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Attempting to combat piracy is “pointless”, Creative Assembly Australia’s communications manager has claimed.
Speaking in an interview with VideoGamer.com, Vispi Bhopti, communications manager at Creative Assembly’s Australia division, the studio behind hardcore PC RTS Medieval II: Total War, its expansion Kingdoms and the upcoming console and PC RTS Stormrise, said that piracy was “the nature of the beast”.
PC game piracy was one of 2008’s hot topics, with a number of high profile developers speaking out on the issue. Ubisoft Shanghai creative director Michael de Plater told VG247 that a PC version of EndWar would most likely ship alongside the console versions if it wasn’t for rampant PC piracy, and that copyright theft is essentially destroying the PC games market.
EndWar is due out on PC this Friday, over three months after it was released on Xbox 360 and PS3.
When asked about this approach in relation to Stormrise, which is due out simultaneously on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in March, Bhopti said: “That’s not that much of an issue. There’s no additional thing that we’re going for with that sort of stuff. That’s pointless. If people are going to pirate a game they’re going to pirate a game. All you can do is delay the piracy, really. But that’s just the nature of the beast. We are a PC developer, that’s where we started, so you do what you gotta do. We’ve got Games for Windows Live activation, so it’s pretty solid.”
In October last year, Randy Stude, president of the PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA), a US-based non-profit organisation formed to defend PC gaming from accusations from some quarters that it is a dying industry, told VideoGamer.com that while “there will always be people who will pirate”, publishers should do more to prevent “some guy” at the duplicator house from stealing code.
He said: “If your product is not protected all of the way through production, you’re going to be faced with the scenario where some guy sitting at the duplicator house, this is where all the piracy starts, back doors the code to a buddy or flat out sells it to make money off a torrent rip of the game. That’s where the problem is.”
Be sure to check out our hot-off-the-press preview of Stormrise, due out on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in March.
What do you think, readers? Is piracy the “nature of the beast”? Let us know in the comments section below.
