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40 million attempts to use pirated ut3 keys

40 million attempts to use pirated ut3 keys

40 Million Attempts to Use Pirated UT3 Keys

Zips @ 9:20 pm pdt on 5/3/08 - pc fps

It seems as though it's not just Crytek that is having issues with piracy on the PC. Epic's Mark Rein, recently made a statement to TG Daily that piracy is the key reason why PC exclusives are on the rapid decline.

We spoke with Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games, and learned that the Unreal Tournament 3 servers received over 40 million attempts at illegitimate access using pirate keys. That number is huge, and the real magnitude comes when you calculate the retail price of $49.99 (59.99 for Collector's Edition).

If those 40 million players actually paid the full price, it would have been nearly $2 billion more in Epic’s pocket book. That is more than the quarterly sales results from Nvidia or AMD. To add another perspective, the government lost out as well, because no sales tax is earned on pirated copies.

The math seems to be of that "fuzzy math" variety as this article is assuming that the full price of the game would go to Epic, which it would not. The article also doesn't make clear how many of those 40 million attempts were repeat attempts from the same person. Despite these questionable factors, the piracy matter is one that is making some PC only developers consider other alternatives.


comment #1 Ryosuke T 9:31 pm pdt - 5/3/08	A never ending phenomenon. For me I wait for game prices to drop if I do not find the game is a must play/have immediately. Except for HL series. I buy them the day of release. Haha. I'm not saying piracy is right or wrong. But the problem with most game like UT3 I have is, no one I know likes to play UT3 or has it. Be pointless for me to buy UT3 off the bat. Not to mention the amount of players playing online is not as high as CS/CSS/TF2 etc etc that would keep the game active in my interest. I still play CS because of one thing, 1) friends plays it alot 2) plenty of servers filled with people. Games like Doom 3, Q4 and UT3, the MP is dead in "my eyes." 90% of the time I see dead empty servers.

comment #2 Gpig 12:45 am pdt - 5/4/08	I'm surprised anyone would want to play ut3 even for free

comment #3 Diamond Dust 1:44 am pdt - 5/4/08	well they aren't letting the pirated copies play online so where is the problem? isn't the whole point of UT3 to play online? It seems to me that piracy for a single player game is the big problem because they can play without authenticating to your servers.

comment #4 mifdeath 2:02 am pdt - 5/4/08	Im a little sick of these companies making claims of huge loss of potential money due to piracy/copyright infringment. Potential money is just that, money you could have made but didn't. Putting a number on potential unrealized profits is a joke. Crying about money you didnt make because of the evils of doing business is laughable at best and at worst a dirty underhanded attempt to get a handout or a political/legal policy change to give your industry a leg up over others. All industries have problems, what makes yours so important? Should game developers go cross platform? Hell yes! The more product you make and make available to more people the more money you will make. However stating this is because of piracy is a fallacy. Instead of blaming everyone else for them not making money perhaps they should look inwards.

comment #5 meowmeow 5:36 am pdt - 5/4/08	I've got a bad feeling about PC piracy, developers might switch to console. =(

comment #6 Sintra 5:53 am pdt - 5/4/08	Makes sense. Lower the damn prices...

comment #7 -:Nighthawk:- Xfire me. (91%) My Steam Community 8:57 am pdt - 5/4/08	Bad news guys, Microsoft is going to stop making Windows for the PC because of piracy problems. Piracy is driving Bill Gates into the poor house, after all. rollseyes The point being, piracy isn't a new phenomenon, yet plenty of software companies still fare very well. I don't condone piracy -- I definitely agree that programmers should be rewarded for quality work. That said, seeing as it's impossible to own software these days (you merely license a copy of it that with modern contracts can be changed or taken from you at the company's sole discretion) you start getting into a fuzzy area where people no longer feel they're stealing. Honestly though, while I do think that piracy hurts sales somewhat, my personal belief is that the majority of kids who pirate software are the same kids that don't make much of an income and probably wouldn't be shelling out $50-60 per title. Perhaps they might pick up the game in the bargain bin the next year (if at all), but most of us that work and have decent incomes don't mind dropping that kind of money on something that will entertain us for far longer than a similar amount of money spent at the movie theater. Online play does seem to be the real future of PC titles, though, given that it allows for better control of valid keys. I wouldn't be surprised to see far more of the single-player titles becoming console-only releases in the future.

comment #8 azz0r Portals: ImpossibleIsEasy The Wuggawoo Project V3 10:10 am pdt - 5/4/08	I doubt 40 million people took there time to pirate that crap. Probably counts the same few people a few times.

comment #9 ALT+F4 11:29 am pdt - 5/4/08	And crap it is. I had a chance to play a legitimate version and it lasted less than an hour before uninstallation. Absolutely no game there. Before whining about losses to piracy, how about: 1. Having a decent story 2. Losing copy protection that punishes legitimate users 3. Having reasonable system specs, or options otherwise 4. Having an affordable price 5. Having a decent story Tell you what, try all of those things and if piracy is still a problem for you, I'll have at least a modicum of sympathy.

comment #10 < )))>< 11:37 am pdt - 5/4/08	Once again, I love hearing from UT3 saying that's the PC market is essentially "dying". ...Of course, then you look at Steam, and you realize that's poppycock.

comment #11 Renegade[CSR] 1:13 pm pdt - 5/4/08	Edited by Renegade[CSR] @ 1:16 pm pdt on 5/4/08 Piracy isn't why your game didn't sell well. Your game is simply an average title. Its fun, but its just run of the mill, and doesn't introduce anything new to the FPS market. This goes for both Epic and Crytek. Oh, and just a heads up to Epic's Mark Rein and any other developers that ever bring up this PC piracy argument again: Piracy is just as prevalent on consoles, so its time to work towards a solution from within your company in order to solve any issues you are having with sales.

comment #12 xbbdc 2:33 pm pdt - 5/4/08	if companies came up with a solution such as steam then piracy wouldnt be such a huge issue.

comment #13 brains 2:41 pm pdt - 5/4/08	these people forget that the people who pirate things like this never would have bought the game in the first place, even if there was no way to pirate it. it's not lost revenue, it's non-existent revenue.

comment #14 sathanas 2:51 pm pdt - 5/4/08	Not quite sure why they can't work out why people wont buy it. I didn't even bother pirating it, I can predict that I wont get more than a couple of days play out of it, even in multiplayer. And by the time it's at a "budget" price, everyone who blindly buys and plays it will have moved on to the next iteration anyway. It's actually much cheaper than I thought it was for a Steam copy of it. Just $35 so ~£18 or something. That's actually quite good compared to Call of Duty 4, which is selling for a staggering $70. Do I want it anyway? No. It's still a game I will lose interest in in a very short period of time.

comment #15 displayroxs 3:05 pm pdt - 5/4/08	Is it even possible to pirate a game off Steam? I think the developers of the new Chernobyl game have the right idea of making it Steam exclusive. Saves cash on producing it on a disk, and cuts pirating by a ten-fold. P.S. F*** Epic Games. UT3 blows, and anyone that says PC gaming is going to die doesn't get my respect.

comment #16 ALT+F4 4:20 pm pdt - 5/4/08	displayroxs wrote.. Is it even possible to pirate a game off Steam? Absolutely. I've seen de-Steamed copies of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Portal and Half-Life 2: Episode 2, to name just a few. The pirates are quite clever at rewriting the data and install routines to negate the necessity of a Steam account or connection. The Steam version of Lost Planet requires a connection just to play alone offline, while the de-Steamed version does not. (See Point 2 in my previous post.) P.S. The above information is posted for educational purposes only, and to disprove the common assumption that Steam in and of itself is any kind of answer to any kind of problem. It is not an endorsement of piracy and one should keep in mind that pirated or cracked copies of many games do not allow online play without legitimate and unique CD Keys.

comment #17 kalabalana 4:32 pm pdt - 5/4/08	Wouldn't surprise me if a couple hackers had their keygens constantly running to find valid keys. 40,000,000 attempts, but, at how many per person? For all we know, 49M of those could be from one guy, over a week. BTW, again, a good game will get even the PIRATES to buy if it has a good online multiplayer. Unreal doesn't imo, but it has been successful in the past.

comment #18 Ryosuke T 6:32 pm pdt - 5/4/08	All the people want is price cut. No game is worth $50-70 a pop without taxes. These guys make enough profit from it regardless. Even if the game is going $30 without tax and it sold 1 million copies, that's $30M. Plenty of profit to pay out the workers/tax/utilities and etc for the year.

comment #19 -:Nighthawk:- Xfire me. (91%) My Steam Community 7:14 pm pdt - 5/4/08	UT3 isn't expensive, so that's not a valid argument. I'm likewise inclined to believe that users trying a multitude of keygen keys are adding up to this 40M... it's hard to imagine all those people trying exactly once and instantly giving up. Neither of those factors negates the fact that easy, relatively safe piracy can hurt sales, but obviously not to the extent implied here.

comment #20 kalabalana 8:13 pm pdt - 5/4/08	@Ryosuke -> They aren't making $30 on a $30 MSRP, they are prob getting like 10, and like 20 on a 50 game. @Nighthawk -> Yeah I think so, but what pisses me off is that even though they are proving a valid point, they over-exaggerate the reasons for it, which pisses off anyone who realizes this. As a result, instead of any sort of sympathy they WOULD'VE gotten from me, now they just get my disdain, for the company, and their work.

comment #21 magicalpoop 9:08 pm pdt - 5/4/08	Ut3 is shit. Valve realized that sorta multiplayer was dead back when they picked up TF and re-released it as TFC.... Seriously..40 million.. R O F L like they werE ALL UNIQUE. Obviously a large # of em were either faked or key gen spam. Please..40 million people wanting to play UT3? R O F L .

comment #22 mifdeath 2:16 am pdt - 5/5/08	It seems very odd that instead of these copyright/piracy/forgery laws and policies being implemented as an active force to stop one entity from literally profiting from another entities work, they are used as an excuse for poor sales or as a cash-grab from the defenseless. Do we seriously need laws protecting the usage of other laws?

comment #23 Linux 10:51 am pdt - 5/5/08	wow so many people complaining about UT3 and other games once again... Personally I'm happy with UT3, it keep me from getting bored and annoying with 90% of the other games I got to play because too many little kids that they're parents don't have the power to say no them when buying a game are playing stuff... UT3 atleast is enjoyable before having come kid screaming across the mic saying jibberish. Anywho pirates are aways going to be around, and if you don't want to support a game then don't buy its simple as they, but if you do want to support it buy a copy and show the support.... Don't bash shit until you have tired it, which I can say a lot of people bash UT3 because they think its like the old ones and its not.... Also computer Spec, go drop some real money on a computer and get up to date, stop trying to build computers on CS specs...

comment #24 Admz 6:27 pm pdt - 5/5/08	"Instead of finding out ways to make our games better, lets see how many times key-finding bots attempt to use our software!!"