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Crysis 2 Most Pirated Game of 2011
MojoKid writes "When an advance copy of Crysis 2 leaked to the Internet a full month before the game's scheduled release, Crytek and Electronic Arts (EA) were understandably miffed and, as it turns out, justified in their fears of mass piracy. Crysis 2 was illegally download on the PC platform 3,920,000 times, 'beating out' Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 with 3,650,000 illegal downloads. Numbers like these don't bode well for PC gamers and will only serve to encourage even more draconian DRM measures than we've seen in the past."
I wish there was some way to correlate between the illegal down loaders and the DRM whiners. Is it 5% or 95%?
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
DRM never effects the pirates, just the paying users,,,,
Numbers like these don't bode well for PC gamers and will only serve to encourage even more draconian DRM measures than we've seen in the past.
Thus only punishing customers who paid, not the people downloading the game illegally and applying a crack.
Makes perfect sense
How, exactly, will "more draconian DRM" prevent the leaking of games before their official release date?
If you're in a position to leak a pre-release build out, you're probably also in a position to strip out or disable any DRM
Was there even any DRM in the leaked game, seems like that's the last thing you'd add in
Nobody wants to actually PLAY the stupid thing, they just want to see how their new video card performs.
Is it a smokescreen for pricing changes?
Example:
You have a PS3, you're used to paying $60 for a new game or whatever the average actually is.
You have a PC, you're used to paying $60 for a new game, except when you plug in your ipod/iphone and play a new $0.99 game. Hmm why am I paying sixty times more for some games than others?
On /. we know why the iphone game costs a bit less due to technical knowledge of how they're made and what goes into them. That is of course completely irrelevant to the general public, who merely know that "a couple hours of fun with a new game" sometimes costs $60 and sometimes costs $1.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
As shown on http://www.destructoid.com/crysis-2-huge-success-xbox-360-dominates-sales-197396.phtml XBox made up 57% of the sales, 29% for PS3 and PC only 14%. Probably in part to the 3 million downloads of the game via torrents.
You could just use: http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/intro.aspx
As of June 30, 2011 over 3 million copies of the game have been sold across all platforms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crysis_2#cite_note-62
From the top torrent sites, they search for the torrents on there and look at the publicly available statistics of times the torrent file has been downloaded, hence the word estimated.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a multiplayer game - as far as I know the cracked game will NOT let you play in multiplayer mode... so the majority of the people that downloaded the game probably purchased legal keys or stuck to playing the single player mode or playing with friends in LAN.
Basically, the download acts as DEMO, incentive to buy the access to the multiplayer mode, and it definitely does not mean that a download equals a lost sale.
As for Crysis 2, I'm not sure how many of those downloads were just to "benchmark" their video cards...
Even so, even if a large part of the downloads were pirates, it doesn't mean lost money... it just means they don't make as much money as they wanted. I know in my own case I'm currently taking advantage of every Steam sale to buy games I pirated and enjoyed in the past - I couldn't afford spending 40 euro on a game but now I have no problems paying 5-10 euro for each of the STALKER games, for example.
I currently have over 200 games bought, in the Steam account.
EA's decision to foist it's totalitarian-steam-wannabe on it's PC customers pretty much guarantees it will see even greater levels of piracy in the future.
Paying for a game I can get for free is one thing, paying to get metaphorically raped by a games publisher is another.
In my view there are 99% chances that developers might be involved in the early release!
I know Crysis has no demo, and BF3 only had the beta; I believe none of the top five games pirated has a demo.
It would be interesting to compare games with a good demo, and those which have none; I'd bet there would be quite a difference.
Also, interestingly, Crysis 2 is only present in the top 5 for PC, and does not appear in the Xbox top 5, which would led some credence to the benchmark argument.
BTW, the original TorrentFreak article is here.
http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-games-of-2011-111230/
Massively overestimated, almost certainly. It's not at all uncommon to download a torrent from three or four sites before you find one with enough seeders to finish in your lifetime. Conservatively, I suspect their estimates are high by at least a factor of two if that was their methodology.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
As pointed out, Crysis 2 had a big leak a month ahead of launch. For a month the *only* way to get your hands on it was through illicit download. People are impatient and took whatever means necessary to get their game (the game companies love this impatience, a lot of people drop full retail early on knowing the price will fall like a stone in just a few months).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Luckily, nobody who pirated Crysis 2 had a system powerful enough to run it, so actually the game wasn't ever successfully pirated.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
The real question is how many of those downloads results in later sales. We give away samples to hook future buyers. SOP.
The most stolen cars are the most popular. Do you think stealing cars has anything to do with sales? And for some strange reason I don't see a lot of car thieves asking to do away with car keys, perhaps they have an ounce of common sense?
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
MW3 appears to have sold about a million copies on PC, Crysis 2 has sold about 500,000.
Incidentally, Crysis 2 sold 1 million copies on xbox360, and 800,000 on the ps3. MW3 did 11.5 million on 360, and 9.2 million on PS3.
It's still hard to derive significant meaning. MW3 has a much bigger marketing push behind it and, frankly, Crysis 2 wasn't a particularly good game. It's initially interesting that Crysis 2 had such a higher rate of illegal downloading, *but* the leak ahead of launch explains that. It's impossible to tell if the month of availability ahead of 'launch' had a chilling effect on sales (my opinion is the sales look about in line with relative popularity with MW3, with the PC perhaps being kinder to Crysis than the console platforms in *relative* terms), and it's impossible to tell how many of those downloads coincided with a legitimate purchase (obviously less than 500k, but some do buy retail and then pirate for no-cd behavior or otherwise being free from DRM) and it's impossible to tell of the rest, how many would have *possibly* bothered to pay if they couldn't have gotten it for free.
Of course the one fact to take away: DRM does *nothing* except inconvenience legitimate users. Both titles were DRM encumbered and both were copied more than they were purchased. DRM does not impair those seeking it to copy in a *significant* way, but it does cause pain to your paying customers.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
One of their assumptions was that 5mbps was the AVERAGE download speed worldwide
There's a difference between "More DRM will help with this" (what I believe you think they said) and "The publishers will have a knee-jerk reaction of more DRM" (which is what I think they meant).
it did crappy, because EA removed it from steam shortly after release due to a contract dispute.
This, and only this, is the reason why.
They're using their grammar skills there.
They should embrace the valve model, especially since they don't have to deal with retail packaging, shipping, returns, etc and make it cheap, easy and convenient. I mean does anybody know how much money went through steam on the Xmas sale? i bet it was garbage trucks just full of money because its so simple and cheap, just "whip out CC, push button, get game'. The problem with "call of honor crysis edition" style games is the publishers have deliberately made their games to have no legs as everyone knows once "call of honor crysis edition II" comes out nobody will be playing the first one and since they are appealing to the "must win teh benches!" tards who frankly spend every last dime they can get on supercoolers for their massive OCs they simply don't spend $60 a pop on games that will be tossed next quarter.
Make it follow the valve model, give the game some real legs, and frankly they'll never have to give a wet fart what the benches tards do because that single game can be making them money year after year AFTER year. I mean how old is HL: Deathmatch now? valve was nice enough to throw it in for the fuck of it with the complete HL:2 pack I picked up on the sale and that thing STILL has tons of people playing it. They are also still selling and making cash on CS and Day of defeat and those things are older than dirt yet because they have legs they are still full of players.
I want to feel sorry for them but its kinda hard when you pick up the game in the $30 bin and find its deserted or worse EA has pulled the plug on MP which i think ought to at least force EA to put out a sticker to be placed on boxes saying MP doesn't work anymore. If they let folks host their own servers more and threw out the occasional update with a new map here or there for the older games then the long tail on sales would mean the benchtards could be ignored. Gabe had it right IMHO when he said to the effect "piracy is your competitor offering a better product" because that means the price is too high, the game doesn't have long enough legs, you simply aren't hitting the sweet spot. Now if you'll excuse me there is this one little shit in HL:DM that keeps jamming a rocket up my ass and i think I'm gonna introduce him to Mr Python. Kinda sad though when i've had more fun with a 10 year old game than I did the last "call of honor crysis edition" I played.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
As of end of Q1 FY2012, Crysis 2 sold 3 million copies ( http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=594196 ). Hoping we can infer from the first week sales the general proportions of sales, PC accounts for about 14% ( http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/crysis_2/news/crysis_2_is_eas_biggest_launch_of_the_year_so_far.html ).
So that's 420,000-ish copies on PC. What proportion of those torrents has to be a possible sale lost, for PC to be a viable game platform?
This is what the ignorant executives at software games companies don't understand. They can't really sympathize with those that pirate. They can't get in their heads. As "PC games" are reduced it will only motivate those sorts of people to move to rooted consoles. By rooted console I mean hacked to the point it's connected up to a PC for all it's input and output. Games will still be distributed over the internet and pirated. Nothing short of eliminating all existing computer network technology will prevent that.
The pity here is that the PC is the Superior game platform. So when PC version of a game is put up on the net there is little motivation or want for the console version of the game. But as the PC games disappear consoles become the new focus for pirates. Pirates are techies. The harder something is to do the more pride and status you get from doing it.
The weakest link to DRM is the internet. It only takes only one person to hack into a locked platform and then they share that information with everyone.
The Solution: The only strategy that will actually work is putting crackers on the payroll. As it is now they can't approach a company like Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft because of the "digital" IP laws these companies have pushed. It looks too much like extortion. But in truth that is the solution, to turn the resources and talent of the internet to your favor. Getting the crackers to fix the hardware and software themselves.
How you come up with an appropriate reward amount has to be open for negotiation. The companies and the crackers must be free to call each others negotiation bluffs without repercussions for the crackers. If the cracker won't accept a specific amount of money then he must be able to release details of his crack. The company can then handle the repercussions and then fix the crack themselves. The cracks are not kept secret, they are actually fixed. There is motivation to fix them. And the free market then decides what is fair compensation.
There then becomes an industry of "professionals" (even more motivated and talented) to not only develop security measures but to defeat them. They actually get a cut of the action. The current crackers doing it as a hobby then have no chance because if they had the ability they would be working for a professional cracking company or have their own.
In essence the problem doesn't actually exist. The entertainment companies are greedy and just don't want to pay that percentage. So they bully people through law suits and create laws that inhibit free speech and the free market economics. They would rather give the percentages to lawyers and politicians.
..the more sales slip between your fingers.
Please, by all means use more Draconian DRM on your games. I DO NOT HAVE TO BUY THEM, I PROMISE!
I don't pirate, either. Pirating a game would mean I actually liked it, but I won't even acknowledge the existence of games/companies which employ asinine DRM measures.
It is fast coming to the point where indie game quality is as good as, if not better than, AAA title quality. I'm happy to give my AAA title business to smaller indie devs who understand the concept of not punishing their customers because they live in a perpetual state of fear for their bottom line.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Where else were people going to get that game a month before release? Best Buy? Steam?
You can't cram a culture of consumption down people's throat, then act surprised when the consumption skyrockets past their artificial scarcity.
>I mean does anybody know how much money went through steam on the Xmas sale? i bet it was garbage trucks just full of money because its so simple and cheap,
I bought quite a few games on Steam during the sale, like many other people, no doubt.
I have both the means and knowledge to *easily* pirate any of the games I bought.
It would be trivial to pirate Crysis 2. I haven't and I haven't bought it because it isn't on Steam.
How many lost dollars and sales can EA put down to pulling their game from Steam as opposed to piracy? I doubt we'll ever hear about that.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
1. Big-name PC games used to be $50 (and some still are). Now most are $60, but there's no justification for the increase.
2. PC games used to be better than their console ports. Now, the consoles are the main platforms and the PC is the after-thought port.
3. DRM schemes have become progressively more annoying and intrusive (first you had to have a CD, then you had to activate online, then you could only activate a limited number of times, now you have to be online all the time).
4. DRM only impacts the legitimate, paying customer. There's no DRM that can't be cut out with some disassembly and a hex editor (or spoofed in some other way), so pirates don't have to deal with it.
5. Steam is the platform of choice for distributing PC games electronically nowadays, yet many primarily console-oriented producers refuse to embrace it.
I wonder why games get pirated?
Let EA go console-only from now on. That would be great! The economic demand for PC games will still be there, so some other companies (who understand how to market to PC owners without having to take control of their computers away from them in order to make money) will then be able to fill that void.
It would be a win all around.
XBox made up 57% of the sales, 29% for PS3 and PC only 14%
Of what? Of 1,000 copies? 1 million copies? They won't come out and say how many units were sold. IMHO it is because the number sold swamps the number downloaded.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Are we just swallowing these stats, like politicians automatically buy made-up industry dollar losses? How can this even be measured? Think about it. One site may be able to show a number of download attempts, but probably can't confirm success, nor begin to measure stats from other sites.
Bimbo Newton Crosby they NEVER mention the losses that came from losing steam. it has gotten to the point if it isn't just DIRT cheap on Amazon like the Kane & Lynch II I picked up for a dollar just to see if it stunk as bad as the reviews (it does BTW) I stick to Steam and GOG because.....why bother? Its "push button and get game" and while I too could have trivially pirated each and every single game i got on the Steam sale (I currently have 20 games in Steam with Hunted:Demon's Forge dloading which was gifted to me by my youngest who won AGAIN and decided that wasn't his cup o tea) which just FYI one of them I had pirated a couple of months before because the reviews said it was hit and miss with regards to System reqs and I wanted to see whether it would run decently.
So why I did I buy it and the 8 other games? they were cheap, they came with the DLC (which the pirate versions don't) they gave me MP, they are kept updated for me without me lifting a finger, in short because they gave me more value than piracy for my money and THAT is how you kill piracy, not with a club but with a cookie. Look at how fucking brilliant Valve was with the Steam sale, each day different objections which you just happened to have to see the front page with all the latest sales (including the countdown to their end of sale) to get to. I bought games i hadn't even thought of simply because i was going to get to the daily contest objectives (which BTW while myself and my oldest didn't win shit but some coal and coupons my youngest won four fricking games in four days and then logged onto his brother's box to help him finish his objectives and won AGAIN, from now on the little twerp is picking powerball numbers I swear to God) and I'd see some game and go "Hey that's a good game...what do you mean its $5? sold!" and the same thing happened with my boys, I'd get a text from the oldest in Steam that said "Hey Dark Athena is on sale and I really liked Butcher bay, would you mind?" which when I saw it had an HD Butcher Bay included bought it for myself as well, and the youngest just yesterday texted "Hey did you know L.A. Noir is on sale for $12.50? I'd kill for that game and promise i won't ask for more if you could get it for me, pretty please?"
So as I sit here downloading my free copy of Demon's Forge gifted to me by the youngest from his big pile of win on Steam I really have a hard time feeling sorry for poor old EA for getting pirated when they have been such douchebags with regards to their customers. Like I said I picked up one of the whole "Call of Honor Crysis edition" games when I spotted it in the $20 bin (MoH anniversary) and not only did they have all this hoop jumping just to get the things set up but when i finally get them all installed I hopped on MP just to give it a spin and they were ALL dead or deserted, every single one! That broke me of buying anymore EA shooters because i enjoy going back and having a little frag for fun and it was clear EA makes sure nobody is playing anything but "Call of Honor Crysis Edition II now with triple cost DLC" and that means the games have NO legs and thus no value for me. I mean when i can STILL get on Bioshock II and find people to throw plasmids at, or as I pointed out TEN YEAR OLD Valve games and find tons of people happily ramming rockets up each others asses that screams to me "this game has value! This is worth the money!" but EA do their damnedest to kill their old games when the nw comes out. Just look at their EOL list sometime and see how many games barely a year and a half old have their MP killed by EA.
And EA can shove Origin right up their asses as far as I'm concerned because it isn't shit compared to Steam and I doubt it ever will be. the horror stories are already pouring in of people having trouble with it and then when they go to point out problems getting banhammered and LOSING THEIR GAMES which I've NEVER heard of Valve doing EVER, only of banning those that cheat with wallhacks and other MP ruining troll crap from the game they w
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Fuck off with your fear mongering. It doesn't bode well for game vendors, because nobody NEEDS to buy their games.
Crysis 2 was highly pirated because it wasn't worth buying. Linear, scripted, aggravating and out of the box it didn't even look that good until they came out with a bandaid overlay to tack on some DirectX 11 features. That didn't make up for the lousy game though.
Same with Modern Warfare 3, which is absolutely the worst deal of any Call of Duty game to date. The campaign is a few hours long and the graphics are mediocre at best. It's a boring game, with a "more of the same shit" feel to it. The multiplayer is a drag too and the maps are boring. I didn't buy it, but I played it on my friend's Xbox. I finished the whole campaign while he was sitting on his computer playing World of Wankercraft then proceeded to multiplayer, to get aggravated by a bunch of pimple wizards.
What entitles them to payment of $60 for such rubbish? I'm sure that not everyone hates those two examples and would play them, but they wouldn't want to fork out that money.
"More draconian DRM" means even fewer sales. Some of these games are retarded. I bought Fable III through Steam without reading carefully enough. That it needs Steam is a given, but also it requires Games for Windows Live sign in to play it at all (which is a highly insulting and annoying waste of time) and if that isn't enough, it also has Securom even though it's not on optical media (They are using Securom for an additional method of restrictive product activation). Go fuck yourselves... it would have probably been easier to pirate that game.