Piracy, Take Overs and More
Just want to update and share my thoughts on some things from the past few days. Ranging from Infinity Ward on piracy to more gaming Take Overs.
Infinity Ward - Piracy and More
The Infinity Ward developer rep on their blog talks a bit about PC games piracy under the topic title - “They Wonder Why People Don’t Make PC Games Any More” Here is what they say;
On another PC related note, we pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer (which was fantastic). What wasn’t fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen / cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only people playing online).
Not sure if I can share the exact numbers or percentage of PC players with you, but I’ll check and see; if I can I’ll update with them. As the amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding. It blows me away at the amount of people willing to steal games (or anything) simply because it’s not physical or it’s on the safety of the internet to do.
Damn piracy! I’ll leave it at that, his words speak for themselves.
In other news from the same blog word comes that the new Call of Duty patch will include a grenade Kill Cam and a EU Connectivity Patch.
Codie’s ‘Connect 2008′
Following on from what I talked about a few days ago it has emerged that at the new Codemasters event ‘Connect 2008′ they will be revealing a new MMO. Source.
Good? I don’t know, they already have a whole host of MMO’s under their banner, none of which are amazingly ground breaking. Until we hear more on this my thoughts are that they should stop flooding the MMO market!
PC on PS3?
It has emerged (thanks CVG) that StreamMyGame, a third-party software company has launched an application that will allow you to play your PC games on any PS3 running Linux.
“The free StreamMyGame Server enables PC games to be played remotely by converting the game’s video and audio into a Game Stream and sending it over a home network to a second computer where you can view and play the game with the free StreamMyGame Player.”
At the moment this won’t work on normal internet connections, though they promise to bring this online with the launch of new broadband services in the coming months. Intriguing yes? Well read on for more at their site and wait for further developments!
How to play Crysis
For around $900 Crysis developers Crytek have built a machine they say is capable of running Crysis on High at 1280*720. The machine specs they made:
# CPU - Intel Core2Duo E6750
# GPU - GeForce 8800GT 512MB
# Motherboard - NVIDIA nForce 650i Socket 775
# PSU - 600W ATX12V
# RAM - 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
# HDD- SATA 250GB 7200RPM
# DVD - 20x DVDR Burner
# Case - ATX Midi Tower Computer Case
# OS - Microsoft Windows XP Home with SP2
Find links to their videos of playing this set up here.
$900 to play Crysis decently? Wow, that ain’t that bad really! That is if you want to play the game when there are surely many better options out there for you to try!
p.s I haven’t played Crysis yet, it just doesn’t appeal to me!
Acquisitions
The ever present trend of the past couple months has continued with the latest news that THQ has bought up Big Huge Games developers of Rise of Nations and Rise of Legends. They seem to have come together following their work on an upcoming RPG slated for a 2009 release on the PS3 and 360. More info here.
Follow the link above for all the usual blurb about ‘helping to expand and improve both our companies.’ These recent buy ups and sell outs all seem to be very cordial don’t they…very odd!
Anyway, good to see THQ bringing an established studio into their mass RTS powered machine. Now scrap that RPG and bring up some more sexy RTS’s!
Valve’ness
As I have posted a fair bit about this over on halflife2.net just check out there for all the latest on Valve and TF2 etc.
End
yes probably missed a load of news but feck it!
Tags: Stuff
January 16th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
That piracy stuff really gets under my collar man. So frustrating! In the past I must admit to downloading or getting copies off friends for games I really wanted to play - but back then it was a matter of $$$. I would have been fourteen without a job and minimal allowance, which meant if I wanted a new game, it was going to take a while to get it.
When I finally got my first job and was able to reasonably save for games I really wanted to play, that’s when the urge to copy other people’s work stopped. No more piracy for me! Now I’m older, the number of games I pre-order on a weekly basis is simply ridiculous and in some ways, I feel like now I’m making up for past thieving.
How many frickin’ updates did Valva want to release yesterday … seriously :|
January 17th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I know! I’ll admit that I have pirated a few games, only a handful, but that was only back when I was a without a job and couldn’t afford to go buying loads of games.
Nowadays I just don’t see the point, it is damaging to the industry and has forced developers to leave the PC which is something I hate to see happen.
Haha I know, good ole Valve :D
January 20th, 2008 at 7:15 am
The issue of piracy is a tricky beast, mainly due to gray area’s and how it’s not all black & white. I initially got my hands on a copy of CoD 4 (pirated), just to see if it’d run on my computer. Having beaten the game, I actually went out and bought it (only, ironically, to have my DVD drive fail on me, when installing the game). In any case, piracy is generally bad for the gaming world, but can also be a positive, at least in two area’s:
1. Games older then 2006 aren’t in wide-release, or distribution anymore. You can’t exactly call up Interplay and ask them to sell you a copy of Planescape: Torment, or the like. Piracy can give old games (and gamers) a much longer life-span, by letting people play the games again. (The used PC game market doesn’t count, as the money isn’t going to the game developer, just to the seller.)
2. Most games (about 95% of them), install and play with very harsh requirements. Mainly, you have to have the actual game disk in order to play the game. I think Galactic Civ 2, is one of the few games that doesn’t have any of that B.S. on it (and it’s why I bought the game, even though I could’ve pirated it, in a heart beat). Piracy (or at least, cracked EXE files), allow me to play games where ever I want, regardless of what’s in my disk drive, or where I’m at. If game companies didn’t treat you as a criminal when trying to play the game with constant “The game CD is not in the drive, i’m not booting up, screw you”, messages, then more people would buy them. Remember, Brad Wardell’s words (in a para-phrased quote), “When you install a copy of Photoshop, it doesn’t require you to have the install disk in the cd drive. Why should games have this requirement?”
But, that’s just my view.
January 20th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Marc - you raise some interesting topics, and hopefully I will be able to expand on them better in a future article.
My opinion (in brief) is that digital distribution is the way of the future. When old games are added to Steam a smile comes across my face as I know that these lost classics are back able to be bought and in some cases the rightful people get their share of the sales.
The second point you raise inextricably ties in with digital distribution, many small developers are aware that by placing awful anti-piracy measures on their games they will just drive people away. By providing an affordable, downloadable game without any anti-piracy crap they know they can get people to support them.