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News Volition: 'We want to make games worth stealing'

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by CardJoe, 18 Mar 2011.

  1. CardJoe

    CardJoe Freelance Journalist

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  2. liratheal

    liratheal Sharing is Caring

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    ...Hot damn, someone said something sane about piracy, while also being a dev house?
     
  3. Hustler

    Hustler Minimodder

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    The only thing that gets me annoyed about the industry and piracy figures, is the automatic assumption that every copy downloaded is a lost sale.....its not.

    Only a small percentage are actual lost sales, the vast majority are people downloading it because they are simply curious to 'have a look' and because they can, and would simply let the game pass them by if they had to actually pay for it anyway.
     
  4. DriftCarl

    DriftCarl Minimodder

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    Indeed, it isnt a lost sale 99% of the time.
    Some people i know have hundreds of albums on their PC, and hundreds of games. If every one of those was a "lost sale" then they would have had to earn about £250k a year just to pay for the stuff they have on their PC. When in reality, most people buy games that are worth buying.
    Nowadays I buy games that are easy to aquire, like steam or blizzard digital downloads. Personally I dont even bother with most other games now because the reveiws are usually terrible, I learned my lesson when I bought FF13 without reading reviews.

    So really the dev studios need to make games that are worth buying, and stop spending time trying to put stupid DRM on them. Just develop a good game, with a great storyline, PC worth graphics and bug free gameplay. I guarantee that will sell in the truck load.
     
  5. BRAWL

    BRAWL Dead and buried.

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    Exactly mate, after the abismal games that have come out the past two years... MW2, BlackOps, CnC4... I think we're entitled to have a snoop when these developers don't even bother with demo's anymore. Of course, I don't pirate games at all... just isn't my thing. I'd rather check it out at a friends, or hear reviews before hammering it.
     
  6. DragunovHUN

    DragunovHUN Modder

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    Oi, guys, no need to defend piracy, this isn't one of those articles. Volition are being(pretending to be?) cool about it.

    Nice to hear that their future PC versions will be in-house though, their outsourced SR2 port didn't work too well for a lot of people. I'm glad they learned their lesson, even though i had no problems with the PC version.
     
  7. do_it_anyway

    do_it_anyway Minimodder

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    Agree with all of this.
    I see the "try before you buy" or "I wouldn't buy it anyway" argument as being totally beside the point.
    In no other industry would you get away with this. If you nicked a car and then said "its OK, I would never have bought one anyway" its unlikely to help when Plod knocks on your door.

    I like volition's stance, that its more important to make a good game which turns up on torrent sites, than make a bad game that nobody wants anyway. And I particularly like the way they are maintaining an interest in the PC as a platform.
     
  8. SMIFFYDUDE

    SMIFFYDUDE Supermodders on my D

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    Love "99%" statistics. Always trustworthy scientific analysis gone into them. Well at least 0.001% of the time.
     
  9. Jim

    Jim Ineptimodder

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    SR2 on the PC was absolutely terrible.
     
  10. Podge4

    Podge4 Oi, whats your game?

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    From quite a few people i've spoke to i have found that maybe more people have at least 1 chipped console rather than playing pirated pc games. weather its because its easier to play it once the console is chipped i don't know, maybe its also because they don't know how to get the games. it would seem its easier to go to a guy in a pub and get 10 games for a few quid.

    Take Crysis 2. I've just pre-ordered the Limited Edition for pc for £25, now i think £25 for what would be a AAA game is a good price, compared to the £40 for a console version. this article suggests that "despite PC development being difficult," why is it then that pc games can be anywhere upto about 50% cheaper than their console counterpart. Surely you would charge more to compensate for that extra difficulty.
     
  11. BigDaddy600

    BigDaddy600 What's a Dremel?

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    But that's not the same is it? For a start you can test drive most if not all cars before you buy and stealing a car is actually stealing. Now if you made a copy of the original car at no expense and took that..
     
  12. wyx087

    wyx087 Homeworld 3 is happening!!

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    agree, piracy figures are meaningless. may of those downloads are from people who already own the game. just it is difficult to obtain it through legit means. i bet Steamwork games are less pirated for the very simple reason that it's so easy to use Steam to download those games.
     
    Last edited: 18 Mar 2011
  13. DragunovHUN

    DragunovHUN Modder

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    I'm sure there are other market demographic factors, but publishers also have to pay a license fee to release something on a console.
     
  14. Landy_Ed

    Landy_Ed Combat Novice

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    :duh:
     
    Last edited: 26 Apr 2011
  15. NiHiLiST

    NiHiLiST New-born car whore

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    Exactly. To tackle piracy, everyone needs to stop treating intellectual property like physical property, the comparison in most situations is ludicrous.
     
  16. Parge

    Parge the worst Super Moderator

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    If you want to make a game worth stealing make Freespace 3
     
  17. NuTech

    NuTech Minimodder

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    Statements like this from devs always make me laugh. They puff out their chest and make it sound like they're standing up for the PC gamer. Truth be told, they're making a PC port because their publisher has allowed them to make a PC port.

    If THQ had said no to a PC port due to reasons such as very high piracy rates on single player focused games, his statement would have towed that company line instead.
     
  18. Paradigm Shifter

    Paradigm Shifter de nihilo nihil fit

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    I just want Volition to make Freespace 3. :D
     
  19. itrush07

    itrush07 Minimodder

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    *this person has been banned for advocating piracy (actually in this case advocating outright theft) in accordance with the bit-tech forum rules.*
     
    Last edited by a moderator: 18 Mar 2011
  20. Claave

    Claave You Rebel scum

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    I think the point actually being made is that all games should have a demo, or at least a limited-time free-play mode. That means you can legally give a game a try and base your purchase on your own experience.

    Might be I've read the original post wrong, but the above seems a perfectly reasonable demand from gamers to games studios.
     
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