Volition: 'We want to make games worth stealing'
Volition has said it wants to make games that are worth stealing, rather than worrying about piracy.
The studio, owned by THQ, still considers PC versions of multi-platform releases to be worth their time and money despite the threat of piracy, according to Eurogamer.
‘Some people say PC is dying,’ said Barker. ‘Some people say PC is the future,’ he said. ‘PC is the most variable, because it depends on what you've got under the hood.’
‘For us, the key thing was making sure the PC version was done in-house.’
The threat of piracy is often used by studios as a reason for not bringing multi-platform releases to the PC. Most recently, Crysis 2 showed up on torrent sites 49 days before its release.
As Barker suggests, despite PC development being difficult, the pay off can be significant. We recently explored some of the untapped potential of the PC in our Farewell to DirectX.
Consoles aren't immune from piracy either, however. Sony's Killzone 3 was leaked for PlayStation 3 ahead of release too.
Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyOnly 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
I'm sure there are other market demographic factors, but publishers also have to pay a license fee to release something on a console.
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.
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.
This
Every NEGATIVE review does not = a lost sale.......just like
Every Bug in your dam game does not = a refund of my money!!
Funny how I can return every other product that does not meet my satisfaction except media but these *******s whine the most about sales figures.....STFU and make a quality product.
From my experience people only download games that they don't feel are worth buying. Not neccessarilly because they are really crap but maybe because they are not great and darn expensive, also you have to either go out to buy it or order it online and wait for it to be delivered.
So several things contributing to piracy; crap games, price and accessibility. IF they fixed the "crappynes" or price and the accesibility then it would actually be worth it.
Obviously Steam has fixed accessibility and sometime price (when there is a nice juicy sale) but they can't make crap games good :(
Best series ever. Nothing else comes close in that genre.
+1
Although a quick comment on the rest of your post: what does it say about society when people pirate games because they can't be assed to go and buy them?
but i personally know quite a few people that actually get hold of a pirated game to see what its like before they buy it becasue very few games have demos know
if a developer made demos that were portable aplications and didnt need installing then they would sell a lot more games
i dont buy many games becasuse the last few i bought have been awful and ive actually watched the walkthroughs on youtube to see whether the game is anygood but you cant tell if its any good by just watching a video
I agree with the peeps saying no demos contributes to piracy and also the fact that a computer game is one of the few products that can be released fundamentally broken and the seller can get away with "yeah, we'll get around to partially fixing that at some point for you, don't forget to thank us when we do". That latter element is proper crap.
yea your right! maybe people are getting more and more lazy these days, but I think thats the direction of media anyway; just have everything come straight to your home instantly with the press of a button. I know I am darn lazy and inpatient, thats why I love steam lol
QFT