Rockstar Games, Ignore this: Thread

Rockstar Games, Ignore this: Change.org

Here's my Petition: Change.org

The Petition I am asking for Rockstar Games to ignore is nothing but childish stupidity, setting a bad example for gamers world-wide, and would be a very bad decision on Rockstar Games' behalf if they decided to listen to them. PC Gamers are by-far Rockstar's biggest LOYAL fanbase, who will continue to buy Rockstar games for years to come. I for one never knew a single real gamer who had Vice City on the PS2, but they had it on PC. I also had Vice City on PC. San Andreas was the same.

Not only is the petition in question childish and disrespectful to both Rockstar Games and fellow gamers of all countries and languages, but it is also selfish and bully-like tactics. Behavior like this is what continues to put the Gaming Community down and give Gamers a bad reputation. I realize this will never be stopped, people will always be rude, ignorant and disrespectful. It is human nature.

Truly, the only difference between PC and Console gaming in general is our controls. There are many other details that can be gotten into, such as the expenses. This is highly arguable and no real evidence has ever been given, to my knowledge. Yet we still treat each other as aliens, or as if we're in Civil War. Things like this does not improve our situation as a whole.

Onto the supposed subject of the Petition itself, it states: "So PC Gamers learn their lesson and stop stealing games"

There are many different kinds of Software Pirates, and most of them are not bad. One in which they pirate the game to test out the software, go through the whole thing, than give support to the original developer by donating or buying a copy afterwords.

The only bad pirate is the one that pirates the game with no intention of ever giving back to the developer. Piracy is like the one in question who wrote the other petition, they'll never stop and they can never be stopped. Nothing can be done about it, not raising prices, not lowering prices, not putting things on sale, not giving special codes that can only be used once, not DRM, not even Always Online. All of these things can be gotten around one way or another, and no one will ever know when it's been done until it's too late. Piracy isn't only possible on PC, nor is it the easiest method. Piracy can still be done on the XBox 360, and the PS3. The PS3 is significantly harder, though. As for the XBox, some simple changes in software will allow one to even play pirated games over XBox Live.

Finally, onto how Rockstar Games should react to this. Long story short, they need to just ignore it. They can't punish a large majority of their returning fan base because of some issues with PC. They as well distribute GTA games over Steam and Moddb, some of the best Gaming Communities out there. Rockstar Games shouldn't have to worry, nor do I think they are worrying, about Piracy. They have one of the most loyal fanbases out there. Which is rare these days, because so many developers and publishers are losing fans due to highly stupid decisions. If Rockstar Games were to do this, they'd start heading down that road and lose fans as well.

And if that's not enough TL;DR for you, here's some more that a friend of mine messaged me about on Steam:

Scouterson scouten the second (AKA Scoutie): It's like if Americans signed a petition telling Apple to stop selling iPhones to the UK because some people steal iPhones there, and not looking at the amount of iPhone theft in the US. You know piracy is a problem on consoles too, right? Hence why you find X360 and PS3 versions of games on torrent sites. The majority of PC gamers aren't pirates (contrary to everyone's obviously well-informed opinion in this petition). If that were the case, why would game developers still be around making games for PC? Plus losses due to piracy are very hard to quantify, because you can't assume every pirate would have bought the game if it wasn't available to pirate online. Furthermore, you have to take into account those who pirate to try before buying (because not every game has a demo).

I don't think console gamers can really comment on "supporting the developers" when there's lending, buying, and selling used games, as well as free PS+ games. How exactly are you guys "supporting the devs" and also taking a huge chunk of the profits away from the devs by swapping and selling amongst yourselves?

Also do you really think Rockstar aren't going to make a PC version, even if 100% of console games sign this? There were over 40 million Steam users alone at the start of 2012; Rockstar will will make a huge profit on PC, and it's their choice to take the risk on piracy. This petition just undermines their intelligence to make a business decision themselves, and it comes off as a petty attempt to keep a console exclusive for to brag to PC gamers.

"No, this is my toy! No sharing! Tell them, Rockstar!" - console gamers on this petition.

Edited by: Templarfreak

I don't think Rockstar will pay any or much attention the petition with two lines of text telling them to not make something.
I reckon the petition might be a joke though, or trolling kind of thing, as they use Trevor Phillips as a name.

Well, it DOES have over 10,000 signatures...So either one bad troll is making tons of accounts or switching his IP, or people agree with him. =\

I rented a PS2 when GTA SA came out and dove into it for a full weekend. I think I hardly slept or did anything else, until I had to return the PS2.

I really couldn't wait until it was released for PC and I never spend a moment thinking about not buying the game. It's a cool looking box with a fat booklet (almost a book, really) and a really nice map and poster. There are games prone to pirating and they are either from big scumbag publishers that don't deserver better or because they are insanely overpriced. Waiting for Steam sales helps though. But GTA is making huge bucks on sales, both PC and Consoles. It's one of the games I want to own. (I passed on IV, but V is epic again).

So this whole petition is entirely stupid. Not only can PC games handle bigger texture size and higher resolution. They usually load faster and play better, too. So I would prefer the game over its console counterpart. It's bad enough Rockstar makes us wait for the PC-version every time.

Edited by: SinKing

I'm pretty confident that the petition is a joke in response to Change.org, from the aptly named creator to (and I'm just going to take a blind guess here and say) at least 50% of the signatures. The punchline being that even consoles are a big source of piracy for games like GTA (which I'm sure you can already find several downloads of, based on reddit jokes on this very subject). If you want to try and plead with a company to get a product on a console of your choice, sign the original petition with more than half a million others instead of creating a counter-petition to a counter-petition.

Assuming the petition isn't a joke, Rockstar won't follow it for one simple reason: Money.
Now let's say they don't want to disappoint customers. By releasing it on PC, they'd be disappointing 10k people (actually less, a lot of those signs are just other people calling actual signers idiots), and those 10k people are worth $600k.

However, that isn't even a drop in the bucket from what they'd make from PC sales. You saw how well the console versions alone sold ($1 billion in a few days!), and PC gamers are a huge portion of players. There is some serious money to be made here, so you can't tell me the friggin' platinum mine we call GTA5: PC is worth ditching because a few thousand manchild console elitists couldn't handle the idea of someone else being happy. They say it's because of piracy, but come on. Wasn't there a pirated copy of GTA5 leaking around? As in, the console version? I'm choking on irony.

This is nothing but PC vs console war that is for some reason being fought by people who are well below the age rating of GTA. They think somebody shouting they want one thing or the other affects anything.

Gaming is a business and Rockstar among all the other companies do market research to see what is financially feasible to make and what is not. They don't have to choose between A, B, and C, they will do all of them by investing if they see all of them pay back and turn profit.

Their marketing move is smart.
Sell to the console gamers first, for 6 - 7 year old hardware, people will go off and get a old ps3 simply for this title.

Then next year, all the xbox one and ps4 owners will get gta5 with their new consoles and see how the game should look.
RS aren't going to piss on their console investment by releasing to PC that will make the xbox1 and the ps4 look outdated now would they.

In time RS will do a average port to pc to get that little bit more, they made all the 250 million $ in dev costs back on pre orders alone, they don't need a pc version to keep the shareholders happy.
GTA can't be too hard to port anyway, its just a remapping of the controls, it was developed on pcs its just a pain we have to wait, its not due to piracy, the console version was leaked before release... Its a marketing plan and one that will not lose them any fans.

@TKAzA. Sell to the console gamers first, for 6 - 7 year old hardware, people will go off and get a old ps3 simply for this title ..

Yeah I bought the US Console PS3 Bundle just for this title. ((even though I had a PS3.)) So Sony Roped me in with another PS3, Nice pair of Headphones, and a copy of GTA5. Now we have two ps3s so my loveys and I can play GTA5 online together.

Also Loveys and I intend on buying the PC version when it comes out.

So it was Brilliant on their end.

Well, the idea was more to show that even if it is a joke, it's not really an entertaining one. I kinda felt insulted, so that's why I did this. *Shrug*

I can take a joke if I know it's a joke.

Edited by: Templarfreak