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.

Finally, my first PC!

You might want to read my previous post before this one, because this is a direct follow-up to that post (although the focus is different).

I was really disappointed and heartbroken about being unable to play Half-life anymore. And I knew it wouldn't be right for me to ask my cousin to buy another CD of the same game. To tackle this issue, I began pestering, or rather requesting my parents to buy a PC for me. I told them that a PC would be immensely helpful for my education (although my primary goal at that point was to just play and beat Half-Life). Being educated themselves, my parents didn't need much convincing with respect to the usefulness of a PC. So I was fortunate enough to get a spanking new PC on October 20th 1999. Yeah, I still remember the date!

My PC was rather 'special' compared to those of my cousins and friends, in several ways. The specifications of my cousins' PC was something like a 333Mhz processor, 14-inch monitor, 3GB hard disk and 32 MB RAM, which was more or less similar to the specifications of my friends' PCs too. In contrast, my PC had a 733 Mhz Pentium 3 processor,  64 MB RAM, 20 GB hard disk and a 15-inch monitor (other components like keyboard, mouse, speakers etc. were almost similar). This was considered a high end PC at that time. Now for the 'goodies'. My PC also had a dedicated graphics card (which was unusual in 1999) with 8MB memory, a color printer (the others didn't have a printer) and a 56kbps modem for dial-up internet connection (the actual internet connection was set up after a few days).

The PC made my parents poorer by ₹65,000 but it instantly made me a hero among my friends (due to it being high-end)! As expected, I purchased the original boxed copy of Half-Life within a few days (because playing it was my main objective). It cost me a whopping ₹2000, but the exhilarating game experience was well worth it. Took me around a month to beat it. I did play other games as well. At that point, even though my primary usage of the PC was for gaming, I was careful enough not to let it adversely affect my studies. As expected, I was fascinated by the internet but unlike most adolescents my age, I didn't use it as an an easy gateway to porn (which was a rage among my peers). Instead, I made use of the internet for game-related information and also my school-related work. I'll describe my initial gaming experiences in a different post.

My PC didn't remain 'special' for too long, due to rapid advancements in hardware. After several minor and major upgrades, I had to finally sell my beloved first PC in August 2004, when it became impossible to upgrade beyond a certain point and the PC couldn't run the latest games. But it did serve me well for almost 6 years, with no major repairs.

The game which got me hooked to gaming!

Its only fair that my initial gaming-related post is the one describing my humble beginning as a gamer. I first had access to a home PC in 1998. Wasn't my own, though. As a 12 year old, I was fascinated by home PCs at my cousins' residence (my cousins were kind enough to let me use it as much as I wanted) and a few of my friends' houses. During that time, DOS-based games were most popular and also more easily available, compared to Windows games. Also, since internet was either unavailable or too slow (dial-up), we could only obtain games through friends or by direct purchase. The first few PC games I played include The Lost Vikings, Prince of Persia, Hocus Pocus, Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D (which were all DOS games) and Road Rash (the sole Windows game).

Then I happened to come across a terrifying and exciting game being played by my cousin on his PC. There was something really different and captivating about this game, something I couldn't quite put my finger on, which was lacking in all the previous games I played. To say that this game totally mesmerized me, would be an understatement. This real gem was none other than Half-Life, which was responsible for catapulting Valve (the developer) to super stardom and also making me treat gaming as a passion rather than a pastime. I could initially play only the game demo (titled Half-life Uplink) because my cousin's friend had borrowed his Half-life CD at that point. The demo had a cliff-hanger ending (although I later realized that the entire demo was totally unrelated to the main game) which made me want to play the full game.

Of course, I could only play it on my cousin's PC, since we didn't have a PC at our house. I kept pestering him to get his CD back from his friend, which he did after a month. That's when the REAL fun started, and I lost myself in a world of alternate reality. The actual game surpassed the demo in every way (I won't go into the details, because I'm planning to post a full Half-Life review soon). I stopped playing all other games, and only played this one whenever I visited their house (maybe once or twice in a week). Then something really unfortunate happened, which shattered my heart. My cousin's hard disk crashed, and along with it, the game as well (including its save files). I didn't mind starting the game from the beginning again (after all, I had only completed around 25%), but for some reason, the game just refused to install from the CD. I still remember that when the installation reached 97%, it used to display 'Engine.dll error' and abort the installation. At that point, me and my cousins were computer novices. This, combined with the fact that we had no internet access, meant that we couldn't troubleshoot this error, so we had to just give up. This happened sometime during mid-1990. It was a really gut wrenching feeling, and I felt my fantasy world had come crashing down. Little did I realize that this disappointment would actually act as a catalyst in transforming me into an ardent, hardcore gamer for a lifetime.

Of course, I did manage to beat this game eventually (as of today, I have beaten it innumerable times and it still remains my all time favorite game), but that will part of my next post. I want to end this post now, before I make it too long. Hope you enjoyed reading it. Lost more to come. All kinds of comments, appreciation or constructive criticism are most welcome. Signing off!

Oh yeah! Here's the box-image of the very first version of the game, which my cousin owned!