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Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

Piracy to blame for slowing PC game sales?

PC gaming is seeing some notable games fail to make waves at retail, and the …

Are PC games in trouble yet again? It seems like no one has written a "PC Gaming is dead" piece in a few months, and while I don't think the industry is dying (yet),  there are some awfully worrying signs on the horizon. A few days ago Robert Bowling, community relations manager for Infinity Ward, posted a few thoughts on his blog under the despairing title "They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More."

"On another PC related note, we pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer (which was fantastic). What wasn't fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen / cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only people playing online)," Bowling wrote. "The amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding. 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."

While Call of Duty 4 was a sales success, most of the units moved were on consoles. Other big-name titles haven't been so lucky: both Unreal Tournament 3 and Crysis crashed and burned at retail, although Unreal Tournament 3 will see a boost from the PS3 and Xbox 360 sales of the game. 

The PC is still fertile ground for gaming, and certainly MMO fans wouldn't dream of going anyplace else, but it has to hurt to see PC-only releases do so poorly, and then sit down and see your own PC efforts get pirated in what sounds like large numbers. Developing games is a for-profit venture; with these kinds of numbers and an alternative (consoles), the days of PC-only releases may come rather quickly to an end.

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