Indie Game Developer Doesn’t Blame Piracy

Groundbreaking, isn’t it? Has hell frozen over? Have pigs started flying? We all know that game developers cite piracy as the reason why they want to move away from producing games for the PC, or when discussing revenue losses. However, indie game developer Wolfire Games’ (who have recently released the Humble-Indie-Bundle where you decide your own price) David Rosen goes bravely against the grain by not citing piracy.

So why are PC games really losing sales? Well according to Rosen, it’s not solely because of piracy, which he says is wildly misunderstood. He believes that the real problem and is behind the sales losses is that the games in question are designed for consoles first and PCs second. God, isn’t that what us gamers have been saying for ages? He puts it extremely bluntly in one damning sentence: “their games are not fun on PC”. Their, of course, referring to the developers who cite piracy for profit loss on their particular titles.

Rosen echoes the thoughts of the vocal PC gaming community. But I wonder… is this the sort of pandering to a community that we can expect as a marketing ploy? Most PC gamers don’t dispute piracy killing PC gaming, they just claim that the piracy is not the glaring problem. To some extent, I do agree. After all, one who gets burned laying down the greenbacks for what essentially amounts to a poor console port that stinks of cut corners and dollar-sign-eyes is not likely to splash out again. In that vein, has the damage already been done? Is it too late to win back the trust of PC gamers across the globe, to get them to once again invest in a game that they can know will be of good quality? Well.. the dimensions here are numerous. For starters, even when a PC game proves wildly successful (eg. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare) it apparently doesn’t stop its successor being one of the poor aforementioned ports (eg. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2). So how can us gamers be guaranteed quality when it’s the cash that is the driving force behind that quality?

An age old argument for sure, but it is certainly refreshing to hear Rosen, as a member of the industry, come out and say this. It’s interesting that a game developer in the business, so to speak, is coming out with a version of the truth that is radically different from the official nonsense that is violently projected from the mouths of big-name-company spokespeople.

Is change upon is? Is it darkest before the dawn? Who knows. Such philosophical musings detract from the here and the now, which is where, ultimately, the problem resides.

Anyhow, I leave you with some quotes from the users over at Xtremesystems.org who had a lot to say on the topic.

• “We do not want console games on our PCs. This is not a hard concept to grasp.”
• “Well its not everyone that can’t work around the piracy problem either. Blizzard has been “getting it” for half a decade.”
• “If you want to minimize the amount of pirated copies for your game, then make a game that’s actually WORTH buying.”
• “But does that means those players would buy the game otherwise? 1 pirate copy is NOT 1 lost sale.”

via Kotaku

Categories: Random

Tags: Games, piracy