emotional high, and it all comes crashing down."
Re:If I use asterisks, it appears less offensive (Score:1, Insightful)
People pirate because they can (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bah... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that I would never cash not even one dollar for anyone that could give just one percent of it to microsoft, seing how they are ruthless and brutal with my platform (linux). Couldnt the same behavior just have happened with mac users?
College CD sharing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Screw You Bungie (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve Jobs was using Halo to demonstrate 400 MHz G4 Power Macs. Halo was being voted the Game of the Year before release. We were going to have it for Christmas 1998.
What did we get? Shafted. Bungie Sold Out to the Great Satan. Sure, when the sellout occurred there were still promises that Bungie would release for the Mac at the same time as the XBox. Never Happened. When Halo finally became available what did we get? Bug ridden trash with insane hardware demands and a non-functional scenario editor. Myth sold off, and the result - a well documented failure.
If Mac Halo is being pirated in great numbers as a result, I don't have a lot of sympathy for Bungie/Microsoft. They broke faith with their users.
all right... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is alright for their premiere platform to be the last one they port it to, years later.
It is alright for them to make the buyers unable to play with their PC friends who got the game years earlier.
It is alright for the game to run like complete ass showing it was quick port.
Is that all right?
Re:If I use asterisks, it appears less offensive (Score:5, Insightful)
I, on the other hand, have all kinds of ill feelings towards developers and publishers who are stupid enough to think that piracy will be stopped by adding copy protection.
I've not copied a game since I gor my first full time job a few years ago. However, I've had to visit crack sites time and time again because of the stupid copy protection mechanisms malfunctionin on my perfectly legit copies of the games. I am so tired of ackward copy protection mechanisms that I've almost stopped buying computer games. Now, my console game purchases outnumber my PC game purchases by over 20 to 1. IMO, any company that puts copy protection in front of the user convenience deserves exactly what they are getting: lowers sales, and thus, more pirate copies, probably becasue in many cases the original, uncracked game is inferior to a pirated one you could pick up from kazaa.
Protecting your livelihood by lowering the qaulity of your product and making it less attractive is a recipee for disaster. Just like the RIAA is just shooting themselves in the foot by protecting their business model by copy protecting CDs in an ineffective way that hurts many of their customers, the PC software industry is just asking for decreased sales by releasing the unisable crap they've been releasing lately. Most software developers I know agree that the copy protection mechanism that the publisher adds to their games are just making their games less attractive, and forcing them to make patches that 'fix' broken copy protection mechanisms that make some costumer return their games because they are unplayable on their computer due to an 'incompatible' CDROM drive.
If developers and publishers want to stop piracy, they could start by either releasing their games at a lower price tag, or by going after the groups that are releasing their cracked games to the internet, as opposed to giving money to the makers of copy protection mechanisms.
Re:Release more hybrid games (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats the problem, most game developers only develop for one platform. Halo so far has 3 development houses behind it. Bungie for the XBox, Gearbox for Windows, and MacSoft for Mac.
Blizzard and id on the otherhand use *gasp* industry standard programming methods and thus have a much easier time getting the game out for both platforms. id even does 3 PC platforms, and console platforms. Epic is also now doing this, ensuring their engine is as cross platform as possible to help more games run on everything. These companies to me are much more deserving of my money. I appreciate the porting houses, but would rather see them break up, and get their programmers hired on at the big publishers to ensure more games come in one box, not two for a computer.
Yes, I'd rather support the guys going after industray standards. If they don't, well, sorry, I'm not paying $100 to play most games.
Hold your horses (Score:5, Insightful)
The real dagger in the heart... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:where do the figures come from? (Score:3, Insightful)
besides than that if they were real professional geeks this really shouldn't surprise them at all, and know that if the game is copied around that really doesn't necessarely mean that people would actually pay you hard cash for it, people are willing to try crap for free but rarely to pay for it.
porno is a prime example, there's shitloads of people copying it but would they buy even 1/10th of the amount they're copying if they couldn't copy it? (applies to mp3's as well)
maybe macsofts real problem indeed is that they have a 'small' market that got the game marketed to them 2-4years ago and now when it's ready it's getting crap on it for being buggy. It's like nintendo trying to sell a buggy port of Mario 64 to gamecube for fucks sake.
The real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The real reason why people are downloading the pirate version is because that's all that's available for them to download if they want to try it out on their system. And let's face it -- this isn't the early 1990's anymore where you have to trust some biased Mac magazine who gives a favorable review because Macsoft spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a multi-page ad campaign. Everyone checks the review sites to see how it fares instead of just rushing out to buy it. And guess what... they're finding out it's junk.
Macsoft, some of your products are great (Neverwinter!!) but you're not going to sell a whole lot of games with your "Trust Us" approach. Put out a demo and let people give it a spin. If it's good, there's a good chance they'll buy it. If they don't buy it after trying it out, then it's your own damned fault for putting out such a lousy product. But don't blame the p2p networks for spoiling sales of the stinker called Halo.
Re:Bah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Meh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, they can surely find some comfort in the fact that the Xbox version is, absurdly, still selling at full price.
They're really in no position to whine about anything.
Random Comments (Score:3, Insightful)
I use Linux for my desktop, most of my software is legit, i.e. free as in gpl'd beer. All my PS2 console games are payed for and lovingly arranged on the shelf.
Mac people pirating games are harming the future of games on their platform. Windows is the dominant PC gaming operating system, its been like that for years. Windows warez junkies are all over the place, but software houses can still make money due to sheer market penetration and online gaming.
Bottom line, if you love your Mac and want to see it grow as a gaming platform. Support it or watch it die.
Re:Random Comments (Score:3, Insightful)
Bottom line, if you love your Mac and want to see it grow as a gaming platform. Support it or watch it die.
I don't think you should view this as typical of the Mac gaming community. There are a multitude of factors that make Halo perhaps the most likely Mac game in recent history to be pirated. First, many Mac users are still miffed about how Halo went from a Mac debut to being the flagship product for Redmond's console. I'm not justifying it. I'm not saying this is right, I'm just saying that the feeling exists. Second, many reviews have been coming back about this being an atrocious port of Halo. Poor graphics performance, laggy multiplayer games, the whole nine yards. The Mac community has seen its share of shitty ports, so I think many people were leery of shelling out the $50 for the game before giving it a try. Not offering a demo was a huge mistake on Macsoft's part in my opinion. Third, it's an old game. I've played the XBox version a couple times, and it never struck me as anything special. It just seems like any other FPS. For an FPS to succeed in the smaller Mac gaming community, it has to have something new to offer.
This isn't to say that Halo is the only game for Mac that gets pirated. As someone who buys all their games, it pisses me off to see people pirating games that I like as it discourages developers from making further ports and encourages them to put inconvenient copy protection on their games.
Demos & Distribution (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's a quick story:
Friend #1: Has a high-end Mac G5. Downloaded Halo and used it until his copy arrived.
Friend #2: Downloaded the game. Tried it out on his current older machine. Ordered a new iBook. Bought Halo.
Myself: Downloaded the game. Tried it out on my Powerbook 667 (under min spec). Played for a night. Didn't have money for a new machine nor wanted to spend the time playing. Deleted it.
So, there you go. Three of the "hundreds of thousands" of pirated copies would have been prevented by supplying a demo or providing alternate software distribution schemes.
How hard is it to sell a serial number online and follow it up with box & CD later in the mail?
-fuzzheadRe:Hundreds of thousands?? (Score:4, Insightful)
My expectations are tainted by my experiences on more open hardware platforms such as the x86 provides. These games under windows perform significantly better on hardware costing half as much- that was my gist. It is a question of the econmomics of that performance.
Obviosuly, if your needs or desires bring you to a specific platform, you play the cards you are dealt.
Give Bungie A Little Credit (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately this piracy problem is a double edged knife in the back. Bungie developers are rightly pissed off, and now the suits will make sure that Halo 2 never sees anything but the XBox. Any experienced developer will tell you that supporting more than one platform is a lot of work which publishers are less and less willing to pay for. So we won't be seeing any more multiplatform Halo.
they don;t get it! (Score:4, Insightful)
All they have to do is start charging LESS for their games and they will make up profits in the numbers of games sold. Look at Avril Lavigne - she sold over a million albums in the US cause they were only $8.99 or something like that, not $20 like most artists. I see games in the store every day
But don't even get me started on Sims games - they have made SO much money out of those expansions (Which are basically collections of the stuff you can get for free on the net, legally) it's not even funny.
Real Heartbreak... (Score:3, Insightful)
As someone who has published software, I can sympathize, but really. Piracy is a fact of life. Its been going on since the earliest days of the computer business. Remember Bill Gates' famous letter? If you can't stand to see your program pirated, then get into another business. Or at least another line of programming. The broader the appeal of a software title, the broader the base of people that will take it for free if they can. And it has to be taken into account when budgeting the cost of a project. If you can't make sufficient income because of pirating, then your business model is broken.
Re:If I use asterisks, it appears less offensive (Score:3, Insightful)
You played Halo on the Xbox for 30 seconds, and decided that it was not good?
Maybe you should consider giving it a little more time. Or, forgetting about Halo- I would suggest that you give the next few games you play a little more time before you decide if they are good or bad.
At least complete the first mission-
Re:Bah... (Score:2, Insightful)
Believe me, Microsoft is not going to miss your not buying of a piece of software created by one of their subsidies and then published through a company they have no stake in.
If any Mac user thinks he/she is hurting Microsoft by refusing to purchase Halo, then they're sadly mistaken. They have more of a potential of hurting Bungie, Gearbox, or MacSoft.
Re:Hundreds of thousands?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Likewise, JK2 and JKA both run well on my machine, with only a few hiccups noticeable, and then only in very demanding areas. A computer with more RAM (I've only 768) and a faster clock speed will handle all of these games much better than mine.
Hell, if you wanted to be able to game on your computer, what were you thinking when you bought an iMac?
Absolutes are absolutely wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, you're awfully well informed, to be able to tell us what every single person in the world who ever pirated is thinking. I've got some news for you: there's more to life than greed.
I have been seriously thinking about getting Halo, because from all I've heard it's still a good to great game. However, I cannot justify giving money to Microsoft, for reasons that anyone on Slashdot should know perfectly well. Thus, when college is out this summer, I'll probably copy my younger brother's copy, and get whatever cracks are necessary to play it.
Please note: I am doing this because, and solely because, I cannot justify giving any money to Microsoft, and some money would go to them if I bought Halo. My general policy is if a game is worth playing, it's worth paying for, and I do not currently own any games I have not paid for (unregistered shareware aside), except for games that can no longer be bought (ie, "abandonware"--I'd pay for it if I could find someone willing to take my money, but they won't). I am willing to bet you that there are plenty of other people in my position out there--people who honestly would have bought Halo if it had been from anyone but Microsoft, but who, like me, can't morally justify giving them money, or who just want to stick it to them (which I consider to be a less mature version of the same feeling).
I think that your view is somewhat over-cynical, and extremely absolutist. There will always be exceptions. Not everyone is like you. Some of us really do have moral standards above the common cockroach.
Dan Aris
Re:Exactly (Score:2, Insightful)
You ever considered that the reason production values aren't higher is because Mac users don't produce enough of an influx of money due to...heh...piracy?
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hundreds of thousands?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Release more hybrid games (Score:3, Insightful)
WRONG. It is a sign of management not considering a cross-platform release to be a priority. I don't know what you think goes on in development, but programmers aren't the ones that dictate how and where the game is released.
So they release the game, and now a programmer asks management, "hey, can we port this to Linux/Mac/BeOS?". Management says, "there's not enough market for it - we won't pay you to do it. We need you working on maintaining the main release." Guess what? The programmer's been working two years straight, has plenty of unpaid overtime to his name, and really doesn't feel like working for free some more!
The programmers are the wrong people to be blaming. If management doesn't see a market for it, they won't allocate resources for it. Programmers have families to feed (sometimes - at the very least, they feed themselves and pay bills), and might actually want to take a vacation or something.
Re:Bah... (Score:3, Insightful)
In most cases, I don't. When the item is fungible, I purchase it from another vendor. When it is not, I generally avoid it. If I'm stuck without other options, then I pirate it. Every dollar that Microsoft recieves results in money going to attack Linux, to play dirty tricks in the industry, etc.
Finally, it's a tough argument to claim that raping a girl is analogous to pirating software. Yes, pirating software means that a potential sale (in my case, a zero percentage chance, since if I couldn't pirate the software, I wouldn't use it *anyway*) is lost. That's quite different from the kind of physical and mental impact that raping a girl can have.
I do purchase products and services from companies that I don't like. Microsoft is a single exception -- they go so far beyond what I consider reasonable and acceptable that I refuse to provide them with funding. If the cost to me is a miniscule chance of a fine, I will take that cost more than willingly.
Microsoft funds research, but research funded by them ends up in a mess of patents intended to maintain their monopoly. It's not at all the same thing as giving money to a university researcher.
I am certainly not playing by the rules that society has built (though to be fair, not in an era of software) to be appropriate.
Microsoft has violated a lot of rules that society has built as well. They happen to have a large number of lawyers and can afford to pay money to political campaigns, so they can get away with it. I think that few people would dispute a claim that a significant portion of the reason that Microsoft is where it is today is because they are willing to play dirty.
This is my own form (along with attempting to find good alternatives to Microsoft products and improving those and encouraging others to use them) of poking back at Microsoft.
I'm not trying to claim that it's a particularly noble way of doing so. I am not an activist. I have no interest in crusading. I am simply a person that has a deep dislike for a company that has had a negative impact on me over the years. Perhaps some of this is just self-justification, and perhaps some is irrational. [shrug] I don't know. I do know that I find your arguments not in the least convincing when it comes to interesting me in giving Microsoft any money.
If Microsoft doesn't want you to use their software without paying for it, you don't use the software.
Ah, but see, I think few people are interested in really using Microsoft's software. How many people are really deeply affectionat of Windows and want to use it? Now, how many people are forced to use their products because Microsoft has produced a market in which they and they alone have a system that is compatible with products other vendors are selling? Perhaps you find this reasonable and equitable; I do not.
I know that many people use, say, RAM Doubler, or Kaleidoscope, and say "Wow, this is a really nice piece of software." They are convinced that they should use it because it is good software that provides them with functionality that they want at a good price. I, at least, feel that Windows does not do this, that most of the value of Windows lies in the fact that it is the only system that is compatible with application software out there.
Can I universalize this, a la Kant? Probably not. But it's what I intend to do -- not let more of my money slide into Microsoft's coffers than must be.
Re:Developer's Perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Just *what* exactly do you think a pirate has to gain by lying about whether (s)he would have bought a game or not? It's not like game companies are going to change their stance towards piracy anyways.
2. If you want to try the game out before buying, don't pirate it; play the demo.
Even if all games had timely playable demos (most of them don't), what's the difference to you? It's not like you're paying for their bandwidth or blank cds.
3. If there's no demo, and you don't trust the developer enough to buy the game, sight-unseen, don't buy it. The developer doesn't deserve your money, but neither do you deserve to own a copy of their game.
That is an idiotic statement. If someone gets a copy with the intention of trying the game before buying it, and likes it, and buys it. Then it's better for the company. If he doesn't like it and doesn't buy it, it doesn't affect anybody. And if he is a true pirate and simply doesn't want to pay, well, there is nothing you can do to prevent it anyways, you're just preaching to a stone.
4. Copy protection schemes that prevent you from playing the game you paid for are inexcusable. If the copy protection detracts from the game, tell the developer why you're not going to buy from them again. Don't pirate the game; piracy will only make future copy protection schemes worse for legitimate users.
Then the pirate will just have to keep getting illegal copies stripped of their protections. And they still get to punish the company by not buying their games. Win-Win situation for them. Nobody forces the companies to make idiotic decisions alienating some of their legitimate users.
It is my opinion that you ask too much from end users. Their goal is to enjoy themselves. Period.
Quite frankly, I'm tired of all the complaining about pirates. Piracy has been around for a long time yet the game industry gets bigger and richer as time goes by. It usually goes like this:
poor kid/student pirates games he can't afford to buy, gets hooked, grows up, makes money, can't be bothered to to use time and effort to get pirated games, buys them instead.
If things start to go really wrong and this equilibrium is breached, Then game companies can start buying shares of nvidia and ati and getting money for every card they sell to someone who wants to play a pirated game. The only reason this isn't happening on a large scale is because there is no need for it yet.
Hundrets of thousands of pirated copies? (Score:2, Insightful)
So if there were actually "hundreds of thousands" of pirated copies of Halo it would mean that between 5 and 10 % of all OS X users copied Halo. It would also mean that on the mac more people pirated the game than there were copies sold for the Windows platform. I find this highly improbable. If compared to other mac game sales it is even less likely.
Maybe they are just frustrated because nobody seems to buy their bad port?
Regards
Jeff