Is 'PC game piracy' overrated? You bet!

Alright, I'm sure you gamers would have heard game companies say that they delay or don't release games for the PC due to 'rampant PC piracy'. Nothing could be further from the truth. Through this post, I'd like to shed some light on what actually happens behind the scene in such scenarios. Hopefully, this will also prevent ignorant console gamers from taunting PC gamers in the future, by saying that the PC only get delayed console ports or not at all because PC gamers are pirates.

In reality, the piracy rates are almost identical for PC and consoles. When you say this to a console gamer, his first taunt would be "Just check out any torrent sites, and you'll find more torrents and more seeds/peers for PC games than console games". This does appear true initially. But the reality paints a different picture altogether. Console games (at least the previous gen ones) always need to be on a disc. So, people who pirate console games just burn it on multiple discs (sometimes hundreds) to distribute amongst friends or sell them at one tenth the price of the legitimate copy. But in case of PC, almost everything is digital. Hence PC pirates just download individually, whereas every console game downloaded illegally is very much likely to end up on several discs. Obviously, its impossible to track this, hence the general perception is that PC games are pirated more than console games (which is not true at all). In fact, since the past couple of years, the console versions of multiplatform games become available on torrents several days before official release, and certainly much before the PC version too. And just consider the the case of Grand Theft Auto V, which was pirated left and right in spite of being a console exclusive (as of now).

Now coming to the second most common reason given by console gamers - "consoles need to be modified in order to run pirated games whereas no hardware changes are required for PC, hence console gamers wouldn't risk modifying the hardware just to play pirated games". This 'reason' just shows how ignorant some console gamers can be. Let me tell you, the easiest way to pirate console games (which several people I know have done) is to own TWO consoles - one normal and the other modded. The combined cost of two consoles is still lesser than that of a mid-high range gaming PC. So they simply use the normal one to play legitimate games online, and use the modded one to play single player games offline (without any risk of a ban).

The third common reason is the comparison of sales numbers between PC and console versions of the same game. Time and again, console gamers and even game companies point out that games sell very few number of copies on the PC compared to consoles, which they again attribute towards piracy. On the surface, this seems to be true because most sales figures do mention this. But the most glaring fact which these people forget to consider (or deliberately avoid), is that sales figures often only account for retail sales and not digital downloads. As of now, digital downloads are almost non-existent on consoles but it makes up the majority of PC game sales over the world. In fact, except in a few third world countries, PC gamers almost always prefer digital downloads over retail boxed copies. Hence, its totally absurd to say that console games sell a lot more than PC games by comparing sales numbers. This statement would be valid only when digital sales too are included in sales figures, or when digital sales become the norm on consoles as well.

Now, the actual reasons why game companies delay PC releases of multi-platform games, or don't release it at all. In case of consoles, a part of the revenue from every sale goes to Sony or Microsoft but it doesn't work that way on the PC (although Microsoft tried to push for this with Windows 8). Also, if games come out simultaneously for both consoles and PC, most people would obviously prefer PC (better graphics, mod support, choice of keyboard/mouse or controller etc.). Due to this, the console manufacturers strike a deal with game publishers (which may involve monetary or any other benefit to the publisher) to keep their game console-exclusive for a certain period or forever. Another reason is, it is much more difficult to develop games for a heterogeneous platform like the PC (since every PC has different hardware combinations, different vendors etc.) compared to consoles (because all XBox/Playstation consoles in the world have identical hardware). So the developers are either incompetent to do this, or too lazy for this extra work. Obviously, game companies can never mention these genuine reasons in public, so they take the easy way out by using 'piracy' as an excuse and making out PC gamers to be the biggest crooks of the gaming industry. And most console gamers ignorantly believe these statements, because its working in their favor anyway.