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THQ Creative Director Says PC Games Piracy Around 80% In US
Boston (dbTechno) – The Creative Director of THQ, Michael Fitch, put out a rant of sorts stating that PC game piracy was the reason that the company had to close developer Iron Lore. He stated that PC games piracy in the U.S. is between 70% to 85%, with it being over 90% in Europe.
He is clearly frustrated and sees piracy as a major problem for developers and publishers in the industry of PC games.
Fitch was clearly upset in his post on QuarterToThree.com.
He stated, “If 90% of your audience is stealing your game, even if you got a little bit more, say 10% of that audience to change their ways and pony up, what’s the difference in income? Just about double.”
He stated straight piracy not only hurts sales at retail because of copies either. He cited, “there are other costs to piracy than just lost sales. For example, with Titan Quest, the game was pirated and released on the nets before it hit stores. A lot of people are talking about how it crashed right when you come out of the first cave. There was a security check there.”
“So, before the game even comes out, we’ve got people bad-mouthing it because their pirated copies crash.”
“If even a tiny fraction of the people who pirated the game had actually spent some god-damn money for their 40+ hours of entertainment, things could have been very different today. Some really good people made a seriously good game, and they might still be in business if piracy weren’t so rampant on the PC. That’s a fact.”
It is clear that PC gaming is in decline, with many big, well-known PC developers such as Epic Games moving almost exclusively to console gaming now.
Fitch even stated he did not believe the reports of piracy at first, “then I saw that Bioshock was selling 5 to 1 on console vs. PC. And Call of Duty 4 was selling 10 to 1.”
He said that the audience is there, they just do not pay for them.
If you have time, be sure to read the entire post here.
Author: Staff
In general, the pirate community is very adamant on the whole “if you like this game, buy it” issue. Also consider that it requires a hell of a setup to play Bioshock with decent settings, likewise for Call of Duty 4. More people can afford a console over a pc that is capable of running these games. Please stop to view the entire scenario and include these pertinent bits of info in your articles.
Thank you
Now they will try to fight piracy by putting potential customers in jail or hitting them with ridicules law suits that will be settled with $3000 payments.
Maybe the industry should tackle the main problem which is the high game prices! A game is firkin 60$. And most of these are for kids… how many kids have $60 to fork up for a computer game.
If games were 15- 20$ like DVDs less people would be stealing and more buying. This is the same deal as with the record industry they tried to fight piracy instead of lowering prices and see how they ended up.
Well for one, if your darn games didn’t come out with such high spec requirements on the PC people might be more inclined to purchase them. Unfortunately the majority of the market either has a high end gaming machine or a console. I doubt very much that a large portion of gamers have both. Its just not cost effective and rather stupid to waste your money to have 2 gaming machines. Just because a vocal few have pirated doesn’t mean the entire market is saturated by it. This goes out to all the Music companies as well. How can you verify and show me raw data to prove that this many people are pirating and sharing files? How many people weren’t buying a tape or cd back in the day because they were dubbing it to tape? Exactly you don’t know that either. Everything is heresay and there is nothing to validate these false reports against.
Perhaps the lack of any real innovation has been pretty null and void when it comes to entertainment. Games have better graphics and crappier story lines. hmmmm
I dont think the numbers are corect.
i didn’t buy bio shock on my pc because i dont want to deal with the drm
I might still get it for the pc so I can play it (not i do not own a pirated copy) but the drm on the disk is a issue, I don’t like that I have to make sure I uninstall correctly in order to beable to reinstall at a later date (maybe I formated my pc without uninstalling or the hard drive died, upgraded to anew system and so forth). I purcased the game and should be able to uninstall and reinstall as many times as I like. Some of the copy protection methods harm your hard ware so naturealy we pc users are wary of this (stardock).
I purchase many more games for my pc then i do for my consoles. some games are better on consoles (ie fighting games like soul caliber) and some are better on the pc (i like fps, rpgs, and mmorpgs better on the pc)
i find it insulting that if the only reson they think that there is 90% piracy is because they sold 10 to 1 or even 5 to on on the console verses the pc that we the pc users are still playing but pirating your games.
Could it be that well consoles are cheaper then pcs so there are more console users? without doing more research and showing that pc users are in fact playing the games without paying for them and going just based on sales fo the games of consoles vs pc is not going be accurate.
the group that I play games (lan and others all buy our games)
It really is sad, I hate to see this happen. Perhaps reducing the price of the games would help? It would seem better to get $15-$20 for a copy than none.
He tried to “Fight” piracy and lost, obviously he had some phone home and monitored the statistics.
He also rationalized that he would have been able to sell all of them if they could not get it for free. This is delusional thinking, and he is not the first to suffer from it.
If the games were of quality, and they forced pirated copies to halt somehere say 20 percent through the game, and say if you enjoyed playing this bit for free, please go by a copy. He would perhaps have had a hit.
He has only his own incompetent management to blame. You do not fight the consumer base, you finesse them!
He had the control, the only control in the process. The consumer can only work within the realm of what he has provided.
He put bombs in his software to kill pirates, and blew his company up. Object lesson in that!
Well, I paid for a copy of Titan Quest; I don’t recall the retail price I paid for it (39.95?). In any event, not to trash the developers, but it really wasn’t that hot of a game anyways; I’m not sure that that many people would’ve bothered to pirate it. It’s not that it was horrible, just not particularily involving. Maybe I just didn’t get that deep into it enough.
By comparison, Hellgate London was much better and cleaner at gameplay time. Perhaps, it’s more like the gaming market is so heavily saturated at every genre. Plus, the consoles are stealing a bigger percentage of the market simply because for the average person, they don’t have to worry about drivers or faster video cards or more memory. The big advantage of the consoles is that they’re just there. Turn ‘em on and you’re ready to roll. PCs are much more of a hassle by comparison although far more tuneable (and yes, hackable!).
In the end, I don’t think that high prices, pirateability, high end pc requirements, etc. really are driving the decline in pc gaming. Probably more likely, is that the younger kids are more in tune with consoles are being ‘it’ machines. In conjunction with a glut of games in every genre, people are more focused on the games that actually are GOOD and have great VALUE. That’s why so many people are locked in Valve, Steam, HalfLife and the subproducts; they have shortcomings, yes, but offer really good value per dollar spent.
I paid for the PC copy of CoD4…….and it is awesome. I don’t even own a next gen console, and haven’t heavily upgraded my computer in some time so I think part of the reason that PC game sales are in decline is the ridiculous system requirements. Take Oblivion for example……it is a lot more system intensive than it has to be. I miss the good ol’ days. I hope they make a sequel to Fallout Tactics….but I doubt they will……but instead they’ll made a new first person Fallout game with what I’m sure will have ridiculous system requirements.
I think if the PC games were not so expensive i.e £40 (UK $60 US i think), which twice what you would pay for a DVD, they would sell many more. And if the games were finnished when they are released, i.e not bug ridden, the game is complete unlike crysis( i will not say more so as not spoil the ending for any one!). The quality of games has declined over the years, with meeting deadlines more important than quality. As others have already said were is the evidence that piracy is 90% in europe? I have never played a pirated game as it hurts the gaming industry as a whole not just developers. Game developer need think about their customers rather that, forcing an unfininshed product on them and then fighting tooth and nail to get every penny (or cent depending where your from) out of them.
Make more MMO’s that require a subscription and a credit card. Then you can combat piracy. Also, Titan Quest sucked. Its more than 40+ hours can be summed up in 5 words… Diablo with more viewing angles. Honestly the genre had its time, and now it is gone. Look at how many attempts there were to clone the greatest top down clicky dungeon crawler in the world, then look at the shit you made… No awesome graphics, no new technology… the same shit with a different label. Honestly THQ give it up and join the 40,000 bandwagon, and release Warhammer Online. For fucks sake kids… it requires a subscription to play… that means not only do you get the 50 rip off bucks at the start, but you get the subsequent subscriptions. And you could charge 18 bucks and people would still play it, because its a CULT CLASSIC! Titan Quest was shit, far from a cult classic so to push it down people’s throat is retarded, you could take Dawn of War and remix it for colorblind people and im sure it would outsell Titan Quest. Narf
Make more MMO’s that require a subscription and a credit card. Then you can combat piracy. Also, Titan Quest lacked originality. Its more than 40+ hours can be summed up in 5 words… Diablo with more viewing angles. Honestly the genre had its time, and now it is gone. Look at how many attempts there were to clone the greatest top down clicky dungeon crawler in the world, then look at the attempt you made… No awesome graphics, no new technology… the same clone with a different label. Honestly THQ give it up and join the 40,000 bandwagon, and release Warhammer Online. Also, it requires a subscription to play… that means not only do you get the 50$ profit at the start, but you get the subsequent subscriptions. And you could charge 18 bucks and people would still play it, because its a CULT CLASSIC! Titan Quest was rushed, far from a cult classic so to push it down people’s throat is retarded, you could take Dawn of War and remix it for colorblind people and im sure it would outsell Titan Quest. -Self Edited for content.
There seems to be a lot of confusion here. First off, gaming requirements are not unreasonable at all. In fact, most games scale better these days than they did in the past. My three year old system can play any game on the market (on modest settings) without too many issues.
Second, you feel that games are overpriced in the US? We pay $90 – $120 for nearly every title here in Australia and seeing as the conversion rate is $1.00 AUS to $0.93 US then $60 seems quite generous.
I would think the main reason for piracy is the ease of peer-to-peer downloading and the increasing frustrations with DRM, unstable drivers etc. The draconian anti-piracy measures are counter-productive because it is actually easier to use a cracked version. Not to mention that new games frequently forgo proper user manuals (the dreaded on-line PDF) and are so stringent as to use paper packets rather than proper cases.
Reducing the price of games will make little difference, regular pirates are loath to part with any amount of money. They will merely earn less per copy and box art, manuals etc. will become a thing of the past. I think Steam has found the middle ground, reduced prices from the comfort of your own home. Although most people prefer to have a solid copy of their legally bought games, they only need include a utility to burn a dvd for it. The Steam system is enough to deal with any piracy issues for the majority.
That’s my two overly large cents, I hope that I didn’t offend anyone who is actually literate. Otherwise plebs, “Let it rain down on me!”