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Infinity Ward Amazed by Rampant PC Piracy

Shacknews, by Chris Faylor, Jan 15, 2008:

In his blog, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward's community relations manager fourzerotwo was shocked to discover an unexpectedly high number of PC players who were running pirated copies of the game and playing online.

Fourzerotwo posted his discovery under the heading "They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More" in his blog. Exact figures regarding the piracy of Cod4 were not disclosed, though fourzerotwo promises to provide them if able.

id Software and Epic Games also noted that they were pursuing multiplatform development due to rampant piracy of their PC titles.

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shacknews.com

Alternative Sources:

PC piracy levels are "... - gamepro.com | By: Cyrus365

Call of Duty Dev 'Blown Awa... - gamedaily.com | By: Cyrus365

The Round Peg - contributor
Published: 717 days 2 hours ago | News | Gaming | PC | Industry News | Dev News

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Winter47th - 717 days 3 hours ago

1 - "They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More"

Yup, more nails on the PC coffin are added by the day.

PC gaming's not dying, maybe, but it sure as hell ain't thriving 'Check Crysis sales, the MOST important game of the year for the PC', and it gets worse on a yearly bases, can't imagine what PC gaming would've been if it weren't for Blizzard.

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Charlie2688 - 717 days 2 hours ago

1.1 -

I find that PC gaming is not really dying but moving on to a different type focus which I find primarily to be Multiplayer focused games or basically games that force you to have a legit copy to play

that is why MMOs are coming out of the walls this days and many other games have some sort of online connectivity all aimed at forcing the player to have a legit copy

I have also found that "piracy" has become a standard for quick access to games cuz I have several friends of mine that have the money and have even bought some pretty expensive PCs and yet download games thru torrents cuz for then its "faster and easier" to get games and I also noticed services like STEAM are helping since they give the facilities of the torrents and they are still legit

I think for PC we wont start seeing so many single player focus games as they were before cuz this ones seem to be moving to the consoles but instead we will see an invasion of MMOs and forced online games

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Winter47th - 717 days 2 hours ago

1.2 -

Well put, but if this's a transition period, as stated, then it's not appealing according to many, people expected Crysis sales to be huge, but it came out underwhelming even though it gained critical acclaim, the result ? consolization, STALKER, UTIII, World in Conflict, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, Far Cry2, Deus EX3, Orange Box, you name it.

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VirusE - 717 days 2 hours ago

1.3 -

9 million wow players disagree with you.

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1.4 WilliamRLBaker | 717 days 1 hour ago - User only got 1 bubble - Show

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gamesR4fun - 717 days 1 hour ago

1.5 - ya and pc gaming industry is making more than ever..

so what most of the cash is coming from games like WOW. Fact is unless you offer a pay for service you control you have to accept some piracy. Even so games stil make money if there good look at Oblivion no copyright protection and one of the best selling games of all times. Most of us will still rather buy the games with all the bells and whistles than just use a pirated copy unless the game is mediocre generic crud...

That and gamers are getting tired of the same old same old fps if UT3 would've hit 3 or 4 years ago it be twice as big as ut2004 but now the markets so saturated with fps...

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Statix - 716 days 12 hours ago

1.6 -

How is WOW dominating the PC industry a good thing? All it means is basically one company, Blizzard, totally monopolizing the PC market and cannibalizing other developers. What this basically results in is the warding off other developers from making games for the platform, and thus less and less variety of high-quality games.

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PS360WII - 717 days 2 hours ago

2 -

Yeah I guess we have to thank PC gamers for loving torrents a bit to much otherwise Epic, id, and so many more wouldn't have made the change to make console games as well.

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Winter47th - 717 days 2 hours ago

2.1 -

Right on the wound brotha, what's ironic is that those who are the reason for many companies to consolize their IPs due to intense piracy are the same people who are defending PC Gaming, they're living in a shell of denial, constantly stating PC Superiority though nobody gives a $h!t about how superior it is, while the fact remains, companies want profit, PC Gaming's profits are declining, therefor, it's consoles all the way.

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Silvia007 - 717 days 1 hour ago

2.2 - Winter

as if consoles are soooo impossible to mod. There will always be bad people. Only thing we can do is do the right thing. If it's not enough, well, be prepared to do what we did as kids for entertainment. Play cops and robers outside with your friends.

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Winter47th - 717 days 1 hour ago

2.3 -

It's not a matter of impossibility, but how much of a counter-measures are being taken to make it a b!tch of a decision to go the mod way, mainly, it's online privileges, patches, free demoes/trailers, and frequent FW updates that results in Banning or what have you.

On the PC the only sacrifice is online play, other than that, it's as easy as a few clicks to download your desired game and you got nothing to worry about but to wonder why your Bittorrent speed's not 600Kbps, that's why piracy's a big problem for companies, there's simply nothing stoping those downloaders from D/ling their 3-years-of-sleepless-nights-of -hard-work but their morality.

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Silvia007 - 716 days 20 hours ago

2.4 - yeah,

Piracy is a much easier deal on the PC. Unfortunately consoles will be easier and easier to mod. Look at the latest PS2 mod. Uses a memory card...

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season007 - 717 days 2 hours ago

3 - here is my guess...

Only few K&B intensive game would be left for PC such as strategic, possibly FPS that needs really fast and broad control of things.....

and for most other it will be console titles, casual goes Wii, FPS goes xbox360, while PS3 have it all...

and for MMORPG, it would really depend on how the controls are for the game...

OFF TOPIC: anyone played UO? i really like the game because you can build your own house and invite friends over...decorate it while you can go kill some people too..if HOME gives me the the same flexibility at my HOME...i am on the boat (and of course if the character don't just gather around and you can actually do some more things with it, it would be great)

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Cartesian3D - 717 days 2 hours ago

3.1 - lol

kill someone in virtual world..joey tribbiani: "Cooool"

I want to be a Serial killer in HOME.. I cant be in real world because its illegal.

jk ( we must say JK after our joke, because there is some guys here who take everythin serious..)

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ip-student - 717 days 2 hours ago

4 - Pirates

I know there is a large number of pirated games (and I don't condone the copyright violation). But you cannot steal a digital copy - the only question is what percentage of those pirated copies would become paying customers if they couldn't have obtained a free copy. I personally think the number of pirated copies doesn't come close to directly relating to the amount of sales lost - if it costs nothing you don't mind giving it a try - if it costs $50 you might pass.

But still, the open nature of the PC platform and the ease at which games can be pirated just further hastens the decay of PC gaming (not the death because at least casual games should continue). In fact, I think the reason PC gaming has been promoted at all is because it used to be a powerful way to get people to upgrade their computer. Once you don't need to upgrade your computer to play games it is amazing how long you can get by with an old computer. That has to greatly concern Intel, AMD, Nvidia and MS (and all the other PC vendors).

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Diabloz - 717 days 2 hours ago

5 -

Why cant they just banned them from online play?

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beaner71481 - 717 days 2 hours ago

5.1 -

no way of telling who has the pirated version due to key cracks, its really whoever registers the key first, F.E.A.R. tried to do that and it ended up with people buying the game in the store/retail form and not being able to play online on pc due to someone generating and registering their key.

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MK_Red - 717 days 2 hours ago

6 -

Well, this is more proof showing why PC sales are so much dominated by WoW. It is not that people don't play PC games, it is that they play mostly pirated copies and MMOs are the only genre that can't be pirated like the rest.

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VirusE - 717 days 2 hours ago

6.1 -

Wow is a good reason to be a pc gamer. It is fun as hell. Scary addictive but fun as hell.

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solar - 717 days 1 hour ago

6.2 -

sorry VirusE, i cant agree with WoW being that fun. ever healed a raid. now thats boring. :D

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Dark_Overlord - 716 days 22 hours ago

6.3 - Sorry MK_Red

but I have to disagree with you, MMO's can be pirated (quite easily actually) with the help of private servers. Just google world of warcraft private server and you'll see what I mean.

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MK_Red - 716 days 20 hours ago

6.4 -

I'm with solar here. Personally I hate MMO RPGs and find them insanely dull and boring. The only one I kinda liked was Guild Wars back but now even that looks pretty bad to me. WoW and MMOs delieverd hugest possible blow to PC singleplayer RPGs and as a result, we've had unbelievably less classic singleplayer PC RPGs which dominated PC back in 90s from Fallouts to Baldur's Gates.
Aside from TES and NWN series, there hasn't been a popular singleplayer RPG on the PC market while every year more than 5 big budget MMOs are released and most of the fail to live up to their hype (Vangaurd, Archlord & more).

Dark_Overlord, I see but at least it's much harder to pirate than other PC games IMO.

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Charmers - 717 days 1 hour ago

7 -

You have to laugh at the cheek of Infinity Ward, they produce a game that has in total 5 hours of single player action for £40 ($80) then they scream "piracy". I have to wonder who the real thieves are here. However for the record I didn't "steal" COD4 nor did I buy it, it is a game that has no interest for me. There is nothing special about COD 4, it is just another generic run of the mill online fps. If a company wants my money it has to offer me a damn sight more than 5 hours of gameplay.

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gamesR4fun - 717 days 1 hour ago

7.1 -

ya i rented it for ps3 very nice graphics kinda makes a statement about the us wars if you look for it...
but the online was crud on psn so I bought ut3 instead cant say i regret it ;)

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Statix - 716 days 12 hours ago

7.2 -

White the story mode might be short, but the fun and addictive multiplayer makes up for it in countless hours of gameplay. According to my account, I've logged around 3 days of total play, which is like, what, 72 hours total play time?

Plus, you really should replay the game over again in harder difficulty levels. Try getting through the game in Veteran, NO ONE will complain that it's a short game then.

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LJWooly - 717 days 1 hour ago

8 -

I was a WoW zombie for a couple of months, but my PC lagged like hell, and completely ruined the experience for me.

So, I have my piece of sh!t computer to thank for snapping me right out of my addiction, and there is no way i'm going back there again.

Anyone else here a WoW zombie?

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solar - 717 days 1 hour ago

8.1 -

i was for 8 months while i was on probation, then the moment i was off i quit the game. its very boring. if your not in a high level guild you miss story arcs. ive seen what the game can do to ppl. its ugly.

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LJWooly - 717 days 1 hour ago

8.2 -

And ugly it is, friend. People lose their career, education, health, relationships, etc. over Warcraft. And in some of the more 'extreme' cases, their health can even detereiorate completely. Ugly indeed.

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Lew_Ijgee - 717 days 1 hour ago

8.3 - I was a WoW zombie.

I was one since the retail street date. I quit cold turkey before BC was released. However, that was after I had played enough to aquire five level sixty characters. Then I restarted about one month before BC was released. I leveled two characters to seventy and another one to sixty-two. That is 502 levels not including any characters that never reached level fifty or higher. I have since quit again and this time for the last time, and I have also vowed to myself to never play another MMORPG (atleast not one that I have to pay a monthly fee for) because I never want for games to have that much control of my time again.

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LJWooly - 717 days ago

8.4 -

Woah, man, that is bad, lol.

I'm never playing WoW again...

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solar - 717 days ago

8.5 -

Lew is right. the game takes way to much time from your everyday life. if they made an MMO that didnt require so much damn time, id be interested. but having to travel so much and for so long is a drag. sigh....

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Rooted_Dust - 717 days 1 hour ago

9 - ....

The whole reason it continues is because people are allowed to get away with it. I personally have never used a pirated game, because I would like developers to keep making PC games. I don't believe this is a problem for Valve with Steam being able to know who bought what software.

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BrotherNick - 717 days 1 hour ago

10 -

I didn't know FPS shooters could be hacked for multiplayer, not that I will. That sucks for people who bought the game though and can't use it online, did COD4 use an algorithm to make the keys? that's a no no.

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jorellpogi - 717 days 1 hour ago

11 -

Software piracy here in southeast asia is so prevalent.

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name - 716 days 18 hours ago

12 -

IMO PC gaming should be taken over by the indie developers. Console gaming is being consumed by mega coroprations and it's almost manditory for small companies to merge, unless they're first or second party companies.(insomniac, naughty dog, sucker punch etc) PC gaming should be tooken over by indie devs, the modding community, and just people who wanna make games for the hell of it.

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jackdoe - 716 days 18 hours ago

13 -

Lol. IW should be more amazed by the number of disgruntled consumers who are pissed off at their seeming inablity to make the fvcking multiplayer work after three months.

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