I’m not telling you anything new by saying piracy is a huge issue on the PC. Call of Duty 4, last year’s best-selling game, sold over 7 million copies in total, but less than a million of those were for the PC. Both Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3, two major PC games, had lackluster sales number. Given this, it’s unsurprising to see fewer big titles being created for computers.
The situation is even worse in parts of Asia — at least in North America you’re unlikely to find stores openly selling pirated games. Unable to make a profit selling games, Chinese and Korean game developers have turned to online games. MMORPG like World of Warcraft are massive hits there, and so are free games like MapleStory that make you pay for special items.
A game, as a product, can be copied and distributed very easily. A game, as a service, cannot be duplicated and each player must pay for his experience — pirating a service isn’t possible. While western PC gaming is crashing down because of piracy, eastern PC gaming is booming despite piracy.
Games as service are coming on our side of the Pacific ocean. MMORPG are already popular and a few companies are hard at work bringing to our shores the free games model from Korea. This change in business model will have a big impact on the games we play, starting with a bigger focus on multiplayer. I expect consoles to follow this trend too, now that they’re able to go online.