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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.
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
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.
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.
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Luckily, nobody who pirated Crysis 2 had a system powerful enough to run it, so actually the game wasn't ever successfully pirated.
== Jez ==
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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.
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?
..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