Mac Gaming Piracy

[dojoboy]

Here is an excerpt from a very good article on a troubling trend. Lets all be good stewards here and promote product loyalty, no matter how frustrated we get at times.

*****

Inside the business

A misconception exists about how the Mac games industry works. To publish a popular title such as Halo, developer/publishers must customarily pay the owner of the PC version of the product a licensing fee. They must then sustain development costs, packaging and distribution costs – and are often required to pay a certain royalty to the original publisher on sales. In many cases, even a minimum royalty payment is set, and Mac publishers may have to pay the balance due under that agreement if a game fails.

Adams said: "Because the Mac is a small market we are always having to make the case that there will be enough sales to make it worth bringing a game to the Mac. If sales shrink because of piracy, it gets harder to make that case."

MacSoft's Tamte said: "Damage is huge: all publishers make decisions about which games to bring to the Mac based on how well earlier, similar titles sold. Stealing games today robs the platform of tomorrow's titles."

Smith observed: "The Mac game market is a small pond. Each lost sale hurts because we sell only a fraction of the games PC developers do. A hit on the PC side can make you rich; a hit on the Mac will pay the bills and bring some capital to get the next game going. If fewer games do well because of piracy, there may not be a next game."

UK games developer Mark Thomas of porting house Coderus said: "If we don't recover costs, future projects can be at risk – users have less titles, and fewer developers risk introducing Mac games.

"We understand there will be piracy, but such massive levels will affect future titles. We are losing money that we need for future games. Mac gamers aren't getting the full picture here."

Stephen explained: "It may end up that only blockbuster games reach the Mac, because they are the only ones that can make a profit despite piracy. This will reduce the number and the range of titles available."

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complete article

[Gatekeeper]

Damage is huge: all publishers make decisions about which games to bring to the Mac based on how well earlier, similar titles sold. ...

Well, hell, that means Civ II for the Mac must have bombed, considering how bad Civ III for the Mac has been supported.

Gatekeeper

[FlameFlash]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper


Well, hell, that means Civ II for the Mac must have bombed, considering how bad Civ III for the Mac has been supported.

Gatekeeper

[Panag]

hi ,

if they would learn to just release a game together with the release of the pc version , and if there would be good support true a site and such , man , they would make more money , .....

but then again , we are only with a few , .....


have a nice apple day

[blackgryffin]

interesting ... really !

A hit on the PC side can make you rich; a hit on the Mac will pay the bills and bring some capital to get the next game going. If fewer games do well because of piracy, there may not be a next game.

maybe my english language is too bad to well understand ... does it means that pc users can practice piracy without any regret versus mac users who must be very happy to pay the strong price for any game even they know there won't be any support for them getting same "privilèges" than pc users ( like addons and multiplayers access ) ? Or does it mean we can already forget having the most recent games in a "next" future ? Or does it mean pc users who practice piracy are less guilty than mac users who practice piracy ?

if i well remember ( but my memory is maybe like a swiss cheese ), one of the best hit on the mac is The Sims ... and if my memory is not too much full of holes, maybe it is a hit b'cause each add on of this game was made for our platform 6 months after the one for pc platform ... 6 months is quite long but quite reasonable if we consider how long we are waiting for the civilizations addons ...

and maybe the responsability of a lack of sells of macintosh games doesn't come from mac pirates but from activision iself and its "vision" of us, mac gamers ...

[FlameFlash]

Here here!

[Agathon]

I don't pirate games. The prices are pretty reasonable (50-60 bucks a game).

Younger people pirate software because they couldn't afford it. When I was growing up in NZ people pirated games as a way of life because it was the only reasonable way to get the damn things since the companies often wouldn't release them in NZ or would supply them scarcely and at an inflated cost.

[Kuciwalker]

I don't pirate games. The prices are pretty reasonable (50-60 bucks a game).

We pay a lot less than that on average on the PC.

[Earthling7]

This article has a point, but so do the replies.

I am happily playing Sid Meier's Pirates! on my aging PC. I started it up for the first time in two months at xmas to play it. No Pirates! on the Mac, won't be for months. By the time the game does get a release, the PC will have had an expansion and the price halved.

Then there is the matter of CivIII. No expansions will be released for the Mac because Firaxis decided to use Microsoft's multiplayer system. Even if you never play MP, you won't get the "enhanced" SP game.

Pirating is bad, but frustrate people and they will turn on you.

[FlameFlash]

Pirating is bad, but frustrate people and they will turn on you.

Couldn't agree more. Not advocating pirating, mind, but advocating stopping buying Mac games period until the companies that release them are actually willing to support them properly (and release their expansions). If not, then I'd rather not have a minor taste at all.

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

I don't pirate games. The prices are pretty reasonable (50-60 bucks a game).

We pay a lot less than that on average on the PC.

I think he was talking Canadian dollars.

[Kuciwalker]

Even so, that's only the starting price for the most expensive games, here.

[Agathon]

Even so, that's only the starting price for the most expensive games, here.

It is now. It wasn't the last time I bought a game (exchange rates).

Besides, Vicky cost me only about 33 dollars.

Then there is the matter of CivIII. No expansions will be released for the Mac because Firaxis decided to use Microsoft's multiplayer system

This is typical of the monopoly **** you get from M$.

On the other hand, I think that most recent computer games suck. I can't decide whether it is me getting older, or that the imagination of game designers has gone to pot.

[FlameFlash]

Blah, it's not monopoly anything, Agathon, and you know it.

How many games are there that you can play MP on a PC, MP on a Mac, and not play cross-platform?

Quite a few!

That means that it's possible, and I'm sure the PBEM function isn't M$ only, which means that cross-platform gaming would be available through there like it is in CtP or SMAX. The company that was going to port CivIII was just too lazy to do so.

[-Jrabbit]

The core problem is that IP issue. Copyright holders demand licensing fees from Mac developers that simply don't exist in the original format. (That's a 2-way street, but in fact Apple's inability to support developers and the realities of their market share makes it very unlikely that games will be developed natively for Macs.)

That royalty fee (and greater expense in hardware like CDs, carboard boxes, etc. due to lower volume) is the reason games cost more on the Mac. It sucks, but it's realistic.

Apple has no upside to helping create Mac cracks for games, and no willingness to make it happen for others.

[Insane]

Originally posted by FlameFlash
The company that was going to port CivIII was just too lazy to do so.

You can't blame the porting company. It's not their fault. It's the original developers...

If the original PC developers choose to use Microsoft's DirectX networking layer [DirectPlay] (which they inevitably do because it's the fastest way to get networking support into their product) the porting company is stuck.

Microsoft has no interest in supporting DirectPlay on the Mac (no money in it for them). And most developers have no interest in writing a networking layer (to paraphrase Barbie... "[good] networking is hard").

Basically, unless the original developer either a) has their own networking library, or b) intends the game to be cross platform from the start, it's not likely to be doable at a later date.

[FlameFlash]

Also true... however all I want is PBEM, and I kind of doubt that's also DirectX.

[Insane]

No, the only real trick to PBEM is keeping the save game format unchanged.

This means you probably have to do some byte swapping every time you read and write the save file. So you pay a minor performance penalty, but you get better compatibility.

[FlameFlash]

And thusly, my beef.

Hotseat/PBEM is what would benefit me the most, and seeing CivIII port scrapped due to IP multiplayer is just a cheap cop-out as far as I'm concerned. If they didn't want to put in the extra work for the DirectX conversion, so be it, but the loss of the expansions totally really is felt hard.

[Gatekeeper]

Well, at least we finally got all the patches (thru 1.29) for vanilla Civ III. Heh. Just trying to find a silver lining here. If I remember right, that last patch was a major one, too, altering some gameplay aspects.

Let's see ... the game shipped with 1.17 already incorporated, 1.21 is an official downloadable patch and 1.29 is, what, a beta downloadable available at CivFanatics?

Gatekeeper