Trigger Finger

I’m inspired to blurt some more rants from my bile-ridden lips by this story and this discussion over at Anandtech’s excellent forums. In summary, Epic games blame pirates for them focusing on console development. Interesting. So let me get this straight, over the years the prices of PC games have crept up and up, then the developers have decided that actually we need adverts in there too to keep the coffers flowing, and then of course there are additional charges for gaming multiplayer sometimes, there are subscriptions in the case of MMORPG’s, then don’t forget that we all need to buy the Limited Extra Special Edition of just about every game launched now and somehow they don’t get enough revenue from PC gaming? OK So you (the game publishers, devs, etc) blame pirates. HA! It’s ridiculous to think that any more than about 10% of the world are actually capable of the hacking required to get most pirated PC games running these days. Then multiply that factor by those that actually want your game in the first place and you are talking tiny, tiny, tiny numbers. Now call me crazy, call me anything you like in fact, but here are a few suggestions why your games are not selling on the PC format. This does no apply to just Epic, this is aimed at every single developer and publisher of PC games out there.

• Your games are bug-ridden pieces of shit. Seriously they are. All of you know deep down that every game you have released in the last 5 years has been released in a progressively shoddier and shoddier state. I don’t care what your excuse is (and yes I do understand the complexities) but average Joe Consumer does not have a clue what a patch is, they do not want to spend several hours hunting down obscure fixes, they are scared shitless by the thought having to uninstall or update drivers, they want to put in the disc and play (preferably without installation for god sake!). As a techy I am more patient than most, but time is becoming ever more precious to me and I am not inclined to spend a couple of hours patching the hell out of a brand new game just to get it to work. I can probably count on the fingers of one hand how many games I have installed to ‘Just work and work as advertised’ in the last 5 or 6 years.
• Your games never deliver on their promises. How many times have you picked up a box that promises (for example) drivable vehicles only to find that actually they will be introduced in a later patch (SWG), or ‘The most advanced physics ever’ which happens to mean that you are constantly getting stuck in walls due to clipping issues (GRAW, Splinter Cell Double Agent), or that the ‘extensive multiplayer’ is actually non-existent unless you pay a subscription (every MMORPG).
• Having a paid for and bought game actually means that you are less likely to be able to play it these days than the pirated versions! Your copy-protection schemes stink for the average user like DRM stinks for usability in Music and Films. There have been many times when I have bought a game for the PC, only to find the only way to get the thing working was to crack it (I am looking at a large percentage of EA games in the last 5 years here, especially the sports ones).
• And finally, whereas the PC used to be the premier development platform, where the games were designed and developed for the PC (then later ported to consoles), they are now designed for the console and then you try and sell us PC users a bad port from the console version (Rainbow 6 Vegas and GRAW are two immediate examples that come to mind… Ubisoft both of them… I am not surprised).

The day you guys start releasing games worth the £40 price tag is the day people will start buying them again, the day you start releasing FULLY REPRESENTATIVE demos BEFORE the game’s release is the day many will stop pirating, the day you stop screwing your customers for more money, for a worse product, is the day people will pay any attention to your whines about pirates. /rant