says the guy with a huge salary able to purchase game after game. The average person cant afford to buy many games a year...and when its readily available as it is for free....thats whats going to happen. Lower game prices please! =)

Is PC piracy really that bad? While you can pirate a brand new PC game, you still need expensive hardware (nvidiaaaaaa) to play it.

@BOMxAgonyxScenex: Game prices are going to opposite of down. Development costs for games are rising much faster than the prices.

I wish they'd take a look at what Stardock and some indie devs are doing.

Fuck SecuRom and it's ilk.

Surely he isn't being hit by piracy...you still need the hardware.

Piracy is what is killing the PC gaming. Unfortunately, the people I know who pirate games are just too stupid to understand that they should be paying for the games (these people are NOT hardup on money). As a PC gamer since the age of 4, it makes me really sad as well. :(

@BOMxAgonyxScenex:
Just because you can't afford something right away, that doesn't justify stealing it. Save your money and get it later.

This really does suck. Developers bust balls to bring games and the only revenue they get is when people actually buy it. It's fucked up and when people aren't making any games for the pc anymore people can't complain

@John-irl: Yeah im super smart...ignore that. (Forgot that developers would stop making games for PC or go cross-platform)...

@Legion329: Seriously. SecuRom is a plight on PC games. I know how I'm going to get Mass Effect for the PC...

@NitrousO: PC gamer since the age of 4! kudos to ya man. When I was 4 the closest I could get to a PC was my 16k Spectrum :D

And the man has a point, sure ya need a GFX card to play PC games pirated or not but the problem lies in that if PC piracy continues at the rate it is now then every major developer will leave the platform (as we've already seen in the case of Crytek) leaving nothing but shovelware on the PC.

I agree fully that we need better authentication and disk-checks, perhaps ME will get it some way right, perhaps not, but something needs to be done to save the PC gaming market. PC gaming isn't dead but it's sure as fuck dying.

@BPMε:
Yeah, what ever happened to earning something. I feel a lot better when i work and save for a game, and then am rewarded for it.

Actually the reason for piracy still remains.. sucky games without demos using hype alone to sell their product on the first week. If i like a game well enough after playing a pirated copy, i will most likely buy it.
I don't call it pirating.. i call it beeing a careful consumer.

Also on that note, piracy most likely makes more sales then they are willing to admit.

@BOMxAgonyxScenex: Sounds like someone has been playing way too much GTA IV...

The best way to combat piracy is to make good games.

I stopped playing pc games *because* of the shit you need to go through to play them. I ended up buying a game then having to install the pirate version because i didnt want to have to find the disc etc just to play the game.

IMHO the only company that has gotten it right is valve with steam

@Roflcopter_Down: Wants you to follow HIM!: See! that right there is the biggest load of bullshit around. You're using a weak-ass excuse to pirate a game (NWN2 had it too, did ya stea that?). You are exactly the reason that we have these measures taken.

@MasterDex: Not EXACTLY a reply to you but I seriously think ME is going the wrong direction. Personally, I do not want my game to be tied down to a server that could potentially go off at anytime or even be shut down eventually (looking at you EA with sports games). And what if my internet connection is down? I still want to use the product I paid for. I was planning on buying ME but now I'll have to wait and see how it folds out. Hopefully it won't be another Bioshock.

@K-Squad! (Badass Edition): Some of my favorite moments are coming home from the store with a brand new game. I remember three games in particular that sounded interesting from reviews, coming home and playing them, and falling in love with each of them. They were Battlefield 1942, GTA3, and Beyond Good and Evil :D

@K-Squad! (Badass Edition): Its called working and saving for a game and then you are Penalized for it because the game turns out to be shit.

With the ammount of excrement floating around in the industry today, is piracy really that shocking?

@speakafreaka: Well that's legal. If you buy a game you are allowed to have 1 digital copy of it on your computer.

And yeah, I think Valve hit it on the head with Steam...it still gets pirated but with someting like Steam it's a lot easier to up the security features on it.

I see developers still don't realize that people aren't pirating things because it's "cool", they're pirating them because they want to know if it's worth buying. I don't blame them either, half of todays computer games are such miserable ports of the console version that I'd be very upset if I had paid $59.99 for that trash.

@MasterDex: It sort of reminds me of a criminal justifying a robbery because the store made it harder to steal. When you actually think about his logic, its amazingly preposterous.

@speakafreaka: If you can't keep track of a disc you're going to have a hard time playing a game on any medium, let alone do anything else.

Value games may be priced very well, but Steam itself is pain. I purchased Company of Heroes through Steam and Steam needs to be up and running to authenticate my copy and let me run the game. Sometimes (every other week or so) Steams servers are flooded and I can't play. Uhhhg Steam...

Now guess how I play it...

I'll feel a little worse for him if A) they make pc gaming affordable, and B) start making some damn good pc games that don't come from valve.

Piracy, unfortunately, has been around for a very, very long time. The only even partially justifiable defense I've heard is that it can be used to preview a game which doesn't have a demo. But let's be honest, if somebody is devious enough to take the time to find a hacked game and figure out how to install it, are they ever going to take the time to buy it if it's decent? Unfortunately, I find that hard to believe.

The only times I've EVER been tempted to do so is when antipiracy measures have gotten strict enough to where they've either hurt the PC or made the game access so inconvenient that it ruins the enjoyability factor (usually, these have been games which have had SecuRom, past and future implementations, on them). However, people have to consider that pirating a game isn't making a statement to the game manufacturer other than "You obviously needed stricter security measures".

That's why I've chosen to boycott such games (or, in Bioshock's case, get the Xbox 360 version), but there are too many people pirating rather than boycotting and petitioning. If that wasn't the case, we would at least have a hope of countermeasures against things such as having to go online to reauthorize a game every ten days.

[kotaku.com]

@e30b27: Thats a slightly more valid point but a single trip to metacritic will tell you pretty quick if it isnt worth it. It has yet to serve me wrong once.

1 word. STEAM.

It seems to be working out just fine for valve. You never hear them bitch about piracy do you now?

@MasterDex: I didn't even touch NWN2 after trying the demo. I shell out $50-60 clams every other month for a PC game, SOSE was the last one I purchased, which is a bit meh.

I sure as hell didn't purchase Bioshock for the PC.

SecuROM and other copy protection get cracked and the cracked copies of the games don't these "draconian" forms of protection while purchased versions do which ultimately screws over the person who buys the game.

PC gaming is a mixed bag of issues. Piracy is a huge problem and of course is hurting sales but its not completely the reason why PC game sales are in decline. Until developers/publishers/PC hardware guys realise that then the road to recovery is just going to be longer.
@MasterDex: Wait. When did Crytek say they weren't going to develop for PC? They merely said they weren't going to develop exclusively for it.

Ah well. I wouldn't be totally against PC games requiring you to be online to play. Most people have an internet connection now adays, for the ones that don't it sucks but its better than the game being subjected to piracy. Of course it wouldn't take a hacker long to bypass that either..

@Gantz: Your Trusted Friend in Science.: No, it's called "Caveat Emptor".

No, it's not shocking, yet throughly not justifiable.

@sariah: I "tested out" SOSE before buying it.

@Jaziek: It works well for Value because they make great games and market them well. Something other companies need to do and stop bitching.

I believe the vernacular he's speaking is 'human', not hipster.

@e30b27: I think the solution to that is more public betas. As it stands, to get in on a private beta you need to be a subscriber to some site like Fileplanet or be a regular poster on one of that particular games fansites or go through some other rigmaroll and then when a beta goes public they only release so many beta keys (which I think is absurd) and everyone rushes to grab one and by time you end up getting the time to grab a beta key for yourself it's gone. Right now I'm waiting on an Age of Conan key but I don't expect that to come right now.

Even still, not everyone is pirating a game because they want to "test it out", alot are just too tight to hand over the money for a legal copy.

The biggest fallacy every anti-piracy whinger makes is the assumption that every pirated copy represents a lost sale. It's simply not true; nearly everyone I know who has a pirated copy of a game only has one because they weren't planning to buy it in the first place, either because they only wanted to try it or because it was too damn expensive.

If they halved the price of PC games and went back to the days of old when a game's box contained some cool collectible knick-knacks along with the disks, that would do more to curb the piracy problem than any of the copy-protection solutions that have been forced on us thus far.

I've been waiting for Turok PC. It was supposed to be out 2/5 here. Then it got moved to 7/5. Just now it got moved to 25/7. Yet I've seen a pirate version being out since maybe a week back. I really wanted to buy it, but my patience is not unlimited. I might still buy it, but chances are it's not very good and I'll be bored by the time I am actually allowed to get it :/

@Roflcopter_Down: Wants you to follow HIM!:

if games were advertised like movies...that problem would probably go away.

@BPMε:

never said it did =)

@FunkyJ:

Only an hour of the game so far. Not even sure what your comment is supposed to mean anyways =P

piracy is wrong, drm is wrong, but I feel that cracks or hacks on these authentication is justified. Once you bought the license to play it, you should be able to play it when ever you damn please without worrying that one day it may not be playable. PC games are relatively cheap and drops in price fast, no reason whatsoever to pirate. DRM is a bitch, the only time I condone steam is on games like TF2 and Counterstrike since online play is the only reason to play those games thus it is of little nuance, but games like Half Life and Portal should not be subject to steam.

Piracy isn't easily justified? Is he really that stupid?

1. The industry wide trend of releasing unfinished games and forcing players to pay for the beta. If your lucky they patch it down the road... if your lucky

2. Stupidly expensive hardware upgrades needed to run the games.

3. Developers designing games for hardware that wont be out until well after the game is released.

4. Minimum system requirements.... yea if you shut off everything in the game. turn the resolution back to 1990. Spend 6+ hours on the forums finding tweaks etc to speed it up.

5. Draconian copy protectioin schemes.

Face it piracy IS a problem, but it is not what is killing PC gaming. The industry is doing that all by themselves. Right now the only games I will buy on my pc are Blizzard titles ( they make great product that work ) and spore.

I had fully intended to buy Mass Effect as i thought it looked great. Im no longer buying it for the simple reason that i refuse to pay for a game they essential own. i will not have a company telling me I have to get their ok every time i want to play a game I already fucking payed for.

In conclusion... make games that work on NORMAL peoples computers and can be played without needing to spend 2k a year or more on upgrades.

@BOMxAgonyxScenex: Ticket prices are going up. It's $10.25 here to see a movie now...

@Tiberian: You bring back one of the fundamental problems with anti piracy measures. The security will simply be ripped out of the game before going up on the torrent sites and then everyone pirating it will have never even known that such a draconian measure was taken to stop them. Meanwhile the people paying for it will be genuinely pissed.

A few developers (or maybe I should say publishers) understand that. Sins of Solar Empire came with no nasty security AT ALL. What it meant for me was I could install it on my gamer rig and laptop, and because it didn't even need the disc to play, my laptop got that much battery life. What does that mean to me? Happy customer soon to be a repeat customer when the expansion pack comes.

@freakout:

Well then if your friends don't like it enough to pay for it they won't have any problem not playing it at all will they?

@freakout: Yes, and if they gave out Rolex watches and diamonds on the street, no one would rob jewelry stores. But how, exactly, are they supposed to make these awesome games and yet sell them at a fraction of the price they need to to make a profit?

Valve seems to be a wonderful excuse for pirates to blame their habits on. "Put it on Steam!" they cry. And yet aren't Steam and Stardock merely a soft form of copy protection, needing internet access and built in verification constantly (albeit without user input) either to play, or to receive in basic, critical patches for your game?

I always felt bad when I use to pirate games, but it was just so convenient. I didn't have to go to a store and could get a game on a impulse. Now I get games on an impulse through Steam and my bank account has never been the same. HOORAY STEAM!

@ban_hammer: You don't need steam online to play any of the games installed already. I used to hate Steam but it's improved greatly and right now it's probably the one thing holding PC gaming up (WoW is too but let's not go there :P )
@freakout: What you said isn't true. That's just the line you're fed by someone trying to justify stealing a game.

Take this scenario for example:
2 years from now, develpoers have managed to come up with a way to stop piracy in it's tracks. You friends who have pirated games before seem peeved but sure they weren't going to buy the games anyway so what does it matter? In time they find they can't get any game they 'don't want' online for free so after some more time passes they find themselves having to buy those games they 'don't want' therefore proving the utter nonsense that is their excuse.

Well if they didn't make such over priced graphics cards then maybe people would have the money to shell out for the games.

I don't condone piracy in any shape or form. Esepcially since some of my friends pirate 360 games its wrong. But with the PC games nowadays the people who keep up with the hardware are usually smart enough to get they're games for free.

PC gamings dieing, But theres still games that can't be played properly without piracy e.g Any game that requires serial for multiplayer.

What I think people should do is just have it check the key for single player. And just put the requirements to always have an internet connection on the box. Make it so theres no way of connecting to the servers or play the game without a key. Fight the pirates. Dont use crappy stuff that only lets you install the game once or it will make people turn to piracy.

@BOMxAgonyxScenex:
Funny, because that's exactly what it sounds like you said.

@-itis:
I could point out how flawed everything you just said was, but I think this is easier:

+ Watch video

@MasterDex: Yes, you need to be connected to the Internets to launch any game through Steam. Trust me :/

@Roflcopter_Down: Wants you to follow HIM!:

which means movie piracy will only get worse. Inflation keeps happening at ridiculous rates with this kind of shit...yet the average pay goes no where. The rich just get richer.

I was planning to buy mass effect. I'm now planning to pirate it because of the protection.

At least we know mass effect is a better game than the pile of crap crysis was.

@BOMxAgonyxScenex: Which is true, before Ironman, I can't remember the last movie I saw in theaters.

On a side note: the experience of sitting next to retards and people that talked on their cell phones during the movie wasn't pleasant. "Mom, it's almost over, just wait outside a little longer! Mommmm!!1"

@flukielukie: You can get a graphics card now that will run every new game out there for €80 now and even cheaper than a full game if you get one off Ebay. and as for your point about people who keep up with the hardware are smart enough to get their software for free: I have an up to date (not top of the line but at the low end of high-spec)
PC and still buy all the PC games I want to play. Are you calling me stupid because I realize that the PC gaming industry needs every bit of support it can get?