PC Game Developer has Radical Message: Ignore the Pirates

PC Game Developer has Radical Message: Ignore the Pirates

Island Dog via Arstechnica on 20 March 2008 - 19:58 · 9 comments & 8820 views

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One of the popular reasons given for sometimes-sluggish game sales on the PC is piracy. If people can get the game for free, why would they pay for it? Go to any popular torrent site and it will likely have many more games than your local gaming store. The situation led the community manager for Infinity Ward to recently complain about the number of people playing Call of Duty 4 online versus the number of copies the game has sold for the PC. Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, has a much different point of view: the pirates don't matter.

"So here is the deal: When you develop for a market, you don't go by the user base. You go by the potential customer base. That's what most software companies do. They base what they want to create on the size of the market they're developing for," Wardell writes on his blog. "But not PC game developers."

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#1 cardg on 20 Mar 2008 - 21:00

Just the obvious...
The corporations always says about a number of pirate copies and convert it to the value of each copy X the number of pirate ones when talking about their suposed "losses" of money by piracy; when really the most part of people using pirate software copys wouldn't buy official versions anyway, even if there were no pirate version of them.

#2 OblivionStalker on 20 Mar 2008 - 21:03

I couldn't agree more.

#3 Jelly2003 on 20 Mar 2008 - 21:45

I suppose that if games companies develop for paying customer base then the warez downloaders will miss out because because their demographic would be overlooked for the sake of selling copies to people who actually do buy games.

Good on them too, I hate it when people pirate games., they deserve to miss out.

(1 reply) #4 +chaosblade on 20 Mar 2008 - 22:56

I'm liking Stardock's staff more and more recently. I haven't played or bought any of their games, But i should probably do so just for the sake of rewarding their sanity - In a world where Starforce exists.

#4.1 jstillion on 20 Mar 2008 - 23:21

You should really check out Galactic Civilization II and it's expansion. It's a great looking modern version of "Civilization Series" but based off a space setting. There is no multi player, but there is none needed. The AI can be incredibly changing and realistic.

(1 reply) #5 Digix on 21 Mar 2008 - 11:18

They need to realize sucking probably over 50% of games retail cost just to fund their "intellectual property" or in other words keep their wallets fat and to say this game so many millions is just stupid, end of story. thinking from my perspective if i made game i'd be more proud to have X amount of million people or whatever download and play or even just try my game then to brag at some board meeting like "omg gais cod4 made $40 million dollars so far and sold 50 million copies but 80 million people are playing online wtf is this" type thing, just stupid. battlefield heros will be a good example if all goes well. either that or just for christs sake stop charging so flipping much if they released the game like cod4 on a steam like platform for 10-20 they'd have millions upon millions of people buying and downloading because it's cheap and easy.

#5.1 Gilly on 22 Mar 2008 - 18:04

I do see your point about reducing game prices. I bought Audiosurf on Steam even though I'd never played a rhythm game before and didn't even look at any screenshots or anything, just because it was cheap and easy.

#6 +warwagon on 23 Mar 2008 - 21:33

He came to the same conclusion: they weren't customers, they might never be customers, so spending money to try to stop them serves no purpose.

Amen, Just Amen!

There are people out there that do download songs and games and tv shows off the net, but only because they can do it for free. If they couldn't the game online for free they just won't play it. So why spend a lot of money preventing them from getting the game when in the end they will circumvent the copy protection and get the game all the while inconveniencing the paying customer.

#7 Gotenks98 on 24 Mar 2008 - 15:23

Here is my issue with games and piracy, the quality of games has gone down alot since the begining games of the 80's and 90's. Sure the games look some what better but the originality is gone, they make it where there is little to no reason to ever play the game let alone buy it. The same thing goes with music and movies. So many songs and movie plots have been beaten to death where I have the hardest time finding entertainment. I dont feel the companies are losing out on any money because the pirates would never buy it to begin with so you cant count that as money lossed. The software cost for stuff is so out of hand could you blame a pirate for downloading it? I would probably pirate windows and other microsoft products had I not gotten them free already thru many special offers. I can honestly say alot of the stuff just isnt worth even the $100 price tag.

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PC Game Developer has Radical Message: Ignore the Pirates

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