THQ producer speaks out on PC game frustration

[kalniel]

This is a very interesting piece by one of the producers over at THQ, following the closure of Iron Lore Entertainment (guys who made Titan Quest) - he really vents his frustrations at the problems in making a game for the PC and makes some very good points about the effect of piracy - not just the obvious ones, but secondary effects like bugs caused by pirated copies being blamed on poor programming. Something any regular of the TDU forums will be familiar with...

 

There are some instances of swearing in the article.

 

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=42663

[CarMadMike]

I completely agree with this article, After seeing a lot of people come in the chatbox asking for help to get online, and then say that torrented the game, its just unbelievable how they then go to complain about why isnt there more Megapacks or DLC's.

 

This is the main reason why a lot of game developers arent publishing their games on the PC anymore, something diablo said in the chatbox really proves that point:

Infinity Ward once said 10 million copies sold on consoles, 3 million on PC yet 10 million tried to connect to their servers.

 

Something needs to change, as we will see more small publishers and developers follow suit.

[iBilo]

The thing is what can you do with piracy? It won't be banished completely. Hackers will find a way round it after every sophisticated protection they put on a game.

[kalniel]

The thing is what can you do with piracy? It won't be banished completely. Hackers will find a way round it after every sophisticated protection they put on a game.

Piracy has been around since before the PC was even invented.. it's not that that's changed, instead, once upon a time, people thought that stealing was wrong and that it was right to pay for something that you would enjoy so despite pirate software being around it wasn't used by most people. That seems to have changed and the majority of PC gamers think that they deserve to get something for free that has cost millions to make.

 

They even do that despite the fact it means they lose out in the long run. So ultimately it comes down to two things - lack of morality, and lack of intelligence.

 

If there was an easy way to cure those then I think we'd all be better off :) But we can only rely on education and setting a good example (by parents, peers) to try and change it.

 

It seems to go in cycles - we hunted the dodo to extinction because we prefered short term gains to actually thinking things through in the long run.

[BobbyV]

:hmm:...I thought it's impossible to connect to TDU servers without a legal key. Correct me if I wrong, isn't it a won battle in the war against piracy?

[kalniel]

Even if it did, that would only be for the online portion of the game. So yes, it's a small victory (similar to that of other online games like Guild Wars/WoW/etc.), but ideally games should sell to people wanting to play games offline as well.