trivard676With all of the news surrounding the PS3 jailbreak, the Sony lawsuit against the people they feel are responsible, and all the fervor surrounding it, we feel that the Internet community is a little tired of hearing about PS3 piracy. Piracy has existed for a long time, and who of us ‘isn’t’ guilty of downloading a few songs here and there? There was even a time in our lives where we might have pirated a few games or two – hey, we’re all human. We all ‘want’ things that we might not be able to afford. We might also have had a point in our lives where the line between ‘need’ and ‘want’ became a little obscure.
There does however come a point in our lives where we ‘should’ realize that we’re doing a touch more harm to the industry than good. Especially when you consider that video games and software are/is not quite like movies or music. Bands can go on tour and release merchandise recouping for lost sales due to downloading of mp3s. Films often base their earnings on box-office sales. What do games have? They have teams of people wanting to get paid for their next project. Teams of people who worked their asses off to program a game that people will inevitably download for free, because some people have a gigantic entitlement complex.
We recently brought you an article on why PC owners should play Amnesia: The Dark Descent. In it, we revealed that Frictional Games has taken the revenue and newfound confidence for the PC platform and are beginning to work on a new game. That’s pretty awesome news when you consider the PC is one of the riskiest platforms to develop for.
In reading the blog that the original article sourced, you could almost feel the relief in the author’s words. They stated that Frictional Games is no longer a struggling company – they don’t have to worry where their next paycheque is coming from, whether or not they’ll be able to pay and hang onto their staff, etc. It all could have gone the other way too, had the game been pirated to hell. We’re not quite sure why Amnesia didn’t get that treatment – perhaps because it was for a niche audience? Or perhaps because it was already a steal? Either way, kudos. You guys helped shape the future of another terrifying game.
On the other hand, it’s probably no secret that Alan Wake didn’t perform too well in the sales department. New and unique IPs are a joy to see in the horror-gaming genre and when a new one comes along that bombs, it sucks. Especially since the game really wasn’t that bad. Where does piracy fit into this? Torrentfreak.com pegged 1,140,000 copies of Alan Wake had been downloaded as of December 26, 2010, making it the second most pirated game for the Xbox 360 We don’t have the official sales figures to the exact date, but we can probably safely assume that’s a pretty big chunk out of the total sales.
We know that Alan Wake had a less-than-stellar release date, and that the replay value wouldn’t have been up there with the likes of a multiplayer-game but…pirates wouldn’t waste time and bandwidth with a game they didn’t want to play. Despite their claims to the contrary – because…I don’t particularly trust pirates.
Gee, wonder if there’s going to be a sequel? /s
–jeeves86
