Gaming Do you think piracy will stop companies from making good games?

[Link5084]

http://kotaku.com/5215529/report-grand-the...sales-are-awful

As indicated it, sales of GTA: CW suck mostly due to piracy and a sequel is most likely not going to happen. Would stuff like this make companies not make any more good games?

 

[DeMoN]

Deter, yes. Stop, no. As long as there is some potential for profit, they will make good games. (Bless those souls who don't have flash cards)

 

[Blackiris]

I answered "Yes", but that's kinda wrong too since I myself own flashcart(s) and use them to play backups...

IMO, piracy is a gamble when it comes to the creation and the selling of games. There are people who could buy it because they don't have flashcarts, or they simply respect and appreciate the game enough (in other words, saw the time and effort of the team behind its creation and enjoyed it). But compared to that number there's like, what, x50 or more playing them as backups, which is not necessarily bad if you take the law's point of view out of the equation. That's because people obviously want to know beforehand if the money they're gonna spend for a game is well worth it or wasted.

In other words, what I meant by piracy as a gamble is that it can actually make or break the status of any game when it comes to sales.

 

[Kingfield]

It will, but eventually these games will have almost un-bypassable anti-piracy checks and stuff put in place, and then we will all have to go legit.

Which i wont mind, as by then I would be having a decent income.

 

[commdante]

Imo pirating itself doesn't hurt quality games that much ... but then again, there are all sorts of pirates.
Some sites actually have ads with "why pay for games, get them here free bla bla". Now THAT is hurting every one. Playing a game and pay for it afterwards because it's a great game doesn't, neither does buying games from the budget-bin because one thinks games are overprized.
On both these cases, no more/other games would be bought anyway.

People that finish every game released and enjoy most of them and never buy any game do, the so called warez-kiddiez.

I've got about 30 NDS games, some still in foil

, but I also got 3 moving boxes full of "old" pc boxes, I'm one of those people that's collecting all the classics. I just love browsing through boxes and manuals to relive them a bit.

Point is that there are so many crappy games these days and developers expect them to sell ... most is dumped on piracy because they don't. Sure, without piracy they'd probably sell more on commercials etc. But that only works for a while. If there was no piracy whatsoever, I'd bet people would wait for a few months and try them out at friends etc and would buy even less games in general compared to now. At least with piracy you can play the game and see if you actually want it, deem it worth your money. Ofcourse not everyone thinks that way, and some people got loads of money but are too cheap to pay for a game that's a must-buy.

My 2 cents.

 

[Moots]

Stop companies from making good games? That happened along time ago.

Nowadays theres a few(5-10 tops, 2-4 if you own a ps3) Really good games a year for each platform filled with alot of mediocre BS.

Games are all show now, and no meat.

 

[FlatFrogger]

http://kotaku.com/5215529/report-grand-the...sales-are-awful

As indicated it, sales of GTA: CW suck mostly due to piracy and a sequel is most likely not going to happen. Would stuff like this make companies not make any more good games?

Its only kotaku (and their source) which is pissing all over the sales figures and theres no word at all of piracy in the article. Look at the article and there kotaku goes trying to draw parallels to GTA 4, just think about what they are doing there, linking a single handheld console games sales to TWO heavy hitting full consoles, not to mention march was a crap month for game sales over all.

Will piracy stop good games being made? No.

commdante has it, theres too much crap out there which is expected to push 1mil units, it doesn't and everyone cries fowl. Ubisoft did this with PC games, do a crappy port follow it up with little to no support and then when it does badly all over whine about piracy is killing you and then link a torrent from the pirate bay with an apparent "5000 peers downloading" and call it a day.

Too bad it doesn't work that way.

 

[Chrono_Tata]

The argument that piracy is destroying the gaming industry doesn't really work. If it is truly the case, then you would think a game would flop in sales because people are pirating it instead of buying it. Rather, we see that games with high sales will have more people pirating it and games with less sales will have less people pirating it. If a game is wanted by the public, a lot of people will buy it and some others will pirate it, simple as that.

Piracy is a problem, but not as much as it is sometimes exaggerated to be. If a game doesn't sell, there is always a better explanation. In this case, it is a failed gamble to release a mature game on a console aimed mostly at a young audience.

 

[Domination]

If the developers don't make good games, there wouldn't even be any people who want to pirate the games much less buy it. So They'll make lousy games just because a good game was pirated? A good game will surely have people buying it.

They want profit too you know. Even if people pirate the good games, a good game can still rack in sales but a bad game will not. (except for imagine games and the like that target young kids)

 

[SoLuckys]

i dont think they will stop making good games
All they want is a lot of money

 

[SaltyDog]

This is such a multi-faceted discussion.
First: NPD sales figures are not finallized yet.
Second: Even if it comes well under the lowest expectation, what more could they have hoped for it is the NDS which historically is viewed as a kids system. Nintendo will neven get from under that moniker, at least not now.
Third: Always look to what John Carmack says about the state of gaming. He has, since the early days of Wolfenstein nee Doom, always had anti-piracy warnings. It never damaged id as a whole. According to him now though it is bloated game productions that are killing the industry. However, a new era of gaming (such as Braid and his own (Carmack and Kang) mobile phone games) prove that small development is the way to go.

Piracy always robs the pockets of the developers in the long run. It is the bloat of development costs that killed modern gaming. Rockstar knew what they were gambling on. It paid off with the PSP. The NDS is just not oriented for their offerings.

 

[BoxShot]

Go add in the fact the sales are based in March which had I think a big drop of sales.
IMO no piracy won't stop companies since so far it hasn't. Sure maybe in the future but go see like GameFly I think that say rent it then return it at $15?

 

[anubiss]

stop companies from making good games？ dont think so. they want money....

 

[Djay187]

I'd say piracy has got nothing to with the quality of the games that are made. Unfortunately as mentioned above Nintendo as a whole has just got such a kiddie orientated image and the games that are made for the older generation are just brain games or keep fit stuff.
It's a shame I'd love to see more from Rockstar or even another Resident Evil, anything more mature.

 

[Vague Rant]

I think it probably does deter companies from releasing quality titles; if you think about it, nobody pirates shovelware, and with something like the Imagine series, they're selling in droves. So for a small capital you can put out a crappy game which won't get pirated but with a picture of a girl and a puppy on the cover, mothers will go nuts for. I'd be interested to see the profit margins of shovelware vs. proper games.

 

[ZonMachi]

Piracy can not stop the development of good games. People will buy games they think are good. The gaming community would have fallen if piracy was really a major issue. To most major game companies the amount of profits would out number sales you might have not gotten in the first place.

Piracy also existed for a while. The PS2 didn't sink because people could play backups. The DS has high software sales and people pirate it. Look at the list of top number of sold games. The DS takes some spots. Good games would be over from piracy a long time ago if piracy could stop good games being developed.

There's also the fact that companies need to make profit. You can't make money if you just say we're not making any because of piracy. That will ruin you in this troubled economy. A game company can't suddenly choose a new way of income.

 

[tkls]

lol. Piracy has been around forever. It never has before

 

[spotanjo3]

That's stupid question. Piracy is going to be here FOREVER and FOREVER unless you believe in God and Armageddon is on the way one day accord to the bible. Come on. That's stupid question. It is going to be here forever!

 

[pantomime]

It's kind of funny. The game industry initially crashed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash) because there where too many games being produced (most where terrible) that might just have a liscense attached to it (E.T) and the arcade ports where terrible. Go to the arcade to play pacman, fire it up on your 2600 and get ready for a let down. It was next to impossible to pirate catridges back then. (PC gaming was a different story, although you would need a physical copy from a friend as well as photocopy the manuel (what is the 10th word on page 6 paragraph 2 line 7). Even then games like Kings Quest 4 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Quest_IV:_The_Perils_of_Rosella) sold over 1mil units and software was alot more exspensive back then. I think they just need to start focusing on content more then eye candy, leave that for the thetres.

 

[Joey Ravn]

What really hurts the industry, in terms of quality of games, is market trends. If most people buying videogames buy things like Ponyz XXXTreme 48: My stable cleaning crew 3, while good games like GTA:CW are left to rot on the shelves, developers will obviously make crappy-but-profitable games. They want money, after all.