PC Piracy survey

Skerries

PC Gamer have set up a survey about game piracy
Should be interesting to see the results when they are released

http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-gamers-fill-out-our-survey-about-piracy/

EoinHef

I dont think iver ever pirated a game,be it console,handheld or PC.

Im not on any moral high horse here either,i just never have,dont think theres a reason i havent,cant think of one anyway.

Skatedude

Never pirated any pc games, I remember pirating a few spectrum games by copying the cassette tape from a friend as a kid. Usually because as a kid, i couldn't afford to buy them, but mostly because you simply could,t buy them as no shops or internet back then.

Your Face

I wonder where the information goes.

ancapailldorcha

I would expect the results to show very little piracy as Steam, GOG et al have made it so cheap and convenient to get most games nowadays.

Lemming

Don't think I've pirated anything since owning a C64 as a kid.

Never was comfortable with the reality of putting cracked software (games or otherwise) on my PC because you never really knew if there was anything 'extra' added in; and back in the day the cracks involved having to do all sorts of shiz like extra command-console services, reg-key hacks, etc. to get certain games to run which just seemed more hassle than it was worth. I just wanted to stick a disc in and play a bloody game rather than f*ck about in my file-system.

Manach

As Ancapailldorcha said - now (for me)far too many games on steam list to then time to play with. That and there is growing awareness, at least with the indie developers, that without some form of support for their good efforts on innovative games, as opposed to re-hashes, will cause the community to stagnant.

ballyargus

I did pirate a lot and still would pirate the odd game. If I enjoy it I'll usually purchase later via Steam.

ancapailldorcha

Lemming wrote: »

Don't think I've pirated anything since owning a C64 as a kid.

Never was comfortable with the reality of putting cracked software (games or otherwise) on my PC because you never really knew if there was anything 'extra' added in; and back in the day the cracks involved having to do all sorts of shiz like extra command-console services, reg-key hacks, etc. to get certain games to run which just seemed more hassle than it was worth. I just wanted to stick a disc in and play a bloody game rather than f*ck about in my file-system.

I did pirate a few games when I was younger. However, I was living in rural Donegal so I'd download them from Uni and install them at home as we only had dial up. Steam has made it so convenient now that it's more hassle to pirate wrt cracks and workarounds. The only thing is that I fear things like excessive day one DLC and other cashgrabs might push people in that direction.

gizmo

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I would expect the results to show very little piracy as Steam, GOG et al have made it so cheap and convenient to get most games nowadays.

Unfortunately, you'd be surprised.

Lone Stone

I use to pirate a fair bit, never pirated an indie game. But since steam sales and the general easier to get discounts these days i haven't pirated a game in a few years. Some game's i bought after trying out as a pirated game, like black flag and some other one's.

edit:
I did have a faze where i would never buy a Bethesda game because skyrim on my ps3 was garbage i couldnt get my money back and it broke my ps3 so yea i would still gladly pirate a Bethesda game that said i bought fallout 4 as i like the franchise.

EoinHef

gizmo wrote: »

Unfortunately, you'd be surprised.

Were only taking the devs word for it there though,its not an independent analysis. Its also a sample size of one game. Im not saying there lying,just that couldnt really state that as the piracy rate on PC.

I do pirate games that are unavailable in my region [china] (steam & the Chinese government blocks them), and then if they're any good, I'll buy them when I'm back in Ireland. I won't pirate the Indie games because they need all the help they can get, but I will download the major games companies, simply because a lot of games are not being developed properly (Total war, Paradox etc have all sold out to commercialism). Besides, many games don't do demos anymore.

The_Valeyard

I did a lot of pirating playing Sid Meir's Pirates! and AC Black Flag.

Robert ninja

I used to pirate if the DRM was strict or layered. Now I don't even bother with the game at all.

degrassinoel

Robert ninja wrote: »

I used to pirate if the DRM was strict or layered. Now I don't even bother with the game at all.

ye don't bother to buy it or play it?

ballyargus

One other reason to pirate, especially recently, is to playtest the game to see if the rig can run it acceptably on different settings. Witcher 3 and GTA V being good examples. Check if they run well, then purchase.

gizmo

EoinHef wrote: »

Were only taking the devs word for it there though,its not an independent analysis. Its also a sample size of one game. Im not saying there lying,just that couldnt really state that as the piracy rate on PC.

Piracy rates will vary massively from game to game though so there's no point in trying to determine an overall rate across the platform. On top of that, independent analysis will generally only be generated by a third party company who, of course, will need to be paid by someone. Since most metrics are monitored by developers and/or publishers, the chances they'd be willing to share such information is fairly slim so the only source remaining is examining public trackers which will give a fairly distorted figure.

Personally, if someone like CD Projekt RED say The Witcher 2 was downloaded approximately 4.5m times conservatively then I'm going to believe them. Doubly so when a company like TinyBuild, who have clearly invested in some decent analytics tools, are able to provide those kinds of figures. I find those kinds of numbers far more interesting, especially when they're accompanied by devs discussing how they deal with it, if at all.

Robert ninja

degrassinoel wrote: »

ye don't bother to buy it or play it?

Both. I just avoid the game. A game not worth buying is not worth playing and vice versa. There's plenty of good games that appeal to my niche, have minimum or even no DRM and are cheap as chips.

For the games that really do appeal my niches I'm actually happy to be supporting them. If I wanted free games there's plenty of F2P and free & open source games. A lot of people I hang out with on a server pirated Fallout 4. I don't know why they torture themselves.

FAILSAFE 00

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I would expect the results to show very little piracy as Steam, GOG et al have made it so cheap and convenient to get most games nowadays.

I was thinking the opposite when I seen No mans sky is €60 on Steam.

ancapailldorcha

FAILSAFE 00 wrote: »

I was thinking the opposite when I seen No mans sky is €60 on Steam.

True but most people already own more games on Steam than they'll ever play. A bit of patience will see that price dropped to a fraction of what it is now.

FAILSAFE 00

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

True but most people already own more games on Steam than they'll ever play. A bit of patience will see that price dropped to a fraction of what it is now.

Very true.

titan18

Ya, never pirated games. Steam is just too good that I don't bother.

degrassinoel

Robert ninja wrote: »

Both. I just avoid the game. A game not worth buying is not worth playing and vice versa. There's plenty of good games that appeal to my niche, have minimum or even no DRM and are cheap as chips.

For the games that really do appeal my niches I'm actually happy to be supporting them. If I wanted free games there's plenty of F2P and free & open source games. A lot of people I hang out with on a server pirated Fallout 4. I don't know why they torture themselves.

fair enough, it just sounded like you were pirating games just for the sake of it and not even playing them in that post above lol

Lemming

Just realised something .... with all this talk of piracy, nobody has asked the most important question yet .....



... Where's all the rum gone?



Sorry, I'll get my coat. Yarrrrr! :pac:

Digital Solitude

Used to pirate a sight back in the day, literally anything I played I pirated. Carry on went on for about two years and I pirated maybe 50-60 AAA games and not much else, just decided one day I'd stop pirating and that was the end of it, pirated maybe 2 games since then. That was near two years ago now, so two years of piracy got me 50 games, two years of buying has over 250, including some gems I'd never have found if I was dependant on piracy.

Have a few pirated games on the hard drive, I refuse to play them just haven't actually thought to delete them, with exceptions for Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim all of which I have a CD for but no DVD drive

Have ended up rebuying a lot of the games I pirated back them

Vojera

The only games I ever pirated were really old ones, to be honest. Either stuff like the early Monkey Island games or ROMs of Mega Drive games. I've only gotten back into gaming in PC in the last three years or so and I just couldn't be arsed pirating anything when buying it is so convenient and, with the sales, relatively cheap.

K.O.Kiki

I was forced to piracy because one of my favourite games was not available for general retail, and didn't work online even with a retail copy (region-locked online play).

It finally got released on Steam 5 years later.

Yakult

For me, its not like a console, where each game is optimized to the same level. PC games change with hardware in many cases. So as to not get burnt like in the past I may download the game and see how it runs and whether it looks good or not. I'm not going to throw cash blindly, so if the game seems worth it and I can run it, I will always buy. Its always worth supporting a good dev.

Canis Lupus

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I would expect the results to show very little piracy as Steam, GOG et al have made it so cheap and convenient to get most games nowadays.

Doubt it except for sales time. GoG probably help piracy because they're DRM free. Whenever I resort to the piratebay it's always nice to see GoG as I'll probably not need a crack.

For me personally it's the grey market that stops me pirating as a lot of games are more online focused nowadays so I need to make a purchase to use them.

Digital Solitude

Oh wait until Kiki sees that Canis :pac: You'll send him into overdrive