PC Games Industry Blames File-Sharing Networks for Low Sales

It seems that video game developers are getting more and more irritated by the fact that thousands of copies of their games are being illegally distributed every day over online file-sharing networks.

The high level of piracy affecting games can be related to the surprisingly low sales new high-powered shooters like Unreal Tournament 3 and Crysis recorded. They only sold 34K and 87K copies respectively in their first month, according to the NPD. As both titles received good reviews they were expected by most analysts to be a big success for the PC gaming industry.

At the opposite pole, the Playstation 3 version of UT3 almost tripled the PC number selling 86,633 copies in its first month, even with the console's small install base.

There are numerous game company representatives like Infinity Ward's community manager Robert Bowling who see online file sharing communities as responsible for the current situation - "It blows me away at the amount of people willing to steal games (or anything) simply because it's not physical or it's on the safety of the internet to do" he said.

According to Canada.com, Call of Duty 4 is being downloaded by 16,385 people from Miniova at the time of publication. The game sold 383K copies in 2007 according to NDP reports which means that at a rate of 164K to 246K downloads a month, more people have downloaded the game illegally than have bought it in stores.

Just the same, Crysis, which is being downloaded by 6806 people, would be downloaded 68K to 102K a month, which is actually more than the game manage to sell in its first month since launched.

Following the pattern, Unreal Tournament III is being downloaded by 3060 pirates, which would be equivalent to 31K to 46K downloads a month, having no trouble in beating the 34K that the game sold in its first couple weeks of release.

A further specification is in place - these numbers here are only telated to one torrent sites so knowing exactly how much money game designers are cause to lose due to online piracy is quite a challenge. Moreover, illegal swapping of PC games can also be conducted using private torrent sites, direct download, FTP, IRC and lots of other file-sharing services.

As Canada.com reveals, the PC market which used to be leading the industry, in 2007 is involved in only 14% of all game sales. At the same time as PC game developers are getting desperate with losing money owing to piracy, companies such as Nintendo are doing a whole lot better having their revenue continually increasing from the thriving console market.

Call of Duty 4, one of the blockbuster games of the year reached almost 7 million in sales accross all platforms, with only 383K of that figure accounting for PC.

Solutions?

Many PC developers seem to be either switching, or porting their games to console. For example, Crytek announced on Tuesaday that they will be showing off CryENGINE 2, the technology behind Crysis, on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 at this year's GDC, which could be an indication that the developer is considering making money from those platforms too.

There are other game publishers, among which Valve, that are viewing this situation from another angle, seeing it as a prospect for a growth of digital distribution as a factor in the PC game market, through services like Steam. What Steam does is giving possibility to developers to sell their game through the Steam store and track game sales. According to NextGen.biz, Valve made an announcement of their own on January 29 saying they have produced a toolset to enable game developers to easily port their games onto the Steam platform. This can only mean good news to game developers as this service is quite successful in an attempt to bring down the untroubled video game pirates.