Crysis 2 Most Pirated Game of 2011 383
MojoKid writes "When an advance copy of Crysis 2 leaked to the Internet a full month before the game's scheduled release, Crytek and Electronic Arts (EA) were understandably miffed and, as it turns out, justified in their fears of mass piracy. Crysis 2 was illegally download on the PC platform 3,920,000 times, 'beating out' Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 with 3,650,000 illegal downloads. Numbers like these don't bode well for PC gamers and will only serve to encourage even more draconian DRM measures than we've seen in the past."
Smokescreen (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it a smokescreen for pricing changes?
Example:
You have a PS3, you're used to paying $60 for a new game or whatever the average actually is.
You have a PC, you're used to paying $60 for a new game, except when you plug in your ipod/iphone and play a new $0.99 game. Hmm why am I paying sixty times more for some games than others?
On /. we know why the iphone game costs a bit less due to technical knowledge of how they're made and what goes into them. That is of course completely irrelevant to the general public, who merely know that "a couple hours of fun with a new game" sometimes costs $60 and sometimes costs $1.
Re:correlation (Score:2, Interesting)
The more you tighten your grip.. (Score:4, Interesting)
..the more sales slip between your fingers.
Please, by all means use more Draconian DRM on your games. I DO NOT HAVE TO BUY THEM, I PROMISE!
I don't pirate, either. Pirating a game would mean I actually liked it, but I won't even acknowledge the existence of games/companies which employ asinine DRM measures.
It is fast coming to the point where indie game quality is as good as, if not better than, AAA title quality. I'm happy to give my AAA title business to smaller indie devs who understand the concept of not punishing their customers because they live in a perpetual state of fear for their bottom line.
Re:Since when was PC gaming ever viable? (Score:5, Interesting)
>I mean does anybody know how much money went through steam on the Xmas sale? i bet it was garbage trucks just full of money because its so simple and cheap,
I bought quite a few games on Steam during the sale, like many other people, no doubt.
I have both the means and knowledge to *easily* pirate any of the games I bought.
It would be trivial to pirate Crysis 2. I haven't and I haven't bought it because it isn't on Steam.
How many lost dollars and sales can EA put down to pulling their game from Steam as opposed to piracy? I doubt we'll ever hear about that.
Re:News Flash (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Interesting)
That's correct. 20 years ago, the battle was over "copy protection", which invariably made it hard for the legitimate purchaser to install and use the software. They battle has moved to "DRM" (same thing, slightly more encompassing), but it's the same battle 20 years later. "Anti-theft" methods that inconvenience legitimate purchasers are ONLY a hindrance to legitimate purchasers. Pirates/thieves/crooks are not stopped by locks or laws, those only keep honest people honest. But when the locks or laws hamper legitimate use by purchasers, people will resort to breaking the locks and laws, and once they resort to having to break them, it's harder to justify spending money to purchase it (e.g. "why should I buy it knowing that I'm going to have to break the lock or 'illegally' download an unlocked copy?").
Copy-protection failed because of this, DRM is failing for the same reasons, and DRM that hampers legitimate users will ALWAYS fail, no matter how strong the DRM or how severe the laws. Make DRM that doesn't hamper legitimate uses and both your DRM costs and your piracy rate will fall. It's a win for everyone (yes, even the crooks who are going to pirate it no matter what).
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Interesting)
That's correct. 20 years ago, the battle was over "copy protection", which invariably made it hard for the legitimate purchaser to install and use the software. They battle has moved to "DRM" (same thing, slightly more encompassing), but it's the same battle 20 years later.
I still have dozens of boxes of original Amiga disks that I have saved. I also have 'Pirate' copies of almost all those same floppies. Why? Because it was a similar thing back then. "Copy Protection" that didn't let you make a backup of your disks (or HD install it). For you young'uns, back then playing from you 'original' floppies was taboo.
So if you bought a game back then, after you bought it, if it was copy protected you'd usually find a pirate copy as to not have to use your original disks. There were advantages to the pirate versions too sometimes, like they were cracked to allow cheats or let you install them to a harddrive when the original wouldn't.
It doesn't take one to figure out why a lot of people started skipping the purchasing part and just went to the downloading part. In someways they were 'trained' by the software companies themselves to pirate.
Software companies knew that the view in the market place was never to use your original disks. People felt uncomfortable using their original floppies. But software companies didn't care. So much so that "entire" legitimate industries grew, for just this reason, that offered special hardware to duplicate disks regardless of copy protection as well as lots of software to try to do the same.