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Why the Piracy "Crisis" Is Overblown
Almost every day we hear about the demise of the PC due to high levels of piracy. Crytek's Cevat Yerli recently put the ratio of genuine vs illegal copies of Crysis at 1:15 - but what's the reality?
I'm pretty damn sure Crysis - which Yerli claims 'lead[s] the charts in piracy by a large margin' - isn't suffering to the degree those numbers suggest, and I can tell you why. The online gaming service GameShadow uses its client side software to automatically patch the games of over 1 million subscribers. As it does this, the software also (anonymously and voluntarily) records various details about those users' games, and filters them back out through a reporting tool.
Amongst other fascinating data, The GameShadow Metrics service detects the version of games installed, based on things like the executable file. Every so often the software finds an unofficial game version (i.e. an install that's been cracked, or uses a No-CD).
What that means is I can tell you the ratio of legal vs illegal Crysis installs in GameShadow's UK customer base is more like 7:3, while in the US it's closer to 5:1 - a far less bleak scenario.
Of course, that's not to say that Yerli is wrong, only that 1:15 is a potentially misleading statistic. It's perfectly likely he was discussing worldwide figures, which would undoubtedly be higher - pirate games are far easier for the average consumer to get a hold of on the street in parts of the CIS and Asia than they are in West Sussex.
Assuming that's the case, then figures in the region of 1:15 may be realistic, but they are not representative of the true impact of piracy on the PC games industry - revenue does not suffer anything like what a ratio of 1:15 would suggest.
This is for two reasons. First, the regions in which the majority of illegal copies are being installed aren't for the most part traditionally large markets. Revenue may well be suffering at the hands of piracy, but sales in these regions have always done so, and console titles are likely to see similarly weak sales for similar reasons. In short, high piracy in these areas does not form a large part of the recently prophesised collapse of PC gaming.
Secondly, it would take a great stretch of the imagination to propose that of the 15 illegal players to every kosher one, all would have purchased the game were piracy not an option. A free game represents considerably better value than a legit one, and only a fraction of the illegal audience is likely to have bought the game at face value - still more may have been using the cracked copies in a 'try before you buy' fashion.
There's no doubt that PC gaming suffers due to piracy - and to a considerably greater extent than console titles. However, ratios like 1:15, and claims that 'consoles sell factors of 4-5 more' are massively misleading - the latter in particular can be put down in part to incomparable install bases (it being famously challenging to calculate the number of mid - high spec gaming PCs in circulation).
Revenues on some PC titles may well be down by as much as 15% - 20% due to piracy, but I've yet to see evidence for any greater piracy related impact on the platform's decline. Meanwhile, online and casual products are popularly held as moving from strength to strength. At the end of the day, faltering sales must not be pinned solely to pirate activity. We must also blame increased competition from consoles, lack of platform support in the form of a major stakeholder, and the snowballing effect of declining exclusives.
In short, rampant piracy is no longer the catch-all excuse it's often employed as.
Wow. This is a VERY poorly done study.
1. It treats people who have both registered and installed gameshadow AND agreed to allow the program to collect their data as a representative sample.
2. Being that there are only 1.21 million gameshadow users according to their own website, I can't imagine the sample size was very large. Remember out of those 1.21 million this only includes people who have Crysis on their computer in some form AND have agreed to let it collect their data. I can't imagine the sample size was greater than a few hundred.
Now personally I can't imagine most hardcore PC gamers would sign up for something like Gameshadow - not the people with machines than can run Crysis. I think most hardcore gamers are capable of downloading their own patches without having annoying software that runs in the background. This is relevant because I think hardcore gamers are the more likely pirates.
Another factor is that I believe people who would pirate Crysis probably are more likely to pirate other games. The last thing that someone like this would want is a program that is constantly trying to install retail patches on all your games.
In short this article is extremely flawed and it's conclusions are unjustified.
The first time I DL'ed a pirated version of a game was when I got NFS 3, since the demo had only two cars (similar type IIRC) and one level it didn't say much about the game and whether different cars handled differently.
I spent about 15$ downloading it with my ISDN line due to EA's inability to let me know what the game would be like, since I liked it I bought it. (and have bought all the following up to and including NFS Underground)
About the topic that cracked are better, I got Übersoldier via a subscription service (you got a game a month at a decent price) and it wouldn't work with the CD-key, so to be able to even try the legal copy I owned I had to get a cracked exe...
That "there are X amount of illegal copies hence we lose that amount of cash" phrase is something I've been annoyed by for quite a long while.
It's been used by Adobe about Photoshop too, how many do they think are prepared to spend that kind of money for manipulating photos? (especially when there are similar programs for a tenth of the price and very good free ones too)
I'm about as far from a pir8 as you can come, but I do get some full games to check them out when the demos are worthless and I also get the occasional music CD to make sure that it's something I want to have.
I've been screwed enough times and have wasted more than enough cash on substandard products I've bought just because the previous game in the series/CD from the artist was great.
As both a hobbyist developer doing a bachelor in game development, and as a gamer, I am quite interested in both sides of this issue (or "issue" if you will). As a gamer, I often get annoyed by all the DRM and what-not developers put into their games, and as a developer I get annoyed by how boring, repetitive and utterly useless a game can be.
Right now, you have 3 ways of knowing how a game will be:
1) Play the game demo.
2) Pirate the game.
3) Do neither, just soak in as much information as possible from game sites and reviews and what-not and make up an opinion of the game.
Number 1 and 3 is often not enough.. no matter how much you read about a game, most of it turns out to be empty promises, hype, false information or useless information. The demo can also be quite useless, as the developers might have picked the one tiny bit of the game that is fun, or perhaps the one tiny bit that was crap, while the rest of the game could be crap/great and you would never know it unless you bought the game.
Most of the time, it turns out crap, and with all the games coming out there, spending 90-100 bucks on games (which is the normal price for new games here in Norway, expensive as hell T_T) you'd either have to settle with like 1-3 games per month you know is great, go broke, or pirate.
Number 2 is the most viable option. First of all, we can test the entire game and learn if this is a game we wish to keep or if it is a game we most likely would put in the toilet and flush down at the first chance we get. Second of all, if we like the game, we keep it in mind and buy it at the first chance we have money.
PC-gamers have left the era of mindless games and demand value for their money. Few games out there give it, those who does hardly feels the effect of piracy. Valve has a cool concept where they have a free weekend, where you can play the full version of the game for free for a weekend. As far as I know, sales spike whenever they do it, and it is a good counter for piracy.
Blizzard is known for making games that run on almost any computer now-a-days, and people know by playing their old games that they give you your money worth when it comes to making games. Even thought many has a pirate version of the game, they also own the legit version, but might either have lost their cd, broken it, or as mentioned earlier pirated it because of the usual no-cd cracks that comes with them, making them a much better option instead of bringing all the CDs to lan-parties and stuff.
As for Crysis, all I have to say is that those boneheads like Yerli is yet to realise a couple of things:
1) Crysis is bloated with DRM and MUST-HAVE-CD stuff. It creates alot of hazzle for the legit guy like me who buy their games. Thus I have two versions of Crysis: Legit and pirated. I move from place to place due to school and study almost every year now, no way im dragging along 200+ worth of game CDs T_T
2) Crysis is a very demanding game when it comes to computer specs. I have a quad core 2,4GHz, two 8800gt in SLI and 4gig ram and I still get FPS-losses at places in Crysis where I consider the game almost unplayable. I can only imagine people who are still sitting with 1core and 1-2gb ram and even worse graphic cards.
3) The game wasn't really as good as they make it out to be. At best, I found it mediocre. Some like it better, some worse, as every opinion of a game is like your ass anyway, 2 sided and full of crap on both sides =p But most likely, alot of people found it lacking severly in depth and gameplay, and thus never bought the legit copy.. heck, most of them might have just downloaded it, played it for 10-15min and deleted it, like many of my friends did.
4) You will always have those who will never buy it for several reasons: They dont have the money, they just checked it out and didnt like it, they would never pay for it anyway or they just download and seed it because they can, never really playing the game itself.
And then you have all those games that should never have been released anyway, as they are just stupid, mindless crap developers hope people will buy just to milk money out of people. In a way, sorry to say this, you kinda deserve the fate you got, and I hope I never end up in a company like that if I get in the game dev business.
There is probably alot more to say about this, but point is: piracy will always happen in one form or another, and your not really loosing money on it as people who do it would never have payed for it anyways. Stop making crap games, bloat them with DRM and other crap and perhaps people will buy them... and make them easy to buy. Did you know around 25% of Norway (Source: http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Europe/Norway.html but compared to game stores versus what is considered urban area I think it is higher) would have to spend up to 3-4 hours driving to the nearest town to buy a game, spending well around 100 bucks on gas alone for it then 100 more for the game, while now 99,8% (Source: http://itpro.no/art/12997.html ) now has access to broadband and can buy&download the game from services like steam?.. and you don't have to worry about the CD there either :o!
Devs really need to wake up from the self-centered hole they have dug T_T
There's another problem with your "piracy" figures.
There are about a half dozen games I BOUGHT sitting on my hard drive right now, but which your figures would report as piracy. A lot of people, particularly more tech savvy ones, will often download and install "cracked" game executable even when they legitimately bought the game. Why? The main reason is that the purchased copy of games are often infected with DRM, crippling the usability of the game and making the "pirate" version better. Game publishers often infect games with DRM and crappy CD requirements and other problems. The Free downloaded versions have the DRM removed and no-CD patches applied and other fixes.
It's sad that you need to download the free "pirate" version in order to get a proper game free of defective-by-design DRM problems. It is downright stupid that publishers punish legitimate buyers and subject them to a WORSE product and a WORSE experience than you get from downloading the free cracks.
So when you report your figures 30% piracy in the UK and 17% piracy in the US, how many of those people paid for the game and then installed no-CD fixes or other cracks to fix the game?
Tom Jubert,
your analytics sucks ass, you know why? Who needs to download official patches for cracked game?! For cracked games there are patches with cracked executables. Otherwise after patching you'll loose ability to launch games.
So those part of users that still download official patches are noobs and definetely minority.
I checked one local pirate resource and found 74 000 Crysis downloads.
Need For Speed ProStreet - 337 000
For torrent downloads numbers would be in millions copies.
Piracy on PC is easier than on consoles because you haven't to chip your PC to make it work with pirate game images.
I dunno for sure, but I doubt that in US, Canada, UK and western Europe chipped XBox360 are freely selling in shops. So console piracy is low there.
In eastern Europe, Ukraine and Russia for example, it's really hard to find non-chipped version.
It shouldn't be all that hard to evaluate the install base of high-end PCs. All you need to do is walk over to Steam Survey and check their figures, then extrapolate to the rest of the known market.
The Steam Survey is very well done in my opinion, and with over 1.6 million unique results, is a sight more reliable than polls based on a mere thousand or five interviews.
The problem is that 1.5 million non-random data points are inferior to one thousand random data points. There is a high likelihood that Steam users are different from the general population in habits and hardware.
The relationship between revenues and figures behind legal and illegal installs of a game is in itself tricky to read. Speaking in terms of revenue “loss” and referring to the right part of the (for instance) ratio 1:15 is not only misleading – it’s wrong, as its correlation is only extremely loose and hypothetical. The loss is definitely there but a large amount of the illegal installs are downloaded only for checking the game out, tasting it and maybe nothing more than that. It’s important to view the “loss-related” figures more as an indicator of how much interest a game has created than as a reliable picture of lost potential buyers.
Philip Arcan