Its official. 2008 is the year to complain about
PC piracy.
TG Daily reports that
Epic Software claimed their were 40 million attempts to authenticate invalid license keys for
Unreal Tournament 3 (via
videogaming247).
CORRECTION - Apparently, Mark Rein did not claim 40 million attempts, but simply "lots". (via Videogaming247)
This is an odd proof of piracy. Instead, it would seem to imply the effectiveness of Epic's anti-piracy technology. After all, these guys were all detected.
What would be interesting (but, sadly, unlikely to ever be disclosed) is how many license keys WERE validated compared to how many PC games sold.
That would be a better measure of the failure of the anti-piracy system.
OR, if there was a known attack that allowed pirates to bypass the license validation system.
So, the only metric given, detected invalid license keys, is the worst metric for modeling piracy.
The TG Daily article focuses on
Crytek's
Crysis which is apparently suffering widespread piracy as well (see interview at
PC Play). The Crytek's CEO,
Cevat Yerli, argues that a console version of the game would sell 4-5 times as many copies (the game has apparently sold around 1 million copies according to
Next Generation). But is abandoning its PC exclusive strategy.
The numbers here puzzle me.
Let's assume a console title can sell 4 to 5 times as many copies as a PC one.
How much more does a developer actually take home?
And, how much more does it cost?
And, what if the game doesn't do so well?
The fixed development costs for a PC game are definitely lower. Cheaper tools, more plentiful programmers, no "dev kits", no royalties to the platform manufacturer.
The break-even cost for the game is much lower. It has to be.
Also, of course, console games get pirated. Fairly routinely. And console games don't have a license key that allows you to detect fake copies... so, unlike a PC, you don't know how many sales you are losing.
Oh, and, to complete the week,
EA has claimed they aren't releasing
Madden for the PC because of... you guessed it, piracy (via
Kotaku)
Needless to say, the PC is doing pretty well for companies that build for it. After all, there is that little game, World of Warcraft... much less Diablo which is still selling years later, Valve seems to be doing just fine with its PC focus, Stardock isn't complaining, and, of course, there are all those Korean and Chinese online games...
notice a common thread.
Yep, a strong, centralized online strategy for PC games.
Adding to the fun, the way consoles work online means that they are more vulnerable to piracy than PCs.