Why should Games’ Piracy Stop : : The Noob Digs In

Piracy is a word prevalent in all corners of the world. Much of the internet as well as the physical world is flooded with pirates, be it- Movies, Music, Apps, TV shows and our main concern, the Games. Pirate games have always existed but recently, they have become a trend, especially on the PC. Every time a new game releases, workable torrents can be found before you wake up the next day. And the amount of seeders is simply huge. In a recent post, one of the biggest pirates in the world said that Piracy may finally fall to DRM, but until that time, piracy is still a viable option in almost every part of the world.

Piracy has it’s advantages, but the disadvantages far outweigh them. Talking from the consumer’s point of view, those who download the games from torrents on the PC platform, many a times, have a hard time running the game. They download some patches from other torrents, some files are taken from a friend who already has the game running, sometimes using sites like 4shared and filehippo and many a times they just reinstall the game 3-4 and pray that the game work. The windows defender has to be turned off, otherwise the dll files are quarantined, which leaves the PC open to attack. This is not the case with Steam downloaded games, most games work just fine. It has been seen that games downloaded from Steam generally contain less viruses. Many gamers complain about the Games for Windows Live software, which hassles the gamer to go through various activation processes just to play the game. Now, not every gamer would be happy at spending half an hour activating a game after installing (Downloading) it, and that too a game like Batman or GTA which come under some of the most anticipated games in the year of their releases.

Free multiplayer is one of the biggest attractions of the PC gaming world and pirate games can never be played online due to their unauthentic nature. This is one of the biggest reasons Ubisoft implemented the “Always Online for playing games” policy. This means that you can’t play the game in a plane, or on a long train ride or if your internet connection is down (A common problem in India). A sense of achievement is always satisfying and sadly enough there are no achievements on pirated games and you can’t see a “XYZ Achievement Completed” flashing at the bottom of your screen. Many people in India don’t buy games just because they are too costly (Ahem, ahem). Just look at the Steam sales. They are just ridiculous and you can find many games at literally dirt cheap price. Some games have reduced prices even before their release. Eg. Just Cause 3 was available for INR 899 in the Autumn Sale. If all the above reasons do not satisfy you, just think that it’s like stealing content. It is analogical to buying a pirate book in which case the author is not credited for his work.

Coming to the Industrial part, it is obvious that pirating a game results in losses for any developer. This is the biggest reason companies either skip out PC ports or just hand them to some third party as we had seen for Batman Arkham Knight (Which was horrible on PC). This results in bad gaming experience and pirating does not help. Another hit comes in the form of community. If more people pirate games then the online multiplayer community will diminish, which will force the developers to shut down the servers for the specific game.

We know that eradicating piracy is impossible, but if you want more games to come on PC, you would want to share this, because at the the end of the day “What will you pirate if there is nothing available?”. Do let us know what you think about the above laid out facts, in the comments below. Peace out.