Playing a bit of news catch up since AbnerCon dominated the weekend. I woke up today having absolutely no clue what went down in gaming the past four days.
We keep beating the DRM drum here and for good reason. I’m going to post DRM news stories as often as they make good reading — and this one qualifies.
Christofer Sundberg, founder of Avalanche Studios, developer of Just Cause, has came right out and said what needs to be said by more people inside the industry and not just fans and critics.
Speaking to Edge, Sundberg got right to the heart of the debate:
“If a DRM system constantly needs to be defended, something must be wrong,” he tells us. “As a developer you will never win over any fans if you constantly let everyone know how much it costs to develop a game and how much money you lose. I don’t like always-on DRM solutions at all, since they offer nothing to the consumer. If you continuously give something extra for registering and being online, and award them for actually paying for and playing your game, it’d be different, but always-on DRM only says: ‘Thank you for buying our game, we trust you as far as we can throw you.”
Exactly.
Read the whole piece at Edge — and a hat tip to Mr. Sundberg.
Hell yes. I wish we saw more developers taking this stance.
I wish I had the links but Gabe Newell has said similar things in the past. CD Projeckt Red seem to agree as well. There seems to be a few developers out there who get it.
Reward your customers loyalty with value? Heresy!
Hopefully these devs will outlast the fools trying to inflict DRM on us.