If there’s one thing I’ve come to depend on Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli for, it’s asinine quotes about piracy. You may remember when he declared that for every legitimate buyer of a PC game, there were 15-20 pirates.

As if that ludicrous statement weren’t enough, he decided to weigh in on the recent Pirate Bay ruling. In an interview with MCV sister site Develop, Yerli said,

“I was really happy [at the ruling], to be honest. I feel it is the beginning of something and a step forward. I think we’re going to see either more tracking sites shut down, or more severe punishments for those involved. Frankly, piracy is the reason why retail games are falling in popularity.”

Now, I’m not discounting that piracy presents a problem for the industry. But is it really as insurmountable an obstacle as Yerli suggests?

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After a renewed start we had an interruption these last few weeks but rest assured Filefront is still hosting and promoting all the great user created and hosted content contributed to us. We return with a double length post highlighting some great mods and files for quite a few outstanding games including usual suspects like Half-Life 2, the Battlefield games and of course one of my favorite series “that I am really no good at yet still enjoy” – Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War

Highlights from this week’s column include mods for:

• Doom III – Wrathchild Act I (not ROE compatible), Revised Alphalabs
• Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – A Provost of the Nine Divines, More Nord Beards
• Battlefield 2 – Operation Peacekeeper, Allies Intent Extended
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R – Ballistics Mod
• Far Cry 2 – new maps: MP_Surf & Gold Rush

There are also links to other maps, mods and patches for many of your favorite PC modifiable games. Be sure to check it all out after the jump.

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A new article on ExtremeTech pits antivirus software against some of the most demanding PC games around. AVG Free, BitDefender (GameDefender edition), Kaspersky and Norton (Gaming Edition) each face off against Crysis, Company of Heroes, Far Cry 2, Supreme Commander and World in Conflict.

ExtremeTech compared the performance of each game on a control system with and without each of the antivirus programs running. Between performance and price points you can get a fairly good idea of which of these software options are best for your gaming PC. Check out the final results from Gaming Performance Versus Antivirus Software on ExtremeTech.

EA and Crytek have announced the release date for Crysis Warhead. Those of you who were interested in Crysis but found the minimum system specs unreal may find Crysis Warhead will run on your PC.

“We think Crysis Warhead is going to offer a tremendous experience to a wide range of gamers,” said Cevat Yerli, CEO and President of Crytek. “Fans of Crysis are going to enjoy more of the open-ended gameplay, cutting-edge visuals and huge, epic battles from the first game, while also finally finding out what kind of havoc Psycho was wreaking on the other side of the island.

At the same time, we designed Warhead to be more accessible for gamers new to the Crysis franchise. It is a game with a story that can stand on its own, it has been optimized to run better on a wider range of PCs, and we are introducing Crysis Wars®, a tailor-made experience for multiplayer gamers within the Crysis universe – all at a great value.”

Gamers can pick up Crysis Warhead in North America on September 16th and in Europe on September 12th. The EA Store is taking pre-orders at $5 off the retail price. If you’ve got a pretty hefty gaming rig or have made use of Noobs Guide to Optimizing Crysis, you can purchase both Crysis and Crysis Warhead for $10 off.

Instantly upon reading comments from Cevat Yerli, the CEO of Crysis developer Crytek, I thought of something Stardock said back in March: that piracy is not the main issue facing PC games. Yerli seems to disagree, though. In a new interview discussing Crysis Warhead, Yerli said that while the developer made a profit on Crysis and the “real expectations” were met, piracy in PC gaming is very, very bad — to the point where, for every copy of a game that is sold, 20 copies are pirated.

“The other critique outside Crytek was the fact that the PC industry is really, at the moment, I would say the most intensely pirated market ever,” Yerli said, according to GI.biz. “It’s crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now. For one sale there are 15 to 20 pirates and pirate versions, and that’s a big shame for the PC industry. I hope with Warhead I hope we improve the situation, but at the same time it may have an impact on [our] PC exclusivity in the future.”

I don’t have specific numbers to cite, but it seems like Yerli is focusing too much on piracy. There’s no doubt that it’s a significant force, but once again, I think about the reasoning Stardock gave as to why they didn’t put copy protection on Sins of a Solar Empire. “We do it because the people who actually buy games don’t like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don’t count. We know our customers could pirate our games if they want but choose to support our efforts. So we return the favor – we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry.”

Crytek clearly has a different mentality. Yerli continued, “Effectively, if the game isn’t an online game or multiplayer game–there are challenges regardless of what you do–the game can be cracked. The effort is to make it more difficult to crack, and certainly we’re going to make it more difficult this time with Warhead.”

It’s difficult to blame companies for wanting to emphasize copy protection. But one has to wonder when a company is spending too much time on copy protection — especially when you consider that if there’s a will, there’s a way, and if pirates want to crack something, they will.

There’s been some confusion over Crytek’s studio boss Cevat Yerli recently announced that the Crysis series will no longer be exclusive to the PC. It’s no wonder since Crytek has subsequently announced the PC exclusive title Crysis Warhead, leaving console players scratching their heads, and a little disappointed.

Crytek’s business manager, Harald Seeley spoke to Next Generation about the apparent paradox to set players straight.

When Cevat said we would not create new PC exclusives, he was referring to any new projects we will start in the future. Of course Warhead has been under development for quite some time, and we had no desire or intention to disappoint our loyal PC fans. So, after some careful consideration, we decided to continue our support for the PC Crysis franchise with this release. But yes, all new franchises we develop in the future will be created with a cross platform strategy in mind. Of course we’re also aware of the danger of making a game that is only designed for one particular audience and platform, and failing to meet the needs of the others. So any game we create will always offer something unique on each platform and will be carefully tuned to both the capabilities and strengths of that platform, as well as the intended audience.

Seeley also has a few words on copyright protection and piracy, but doesn’t give in to the hysteria plaguing PC developers these days. He also gives gamers a look at the new CryENGINE 2. Catch the full Q&A with Crytek’s Harald Seeley on Next Generation.

Yesterday, Jonathan posted a teaser from the Cyrsis website which contained a screen with the word “Warhead” and not much else. Today though, we received a lovely press release which should make fans of the game pretty darn happy.Crysis Warhead, according to the press release from EA and Crytek, will be a parallel story to Crysis and will ship exclusively for the PC this autumn. Crysis Warhead is the first title to be developed at Crytek´s Budapest studio, and is built on a new, enhanced and optimized version of Crytek’s CryENGINE 2 technology.

In Crysis Warhead, players will don the Nanosuit of Sergeant Sykes, also known as ‘Psycho’, one of the most brash and aggressive member of the Delta Force and especially more so than his squadmate Nomad. Players will experience Psycho’s parallel story during the events of the original game, finding that life on the other side of the island is even more intense and explosive than they ever could have imagined. Luckily, Psycho’s Nanosuit is just as capable and he’s equipped with an even bigger arsenal of fully customizable weapons and new vehicles, giving players access to the tools they need to dominate any situation. Aside from this new single player campaign, Crysis Warhead will also feature new multiplayer content.

Stay tuned for more details headed our way this summer.

Via: Press Release 

Not long ago, Crytek made some cryptic remarks that there would be no further updates to Crysis, while quickly adding that the reason for this would be revealed soon. Well, this might be it…whatever it is. Right now, the official Crysis website is showing a graphic for something called “Crysis Warhead.” Unfortunately, that’s really all we know about it at this time. It could be an expansion, it could be an entirely new game, it could be a console port, it could be a new clothing line. Who knows? Hopefully we’ll get some answers soon; I hate being teased.

Via Crysis Website

PC gaming is dead!

We’ve all heard it over and over recently from many pessimistic sources in the games industry. They cite software piracy as a major culprit, claiming an incredible percentage of games are stolen. We’ve heard how PCs are so much more expensive to upgrade than consoles and with the seemingly infinite combinations of hardware, software and drivers is it any wonder consoles look so promising to developers? With each successive generation of systems, consoles have become more sophisticated and now rival the performance capabilities of midline PCs.

PCs are hard to write games for. Again and again, developers complain about the time and money involved in creating games for systems that have no standard specifications and have a wide range of performance capabilities. Consoles represent a base configuration, sure they may or may not hare a hard drive and even when they do the size might vary but its nothing like PCs and its use of different hardware, OS and drivers. There’s no guarantee that a game will work for every build out there even if the machine meets the minimum system specifications.

All these are legitimate complaints, but I think there is one very important reason why the cries of PC game death are false. PC games have an appeal that is uncommon among the proprietary game consoles by offering a training ground for future developers. Gamers modify PC games adding increased value for other players while granting the titles a longer life span if the mod scene takes off after release. Developers even plan for and encourage game owners to create new content and change existing code. What console offers this sort of tool? Some games come with tool sets packaged with the game, while others are free to download. Its become common for development teams to challenge amateur game makers to enhance or create new game content through contests, some – like the Make something Unreal contest, offer substantial prizes to the winners.

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