Crytek, Epic lost billions of dollars because of piracy.

[Noja87]

Crytek, Epic lost billions of dollars because of piracy.

Zagreb (Croatia) - My former colleague Igor “Iggy” Gajic got the chance to interview Cevat Yerly, co-founder and CEO of Crytek. During the interview, Yerly was keen on keeping the lid of future projects, but he did not refrain himself from stating his views about the current state of PC gaming industry.

Said Yerli, “We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy, to the degree [that PC gamers who] pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won't have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore."

This statement confirms the attitude a lot of game developers discussed earlier this year at the 2008 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA. We spoke with Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games, and learned that the Unreal Tournament 3 servers received over 40 million attempts at illegitimate access using pirate keys. That number is huge, and the real magnitude comes when you calculate the retail price of $49.99 (59.99 for Collector's Edition).

If those 40 million players actually paid the full price, it would have been nearly $2 billion more in Epic’s pocket book. That is more than the quarterly sales results from Nvidia or AMD. To add another perspective, the government lost out as well, because no sales tax is earned on pirated copies.

When you take into account that Crytek saw similar levels of pirated copies, it is easy to see how big of a deal gaming piracy is. Between two games there were billions of dollars of lost sales. The natural instinct is of course to hit the platform(s) where they can actually earn money, which is looking less and less favorable for PC gaming.

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And i know who to blame! this guys! ---> Ban them all!!!

But seriously, thats a lot of money =|

[Dcollins85]

Originally Posted by Noja87

Between two games there were billions of dollars of lost sales. The natural instinct is of course to hit the platform(s) where they can actually earn money, which is looking less and less favorable for PC gaming.

Ouch! That's a big hit for any company. Somehow it's hard to believe that that is all due to piracy... Makes you think about it.

[StriderVM]

Again.... Blaming piracy for anything.... While the actual game they're talking about can't be run by 95% of the current PC in active use.....

.... And they always talk about like there's no PS2/Gamecube/Wii/X360 "backups" ...... *sigh*

[Cid Highwind]

again flawed reasoning there: not every attempt can be seen as a loss,many wouldnt buy it otherwise because of their financial position,like in 3rd world countries or kids with a 2 weekly allowance. Crysis shot themselves in the foot with the sysreqs.No one buys a game that may not run well.When downloading this is less of an issue.

And the tax thing is just proof this news bulletin is pure propaganda:the money will now be spend elsewhere like on an 8800Ultra.The only tax threat would be importing games.

[Cheesus]

Wait, does this mean that there's going to be no Crysis 2?

They couldn't port Crysis(1) to the PS3 and Xbox 360, how exactly are they going to make the 2, which supposedly will have better textures and animations, run on current gen consoles??

[Noja87]

I guess Crysis 2 for the consoles will be Downgraded a lot and the PC version will be the best looking one. But if they do that, then why not downgrade Crysis 1 and port it to consoles to make some more profit? i really don't know. Thats a good point you have there >>

[refraction]

stupid reasoning, if they opened their eyes theyd realise, past the glorious graphics, the game wasnt exactly ground breaking, pretty much just another-fps-game. Admittedly i pirated it, but its now sitting happily along side my other games on my shelf in its original box, cos i figured it would be worth the money. So saying cos piracy statistics are high, doesnt mean nobody went out n bought it.

Long story short, its nice, but not the stunner "omg is this really a game" that we were all originally expecting.

[Phil]

Yeah i second you there. When i saw the first crysis screens i was shocked. when i played it........um what happened?

[Thanakil]

"Similar games on consoles sell 4-5 times more" (or something similar to that)


Obviously... BECAUSE PEOPLE CAN PLAY THEM.
Sell a game for top-of-the-end hardware and expect sales to be low.
Sell a game for a console with almost 20M consoles sold and OBVIOUSLY people will be able to play it easily. THEY GOT THE HARDWARE FOR IT.

[Cid Highwind]

Originally Posted by Cheesus

Wait, does this mean that there's going to be no Crysis 2?

They couldn't port Crysis(1) to the PS3 and Xbox 360, how exactly are they going to make the 2, which supposedly will have better textures and animations, run on current gen consoles??

Actually, I think I read that there will be a port. Perhaps it'll be dumbed down, but it's possible, even if that means that they'll have to butcher it like they had to rape Mafia to run on the PS2.

Anyway Refraction, I remember that Crysis was in the #1 position in stores everywhere here as well. It probably sold really well, but of course that doesn't take away the fact that it could've sold a lot more if every pirate "would have" bought it. They have a point, but at the same time they over simplify things to the point of it being mere propaganda in order to get politicians to tighten laws to allow for more lawsuits, which is mainly a publisher's doing, not that of developers. But I don't even think I needed to explain that to you in such detail

[Noja87]

I think the game sold in total like 60ks and thats it. Not sure. Last time i heard about the game was that article from gamespot saying the game had only sold 45ks in the first couple of months.

EDIT:

A quick search on google and found out the game sold almost 90k last November. So maybe the game reached the 100ks units sold by now =\

[Phil]

dang.....compared to ff12, which sold 1.2 million in pre orders.....wow

[cottonvibes]

Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more.

the reason could be that...
1) Most people don't have a Gaming PC strong enough to run games like Crysis.
2) Most gamers already own a console, and like to play games on that instead of a PC.

learned that the Unreal Tournament 3 servers received over 40 million attempts at illegitimate access using pirate keys.

The keyword here is "attempts", this biased article makes it appear as though 40 million people trying to pirate the game.

A typical Pirater could have tried as much as 20 keys each, significantly lowering the count to 2 million people.

If those 40 million players actually paid the full price, it would have been nearly $2 billion more in Epic’s pocket book.

not true because,
1) Like said above, its not really 40 million players as the same people used multiple keys.
2) Piraters would rather just not buy the game and not play, than buy the game and waste their money.
Theres a reason people pirate games, usually because they don't have $50 to spend on a crapy game like crysis that won't even run correctly on any PC thats out.

[Cheesus]

AFAIK Crysis just broke the million mark. But compared to other games, even really crappy ones, its pretty disappointing...

In the first few weeks it only sold like 80k, which is quite the anti-climax considering this was supposed to completely revolutionize PC gaming (which IMO it has).

But as stated before, while piracy may have been an issue, I highly doubt that was why it wasn't such a hit. A cheap mod to the Xbox 360 can get you all the pirated things in the world... I don't see how anyone willing to spend enough cash on something to get crysis to run is not going to spend $20 on the Xbox.

Honestly, I think that this is just an indication of the gradual death of PC exclusives. In the long run its just cheaper to buy a console and have it run everything its designed for without the need to upgrade constantly. While I doubt PC gaming will ever die entirely, most games will probably end up being ports, so not that very many companies will ever use the PC to its full potential. Rather sad really...

SPOILER: Highlight text to view.

Toms Games just released a video regarding this

[Noja87]

Hey its true. Didn't know. VG charts don't have any info on the games sales.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/99...exceed-million

[cottonvibes]

Originally Posted by Cheesus

AFAIK Crysis just broke the million mark. But compared to other games, even really crappy ones, its pretty disappointing...

In the first few weeks it only sold like 80k, which is quite the anti-climax considering this was supposed to completely revolutionize PC gaming (which IMO it has).

Most people don't have PC's strong enough to run crysis. So that explains its poor sales.

Originally Posted by Cheesus

Honestly, I think that this is just an indication of the gradual death of PC exclusives. In the long run its just cheaper to buy a console and have it run everything its designed for without the need to upgrade constantly. While I doubt PC gaming will ever die entirely, most games will probably end up being ports, so not that very many companies will ever use the PC to its full potential. Rather sad really...

pc games will never die out.

For an indie-developer, the PC is the easiest platform to code games for.

Making a game for the PS3 for example, requires a compiler provided by sony and a similator and debugger to test games on.
This is stuff that the indie-developer can't get his hands on.


maybe the major game companies will stop developing for the PC, but there will always be people making PC games.

[John Aiton]

Originally Posted by Noja87

And i know who to blame! this guys! ---> Ban them all!!!

But seriously, thats a lot of money =|

Yarrrr, I buy all me own games matey

[PCXL-Fan]

Here's the problem with that dumbass theory of theirs.

If pirating was impossible, the majority of those people wouldn't have purchased the game anyways. They get it cuz its free. Once you start charging $60 for the game, many people have many other things they'd rather spend the money on.

[Thanakil]

Originally Posted by cottonvibes

For an indie-developer, the PC is the easiest platform to code games for.

Making a game for the PS3 for example, requires a compiler provided by sony and a similator and debugger to test games on.
This is stuff that the indie-developer can't get his hands on.


maybe the major game companies will stop developing for the PC, but there will always be people making PC games.

The new trend is making games for the 360 arcade (they're getting more and more support from MS) or now, the Wii-ware, who is affordable/easy/has nice support too.

But they still definitely make those games for the PC too usually.

[cottonvibes]

Originally Posted by Thanakil

The new trend is making games for the 360 arcade (they're getting more and more support from MS) or now, the Wii-war