Widescreen Gaming Forum

e.g.: the lazy(crytek) blame pirates for their buggy overpriced trash and the good(stardock) thrive without even putting up any copy protection ...

Sounds to me like you're rationalizing after the fact by attributing "bad" to a dev who failed and "good" to a dev that succeeded. The overwhelmingly positive reception of Crysis does *not* suggest to me at all that it's "buggy overpriced trash." A more objective observation on the differences would be that Crysis is a big budget game and Sins of a Solar Empire is a low budget game. Crysis sold a lot more copies than Sins, so it's really a fallacy to suggest that Sins' comparative success has anything to do with things Stardock did that you perceive as having generated more sales. Compared to Crysis, they didn't.

You're not gonna win sales by screwing our systems, and we are the ones paying you.

How do you figure Crytek is screwing our systems?

He just feels like crying because he can't turn the settings up at all. But that is one thing that Crytek wanted to do with that game, it is scalable with the hardware, as hardware evolves in the next few years gamers systems will live up to those absolutely amazing screenies of crysis at super max everything.

Sins of a solar empire was not made by stardock, only published by them.

Crytek has made buggy games more then just crysis, and so those 2 were plain examples, plenty more are around, I was simply stating that I find it useful for piracy to give me a way to see bad devs, shown by their own 'cry against piracy' no less. -edit- actually, it runs at smoothly, I just don't play trash.

You are failing to recognize the difference between the example part and the more general concept I tried to convey. In which case. I won't reply further, may those who understood it properly be blessed.

Sins of a solar empire was not made by stardock, only published by them.

Everything I said about Sins also applies to GalCiv II.

Crytek has made buggy games more then just crysis,

Crytek has made exactly two PC games. Far Cry and Crysis. Furthermore, this topic is about the latter.

I was simply stating that I find it useful for piracy to give me a way to see bad devs, shown by their own 'cry against piracy' no less.

Stating a conclusion isn't good enough - you need the facts and the logic used to reach that conclusion too or else it's meaningless.

You are failing to recognize the difference between the example part and the more general concept I tried to convey.

Your "general concept" is devoid of logic and meaning. Bad devs protest digital thievery, and good devs don't even use basic protection against it. That's your "general concept," and all it has going for it is the one example you provided, and as I pointed out, it isn't a good one.

I think Crytek isn't happy that their game didn't sell 300 billion copies with their only platform as a PC like they thought it would, and is using piracy as a cop out to switch over to consoles. Piracy is just as possible on consoles as it is on PCs so I really don't believe their whole sob story. Just like most other developers, they probably realized the VAST majority of college frat boys who are likely to play their games do what? Play on an Xbox 360.


Just because your game looks so damn amazing doesn't make up for a mediocre (In my opinion) story, mediocre AI, and a money grubbing scheme in the form of a trilogy, rehashing the same assets from Crysis in Crysis 2 and Crysis 3, thereby saving tons of money and still charging 50$ for each successive game.

Sounds familiar.

I played the demo, though, "Wow, waht a game! I'm-a gonna- buy it!"

So i pre-ordered. Then it came to a torrent site 3 days earlier.

I finished it the first day.

I was very let down.

I got my money back.

I deleted my download.

Hey, I saved sixty bucks!

I realy wish demos would do full games justice these days.. i loved Far Cry so much (and still do) I as expecting something more spectacular.

Then again some games never need a demo, like the GTA series. I bought them ALL and love them all. I also pre.."obtained" teh last two and got it from a store later. The Half-Life games also burned a hoel in my wallet.

I really wish we could just avoid giving money away for printing, middle-men, distribution, etc.. I'd prefer to just pay the developers directly.

Piracy is just as possible on consoles as it is on PCs so I really don't believe their whole sob story.

Except they aren't doing this to avoid the "possibility" of piracy. They're doing this to avoid *ACTUAL* piracy. I think you're bothered just enough by the fact that piracy is devastating to the industry that you need to pretend it it isn't true, and you'll look for any excuse to dismiss the testimony from a dev that's been hurt bad by it.

Hey, I saved sixty bucks!

You didn't *save* anything. You played through Crytek's game all the way to the end and then cheated them out of THEIR sixty bucks. If you were concerned about length, you could have waited for it to actually come out, and then asked others who got it first how long the game really was. But dismissing something as being not worth your money after you've already played it all the way through without spending a dime is not cool.

As I said, piracy ain't nice, but it is here to stay, no matter what draconian drm or other 'anti-piracy' method they come up with next. In the end only paying customers get burned by those.

Yes it costs devs sales, but not as many as they sometimes claim, or for the reasons they boil over either.

These days I tend to not even consider games without demos, I've bought too many crappy games based on trailers only to find they have idiotic controls or totally insignifigant production values.

My point is, devs that claim piracy is their only justification to do so and so action, to me mean they found a scapegoat for their own failures. Similar to how all killings are because of videogames.

In crytek's case I found it more of a 'me-too' thing too, since ID and Epic had already said similar cases hadn't they?

As I said, piracy ain't nice, but it is here to stay, no matter what draconian drm or other 'anti-piracy' method they come up with next.

That's why they're abandoning the PC ship. But piracy would damn near vanish from the USA if they'd make it a summary offense and actually go after people who download.

Yes it costs devs sales, but not as many as they sometimes claim, or for the reasons they boil over either.

What makes you think you know better than they do?

My point is, devs that claim piracy is their only justification to do so and so action, to me mean they found a scapegoat for their own failures.

And I'm saying that your point isn't a reflection of facts, but seems to be more a reflection of what you wish were not true.

In crytek's case I found it more of a 'me-too' thing too, since ID and Epic had already said similar cases hadn't they?

And why should you doubt them? Are these three companies so different that it's impossible to believe that piracy wouldn't affect all of them in similar ways? Or that their conclusions on the subject should all be different?

Abandoning the PC platform is probably the best available anti-piracy measure that exists today. It's not perfect (far from it!) but is the best one that exists.

Console piracy is a tricky business, especially on Xbox 360. First you have to mod your console, something that a lot of people don't know or are not willing to do. Then you risk being banned from the only on-line connectivity available on that platform. Fine, you say, you don't play on-line titles, you don't care about Xbox live. Then you find out that Xbox has as much as 30% failure rate, so you are playing with your warranty because of a stupid pirated game.

Now compare this to PC piracy that comes with zero risk, zero cost.

I am actually surprised that it took Crytek so long to realize it. Epic already did it (Gears of War), Valve did it (there's no difference between the PC and Xbox version of the OrangeBox) Id software is about to do it (just read all their latest interviews where it's quite clear that Id is concentrating on console development, my guess is that "Rage PC" will end up being just another "port" from the consoles), Bethesda did it (Oblivion was and the new Fallout 3 will be a port from consoles), Bioware did it (Jade Empire, Mass Effect) and now finally Crytek admits it will follow too.

An interesting side effect of all this is that Crysis 2, if it appears during current console generation, is probably going to be a lot less impressive than its predecessor. Crytek repeatedly said that Crysis (in its current PC form) cannot be ported to consoles because of its hardware requirements, so if Crysis 2 does appear on consoles, we should not expect anything as good as the current episode.

It seems like the only advantages of PC games (as compared to consoles) will be higher screen resolution and more detailed textures, both of which are completely irrelevant on consoles where you play at 1280x720. PC platform is no longer the main choice for FPS nor RPG games. MMORPG and RTS are the only PC-centric genres left.

As a PC-only gamer myself, I really hate this recent tendencies where all the good PC games developers are leaving off to console world, but I understand why they are doing it, and I must admit that if I was at their place, I would probably do the exact same thing.