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Death of THQ?

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  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    Blaizer wrote: »
    And which games do you have on your shelf that requires online activation, and that you can not activate. As far as i know, all my games with online activation are activated only once, one unique time, and they are associated to an account, and i repeat you, ALL. What you said is another nonsense for me, so you will need to say me which games you can't activate now because that is not very credible.

    I don't buy many games, especially not now, but I have software that you physically cannot install because they ask for a key and then go check it with a server that doesn't exist any more to retrieve the decryption key for the data on the disc.
    I have all the assassin's creed games, and too many ubisoft titles, and my user experience was not hampered. Furthermore, i support their efforts to protect their product, and i demand stronger measures anti-piracy.

    Good for you. My internet goes down at completely random times, sometimes more than ten times in a single day despite endless service. These games would be completely unplayable to me. Ubisoft themselves recently acknowledged that DRM was killing their PC sales.
  • Kwramm
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    Kwramm interpolator
    I have a couple of pirated games here. I bought the box alright, but the version I play is pirated. Like my copy of Dreamfall I got from my employer. Thanks for giving us the EU version with Securom.
    Fable 3... can't be bothered to crack it. Steam didn't warn me about "Games for Windows". The Chinese communist party hates Games for Windows and blocks it, or Microsoft hates China, or both. Just won't work.
    Diablo 3 - playable if I pay 5 bucks a month extra for VPN. Great! I only ever played single player - something that shouldn't require any net access at all.
    There's some other games which screw you location wise. Maybe internet DRM is a good idea in 10 - 20 years from now. But in many places of the work it's just not there - heck I lived in Oslo Norway and couldn't get DSL in my area!

    As if gaming here isn't tough enough if you decide to get the legal stuff (ok, I could just pirate everything) then I have to hear people telling me about always-online crap. Go ditch your DSL and get a 56k modem. Let's see how you like playing your "single player" games with that!
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    Blaizer wrote: »
    I've seen Darksiders 2 TV spots in the soup, in the soup... So THQ did a high invesment in marketing.

    Coincidentally, it's Steam's midweek madness sale today, and I have seen adverts for it - but this is completely not the same of their other titles. I personally have no interest in the title, but I don't know how that reflects elsewhere. It was however the best selling game in August in the US, which isn't insignificant. It's shipped around one million units, which puts it in comparable position to it's predecessor.

    Darksiders isn't necessarily the problem, especially given that it is predominantly a console title.

    The problem is THQ's management. The company has been trying to dig itself out of the hole it got itself into a couple of years ago by licensing tons of expensive IPs for games (especially children's games) that were never going to sell and as a result has been struggling for a while. It's likely their position will continue to decline.
    Blaizer wrote: »
    The problem here, and in my opinion, if you read me well, is that their games are SINGLE PLAYER. And as i already stated, nobody will pay a shit for them because they are cracked days before the launch. Multiplayer is what sells.

    This isn't strictly true. Plenty of Valve's games are singleplayer and are cracked and available the same time as they launch. Portal 2 as an example (which does admittedly include a coop option) has shipped some 4-5 million units. Portal (which does not include coop) has shipped a similar number of units. Half-Life 2 and it's episodes are all also widely available as pirated copies, but still have sold very well. The Sims 3 has shipped some 10 million units.

    Heading out of PC territory, God of War 3 has shipped some 5 million units, and each of the Uncharted games in the region of 10 million across the series. Fable 2 shipped around 4 million units (does include coop). Dead Space shipped half a million units on PC alone.

    Singleplayer games can and do sell well, and can stand on their own feet. Piracy isn't some kind of immediate killer.

    Give singleplayer PC gamers some credit, and don't assume you know too much about the market, because it's clear quite a few publishers don't really understand it either.
    Blaizer wrote: »
    If the server is unavailable, i don't play. Today there's a server mainteneance for Diablo 3, and i can't play. The same happened with guild wars 2 and all the mmos i play. The world will not end, so that's is a stupidity to consider in this matter. Another nonsense.

    It's not stupidity, it's common sense. Despite pre-ordering Dead Space, I couldn't play it without obtaining a crack for three weeks because I couldn't seem to connect to their activation server.

    Paying customers had endless problems with Ubisoft's DRM, locking many players out for days at a time, this is all well known.

    I'll also reiterate my previous statement: There are games out there whose activation servers no longer exist and cannot be installed and played without a crack - and are probably still available in a fair number of retail outlets or online stores like Amazon.
    Blaizer wrote: »
    Too many studios launch low cost mmorpgs (korean), and they have their game with their client. A client based DRM is not so expensive, and when you have less players, you do a server mergue and that's all. Tera Europe did one a few days ago.

    Given that THQ isn't particularly active in the MMO space, this isn't overly relevant.
    Blaizer wrote: »
    Another thing, Ambershee, are the people playing a pirated Diablo 3 with all its glory?.

    Diablo 3 is widely and easily available in a pirated format, as is StarCraft 2 (heck, so is World of Warcraft).
    Blaizer wrote: »
    And which games do you have on your shelf that requires online activation, and that you can not activate. As far as i know, all my games with online activation are activated only once, one unique time, and they are associated to an account, and i repeat you, ALL. What you said is another nonsense for me, so you will need to say me which games you can't activate now because that is not very credible.

    Codename Panzers 2, to name one. The publisher (Atari) folded, taking the verification server with it. The game will crash if you try to run it.
    Blaizer wrote: »
    I would like to see too many pro-piracy guys from here working in the industry, and then, being fired so they could taste their medicine. I'm sure their perspective would change drastically.

    So if I'm not with you, I'm against you? I'm not pro-piracy. I'm anti-draconian-DRM.

    I'm so glad you wish me to lose my job, you're such an upstanding person.
  • Snacuum
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    Snacuum polycounter lvl 9
    I would like to see too many pro-piracy guys from here working in the industry, and then, being fired so they could taste their medicine. I'm sure their perspective would change drastically.

    What the hell? We've taken the time to articulate our points of view in such a way as to show how we feel as CONSUMERS, as GAMERS, and as DEVELOPERS without letting it spiral into the very debate about piracy that polycount wish to avoid and unfortunately must censor so this doesn't become a flame war and you bring it right back. We've even mentioned that the topic involves the livelihoods of developers and you're actually wishing firings on those whose opinion simply differs from yours; which is neither here nor there!

    All of your evidence is anecdotal and opinionated. You don't play single player and you haven't had issues with online DRM. But you don't speak for everybody. We make entertainment products, a luxury in today's world. There is two sides to this coin: while you are right in saying that we can go without our DRM'ed games during downtime and go play outside, the customers are paying for said luxury items and their enjoyment is important, the MOST important, as what we make provides them no other thing.

    As a developer, even worse than my game being pirated is a customer simply stating that they do not want to play my game for any reason. Why should I give them more reasons to not play my game? To keep it on topic THQ has clearly not created an environment where their games are desirable to play over the competition EA and Activision is providing. There is no reason for them to make that worse. In fact Darksiders 2 is one of the few recent good games from THQ that doesn't have multi-player and yet still the company is concerned.
  • Michael Knubben
    Oh hey, this thread's been Blaizered, eh?

    Don't be fooled, he's a troll. He argues endlessly without providing much in the way of proof, resorts to personal attacks (I hope you get fired because you don't like drm! Classy!), is quick to derail the thread to hot-button topics like drm, and thereby kills any interesting conversation that was previously going on. My hunch is that he does it because he enjoys luring people into shouting matches, or he's simply so socially stunted as to not see that he comes off as being highly obnoxious.
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    I don't mind too much, I got my two-cents out there. I don't think my opinion is any way unreasonable.

    As it happens, the last game I worked on (Fable the Journey) was pirated heavily; it was available on torrent sites over a week before the game came out, and to date it's only sold about 70,000 copies. I also lost my job the week it launched.

    I don't blame piracy for the weak sales or losing my job.
  • Blaizer
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    Blaizer interpolator
    Look this, The MightyPea appears to call me Troll? interesting... and more coming from a real Troll King. hilarious, yes mom!

    I just pointed a fact, and you see, it's impossible to talk anything about piracy when there are pirates in the thread shielded by a nickname.

    And as i pointed, i don't care about draconian-DRM because it does not bother me. Nowadays, the 99% of games i play on PC has client/server authentication. And i think it's the only way to avoid the problem of mass piracy, and its result of poor sales.

    BTW, An user named Tekoppar, sent me this pm:
    Tekoppar wrote:

    I put an image with my profile, and the image in question if this guy deletes it. It may be fake or not, but i don't care now. The fact is that he sent me the image yesterday. It must be a kid or something, One Piece? and seeding hundreds of GBs... incredible, and what a coincidence... Darksiders 2!!!

    Polycount_Troll.jpg

    This is funny ehh?

    Mightypea, you have earned an ignore for life. I've been tolerating you sometimes, but i'm fed up of your stupidity. GTFO.

    EDIT: Ironlore died due to the piracy.
  • the_Adri
    Blaizer wrote: »
    This is funny ehh?

    Yes.....yes, it is. LMFAO, I can't stop laughing.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Hooray for internet drama.

    Lets be blunt here, piracy sucks, we wouldn't have jobs if every pirated games.
    DRM also sucks, I don't want to be forced to play a single player game online and register an account with an email unless there is some perk for doing so (aka Steam with cloud backups, keeping a copy of your game, and you know the servers are not going down soon). I don't believe always on DRM is the solution. Look at Minecraft, no DRM, Notch supports pirates and his game is making record sales.
  • reverendK
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    reverendK polycounter lvl 7
    wow. that escalated quickly...
  • Snacuum
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    Snacuum polycounter lvl 9
    Wow, where are the mods? I think this thread was warned once and now I'm pretty sure it's hit the very point of what polycount doesn't want. I mean it's no wonder people don't provide the very transparency you want Blaizer when they're just going to get a public lynching.
  • Geezus
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    Geezus mod
    This thread has gone past a simple discussion. Closed.
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