Crytek Moving Toward Free-to-play?

[Yoshi]

Then again, let's see what Crytek says when PS4 & 720 come out.

You say this as if the big developers don't already have kits for them. You can't launch a system in fall of 2013 if you don't let the developers see it until E3 2013.

[gamevet]

They would. Crysis sold like 2 million copies on PC, with the highest system requirements on the market, better than any other PC exclusive at the time.

But yes, it's all piracy. I'm sure all those people were going to buy the game but just pirated it instead.

It's just too easy to get a free copy, so why pay? Obviously, the title is used for benchmarking purposes and has been for quite some time.


Crysis 2 was the most pirated game of 2011, according to TorrenFreak.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Cry...uty,14406.html

According to TorrentFreak, Crysis 2 ended the year with 3.92 million illegal downloads, followed by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 with 3.65 million and Battlefield 3 with 3.51 million.

[Diff-chan]

I don't really agree with this attitude, prevalent amongst PC gamers (even those that don't pirate), that piracy is just part of the deal and companies should just accept it as part of the business. Maybe that was the case in the 1980's-1990's, but back then it was far more difficult to pirate. Now the same tech that makes it so easy can be used to get some of that revenue. A company like Crytek, which has growth targets and employees to pay, will of course try.

It's hard to quantify the effects of piracy. it's not made any easier by the bad faith numbers put out by the companies and trade groups, or the bad faith rationale that pirates give. Thing is, a lot of things are difficult in business to quantify. I'm taking a corporate finance course now and even though we have over 100 years of stock information, some basic questions are a mystery. Companies and people try to figure it out anyway because a lot of money is riding on it. If you assume piracy is the result of market forces then market forces can resolve it. F2P is a good start.

[Yoshi]

It's just too easy to get a free copy, so why pay?

Are you fucking kidding me? Diff is spot on. I am not a fan of the F2P model, but I don't blame companies for trying it. It beats Ubisoft DRM.

[Frogacuda]

I don't really agree with this attitude, prevalent amongst PC gamers (even those that don't pirate), that piracy is just part of the deal and companies should just accept it as part of the business.

That's not really what I'm saying. But I am saying that everyone deals with piracy and that the most pirated games also tend to be the best selling. Crysis actually did very well on PC, but none of those other games would have made a profit if they were PC-exclusive either.

We're just past the point where PC exclusive makes sense for a $100 million dollar game and I wouldn't really chalk that up to piracy.

[Joust Williams]

PC exclusive doesn't make sense period (well, actually that isn't true, but it lies a lot closer to "it never makes sense" than what I'm sure Yoshi thinks ;p). It's in a console creator's best interests to make their consoles with an architecture similar to a PC to get easy ports and it's in a hardware developer's best interest to make console hardware with architecture similar to a PC because they'll obviously save on process costs.

[Frogacuda]

PC exclusive still makes a lot of sense for smaller games and downloadable titles because it's cheaper to develop on and distribute for. Hell even for a game like Witcher 2 where the costs are just low because of the exchange rate it's fine (although maybe not the best choice). But these days a lot of games on consoles struggle to earn the kind of money they spent on Crysis so I don't know what they were thinking really.

Maybe that was the case in the 1980's-1990's, but back then it was far more difficult to pirate.

Are you fucking kidding me?

[Diff-chan]

That's not really what I'm saying. But I am saying that everyone deals with piracy and that the most pirated games also tend to be the best selling. Crysis actually did very well on PC, but none of those other games would have made a profit if they were PC-exclusive either.

We're just past the point where PC exclusive makes sense for a $100 million dollar game and I wouldn't really chalk that up to piracy.

Crysis did well and so did Crysis 2. But let's say Crysis 2 lost, I don't know, $3 on each pirated copy. This assumes that the majority of pirates would have never in a million years bought it, some would've bought it on sale, a few would've bought it at $60 etc. That's still about $12 million, which is a substantial amount of money for a company like Crytek. They really have a responsibility to themselves to go after that money. That's what I am saying. Now, we don't know the real amount - it might be more than $3, it might be less. But I figure that Crytek has come up with an estimate and determined that it is a material amount of money lost and is worth getting after.

[Joust Williams]

The ones you named were most of the exceptions ;p

[Yoshi]

PC exclusive doesn't make sense period (well, actually that isn't true, but it lies a lot closer to "it never makes sense" than what I'm sure Yoshi thinks ;p).

I am well aware of the market conditions. It's unfortunate that the average "gamer" is probably at least two of lazy/ignorant/stupid, but i realize that that is the case.

edit: Add a thief and has no standards and make it three out of five.

edit2: For the record, I hope there are Mac versions of at least the major titles by the time Windows 7 is sunset... or that the inevitable has already occurred, and everything is on iOS via AppleTV or the Apple TV or on Android via Google TV.