Are the main publishers trying to kill off pc gaming?

Soldato
Joined
12 Jan 2006
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I have been gaming on pc's since the Amiga days and never before have i seen pc gamers be held with such contempt by the major publishers.

Financially i can see why they would do it, why pump money into an abstract market when you can focus on fixed platform consoles which are becoming more and more popular.

Ubisoft and EA have both signed onto the 'always on', DRM method where you are required a net connection to play. While pirates (theoretically lost sales), whom this is supposedly aimed to combat, have cracks before the game is even released legitimate gamers are punished for buying the game.
While personally i believe this is a method to kill off second-hand gaming (actual lost sales), that is just pure speculation so should probably be ignored.
Titles which are utilizing this new method include;
Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, Assassin's Creed 2, Crysis, Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic

If they had stopped there, perhaps things would still be bearable but the constant shift towards consoles are resulting in us losing out in the things that make pc gaming great.
- No more LAN feature;
Games like AVP3, Modern Warfare 2, Bad Company 2, Star craft 2 all seem to be moving to the online model with no LAN capability. Instead you connect to a server and then are routed back to your local network, surely this defeats the purpose of a high speed network to play games on?!?

- No more mods
Once the creative pit of amateur programmers everywhere this is slowly being phased out in preference to DLC, content which probably should have been in the game in the first place in many cases

-Poorly ported controls
I don't know if it is just me but games don't seem as sharp anymore, the poor porting ranges from playable but noticeable to incredibly irritating.
Examples which stand out to me are Bad Company 2, which i found the mouse to be extremely sluggish. After a while you get used to it, but if you switch from a game like CS:S or UT the issue is very apparent.
The other end of the scale are games like deadspace and AVP3 where the controls are just poor, it feels like playing on an acid trip.


Maybe its just me, but i genuinely feel they are slowly eroding what made pc gaming great in the first place


I really cant understand the mentality of publishers from a perspective that they want to keep the market alive, legitimate gamers are being punished at every corner.
The really sad thing is that to avoid many of the issues i simply buy console games instead, but then they will see less pc sales and more console sales further solidifying in their minds that the console market is growing and everyone is pirating on the PC platform. Despite the fact, at least in my case, that it was their own doing.

/rant over
 
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Pretty much, they have too little control over the PC platform. It's more difficult to develop for due to all the varying configurations, it's rife with piracy, and it has a very vocal community that makes shovelling crap to the market that more difficult.

I don't think it's killing PC games though, just polarising the types of games available on each platform.
 
Profit and control. Why spend extra money properly converting a game to the PC when you can just tell them to suck it up and deal with it. And what they really want to do is prevent you from selling your copy after you've bought it so they don't lose sales to the second hand market. Same goes for modding, why let customers mod a game or allow custom content when you can simply 'streamline' the experience (i believe thats the excuse Activision/IW gave) and block all custom configs or maps so you can sell a little more DLC.

Its all about greed, no surprises there.
 
If they were trying to actively kill off PC gaming, then they'd just pull out of the market, rather than pumping money into rubbish games.

Some games/devs/publishers are rubbish - it's not a conspiracy, it's just a fact.
 
The always on DRM has not been cracked properly as those games you mention do not work without major issues so they have scored their victory against the pirates & freeloaders! However, PC gaming has been declining for years very slowly but recently its been decided by most publishers/developers to make the PC version another port of the same game & if your lucky they let you adjust ingame settings for gfx it would seem :eek:

It would appear that as most console owners are willing to accept poorly made games (which naturally cost less to develop) PC gamers will be stuck with the current crop of 2nd rate ports for years to come with only the rare PC only or PC enhanced version :(

Even when PC does get a decent game it usually gets pirated heavily anyway so its not like PC gamers did not have a chance to demonstrate their support of their favorite gaming platform with the wallet instead of the torrent client is it........
 
no but its best features are slowly being taken away

I can only disagree with this from my experience, I buy a lot of games for the PC and they last me for years but then I don't buy churn.

Demigod, Total War series, Hearts of Iron, Titans' Quest, Torchlight, rFactor, Sins of A Solar Empire, Dawn of War Series, Company of Heroes, Football Manager, Battlefield Series, Lotro, Aion ..... plenty more but that short list contains originality, playability and MODability in abundance.

With the exception of maybe GT5 there's nothing out there on say the console machines I give more than a glancing thought. You see the way I look at gaming is value over garnish and I do my research through reviews, friends and taking part in beta's so I save myself cash.

For me there's not enough time in the day to play the extensive amount of quality games/MODS I have installed, and to top it off there's a lot of PC games due out that I'd like to add to my list.
 
The same thing happen's when any new entertainment industry takes off.
It starts out in the hands of creative genius', creating entertainment for the love of it.

See, the music industry, and hollywood.
Both have become corporatized. As soon as some absurdly rich publishing company, that has no understanding of the quality of art itself, realises that there are billions to be made, they figure out a way of manufacturing the media on a mass scale, as if films and music and games were little plastic toys made in a factory.
 
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