I don't know how priacy effect gaming industry. I know how it effect me when I hear that some games won't be released on PC because Devs don't wanna see their game being pirated. And it comes even from cool devs like Rocksteady.

Now PC equals pirates for most of people and well you can't blame them, because PC is the only platform where more games are pirated than sold.

I don't believe this for a single second. Even if it actually WAS true, which is highly unlikely, how are the publishers supposed to figure that out? Nobody, not even people who do actual piracy research, know the real numbers. It's a big internet, you know.

Also, for the record, getting pirated games for consoles and stuff like the GBA is almost trivially easy. People do it all the time. Piracy isn't as big an issue on consoles but it's absolutely still there, and thriving.

Yes, all console/handheld platforms can be pirated now. It's actually even easier than PC piracy since games don't need to be individually cracked because the barrier is the hardware itself. You rarely if ever hear talk of console piracy, possibly in part because they don't want it to grow any more than it already has.

Piracy has been such a big issue on the GBA and DS that Nintendo added special detection to later games so they could know when they were being run from a flash cartridge instead of the real thing. This was eventually bypassed but it shows that Nintendo is taking this very seriously.

Well, I read article on TorrentFreak "Most downloaded games via torrents in 2011". They made statistics based on finished downloads from biggest torrent trackers. Console games were nowhere near PC games.

Most pirated game on X360:
"Gears of War 3" - 890,000
Most pirated game on PC:
"Crysis 2" - 3,920,000

As I mentioned it's data not from "greedy publishers" but from pirates so it's not "evil overestimated data".

Maybe console gamers use different ways to download games than PC gamers? Or maybe PC gamers just tend to pirate more?

I bought Skyrim retail without knowing it required Steam.
In very small writing on the back of the box it says you need Steam to activate it, it doesn't say you need it to play it.
Until then I had thought you only needed steam to play games you bought from Steam.
In future I will be looking into it before I buy a game & not buying any game that requires it.

So to Assume everyone who bought Skyrim knew about the Steam requirement, only goes to reinforce what Benny Hill said about assuming things.

Oblivion was released without online-DRM in March of 2006. From wikipedia:

"The game had shipped 1.7 million copies by April 10, 2006, and sold over 3 million copies by January 18, 2007."

The number of copies sold is surely much higher now.

Yet Bethesda still pissed on fans by forcing Steam with Skyrim. It's not about protecting the product. It's about killing the second-hand market.

Unless there's already a reliable source for the information (???), I wish the government did something useful for a change and passed transparency laws requiring software and game companies to fully disclose total investment versus total profit for each program or game every year. Then we'd see a whole lot less sympathy for dick moves like this.

Also: Skyrim sucks. Played on Xbox cuz I won't use Steam. Not worth the time and money despite the praise it gets from some. Wait until it's dirt cheap or pirate it.

Lists of Steamworks games are maintained by the Steam community which can help narrow things down (here's the list for 2012). "only STEAM version" entries have Steamworks features when bought directly through Steam but not anywhere else.

Publishers using Steamworks almost always use it on every game, so once a publisher has started using it you'll know that any future release from them is basically guaranteed to have it too.

I believe Oblivion shipped with SecuROM DRM, which, while mostly invisible to the owner's eye, is arguably even worse than Steam in many ways.

Now Morrowind - that title was DRM free, even the GOTY edition. And according to Wikipedia, it has sold over 4 million copies.

There was a disc check, which was easily circumvented by running the main game exe rather than the launcher.

Oblivion and Fallout 3 used SecuROM ONLY for a disc check iirc, and Steam is MUCH worse than a SecuROM disc check (tho I admit that a simple, non-invasive disc check is preferable to both).

No argument with that.

Well, yes. That's what the software was intended to do. However, a quick Google search has given me many many examples of how Oblivion's DRM conflicted with other software and services in people's computers. SecuROM has a huge tradition of being despised by a lot of people, and with good reason. It was one of the most aggressive DRMs out there before online activation came along.

Oh, I didn't know that. My bad.

Morrowind has SafeDisc copy protection on the GOTY version I have. I don't think Morrowind's implementation of it installs itself onto the system but as with other SafeDisc games you'd need a special program in order to back up the discs since it works by including deliberately corrupted sectors that most ripping programs will choke on and refuse to continue.

Securom was added later, with the release of Shivering Isles. Whether or not it's worse than Steam is probably debatable and depends on which components are activated (modern Securom is/was a suite from which a publisher could choose between several different means of protection, from a disc check through online activation through a rootkit).

Well, it did have a disc check. But yeah, nothing beyond that.

We're starting to stray into the copy protection vs. DRM debate, which is probably not fruitful here. The point is that Bethesda was able to sell a fuckton of copies of its games before deciding to use online-DRM (Steam). ;-)

First of all thanks Psyringe for his struggle for defending reasoning and his stand against unfounded opinions and extra judicial punishments.

You sir can not throw bad-mouthful words to people at your will. Scumbag? A bag of scum? That is very heavy. And if you find rights to call me "scumbag" i can call you "real scumbag" or with much more worse insults.

I really didn't know about Skyrim until i asked here on forums. I am amazed at how many people waiting to declare someone a troll or plotter. Then throw any insult which come into their minds at that moment.

Let me tell you a story. Be ready. It will a long one.

I live in Turkey. I am playing games since i was about 13-14 years old. In the years when i was just a child there was nothing like "original game"(we were calling it this way). The games selling in shops were all "copy". (like you say pirate, it is another expression common in Turkey). The prices were about $2.5 - $10 or sometimes more if the game have many CD's. They weren't any "boxed" games but all games were in good CD cases with their manuals inside. Also aside from the CD itself has high quality, the press - the picture on the CD was great. I have a copy Starcraft CD from those days and it is the best CD i have ever seen. It is even 3 times better than the "original" SC now i own. It also has CD-key imprinted at the backside of CD. I will post a picture when i find it.

The original games were very very very expensive. They were very rare only sold certain games(i assure you very low), they were in only in the 2 or 3 biggest cities of Turkey, in certain stores. By being a child you have to travel to those cities and take money of at least $100 or more(plus the travel money) from your parent only to buy one certain game original while they earn not more than $300 - $500.

I remember at this time when i travel to Istanbul to a rich friend's house. We went to a mall. And i insisted him at least buying one "original game". Even he said, "What is the difference? Isn't it the same game? Why pay X amounts of money?" i insisted. I remember i trying to explain him that buying "copy" games is wrong and we have to support developers and company the game that brought us. I was just 14 i guess.

Even in the jungle of "copy" games, even in the times of poverty, i was trying, encouraging to buy "original games".

A lot of time passed on after that. In the time i was i military i made my girlfriend to buy "Baldur's Gate Collection" from Amazon.com. Shipment payment was very high so we shipped it to her uncle living in America and take the game from him when he came to visit her in Turkey.

Years passed and Turkey's original game market developed. Now we can find virtually every game on market though new games, especially console ones are still excessively expensive. Most of them is %8 of my salary, while some of them is higher than %10 of my salary(%12 - %14) and my salary is considered a good one. Most of people paid by "minimum wage". If you have this kind of salary some new AAA titles for console are 3/1 of your wage = ) Though you can find old games being cheap to very cheap.(not the console ones, they are everytime expensive.)

In Turkey i don't know anyone around me beside my room-mate that buy original games. When i say someone that i bought they blame me being of stupid and chump. I couldn't even persuade my best friend to buy a $5 dollar original Starcraft. And he played this games for years.

I was away from the gaming industry for a while. For a loong while. In the meantime i was only playing Homam3, Starcraft, Dota or playing nothing. I studied economics at the university. But then i want to study computer programming and i educated myself. I now working in a company as a web developer. And i value the "free software" philosophy (software free not as in beer, but free as in speech) I use GNU/Linux as my main operating system for 6 years now. I only and only buy Windows for playing games and nothing else. I am dual-booting my OSes.

I recently started to work. And as soon as i started to work i bought myriad of games. My money wasn't enough so i borrowed from friends. Only on GOG i have 100 games exactly.
I have about 50 boxed games. On GG i have around 40. Then comes DotEmu, Amazon and Indie Bundles and some titles bought from their respective sites like "To The Moon".

In total have at least 200 games that bought only in 1 month. Only to pay my respect to developer and gaming world. All of DRM free. Plus i own Nintendo DS, Playstation 2, Playstation Portable, Nintendo Wii. More benefits and money to the gaming world.

With all of these. I am the biggest scumbag of all. Ain't i?

Let's come to a conclusion. My roommate buys his games from Steam mostly. But until recently i didn't know Steam was a kind of DRM only. I assumed that Steam was only a shop. You can download and play freely. Think he only use it when he wants communicate with friends and for other features. What a fool i was. I had never think that if you want to play a game you bought, you have to go inside of that shop. Was not logical so i never think of it. I was optimistic. Then i've heard the rumors about Skyrim. I asked my room-mate about it and he said: "No, I don't think so. This game can not be Steam-only".

Then i came here and i asked my fellow forum friends here. But i found judgment and insults instead.

Words came to this i must explain. Of course you can choose not to share my opinion but here is "my opinion" and "experiences":

Using Windows was the constraint. Having obliged to pay and use an operating system because of games restricted mostly on Windows platform. It sucks, it really sucks. But i love gaming, i endured.

Then came this EULA's, NO-LAN, Online-Only, Steam-Only, rootkits(SecuROM, Tages etc..) Day by day freedom stripped away from us and they contiune to strip away it and will continue. Nowadays you can't even give a game you love to your friend. You have install rootkits in to your computer to play a game, you have to install client that decide for you, that scours your computer for information and share it with third-party partners. Only for playing games.

By using excuses like "piracy" (invented by media and fear of piracy promoted for certain goals) they are "using" us, they are "treating" us how they like. Installing rootkit for piracy is excuse me but for another "piracy"? Piracy to user rights? Piracy to your private rights? We are "thieves" for we "steal" from them? No. They are "stealing" from us. Our informations, our privacy, our freedom. They have to watch our every move because we paying customers are "potential criminals" aren't we? Maybe in future they want to watch us too by "Webcam-Alwasy-On". But you signed that agreement right? Oh ok, you accepted everything at the beginning.

It is enough that we swallow this "piracy" pill. It is enough for "company rights". Isn't it time for "our rights and freedom"?