[Rocky]

I recent discussion "Game Piracy Astounding" kicked off a decent discussion with a developer (Serellan) and forum regs commenting on the ill effects of piracy and how it can devestate developers.

Today the flip side of that debate appeared on arstechnica.

Quote

... the highest-rated PC game of 2008 and probably the best-selling 2008 PC title... Neither of these titles have CD copy protection."

Quote

"The reason why we don't put copy protection on our games isn't because we're nice guys. We do it because the people who actually buy games don't like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don't count," Wardell argues. "When Sins popped up as the #1 best selling game at retail a couple weeks ago, a game that has no copy protect whatsoever, that should tell you that piracy is not the primary issue."

From, Pirates Don't Matter.

Great read, "hardcore" gamers proceed with caution.

[Kingkat]

Great read! But I think the best is the last few lines;

From Pirates Don't Matter

In the meantime, if you want to make profitable PC games, I'd recommend focusing more effort on satisfying the people willing to spend money on your product and less effort on making what others perceive as hot. But then again, I don't romanticize PC game development. I just want to play cool games and make a profit on games that I work on.


Sound familiar......................................

[WhiteKnight77]

Kingkat, on Mar 20 2008, 10:53 PM, said:

Great read! But I think the best is the last few lines;

From Pirates Don't Matter

In the meantime, if you want to make profitable PC games, I'd recommend focusing more effort on satisfying the people willing to spend money on your product and less effort on making what others perceive as hot. But then again, I don't romanticize PC game development. I just want to play cool games and make a profit on games that I work on.


Sound familiar......................................

This is why BFS will have success and a different company will fail (eventually)

[Hatchetforce]

Absolutely a must read article. A lot can be said about focusing on business when discussing a product that is relatively stable and bug free. Not that I am comparing Vegas 2 to Battlecruiser 3000AD mind you.

The one area I disagree with the author concerns targeted hardware. While I understand their focus and where he was going with the Shader 3 comment, the facts disagree to some extent. No PC game to date has the system requirements of Crysis and in 4 months it managed to sell over a million copies. That isn't exactly shabby.

This post has been edited by Hatchetforce: 24 March 2008 - 09:02 AM

[Serellan]

http://serellan.typepad.com/my_weblog/

[krise madsen]

Good blog Serellan and some valid points. I don't quite get the "don't make games for pirates" bit either.

The sales figures of GalCiv and Sins do, however, offer a rather compelling argument that copy protection schemes are, shall we say, not the ideal solution.

Respectfully

krise madsen

[dporter]

I enjoyed reading the article as well.

Thanks for posting your thoughts on your blog Serellan. I do think he makes some very good points and vaguely tries to connect some other points but like Kingkat, I agree that I like the idea that more focus should be put into the content of the game then on anti piracy measures.

I guess it's not that pirates don't matter, it's that your not going to beat them so why try. I think if you make a stellar game it will overcome the issues of piracy mostly because someone who gets it illegally and really enjoys it is going to want to get an actual copy for themselves at some point if it's worth buying. I'm not expert on the matter, but I don't even think you can get online with cracked copies.