Fri 16 Mar 2007
Piracy Kills Adventure Games
Posted by Bashar under Adventure, Entertainment, Finance, Video Games
The Longest Journey and Dreamfall are two successful adventure games that were developed by Funcom. Even though I could not bare to finish The Longest Journey, being on of the most buggiest and boring adventure games I’ve ever played, others have still loved it crazy and it got quite high reviews from the fans. It was followed by the anticipated part 2 Dreamfall game, and the company seemed to be doing quite well. Today however I read in the news that Funcom, the developer of the adventure game series have decided to abandon all “offline” games development, and will go for the MMO games instead. The main reason behind that decision they say is the high ratio of games piracy. They estimate that over 200,000 illegal downloads of Dreamfall were made before it was even released! They estimate also that for every copy they sell, 3 to 10 illegal copies are made.
The numbers they have are really scary, however not very far from truth I can tell. I can hardly find someone who buys original software in Kuwait. They are more embarrassing and difficult to get, not to mention ridiculously expensive as well. The game which is available online for $18 is in our market for 16 KD!, that’s more than 3 times the price. Nevertheless, the decision is a clear message to gaming fans, and especially adventure gaming fans, piracy is hurting business seriously, and it’s affecting the strategy and trend of games being developed. I remember someone who said once, don’t worry, there are xxxxx stupid people buying original copies we won’t be harmed. Well, it seems now we are. If it wasn’t for those piracy, Lucasarts might have never unplugged the host on adventure games, and we wouldn’t have to go through this complex license activation procedure for each and every Sam & Max episode release. Not to mention Telltale will not have to share extra money with the online licensing company. So by paying a little for the games we love, we are supporting even greater games to come. More of a Win-Win situation here.
Popularity: 65% [?]
March 16th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
This is why I support online distribution so much; it’s much harder to copy CDs that way. If a company created a system where you simply ordered the game online, for a cheap price (does this require a publisher?) and paid the cost of shipping and handling, it’d be a much more of a Win-Win situation. Why? Because pirates wouldn’t be able to get their hands on illegal games so easily, and sites like The Pirate Bay would not be able to afford entire countries. Besides, it’s CHEAPER.
Secondly, I’ve noticed that, with the introduction of things like Blu-Ray, piracy (in my country) has really dropped, and the only way to pirate, say, PSP games is to copy them on the PSP memory. It’s a good temporary solution for game developers.
There should be a new law on torrents, too.
There always seems to be a way around licensing, because I’ve seen this in front of my eyes: Half-Life 2 being activated without using Steam.
I don’t know. I need to think about this quietly.
March 16th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Well, online distribution is different than online gaming, and sadly people have posted on Telltale forum they managed to find crack keys for Sam & Max online so easily, so it still won’t serve the purpose.
Online gaming on the other hand will force you to pay your subscription, but it will mean changing the type of game.
As for Blu-Ray and all, it’s just a matter of time I believe before it’s also pirated.