The Imagined Future of PC Games

News Reader · Post by **News Reader** » April 3rd, 2007, 7:00

The Imagined Future of PC Games
PC Gamer has up a five-part series prognosticating the future of PC gaming. (part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5) Graham Smith, Kieron Gillen, and a few other PC games folks make some big-picture predictions about where console gaming's aging sibling is headed. Some of their predictions are fairly safe ("6. The mouse won't die, and graphics cards will get more powerful."), but others may be a bit contentious: "4. Steam and similar services will crush PC piracy. There's been a lot of talk from developers - old rivals id and Epic chief among them - about piracy making it harder for them to justify developing PC-only games. There's so little profit in it, apparently, that the poor fellows are left with no choice but to stray from their beloved home-platform and develop for consoles too. And yet the only games out there with a zero percent piracy ratio are all PC-only: MMOGs. They have a headstart in the anti-piracy crusade: connecting to a central server is an integral part of the game, so verifying that the user's CD key is unique can be done without much fuss. And no one's going to complain that a MMOG requires an internet connection; that's pretty obvious from the concept itself."

Author: Zonk
Category: pcgames
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Source: Slashdot: Games
Description: News for nerds, stuff that matters

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » April 3rd, 2007, 10:11

I never play online pirated games on the PC anyway, I'd much rather buy the game than muck about with Hamachi

Post by **Dog Pants** » April 3rd, 2007, 11:18

When the biggest selling PC game of last year (and probably several years before) is The Sims, it says to me that the majority of the games-playing public don't have the acumen to pirate a game.