Starcraft 2 and many other products show that having something that you can't get any other way (multiplayer), will give the customer the ultimate choice that they didn't have beforehand.
Buy and play or don't play is more powerful than buy and play or dont pay and still play.
Which is the reason this leak most likely won't cause much damage anyway that it wouldn't have otherwise, pirates gonna pirate because they still can.
And customers are going to buy it because they want to support it, or are amongst the people who don't know how to pirate something.
You completely missed the point. I'm not contesting that free is cheaper. You'd have to be a massive fool to not realize that. My point was the people have this false belief that if illegal file-sharing just disappeared tomorrow, sales would go up. The truth is, if people had no intention of paying for it in the first place, taking away the free option is not going to compel them to buy it instead. Multiplayer features are not effective deterrents for such behavior, especially for those that don't play online MP games. Big deal, you stopped someone from infringing. One point for you and you prevented a lost sale that was never going to happen anyway. But now that person won't be able to tell other people how great that game is who will also tell other people and so on. Word of mouth advertising is the most powerful marketing tool we have and not using it is a huge mistake.
a lot of people have been in the game industry for so long, and sacrificed so much for it, that they have lost objectivity. People would rather point fingers at someone else than admit that the suits they work for are the ones that are responsible for cutting jobs (while collecting even fatter paychecks).
for example, this article (http://pc.ign.com/articles/870/870416p1.html) seems to indicate to me that the people running Crytek are either complete morons to think they would sell more than one million copies of a bleeding edge PC exclusive, or more likely they are just liars, blaming "poor" sales on piracy. Either way, it's hard to have much sympathy for the people at the top there.
Is it sad that Crysis was leaked? Yes. Was it a surprise? Not at all. In fact, Crytek probably has a contingency plan. I suspect that plan involves complaining bitterly about piracy to get more media attention and then using it as an excuse to fire half their staff immediately after the game ships.
Nobody is going to say "Oh wow. Now I see your point, I shall retract all my statements because you have proven you are correct and I am clearly wrong"
OR you can continue this for another 11 pages. Whatever's good for you guys.
There is no excuse for piracy of games. Games are not food or shelter. You don't need them to survive. There is no excuse you can formulate that isn't a justification of some sort. It's theft. Period.
Replies
You completely missed the point. I'm not contesting that free is cheaper. You'd have to be a massive fool to not realize that. My point was the people have this false belief that if illegal file-sharing just disappeared tomorrow, sales would go up. The truth is, if people had no intention of paying for it in the first place, taking away the free option is not going to compel them to buy it instead. Multiplayer features are not effective deterrents for such behavior, especially for those that don't play online MP games. Big deal, you stopped someone from infringing. One point for you and you prevented a lost sale that was never going to happen anyway. But now that person won't be able to tell other people how great that game is who will also tell other people and so on. Word of mouth advertising is the most powerful marketing tool we have and not using it is a huge mistake.
for example, this article (http://pc.ign.com/articles/870/870416p1.html) seems to indicate to me that the people running Crytek are either complete morons to think they would sell more than one million copies of a bleeding edge PC exclusive, or more likely they are just liars, blaming "poor" sales on piracy. Either way, it's hard to have much sympathy for the people at the top there.
Is it sad that Crysis was leaked? Yes. Was it a surprise? Not at all. In fact, Crytek probably has a contingency plan. I suspect that plan involves complaining bitterly about piracy to get more media attention and then using it as an excuse to fire half their staff immediately after the game ships.
Nobody is going to say "Oh wow. Now I see your point, I shall retract all my statements because you have proven you are correct and I am clearly wrong"
OR you can continue this for another 11 pages. Whatever's good for you guys.
End of discussion, thread closed.