Edward Zhao of Game Kudos writes an interesting piece on piracy and how it has had an impact on PC gaming, and what measures have been put in place to stop it:
"I’m certain that all of us know pirating is wrong. It’s basic human courtesy that when someone puts his heart, soul, sweat, and time into a project, you don’t steal it. But we humans have an extraordinary mind, one that can work out illogical reasoning to support the most wicked behavior. We will steal, cheat, and lie due to the allure of immediate gratification and we’ll even convince ourselves that we’re in the right."
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Spiders: "We're going to cut straight to the chase so you're not left wondering: After a long period without clear answers, we have received confirmation that Spiders is being liquidated.
What does it mean? This means the company as a whole no longer exists. We'll cease our functions immediately. The planned DLC will release via Nacon, and then-- well, that's it.
We're sorry that it's come to this and would like to thank each and every one of you for your support over the years.
If you have any questions or run into issues with your games, please contact Nacon directly as we'll no longer be able to reply."
Solution to Piracy, put your game on Steam
if you're really into making some money. And not just Steam, there are plenty of other websites dedicated to providing games for PC gamers. Just dont fuck up and have it exclusive to Games for Windows Live, like Lionhead is doing for Fable 3.
That there are definitely some games that I wish I pirated, instead of buying the pieces of shit. Like Necrovision. Its pretty stupid that in an FPS, all your weapons are useless (unless you're fighting a boss), because you have this legendary spartan kick that makes all the enemies CRUMBLE.
This article is spot on the problem is too many game companies expect to release an uncompelling game then moan when people don't want to pay for their sub standard product. Why should I spend $40 on a single player game that'll last me 14 hours when I can buy a multiplayer game that'll be replayable for the next few months for the same cost. Case in point I bought Battlefield 2 years ago but I still play it regularly due to the large amounts of mods available that keep it fun. Likewise games with a good multi-player like the COD series, are going to get more sales as people need a legal copy to play online. The point is just releasing a single player game isnt going to cut it anymore developers need to add a hook to their games that make it worthwhile for people to buy them, this is done in two ways, make the game highly moddable to keep the game fresh and replayable or give the game a very good multi-player experience that forces people to buy a legal copy in order to play. Otherwise people will just download the game and play it through in a matter of days and discard it as it has little value.