Piracy Impact Is Smaller Than in the Past, Says PC Gaming Alliance Leader

The impact of piracy is smaller at the moment than at some points in the history of gaming, says the leader of the PC Gaming Alliance, and both publishers and developers are creating new ways of persuading players to buy original games.

Speaking to Gamasutra as part of a bigger interview Matt Ployhar, who is the new president of the PC Gaming Alliance, has said, “What's really interesting is piracy was largely, historically rampant when you had an optical drive or a piece of physical media. And people would go and download the crack for it.”

The PCGA leader then went on to talk about how MMOs and free-to-play games are not affected by piracy because of their business model.

He then insisted that the high point of piracy had passed, stating, “I'm not saying that piracy is going to go away. It's fascinating to watch. For example, you get a game like Crysis that got hit hard by piracy. Now what you're seeing to combat that or reduce the chances of piracy are developers implementing achievements, in-game pets, all of these things that are tracked and stored in the cloud.”

The most recent big PC release has been linked to Crysis 2, which was leaked in its entirety in beta form a few weeks ago, apparently with the master key for multiplayer gaming also included.

Despite the big breach in security and its possible consequences, developer Crytek released a statement saying that the company is still interested in the PC gaming market but that piracy is continuing to be one of the biggest threats to its development.

The PCGA recently announced that Microsoft and Nvidia, two of its founding members, were pulling out of the non-profit organization, presumably seeking other ways to promote the PC as a gaming platform.