Kim Kardashian
But that's beside the point. The point is that the post continues a recent trend of developers blaming piracy for all their woes.
Yes, I'm sure piracy is rampant on the PC. Of course there's no justification for it bla bla bla. Yes I'm sure it hurt the sales of your game. What I really find staggering is how developers or publishers or whoever it is that's responsible for this sort of thing seem to believe that the solution should be draconian copy-protection.
Honestly, it's 2008 and we're still stuck with games demanding disc checks on startup. Do they honestly not see the problem with that? I don't know of any game in existence that hasn't had it's copy-protection cracked. More often than not in a matter of days. The result is that the protection ultimately serves no purpose other than to inconvenience and irritate the users who legitimately purchased the game. It doesn't bother the pirates because they're running cracked copies with no disc checks. This is completely and utterly backwards. There's really no excuse for punishing the people who paid for the game under some pretense that "they'll put up with it because they understand it's necessary". Especially when it's patently unnecessary, on account of being so ineffectual and ultimately worthless. Is it really a shocking surprise that some people prefer the convenience of a pirated version that might require no more than a torrent download? It's easier to pirate than to buy, that's the problem, and that's the developers'/publishers' fault.
Then add insult to injury in the form of Starforce or whatever other third-party protection software a publisher might buy in to not only make the simple act of running the game as painful as possible, but also potentially fuck your machine up in the process. Good job.
I will freely admit that while I am willing and able to buy games, I won't hesitate to download cracks for them because I'm not willing to juggle discs every time I feel like a bit of the old ultraviolent. Get a fucking grip, developers.
Many people are quick to point out that piracy is perfectly possible on the devs' beloved consoles too, but that's not really the whole story. It might be possible to pirate console games but it's generally nowhere near as convenient as it is on the PC. Even if you don't require a modded console you're still going to have to put the game on disc which makes the process, on balance, less convenient than simply buying the game in the first place. Compare that with simply downloading to your hard disk. Job done. Disc checks are essentially built-in to consoles by virtue of the game not being (entirely) stored on the machine's hard disk (if it even has one), so there's no advantage to piracy in terms of pure convenience.
So where does that leave us? The obvious answer is online services like Steam. Today, for example, I was absent-mindedly browsing and happened to notice Two Worlds on special offer for $10. I was vaguely aware of the game, and aware that there were some very mixed reviews, but I thought to myself "fuck it, I'll have some of that". Tippety-tip-tap, and seconds later it's downloading onto my computer. A game I definitely wouldn't have gone out and bought, but at $10 and as a digital download it was below my "what the hell" threshold. It was a simple, painless process, and that's the point. When CoD4 came out I bought that on Steam because I knew that it would avoid the hassle of disc checks, and that worked out perfectly well. Of course I bought the various HL2 stuff on there too.
One of the main concerns with direct download services tends to involve patches, or lack thereof, but Steam in particular has reached a sort of critical mass now where you can be confident that you will get all necessary patches in a timely fashion. And what's more, it's a painless, automatic process that's more convenient than locating and downloading patches manually.
The problem with Steam is that some of the pricing could do with a bit of a review. I'm sure Valve only have limited input into the pricing of third-party games, nevertheless $50 for last year's Bioshock, and remember it's a digital download with no physical product, is still a bit cheeky. Similarly CoD4 might be a great game but that's also still listed at $50. It feels greedy considering the overheads are undoubtedly less on a digital download with no fabrication or shipping costs. I was also disappointed that in the case of Bioshock you couldn't register a retail key on Steam and thereafter access the game through it's usual (disc check-free) authentication. What, do you think I'm going to buy another copy just for that? Fuck off, I'll download a crack instead.
The only problem with using online services for purchase and authentication is that there's the potential for ending up with any number of separate services, each required for specific games and probably each running some sort of Steam-style client software. That would be A Bad Thing. It's also still perfectly possible to pirate Steam games, especially the single player ones like Half-Life 2 and it's various episodes. But as I've been trying to make clear, it's as much about convenience these days as it is about money, and buying through Steam is actually more convenient than locating and downloading a well-seeded, working torrent.
Still, the increasing number of third-party games on Steam itself (I noticed Eve Online has been added which is interesting) is encouraging, and I'll be looking there first when there are any new games on my shopping list in the future. For the rest, I'll continue to download cracks where necessary, but hopefully some of these disc check-obsessed idiots will come to their senses and start making life easier rather than harder for the people who pay them to make their games in the first place.
Update: I see Bioshock is now $30 on Steam. Well, about fucking time.
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