PC games piracy is in decline, according to the president of the PC Gaming Alliance, Matt Ployhar.
The boss of the Alliance, which is made up of members including Epic Games, Capcom, Intel and Dell, reckons the shift to free-to-play models and supplemental content via download has lessened the value of pirated games.
"There are free to play games. You can't really pirate free to play. You can but it doesn't make a lot of sense."
He added that while he doesn't think piracy is going to go away, he thinks it's "fascinating to watch."
"For example, you get a game like Crysis that got hit hard by piracy. Now what you're seeing to combat that or reduce the chances of piracy are developers implementing achievements, in-game pets, all of these things that are tracked and stored in the cloud.
"So even if you pirate the game you're still not getting the bragging rights. You've got all these additional mechanisms where the value proposition of the game, where if you pirate it, it's just not going to be as fun."
One consequence of this shift is an increase in identity theft, says Ployhar.
"The game design is now shifting to combat piracy, but because the value propositions are altering and changing, now you're getting more of increase in the identity theft space," Ployhar added.
"These retail games, your brick and mortars, are declining, and some of that forcing function was piracy. What's picking up the slack are your Steam accounts, your Wild Tangents, your Orbs, your EA Downloader, your Battle.net."
This morning developer Crytek called the leaked version of its FPS sequel "a really ugly version".
Comments
12 comments so far...
Codename21 on 21 Feb '11 said:
Actually I would say that the reason for PC piracy declining is that there are now f*ck all AAA titles going to the platform as they're all going console first
justforkicks101 on 21 Feb '11 said:
pc gaming isnt dead
i like jam donut on 21 Feb '11 said:
Soon sony won't release any games to stop pirates.
PandyBear on 21 Feb '11 said:
I beg to differ, after comment from Cliffy B lately about "grumpy" pc gamers having to wait for the demo of bulletstorm, after the actual games release, im half expecting it to get the crap pirated out of it.
Frogster8 on 21 Feb '11 said:
Tbh I think Steam is a big helper in this. If it wasn't for Steam I wouldn't even PC game. Its just so convenient to use, not to mention I got all my games in the sales and they are damn good prices.
PS3_fannyboy on 21 Feb '11 said:
Piracy in decline?
Pffft, morelike the whole of PC gaming in decline!
justforkicks101 on 21 Feb '11 said:
http://www.segabits.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Total-War-Napoleon.jpg
ffcoppolla on 21 Feb '11 said:
Yep, because your opinion is well-balanced and unbiased.
You change your opinions with the tide.
Nollog on 21 Feb '11 said:
Codename21: No. Just more original titles rather than sequels like killzone 12, call of duty 64, halo 5, and metal gear 10.
There's lots of factors.
Steam is one, lower prices, DLC, free-to-play, some games being good enough to pay for helps too.
wasted-again on 21 Feb '11 said:
The pirates are too busy playing their pirate copies of bl:ops to bother with anything else, but that'll soon change when Crysis2 comes out next month. Maybe Chart Track should replace their PC chart with a PC Pirate chart? It'd be a damn sight more interesting.
The_KFD_Case on 22 Feb '11 said:
That pretty much sums up the "rationale" of the gaming industry towards piracy so far - especially on the PC platform. The only thing that's achieved in regards to me being a customer, is that I now stubbornly refuse to buy most games at full price for the PC when they're glorified rentals (i.e. mandatory online activation/DRM/limited activations, etc. - if it's a rental I'm getting, it'll be a rental price I'm willing to pay for it - not a penny more). And just as a bonus I make sure to carry that negative will over to their console products too.
wasted-again on 22 Feb '11 said:
Releasing games on PC only supports piracy these days. Less games=less piracy.