Rant: Now Ubisoft is blaming piracy too

Rant: Now Ubisoft is blaming piracy too

The creative director at Ubisoft Shanghai has, while talking to VideoGaming247 (VG247), had a pop at the PC games market.

Michael de Plater has put the blame for PC games sales not being as good as their console counterparts squarely at the feet of the dread P-word: Piracy.

He said that the game his studio has been working on, Tom Clancy's EndWar, would have a concurrent release on PC if it wasn't for piracy.

"Piracy's basically killing PC," he told VG247. He said that PC piracy also affected sales on consoles, as people just get the 'free' illegal one instead of spending money on, say, the PlayStation 3 version.

Of course, while Mr de Plater's opinion is his own, it doesn't explain how a company like Stardock managed to sell more than a million copies of a space strategy game, Sins of a Solar Empire, despite the fact it had no anti-piracy measures whatsoever.

People could easily just 'steal' that game, but they didn't. The question is why - it is also a question many companies aren't even trying to answer, preferring to merely hide behind the "bloody pirates" excuse.

Clearly piracy is a bad thing, but just as clearly it isn't a reason why games don't sell.

Crysis is the main example hoisted up by games companies playing the piracy card, except it could easily be argued that people didn't buy the game for two reasons.

One, the game wouldn't run on their machines and therefore they were wary of spending money on a title they might be able to play.

Two, 'pirate' copies were often used to test whether point one was the case or not. As many have criticised Crysis's gameplay for a number of reasons, perhaps people also came to the conclusion that the game just wasn't as good as the hype made it out to be and therefore didn't go on to purchase the game after 'trying' the 'pirated' copy, who knows?

Sins of a Solar Empire ran well on lesser systems, while remaining graphically pleasant on high-powered ones. It had no copy protection and it was almost universally praised.

In short, it was a good game that people were confident would work and offer a good game experience. That is the difference between it and Crysis, beyond the obvious genre clash.

Another example is that set by Valve, achieving so much success with Half-Life, Team Fortress 2 and, hopefully, Left 4 Dead.

Why have they succeeded where others have failed? Can it be just due to Steam or do they know things we don't? Perhaps people feel the need to reward Valve for producing good games?

Or perhaps it is because a lot of their titles feature content that can't be pirated - online play in Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead (which has already smashed the Orange Box's pre-order records by a substantial margin) for example.

Think about it - the Total War games sell well, they have online modes that are very difficult to 'crack'. Try connecting to a Team Fortress 2 game without going through Steam and your copy being found to be illegal. Good luck with that one.

Why bother playing a cracked version of Audiosurf or Trials 2 without the online scoreboards?

At the end of the day, there are so many reasons why people do and don't buy games. People don't just (lots do, obviously) pirate games just because they can, it is far more complicated than that.

Some use it as a 'try-before-you-buy' service, making sure they don't waste money on a poor title.

EA are partly to blame for the increased caution of its fans, because of its perceived reputation for shoving half-finished games out of the door.

It's also worth looking at the fact many game developers are refusing to produce demos in advance of a game's release - it's quite difficult, I gather, to do this. But if they did, people might be tempted into pre-ordering or buying much closer to the release date, rather than paying 35 pounds 'blind' for a game they haven't been able to test or dabble with.

PC games owners are also unique in that they will often wait for a game to come down in price before purchasing, so initial sales aren't necessarily a 'big' thing.

It is interesting to note that Crysis has in fact gone over the million copies sold mark by a substantial margin, despite not selling that many copies in its first few weeks.

This could be because the game was so intensive, people just decided to wait until they'd upgraded and then purchased it.

The PC market is a much more long term one than the more immediate console equivalents - after all, PCs don't have a sales 'lifespan' in the same way the current generation consoles do. It just doesn't work in the same way, something people in the industry quite often forget.

A visit to the PC Zone forums, for example, reveals the Good Old Games service is receiving big support from players who are just as comfortable playing older titles as they are new.

Also, with some developers and company spokespeople saying that, because PC owners are more 'aware' of torrents and the ways in which to pirate games, is this not also an argument as to why games don't necessarily sell as well?

If the gamers are more aware of torrents, perhaps they are also more tuned in to what makes a 'good' game or a worthwhile investment of their hard-earned cash.

It is also clear that PC gamers are difficult to please as a whole - you don't ever get the same sort of mass fanboyism that the likes of Halo receive, even with games like World of Warcraft and Half-Life. Are standards higher or is that elitism? Who knows, but it is perhaps a question that could be looked at.

This rant was inspired by the comments of Michael de Plater, but it would be unfair to single him out for criticism - he is merely one more in an increasingly long line of industry commentators and bigwigs to adopt this latest line.

Essentially, this piece has only barely scratched the surface of the piracy issue and the reasons why games do and/or don't sell, but it is clear that just saying "I blame piracy" is far too simplistic an answer.

It would also be nice not to be treated like an idiot - piracy causes terrorism, pirate copies are of inferior quality etc etc. This suggests an industry so lacking confidence in its audience that it feels 'we can't afford to keep making these things if you won't pay your way' is too subtle an answer.

Nor, for that matter, does anyone find piracy socially unacceptable - rather like insurance fraud, it's seen as a victimless crime, and no amount of patronising knock-off Nigel ads will change that.