PC games that made the Amiga look like Shit

[Weasel Fierce]

Its also worth noting that CD ROMs were viewed by the software industry as being very difficult / impossible to copy while floppy disk piracy was epidemic.

[sokolovic]

Doom maybe had a little part but I'm convinced that Commodore management was the only responsible.
Think about it : between 1985/1990 only 4 models of Amiga were released, with a certain logic (A500, A1000, A2000, A3000). Between 1991 and 1994, they released A500+, A600, A1200, A3000T, A4000/030, A4000 040, A4000T, CDTV and CD32... And at the time they were released, the olders machines weren't discontinued (except for the A1000). Not even the C64 !
They clearly had no long term plan at all for their brand.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Weasel Fierce

Its also worth noting that CD ROMs were viewed by the software industry as being very difficult / impossible to copy while floppy disk piracy was epidemic.

Ha ha Luckily the industry itself made it cheap and remarkably easy to copy cds not long after. Quite an astonishing development really.

[Megalomaniac]

I think my second PC in 1999 had a writable CD drive, probably rewritable but possibly WORM (write once, read many). Think they were still a custom addon rather than a standard inclusion much before that? I assume they were available for Amigas if you knew where to look?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Ha ha Luckily the industry itself made it cheap and remarkably easy to copy cds not long after. Quite an astonishing development really.

And then they put copy protection on CDs and then we got CloneCD and then they made online DRM and then... yeah, it sure feels like all this is totally worth it

[grond]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I think my second PC in 1999 had a writable CD drive, probably rewritable but possibly WORM (write once, read many). Think they were still a custom addon rather than a standard inclusion much before that? I assume they were available for Amigas if you knew where to look?

I bought a PAR-port CD stand-alone burner for my first or second PC (both laptop computers). That probably was in 1998/99 and was when stuff like this started to become affordable and thus common. It probably cost something like 400DM. I think this PAR-port CD burner could have worked with an Amiga. It did work under linux. I remember that my harddisk space was still so limited (single digit GB harddisk) that I had an 800MB partition just to hold the data that was supposed to go on the CD and would get deleted immediately afterwards. That hdd may have had something like 5.6G.

In any case the industry had like five years before CDs started to get copied just as much as floppy-based games had before. That was more or less the expected product life of a console generation.

[sokolovic]

Yeah I remember that time when everyone moved (every Amiga dedicated UK developpers) to the PlayStation because piracy wasn't sustainable on the Amiga and then people buying PlayStation because it was so easy to have pirated games. The piracy argument to drop the Amiga was the worst, no doubt about that. Most developpers went to the most easily piratable machine after the Amiga
(And I don't know the PC market at that time but I guess it was as easy to pirate games on this machine, maybe easier because games could'nt be non DOS as in the Amiga.)
Dont know elsewhere but in Marseille, which is not exactly France , you could have pirated PSX games in shop around 1995, just by asking the shop seller.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

(And I don't know the PC market at that time but I guess it was as easy to pirate games on this machine, maybe easier because games could'nt be non DOS as in the Amiga.)

Let's put it this way: I got my first games as backup copies on PC and they didn't have a manual protection either. Doom 2 was probably the most pirated game of 1994, but I don't think id or GT Interactive worried about it too much.

[gimbal]

That's why you went to computer clubs. To copy.

[TCD]

10 Years of PC DOS Gaming Part 4: 1991 [ Show youtube player ]

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Weasel Fierce

Its also worth noting that CD ROMs were viewed by the software industry as being very difficult / impossible to copy while floppy disk piracy was epidemic.

Correct. It wasn't just that though. PC software was coming on as many as 55 disks (Office 97 Pro), so CDROM drives were becoming virtually essential. CD ROM also provided the extra storage space for enhancements like digitized speech and CD audio background music.

Once you got over a half dozen or so disks a CD was cheaper to produce. PC games were were already being limited to fit on a reasonable number of floppy disks. For example Monkey Island 2 (released in 1991) had five planned scenes cut in order to fit on 6 disks (the Amiga version came on 11 disks, partly because it had to run from floppies on a 1MB machine).

On the Amiga it was not quite such a boon because most Amiga owners were too miserly get a CDROM drive, and when a game came on 11 floppies would-be pirates might think twice about copying it. Nevertheless forward-thinking Amiga developers were keen on it for the same reasons.

Originally Posted by gimbal

Ha ha Luckily the industry itself made it cheap and remarkably easy to copy cds not long after. Quite an astonishing development really.

I bought a CD writer in 1993, for ~NZ$800 (NZ$300 of which was freight from the US). Not bad considering it was costing us NZ$1000 to have a gold disk master burned from a hard drive. It was a Philips external SCSI drive which I could use on both the A3000 and A1200.

Originally Posted by gimbal

That's why you went to computer clubs. To copy.

When I got my ZX Spectrum I heard that there was a local 'Sinclair' computer club. I went along expecting to gain knowledge and share experiences with other users, to find that it was basically just a pirate software distribution network. An old guy who smoked like a train would import tape games from the UK and make copies for a fee. I didn't bother joining that club. Instead I offered my technical services to a local electronics shop and got friendly with the owner. He didn't know much about home computers so I got the job of evaluating, ordering and promoting them. I would take demo models home and invite groups of people around to play with them - strictly no piracy of course.

Around 1985 another guy started a 'user group' with meetings in his garage once a month - again no piracy. Later on when the Amiga became popular an Amiga club was formed which was active for many years. Piracy was strictly forbidden there too. We were (mostly) adults who knew what damage it would do to our relationships with local retailers and their willingness to stock Amiga products.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TCD

Let's put it this way: I got my first games as backup copies on PC and they didn't have a manual protection either. Doom 2 was probably the most pirated game of 1994, but I don't think id or GT Interactive worried about it too much.

Doom II

According to David Kushner in Masters of Doom, id Software shipped 600,000 units of Doom II to stores in preparation for its launch. This initial shipment sold out within a month on shelves, despite its being expected to last for three months. Pre-orders for the game were so massive that it was difficult to buy from a store. The game products were displayed on pallets rather than shelves. The game was the United States' highest-selling software product of 1994, and sold more than 1.2 million copies within a year...

In Australia, the game sold 10,000 copies in the first two days of its release.

Contrast this with the Amiga:-

Piracy: The kiss of Death

The Amiga games scene is dying because piracy is so rife that software companies can't sell enough copies of most games to make them pay. Companies are abandoning the Amiga in favour of the consoles because while cartridge piracy exists, it is infinitesimal when compared to piracy on the Amiga. The average Amiga game sells around 8,000 copies. There are over 1,500,000 Amigas in the UK alone. This means your average game manages to sell to a mere half of one per cent of all owners.

AF: Are most pirates amateurs, or professionals?

JL: When you go right across the scene, you've got to start from the Bulletin Boards and the cracking teams. They do it for kicks...

When it comes to the market stall traders, you're talking about people who're purely in it for the money. They're not the slightest bit interested in Amiga software — last year they were probably selling videos. There is a lot of money in it — there are some very heavy people involved in it now.

They're actually cartels, operating at a number of car boots at the same time. Look at the overheads — they've got 25-50p per disk and sell them for £1.50-£2 per disk. These guys are making £100,000 a week.

AF: Do you think if software was cheaper there would be less piracy?

JL: I don't know. Budget titles are still cracked. Budget titles are only £8-10 aren't they? And you get just as many cracked disks for the budget titles...

Kev Bulmer

MD, Dimension Creative Designs. Responsible for Legends of Valour and Resolution 101.

We don't make much profit, but we do enjoy doing what we do. If Amiga piracy continues, then its up to the publishers who advance us development money against potential sales if they want us to develop for the Amiga.

Software publishers at the moment are not interested in developing for the Amiga, the CD32 yes, but not the Amiga.

People who pirate will suffer in the long run. They might have 200 games to play with this month, but in six months all of the big software houses will have pulled out and they'll be left with nothing.


Dino Dini

A firm footv fan, Dino has produced Kick Off 2 and Goal!

If the level of Amiga piracy stays the same, I will continue to support it, but only because I can also produce other formats as well. On its own, it wouldn't be worth it. Goal! is probably the last game I will develop on the Amiga first.

Pirates should see that there aren't as many new games coming out as there used to be. It's time to grow up and buy games. If they carry on like this, they can look forward to a future where the only software they can get for their Amiga is in the Public Domain.


Andy Braybrook

Programmer, Graftgold. Andy has worked on Fire and Ice and Uridium 2.

The more piracy there is, the less able we are to develop new games. But the Amiga platform is moving on to be less piratable. With CD32 and the CD add-on for the A1200 there's going to be less piracy... The arrival of CD32 actually means we're going to stay in the market a lot longer than we would have done.

Software pirates only realise how much damage they're doing when it affects them personally. We get people who come into the office who suddenly realise how much what they're doing affects what we do for the Amiga.

Peter Molyneux

MD, Bullfrog. Bullfrog have produced great games like Populous and Syndicate.

Piracy on the Amiga is a serious threat and to my mind the pirates have won. We didn't put copy protection on Syndicate — there's no point putting protection on games, because they only get hacked within a couple of days.

Here's a message for Amiga pirates: congratulations, you have now won over on the hacking side, and you have shown us how much better you are than us developers. Well done for making the Amiga a secondary marketplace behind the PC — we always used to develop first and foremost for the Amiga, but too much piracy means this is no longer the case.

[sandruzzo]

Piracy will always be an issue, but selling crap games at high cost won't help. And it even happened with Amiga: too much trash selled as gold...

[kremiso]

offtopic, just to share something different than just black or white

personally, i have always tried to grab the originals of all the games that i 'presumed' were perfect for my tastes, back in the day;

sadly here in South Italy the spreading of the Amiga games was not great at all, with the lack of many big titles;
here, 40KM to reach the lone computer & software shop, and most of the time i needed to take more than the third choice;

ok, i got something also by mail, but with normally a month of waiting each time

at least here, it was not easy at the time

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Doom II


Contrast this with the Amiga:-

Piracy: The kiss of Death

As I said: I didn't pay for Doom II in 1994 but it sold like hotcakes. Somehow I think that there is more to that than 'Piracy killed the Amiga'. I'll put it differently: Piracy was rampant throughout the C64 lifespan, but that didn't put CBM in financial problems. The PSX had a lot of piracy yet it was the most successful console saleswise. By that logic CBM should have made tons of cash from selling Amiga hardware. Yet they clearly didn't.

Edit: Here's an article from 2010 about piracy on PC https://www.destructoid.com/epic-bla...-the-pc-scene/
The funny/interesting bit about that article is this: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/b...ic-games-store

[Konrad]

Exactly. I'm not convinced that piracy killed the Amiga, but competition of other platforms in terms of distribution, quality and games library.

The Amiga games scene is dying because piracy is so rife that software companies can't sell enough copies of most games to make them pay

The last portion of the sentence is the important one.
Pirating on PC was EXACTLY the same. No less, not a little. Still, you always had fresh and new quality releases on the PC. Why is that ?

The example above of Peter Molyneux:
Populous and Syndicate were also pirated on the PC. That didn't stop Bullfrog producing more games on the PC, though. It was feasible to keep on developing for the PC.

Why not for the Amiga ?

People started to shift to other platforms. Other platforms (especially PC in comparison to Amiga) opened them more possibilities and more customers. Most Amigas were bought for gaming. But PCs were bought for work AND gaming. Which spread it widely in households.

There the software companies focused their money+energy. Again, on the PC there was the SAME pirating going on. But still there were more potential buyers, and just increasing. Even if no one would've pirated games on the Amiga, you would still have earned more money on the PC including pirating.

[gimbal]

Software houses will forever and ever claim that software pirates are the cause of all problems. It's to begin with a really nice way to not have to take any responsibility themselves.

I think that the reality is more that the piracy triggered a minor exodus. But for every software house that called it quits a new one was already in the starting blocks to replace them. Unfortunately the Amiga platform was already on its last legs, so those starters didn't have a whole lot of output.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Konrad

There the software companies focused their money+energy. Again, on the PC there was the SAME pirating going on. But still there were more potential buyers, and just increasing. Even if no one would've pirated games on the Amiga, you would still have earned more money on the PC including pirating.

Originally Posted by gimbal

Software houses will forever and ever claim that software pirates are the cause of all problems. It's to begin with a really nice way to not have to take any responsibility themselves.

I think those two quotes sum it up pretty well.

[Megalomaniac]

As late as mid-1994 Amiga games were the biggest seller in the UK, outselling PC CD games, and outselling Megadrive or SNES in quantity though not in value, despite there supposedly being 9 pirate copies for every original game by then. The problem was that Amiga games only sold in parts of Europe (and maybe Australia and New Zealand), whereas PC games dominated the US market (more people than the whole of the EU at that time) and consoles had Japan too. Amiga original games could potentially become console hits if they were good enough, but a game designed around the Amiga had little hope of breaking through on the PC because they were used to bigger games designed around hard drives. I think the Settlers did well on the PC, and Worms, but by 1993 they were rarities.

Piracy definitely hurt, but was it really the biggest cause? Many Amiga gamers at that time weren't old enough to have jobs, maybe paper rounds but nothing else. People who paid £1 a disk for a pirated game would not have magically been able to spend 10 times as much as that on the originals of all those games if pirated copies suddenly stopped existing. That said, I generally bought originals, but not usually as soon as they came out, I'd get them a year later for half the price via sales or mail order or sometimes on budget so it could be done.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Konrad

Again, on the PC there was the SAME pirating going on. But still there were more potential buyers, and just increasing. Even if no one would've pirated games on the Amiga, you would still have earned more money on the PC including pirating.

Indeed, the larger market gave the PC market more immunity to piracy. The small size of the Amiga market meant that the same proportion of piracy wasn't sustainable. While it wasn't the single factor involved, it drove software houses away quicker than they might otherwise have done. 80% piracy in a market of 100,000 sales is very different to 80% piracy in a market of 1,000,000 sales.