40 Million Attempts to Use Pirated UT3 Keys

[CSN NewsBot]

It seems as though it's not just Crytek that is having issues with piracy on the PC. Epic's Mark Rein, recently made a statement to TG Daily that piracy is the key reason why PC exclusives are on the rapid decline.

We spoke with Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games, and learned that the Unreal Tournament 3 servers received over 40 million attempts at illegitimate access using pirate keys. That number is huge, and the real magnitude comes when you calculate the retail price of $49.99 (59.99 for Collector's Edition).



If those 40 million players actually paid the full price, it would have been nearly $2 billion more in Epic’s pocket book. That is more than the quarterly sales results from Nvidia or AMD. To add another perspective, the government lost out as well, because no sales tax is earned on pirated copies.

The math seems to be of that "fuzzy math" variety as this article is assuming that the full price of the game would go to Epic, which it would not. The article also doesn't make clear how many of those 40 million attempts were repeat attempts from the same person. Despite these questionable factors, the piracy matter is one that is making some PC only developers consider other alternatives.

[Ryosuke T]

A never ending phenomenon. For me I wait for game prices to drop if I do not find the game is a must play/have immediately.



Except for HL series. I buy them the day of release. Haha.



I'm not saying piracy is right or wrong. But the problem with most game like UT3 I have is, no one I know likes to play UT3 or has it. Be pointless for me to buy UT3 off the bat. Not to mention the amount of players playing online is not as high as CS/CSS/TF2 etc etc that would keep the game active in my interest.



I still play CS because of one thing, 1) friends plays it alot 2) plenty of servers filled with people.



Games like Doom 3, Q4 and UT3, the MP is dead in "my eyes." 90% of the time I see dead empty servers.

[Gpig]

I'm surprised anyone would want to play ut3 even for free

[Diamond Dust]

well they aren't letting the pirated copies play online so where is the problem? isn't the whole point of UT3 to play online? It seems to me that piracy for a single player game is the big problem because they can play without authenticating to your servers.

[mifdeath]

Im a little sick of these companies making claims of huge loss of potential money due to piracy/copyright infringment. Potential money is just that, money you could have made but didn't. Putting a number on potential unrealized profits is a joke.

Crying about money you didnt make because of the evils of doing business is laughable at best and at worst a dirty underhanded attempt to get a handout or a political/legal policy change to give your industry a leg up over others. All industries have problems, what makes yours so important? Should game developers go cross platform? Hell yes! The more product you make and make available to more people the more money you will make. However stating this is because of piracy is a fallacy.

Instead of blaming everyone else for them not making money perhaps they should look inwards.

[meowmeow]

I've got a bad feeling about PC piracy, developers might switch to console. =(

[Sintra]

Makes sense.

Lower the damn prices...

[-:Nighthawk:-]

Bad news guys, Microsoft is going to stop making Windows for the PC because of piracy problems. Piracy is driving Bill Gates into the poor house, after all. *rollseyes*



The point being, piracy isn't a new phenomenon, yet plenty of software companies still fare very well. I don't condone piracy -- I definitely agree that programmers should be rewarded for quality work. That said, seeing as it's impossible to own software these days (you merely license a copy of it that with modern contracts can be changed or taken from you at the company's sole discretion) you start getting into a fuzzy area where people no longer feel they're stealing.



Honestly though, while I do think that piracy hurts sales somewhat, my personal belief is that the majority of kids who pirate software are the same kids that don't make much of an income and probably wouldn't be shelling out $50-60 per title. Perhaps they might pick up the game in the bargain bin the next year (if at all), but most of us that work and have decent incomes don't mind dropping that kind of money on something that will entertain us for far longer than a similar amount of money spent at the movie theater.



Online play does seem to be the real future of PC titles, though, given that it allows for better control of valid keys. I wouldn't be surprised to see far more of the single-player titles becoming console-only releases in the future.

[azz0r]

I doubt 40 million people took there time to pirate that crap.



Probably counts the same few people a few times.

[ALT+F4]

And crap it is. I had a chance to play a legitimate version and it lasted less than an hour before uninstallation. Absolutely no game there.



Before whining about losses to piracy, how about:



1. Having a decent story

2. Losing copy protection that punishes legitimate users

3. Having reasonable system specs, or options otherwise

4. Having an affordable price

5. Having a decent story



Tell you what, try all of those things and if piracy is still a problem for you, I'll have at least a modicum of sympathy.

[< )))><]

Once again, I love hearing from UT3 saying that's the PC market is essentially "dying".



...Of course, then you look at Steam, and you realize that's poppycock.

[Renegade[CSR]]

Edited by [user="22953"] @ [time="1209932191"]

Piracy isn't why your game didn't sell well. Your game is simply an average title. Its fun, but its just run of the mill, and doesn't introduce anything new to the FPS market. This goes for both Epic and Crytek.



Oh, and just a heads up to Epic's Mark Rein and any other developers that ever bring up this PC piracy argument again: Piracy is just as prevalent on consoles, so its time to work towards a solution from within your company in order to solve any issues you are having with sales.

[xbbdc]

if companies came up with a solution such as steam then piracy wouldnt be such a huge issue.

[brains]

these people forget that the people who pirate things like this never would have bought the game in the first place, even if there was no way to pirate it. it's not lost revenue, it's non-existent revenue.

[sathanas]

Not quite sure why they can't work out why people wont buy it. I didn't even bother pirating it, I can predict that I wont get more than a couple of days play out of it, even in multiplayer.



And by the time it's at a "budget" price, everyone who blindly buys and plays it will have moved on to the next iteration anyway.



It's actually much cheaper than I thought it was for a Steam copy of it. Just $35 so ~£18 or something. That's actually quite good compared to Call of Duty 4, which is selling for a staggering $70.



Do I want it anyway? No. It's still a game I will lose interest in in a very short period of time.