THQ’s Michael Fitch places the blame for the closure of Titan Quest developer Iron Lore Entertainment, squarely on the shoulders of game pirates, though he does suggest that they may have had a bit of help from dumb players, hardware vendors, and one particularly stupid reviewer…
“If even a tiny fraction of the people who pirated the game had actually spent some god-damn money for their 40+ hours of entertainment, things could have been very different today. You can bitch all you want about how piracy is your god-given right, and none of it matters anyway because you can’t change how people behave… whatever. Some really good people made a seriously good game, and they might still be in business if piracy weren’t so rampant on the PC. That’s a fact…”
Fitch is clearly very frustrated — and rightly so — by the obstacles and difficulties inherent in making PC games, but it’s difficult to see Titan Quest’s problem as unique. Given that game piracy and configuration difficulties seem to be particularly problematic for the PC gaming world, we have to wonder, would Iron Lore have survived if Titan Quest had been a console game?
This may be one of those market events that signals killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I don’t care. We still need to increase the number of pirates in order to decrease global warming. FSM has made this clear. Decline in pirates is linked to increasing planetary temperature.
Who???
Maybe they needed better marketing. I didn’t even know it existed to pirate it.
Let’s see. He sells a game that is mediocre at best and that doesn’t play well on his customer’s computers. And then he blames pirating for his failure.
I’m more of a supporter of IP rights than most here but all I can think is, “Screw Him.”
Never heard of the game. Looked up some reviews and it seems that it was a piece of crap. Maybe that’s a major reason it didn’t sell. Closing is a good thing, now the few people with talent have a chance to find more rewarding work.
TQ is a cool game, but yeah, like #2, their marketing sucked. Michael Fitch sounds like a whiny douche-bag. I usually get pirate versions of all the games I consider buying to try them out. If they pass muster, I’ll go buy them–like Titan Quest. I bought both the game and the expasion pack. One thing I don’t do is buy games that have StarForce copy protection. I learned that the hard way when I had to rebuild my system. It gets deep in there like spyware. Another thing I never do is buy a game like HL2 that requires a Steam account to play it. Sorry, I don’t need your game that much.
It seems to be the concensus around here that people either never heard of the game or if they did they heard it wasn’t any good.
I think we found the real culprit.
mind if i go the cynical route? -thank you.
i bet part of his “severance package” was that he write a scathing “piracy killed my game” review/good bye letter, so some politico schmuck with money sticking out of his hole can have another piece of baseless evidence to throw on the table when lobbying for more internet and ISP self-monitoring restrictions be put in place.
-s
#1 – You’ve finally mentioned the real cause of global warming. A little over a year ago I went to a conference in Atlanta that had a pirate themed costume party one night. It was unseasonableycold as hell and we all damn near froze. One datum in support of the theory.
People who write software for a living don’t deserve to be ripped off. I write software, and it bothers me when I hear about people who wont pay $50 for a game, but they will gladly spend the same money on designer jeans.
Programmers deserve to be paid too!
I don’t play games much anymore, but I’ve paid for most of the ones I did play and enjoy. I’ve paid for other software that I’ve liked and paid for some I didn’t care much for. Looks like I’m going to have to do that again, as I’m going to have to upgrade to Windows XP while I still can. NO VISTA.
And I DO find myself using a lot of open source stuff for most things I do nowadays.
Piracy is bad. I think in that we can all agree. However, so are the plethora of games out there. TQ was merely a Diablo-clone. Point, click, loot, rinse, repeat. The problem with the game was that it didn’t do anything revolutionary to the top-down grindfest, it simply did it with different looking graphics. Not improved graphics, even though there was a 6 year gap between Diablo 2 and TQ, just different. You’d think that in 6 years they would have innovated something? Heck, even Dungeon Quest, Microsoft’s answer to the Diablo phenominon, tried to at least push the genre forward.
I bought the game, and subsequent expansion pack because I like that type of no brainer game from time to time. There’s not a lot of thinking involved. The only problem is that it really becomes difficult to devote 40+ hours of your life to a game that doesn’t do something new and exciting if you’re not a real fan of that type of game to begin with. Couple that with the fact that the only reason I even heard about this game in the first place was that a co-worker of mine suggested it to me, only because he buys nearly every RPG type game out there, and I mean EVERY one. If that hadn’t happened, Iron Lore would not have had any of my money because I wouldn’t have known about it.
Blaming the pirates is easy, though. It gives him a ready-made excuse as to why his company failed to innovate.
Don’t buy the games as soon as they come out! wait six months and you can save $30, wait longer and may get the title for $9.99, easier for a 40 something than a 16 year old to do.
I agree with #9, you shouldn’t pirate software! music on the other hand… 😉
There isn’t a shred of proof that song and game piracy hurts sales.
Everyone knows that piracy is stealing by now. If you are willing to spend considerable time searching, downloading, and then dealing with missing parts, corrupt files, virus threats etc. on top of dealing with some guilt… if $1-$40 is worth more to you than all that… then you wouldn’t have spent the money in the first place.
A guy who already has a car and decides to steal another different car didn’t cheat some dealer out of a sale.
On the other hand, the recent request of the Songwriters Association of Canada to charge every Canadian with high speed internet $5/month to cover the cost of piracy, is fraud.
Another developer / publisher crying because his game did not sell well and then blaming it on piracy.
How come Valve can sell more PC games then the console version and say piracy for them is not as bad as everyone else is making it out to be.
Make good games and they will sell. Make a good PC game and it will sell, make a good console game and it will sell. make a crappy port from a console game to the PC and it will not sell very well…**cough** Unreal3 **cough**
#1 and #8 Arrrrrrr! It be cold in here. Shiver me timbers.
http://www.titanquest.net/
I went to their site..
32,000 USERS??
Umm, What was hacked??
I play a lot of games and have never pirated one yet. But I do look on gamespot.com for a review before buying one. The 2006 version of Titan Quest scored a 7.6, while the 2007 version scored a 7.9. These are low scores in a competitive market. Plus, if your first version sucks, who wants to buy the sequel.
Piracy sold about 5 copies of Call of Duty 4 that would have never been purchased.
A guy brought a copy in to work, we played it over lunch and subsequently we bought our own copies so we could play it at home and online.
If I had never played that pirated copy I would have never spent $50 on it…and then had to spend the $100 on the video card upgrade.
Just saying.
Reminds me of the old Amiga days…
Almost all the only games you played were pirated, and plenty of good studios went to the wall because of it.
The old mantra still applies;
‘A game worth playing is a game worth buying’
Yea first i’d have to hear of their games to pirate them.
eKIM,
very TRUE…
(excuse my caps)
But MOSt will generally, get a Hacked version, ANd IF they REALLY like it, will go buy the FULL version, so they can get updates and so forth.
aND IT WOULD BE A DECENT BUSINESS MODEL, TO give THE first part of a GAME away and then Charge for the added content, ONLINE.
But, they are ALL useing the SAME business model as the RIAA and so forth. CHARGE a fortune, FOR CRAP. You cant Tell whats Good until you get into a game or program.
Even HL2 ran decent in the demo, but the FULL game KILLED machines. The requirements SUCKED and forced alot of people to upgrade. had to have XP so you could have the BETTER version of DX9(many changes over the years), NEWEST video cards only, and FASTEST system from last gen machines. it really SUCKS.
Games are to hard to learn,take to long to finish and require major hardware to run. I used to play eight to ten hours a week on what ever the currant game was. It took maybe half an hour to learn and could be finished in an hour or two. now it takes four or more hours to become evan remotely good at most games. Why is it wrong to try a game before you buy it but not wrong to sell you a game that is so buggy it wont evan play on most machines and then tell the customer tough luck.No refunds on software. I originaly started pirating because I had to many games and apps I paid for that flatout whould not run or work as advertised. Fair is fair. you steal from me I steal from you.
22,
i remember OLD RPG’s that took Weeks to play, and the NEW ones take HOURS.
I know the old strategies and tricks, and I aint the best.
Its Like MOO3…we thought it would be great…it was CRAP…Why did I pay the money. the first 2 were GREAT. and after development, ATARI bought out the rights and the programmers got SCREWED.
Took 1 year and a Fix was added, and STILL CRAP, but the MAIN programmed made a MOD…It CAN be played.
but, the OLd games WORKED before they were released…NOW you are BETA TESTERS, and probably have about 10 UPDATES and 6months BEFORE its any good.
Even WOW, has CLONES out there, that have BETTER and FREE ACCESS. WOW charges to much, and its a BAG OF WORMS…