Was the Atari ST to blame for badly ported games?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

* The ST was not generating enough money on its own, the piracy was way too high on this machine. Therefore, the publishers were forced to release the games on Amiga to counterbalance the losses, otherwise they would have gone bankrupt.

It was the same problem on the Amiga too. Some games were 'cracked' and distributed even before the official release! The sales life of games was short, so they had to be developed quickly and cheaply to make a profit.

It wasn't the ST that was to blame, nor was it (as many have suggested) Commodore's fault for not bringing out cheaper more powerful Amigas fast enough - it was the users. Most were teenagers who got their computer for free and didn't have the money, the patience, or the morals to wait until they could afford to buy the games they wanted. Unfortunately some of those users were also highly intelligent as well as immoral. For them the real game was cracking and distributing titles for street cred. Few of them understood the damage they were doing until it was too late.

The PC also suffered from piracy of course, but due to the much larger user base and larger number of adult owners who expected to pay for software the market was much larger.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

It was the same problem on the Amiga too. Some games were 'cracked' and distributed even before the official release! The sales life of games was short, so they had to be developed quickly and cheaply to make a profit.

It wasn't the ST that was to blame, nor was it (as many have suggested) Commodore's fault for not bringing out cheaper more powerful Amigas fast enough - it was the users. Most were teenagers who got their computer for free and didn't have the money, the patience, or the morals to wait until they could afford to buy the games they wanted. Unfortunately some of those users were also highly intelligent as well as immoral. For them the real game was cracking and distributing titles for street cred. Few of them understood the damage they were doing until it was too late.

The PC also suffered from piracy of course, but due to the much larger user base and larger number of adult owners who expected to pay for software the market was much larger.

Immoral?

Street cred???

Hit with the ladies????

[sparhawk]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Most were teenagers who got their computer for free and didn't have the money, the patience, or the morals to wait until they could afford to buy the games they wanted.

I was thinking about this argument. While it certainly has some truth to it, as I also couldn't have afforded to buy all the games I got, I wonder how much difference it really had made.
Considering that the teenagers should have the patience to wait until they had enough money to buy this cool game, how uch games would they have purchased this way. Ok, there is still the occassional game from the dear uncle or aunt, and birthday, christmas, etc.. But all in all, those people could NEVER have afforded to buy even a small percentage of the games they pirated, so as a consequence, some games might have done better, but in general I somehow doubt that this would have helped all the companies blaming pirating.


When I compare this with movies, it's pretty similar nowadays. 20 years ago, movies were also pirated a lot and the internet was to blame like peer to peer networks and all. I bet that today, piracy is much lesser of a proble, but not because of good protection (which certainly has increased), but with cheaper alternatives being available, so that people don't need to pirate as much because it became more affordable.

Unfortunately some of those users were also highly intelligent as well as immoral. For them the real game was cracking and distributing titles for street cred.

I never considered myself as immoral, but cracking was cool, because not everybody could do it, and it was a kind of intellectual challenge. Like playing chess, to beat your opponent with your brain.

[Retro1234]

blaming the ST for a market that was small and not very profitable doesn't make much sense if there was a profit like in the console world more effort would have been put into both ST and Amiga ports but it just wasn't worth it, the only reason anyone would go the extra mile was personal pride in there work not profit.

Movies have always found a profit, hollywood movies are global not like Amiga and ST games, piracy is rife and there hasn't been any good movies for years, it's all going to Netflix originals etc.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Most were teenagers who got their computer for free and didn't have the money, the patience, or the morals to wait until they could afford to buy the games they wanted.

Well that's bollocks, innit? If they don't have the money then they're still not gonna buy the game. They might buy a game when they do have the cash on hand, but that's still gonna be a whole shedload of games that went un-bought.

[AmiBoy]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

It was the same problem on the Amiga too. Some games were 'cracked' and distributed even before the official release! The sales life of games was short, so they had to be developed quickly and cheaply to make a profit.

It wasn't the ST that was to blame, nor was it (as many have suggested) Commodore's fault for not bringing out cheaper more powerful Amigas fast enough - it was the users. Most were teenagers who got their computer for free and didn't have the money, the patience, or the morals to wait until they could afford to buy the games they wanted. Unfortunately some of those users were also highly intelligent as well as immoral. For them the real game was cracking and distributing titles for street cred. Few of them understood the damage they were doing until it was too late.

The PC also suffered from piracy of course, but due to the much larger user base and larger number of adult owners who expected to pay for software the market was much larger.

I also see that the other way around. Pirated games helped the user base for both systems especially in other countries, away from the US/UK/Germany (e.g. countries with less GDP so to speak). Consumers will always go for the cheaper option, I had colleagues making 8k/month that were downloading movies and games on a daily basis. Also the circulation of the pirated games helped a whole market grow. There were stores selling the games etc. After all if one cannot afford to buy a game, one will never buy the game. Of course some profit was lost but the more Amigas/STs were sold, the more games would be produced.

[malko]

Don't forget the "private copying levy".

[jizmo]

Both piracy and Atari ST may have contributed to the quality of Amiga games but neither are unanimously guilty here as there are multiple ripple effects (both positive and negative) with both.

Many other factors like small market size, audience expectations, publishers and their business models, one-man dev teams, nonexistent quality control, lack of knowhow, schedules etc all had similar contributing factors and ripple effects that ultimately led to early Amiga games library not being 100% stellar.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Well that's bollocks, innit? If they don't have the money then they're still not gonna buy the game. They might buy a game when they do have the cash on hand, but that's still gonna be a whole shedload of games that went un-bought.

Yup... Neither me or my parents really had the money to pay for games at full retail price back then. So yeah what do you do when you get a 2nd hand Amiga on the cheap? You find a guy to supply the rest on the cheap as well.

The end result is still the same.

Not buying games because no budget: the devs don't see a dime for the games you would want to have

Getting the games pirated: the devs don't see a dime for the games you want to have.

Either way, nobody wins or loses anything.

[Rob68K]

Who here really can honestly say, hand on heart, that they've turned down a copy of a game they really like the look of for moral reasons?
I know I never did.
That does not include those which were then subsequently bought when some smidgen of guilt or even a genuine desire to do the right thing finally sets in.
Because that doesn't count.

[modrobert]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Either way, nobody wins or loses anything.

At least the pirates got to play the game, not to mention they had far more efficient distribution channels, boards and "online" (zmodem over telnet) before it was even a thing for game distributors.

[AmiBoy]

And I think, taking into account the poor means of information sharing and sales, piracy did push the reputation of both the game and the home computers out to more people and I believe helped the Amiga. Not sure if this actually made the Amiga a game machine in people's mind though

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Rob68K

Who here really can honestly say, hand on heart, that they've turned down a copy of a game they really like the look of for moral reasons?
I know I never did.

I was a voracious consumer of both pirated disks (DefJam/CCS Compact Disks FTW!) and games I could buy with my pocket money. I got £1/Week, so saving up for a game meant two or three per year.

The rest... well. Yarrr.

[redblade]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Hit with the ladies????

: The FairLighT crew weren't asked to model for the female teen magazines like all those boy bands groups? (a band implies they play instruments)

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Hit with the ladies????

Strangely a bit of success had with my mod (ok soundfx at the time) tapes with some girls i was going to disco with, but at the end got friendzoned anyway :/

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

It was the same problem on the Amiga too. Some games were 'cracked' and distributed even before the official release! The sales life of games was short, so they had to be developed quickly and cheaply to make a profit.

Even Piracy accounted for, there was more games or software sold on Amiga than on Atari ST. And this was a fact. The publishers left the ST because it was absolutely impossible to recoup the dev costs. For 50.000 copies sold on Amiga, you'd get 10-15.000 sold on ST.

The piracy system was industrial on ST up to the point that it was even easier to get any software than going to your local hypermarket.

What appears is that amiga users in the end bought more originals than ST users did. This is a fact proved with the software sales figures.

It wasn't the ST that was to blame, nor was it (as many have suggested) Commodore's fault for not bringing out cheaper more powerful Amigas fast enough - it was the users. Most were teenagers who got their computer for free and didn't have the money, the patience, or the morals to wait until they could afford to buy the games they wanted. Unfortunately some of those users were also highly intelligent as well as immoral. For them the real game was cracking and distributing titles for street cred. Few of them understood the damage they were doing until it was too late.

Check my answer above. We were at the time short of money, quite a number of us, but also many had parents with money, more on the amiga side than the ST side.

St kids had an ST because they had 'no money'. Amiga users were more rich.

The PC also suffered from piracy of course, but due to the much larger user base and larger number of adult owners who expected to pay for software the market was much larger.

Correct.

[nobody]

There was no control on what was coming out by software houses, like e.g. in Nintendo, so after you had bought some bad games like Final Fight or shinobi you would prefer buying copies next time. Personally i had some originals like Rainbow islands, Beast 2 the huge box with shirt inside, Shadow warriors etc, mostly the ones i knew they were good. But even if i wanted to buy the originals there weren't anywhere, i once bought Mig 29 fulcrum and BAT originals and the disks were corrupt (boxes already open, as a kid I didn't pay attention) so that was the last time i bought originals.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by nobody

There was no control on what was coming out by software houses, like e.g. in Nintendo, so after you had bought some bad games like Final Fight or shinobi you would prefer buying copies next time. Personally i had some originals like Rainbow islands, Beast 2 the huge box with shirt inside, Shadow warriors etc, mostly the ones i knew they were good. But even if i wanted to buy the originals there weren't anywhere, i once bought Mig 29 fulcrum and BAT originals and the disks were corrupt (boxes already open, as a kid I didn't pay attention) so that was the last time i bought originals.

indeed. I remember going in UK in 1991. Hook from Ocean was released in UK cinema, and the game as well in shops.I remember being shocked by what i saw in those : where in hell you have the boxes not protected and not sealed against theft ???



The clerk had the disks out of the boxes, and put them inside the boxes once you paid the game.


In France, Innelec, the biggest software (huge) distributor sealed each game boxes in thick plastic casing, ensuring you get a pristine game in top condition with disks untouched.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The clerk had the disks out of the boxes, and put them inside the boxes once you paid the game.

I remember doing the same thing for CDs at the charity shop I used to volunteer at. They would regularly have a delivery of new stock of CDs called "Delta", and I and others had to take them all out of their jewel cases and stick them in these cardboard pouches with numbers on them, under the counter.

The idea was to prevent theft, but it was a LOT of hassle to have to process them when simple locked glass cases would've done just as well to display them on sale, but I guess the charity just couldn't be bothered with them.

[sparhawk]

Originally Posted by nobody

But even if i wanted to buy the originals there weren't anywhere

In Austria, I already had my C64 for at least two years, and the shops still hand't had many games. I rember buying a game (Snake) for my VC20 before that, but they had only a small selection (luckily Snake was my favourite so I bought it). They mostly sold old/cheap games, but I never saw any of the games you'd see in mags or I got from some connection.
As a 14 year old I wouldn't even have known that I might have imported them, but honestly. Do you seriously think that teenagers start importing games in big numbers? You wouldn't know where to start. Shops didn't bother, phone calls were expensive. Paying in foreign currency was expensive, etc..


It took several years until shops started to sell games that were closer to what you could get from your local dealer.