PC games piracy is in decline, according to the president of the PC Gaming Alliance, Matt Ployhar.

The boss of the Alliance, which is made up of members including Epic Games, Capcom, Intel and Dell, reckons the shift to free-to-play models and supplemental content via download has lessened the value of pirated games.

Ployhar told Gamasutra: "What's happening is game design is shifting and as a result of shifting game design, piracy, at least on the PC side, is actually declining as a result. There are stats that do corroborate that.

"There are free to play games. You can't really pirate free to play. You can but it doesn't make a lot of sense."

He added that while he doesn't think piracy is going to go away, he thinks it's "fascinating to watch."

"For example, you get a game like Crysis that got hit hard by piracy. Now what you're seeing to combat that or reduce the chances of piracy are developers implementing achievements, in-game pets, all of these things that are tracked and stored in the cloud.

"So even if you pirate the game you're still not getting the bragging rights. You've got all these additional mechanisms where the value proposition of the game, where if you pirate it, it's just not going to be as fun."

One consequence of this shift is an increase in identity theft, says Ployhar.

"The game design is now shifting to combat piracy, but because the value propositions are altering and changing, now you're getting more of increase in the identity theft space," Ployhar added.

"These retail games, your brick and mortars, are declining, and some of that forcing function was piracy. What's picking up the slack are your Steam accounts, your Wild Tangents, your Orbs, your EA Downloader, your Battle.net."

This morning developer Crytek called the leaked version of its FPS sequel "a really ugly version".

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/28 ... n-decline/

I'd be interested to know your thoughts on that, peeps

I've not pirated a game in years because all the fun is on line, much as the article says. Most of the ones I did pirate have now been open-sourced or are freely available as abandonware. I never copied that many actually, most often I was happy with the demo levels.

When people's Steam accounts or whatever get "hacked" - does that usually mean someone guessed the password, the same way most Yahoo and Hotmail accounts are "hacked"? Or have people actually hacked into Steam?

It's scary how much of my life is totally dependant on passwords. I know Amnesia uses impossible to remember super-secure ones, but how many other people do? And what about the "password reminder questions"? Are yours secure? Remember, if someone can get into your email they can probably get password reminders for many other accounts you have linked with it. Things like your birthday, mother's maiden name, the town you were born in and where you went to school are all public information, and it's likely the name you gave your cat isn't exactly top secret.

I don't use the same password for everything, and I also don't use the same email. I do take security seriously, but convenience often takes priority. My forum password is remembered by my browser for example. Obviously I wouldn't do that with my bank account.