Piracy Killing PC Gaming?

1up reports on comments from Kevin Cloud, co-owner of id, saying that piracy is killing the PC games business. He says that, in most markets, it's hard to sell official products because pirates can beat them to market. From the article: "'It's the primary reason retailers are moving to the console,' Cloud said, continuing on to say that ways to reduce piracy are in the forefront of every PC developer's mind, and citing World of Warcraft's subscription-based nature as an example of a possible solution to the problem."

Comments

Piracy is not the problem

[Schemat1c]

Piracy is as old as PC games and used to be much easier, but the games sold just fine. The problem is price and the same old tired titles being pushed out over and over.

If they want to start selling games they should provide a downloadable version with a nice printable manual for at least $20 but no more than $30. What's the first thing I do when I bring a game home? Throw away all the dead tree except for the discs and the manual, and the manual follows about a week later. How much money would they save by not printing boxes and manuals, pressing cd's, packaging them and shipping all that garbage to the retail stores?

Plus the industry has plateaued, they need an injection of fresh ideas and talent. They have become formulaic just like the music and film industry. And just like those industries it will take a new wave of independent developers to shake things up.

Re:Exactly What you said -

[gadlaw]

And you're just another anonymous coward. If I have the particulars wrong about steam I do know all I need to know - that it farks up my computer. I don't need to put games on my computer to know what I'm hearing from everyone else. Idiot.