NVIDIA not down with pirates

Sean Ridgeley - Wednesday, May 7, 2008 1:25pm (PST) 0 Favourite (0)

VP of Content Relations says solution is more copy protection

Roy Taylor, NVIDIA's Vice President of Content Relations, says, in a Eurogamer interview, the future of PC gaming will see "more digital authentication, and we're going to see more of an approach that says that PC games aren't products - they're a service."

By this he means additional content, expansions and all that stuff for sale, because "pirates are just killing the developers - and I think it's really unfair, what they're doing."

It's certainly a divisive issue. Taylor is pretty hard in his stance though, expressing his disheartenment at the situation:

"One of the things that I find frustrating is that PC gamers tend to be very passionate, and they love the people that make great PC games. If you ask any PC gamer what they think of John Carmack, they'll say he's a hero. What do they think of Tim Sweeney? He's a hero. Ken Levine is a hero. And yet many of them, sadly, will go and steal from them. I just don't get that, I really don't."

Well, it's easy to blame the overall low PC sales on piracy, but there are examples that contradict this theory (inside and outside the gaming industry, take the music industry for example). A couple of months ago a developer from Sins of a Solar Empire posted an article about this on his game's forums. Empire, by the way, contained no copy protection, was under an independent development house, and topped the PC sales charts a few weeks after being released. Read on:

"Our games sell well for three reasons. First, they're good games which is a pre-requisite. But there's lots of great games that don't sell well.

The other two reasons are:

* Our games work on a very wide variety of hardware configurations.
* Our games target genres with the largest customer bases per cost to produce for.

It's irrelevant how many people will play your game (if you're in the business of selling games that is). It's only relevant how many people are likely to buy your game."

Obviously, there are a lot of PC gamers here. Why do you pirate or purchase PC games?

Source: Eurogamer

Alternate Source: Sins of a Solar Empire forums

Section: PC Games

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0 thumbs!

bruceleethree May 7, 08

I'd like an example of a great PC game that didn't sell well due to piracy. I don't think there's one.

The developers should pay attention and start thinking outside the money box and make some good damn games if they want to make money.
0 thumbs!

OmegaFury May 7, 08

Yeah. Very well put, bruce.
0 thumbs!

iamjoe56 May 7, 08

Bruce, you do realize how much it costs to make a game, right? If even 5% of the the games "sales" are pirated copies, that is ALOT of money out the door, that they may not get back. This is about money, yes, but the money they are talking about is the regaining the money they put into the game, not profits.
1 thumbs!

Ameer May 8, 08

Are they really losing money if that 5% couldn't pirate it? If a game is too hard to crack or bypass, unless the game is extraordinarily good, pirates will usually just move on to the next game.

This 5% has not nearly a big effect as most developers claim it to do, and probably spend more on DRM measures than what they 'lose' to pirates.
1 thumbs!

x_revenge May 8, 08

companies ussually blame piracy when things go wrong...i'm not saying that piracy doesn't hurt companies but it's become more of an excuse as it has a fact...just like how adults blame video games for everything...a meteor falls it's video games' fault, your football team losses 4-0 it's video games' fault...it's become like this, a console doesn't sell well, it's piracy (remember what nintendo was nagging about some time ago?), if a game's income was less than estimated, it's piracy's fault...
0 thumbs!

Guest May 12, 08

It's a vicious cycle. The game companies perceive piracy numbers they have no way of verifying, but get scared and raise the prices of the games to compensate. With prices so high, people are driven to piracy. Copy protection won't save them, either. It never saved anybody. Lower the prices, make it ridiculous TO pirate the game in the first place, and the numbers will go down.
0 thumbs!

Getano Jun 3, 08

There is a reason piracy exists. I have been in the gaming market for nearly 25 years and have drawn this conclusion. AAA games like Crysis etc usually don't sell a lot of pirated copies, since people are getting value for their money. Other games (the majority) is RUBBISH and I don't see the reason why badly developed games (e.g. bad graphics, bad gameplay, no storyline etc) should sell at the same pricing. Thus piracy will continue mostly on the poorly developed games. I hope this is a lesson to the gaming development community. If you make crap, expect it to be pirated because NO ONE will buy it at the same price as a AAA game.