Nice blog.
Piracy is fast becoming a mute point with better security and online distrobution systems like steam which has an almost 100% success rate of blocking piracy, not only that but they now have released their sdk FREE so anyone can make their games steam compatible and take advantage of the amazing security that comes along with it.
At the moment the main method of getting access to pirated steam games is actually thro stolen steam accounts, and thats no where near prollific enough to even dent steam sales.
Steam is the way forward, the sooner other developers realise this the better.
Piracy numbers are not accurate either, I can name at least 4 main UK based developers that have people watching mininova downlaod counts to see how many lost sales per hour they have, thats the most dumb thing iv ever heared of and I told them as much.
A lot of people will pirate a game to trial it, for the simple reason that Demos are normally lacking features, which should be there to allow a proper test, even worse some games come with much smaller custom demo levels which gives even less of an idea how the full product will run and play. people that do this will buy the game if it plays well and they like it. or uninstall the game if they dont. dont get me wrong there are A LOT of people that simply dont want to pay for games, lets face it, they wont buy the game even if they like it. so thats not a lost sale either.
A Report published in an industry magazine that we get at work a month or so ago showed that while Highstreet PC title sales were down on Xbox or console sales, when the report took Steam and a few other DD's into account , PC Sales dwarfed console sales for the year..
PC Sales are not falling, they are increaseing, the thing is that their becoming more digital, than highstreet. and a lot of people dont get that. HELL, the Reginal Manager for West of Scotland for one of the UK's BIGGEST highstreet gamesd shops HAD NO FKN IDEA who steam was. people like this need to wake up, and start paying attention to the always moving trends of the digital world. simply looking at highstreet sales and then claiming piracy this or piracy that isnt good enough any more.
Piracy is fast becoming a mute point with better security and online distrobution systems like steam which has an almost 100% success rate of blocking piracy, not only that but they now have released their sdk FREE so anyone can make their games steam compatible and take advantage of the amazing security that comes along with it.
At the moment the main method of getting access to pirated steam games is actually thro stolen steam accounts, and thats no where near prollific enough to even dent steam sales.
Steam is the way forward, the sooner other developers realise this the better.
Piracy numbers are not accurate either, I can name at least 4 main UK based developers that have people watching mininova downlaod counts to see how many lost sales per hour they have, thats the most dumb thing iv ever heared of and I told them as much.
A lot of people will pirate a game to trial it, for the simple reason that Demos are normally lacking features, which should be there to allow a proper test, even worse some games come with much smaller custom demo levels which gives even less of an idea how the full product will run and play. people that do this will buy the game if it plays well and they like it. or uninstall the game if they dont. dont get me wrong there are A LOT of people that simply dont want to pay for games, lets face it, they wont buy the game even if they like it. so thats not a lost sale either.
A Report published in an industry magazine that we get at work a month or so ago showed that while Highstreet PC title sales were down on Xbox or console sales, when the report took Steam and a few other DD's into account , PC Sales dwarfed console sales for the year..
PC Sales are not falling, they are increaseing, the thing is that their becoming more digital, than highstreet. and a lot of people dont get that. HELL, the Reginal Manager for West of Scotland for one of the UK's BIGGEST highstreet gamesd shops HAD NO FKN IDEA who steam was. people like this need to wake up, and start paying attention to the always moving trends of the digital world. simply looking at highstreet sales and then claiming piracy this or piracy that isnt good enough any more.