This is one of those times when you have no alternative but to take a person, or a company, as its word and move on. But if you don’t recall the brazen comments from Crytek’s Rasmus Hojengaard regarding used game blockage on the next wave of consoles, here’s a recap:
“From a business perspective that would be absolutely awesome. It’s weird that [second-hand games] is still allowed because it doesn’t work like that in any other software industries, so it would be great if they could somehow fix that issue as well.”
As you can imagine that caused quite a ruckus. Well on Monday Crytek played the, “What? You took that seriously?” card.
“My comment made in the interview released on the 24th of April, touching upon ‘blocking sales of used games’, was not intended to be taken seriously nor representative of the opinion of Crytek.”
I have no choice but to give Hojengaard the benefit of the doubt here because I know how interview quotes can be misinterpreted because you don’t always hear the tone and the inflections and the whatnots, but you’ll excuse me if there’s a sliver of me that sees this as damage control.
Anyway, this all comes courtesy of CGV, so thanks chaps.
Ruh roh…
I wonder who, if anyone, gave him a little no-no slap on the wrist. What reason would he have to backpedal?
Reading this, I can’t help but laugh, he got called back by his boss, and I’d say that’s a good thing. Means that someone in charge actually has a brain.
But why backpedal? If this is the path that the new consoles are going down, then why would he be slapped on the wrist for having such a strong, positive opinion about it? It just seems weird. Are they grasping for rebel cred?
Because it’s terrible PR? We may be heading in that direction, but we’re certainly not there yet. Frankly, the statement that his comments are not representitive of his company is pretty standard. The bit about not being taken seriously strikes me as total bullshit. Uh, I’m sorry, was that supposed to be a joke? We all know how publishers and developers (mostly) feel about used games. They’ve been very vocal on it. It’s now “worse than piracy”. Saying “Oh I was just kidding” is a total copout, and I don’t buy it at all.
Here’s the funny thing: I support them on eliminating used game sales. I think Gamespot’s business model really is bad for the industry. But the way we need to do it is to get affordable broadband Internet into everybody’s homes and push digital distribution to the max, while using it to also lower the price of new games a la Steam. Steam has single-handedly eliminated used games entirely from the PC realm, and I don’t see anybody complaining about it. Except maybe Gamestop, but hell, even they’re getting into selling digital downloads now. They know the writing is on the wall.
The force is strong with this Dorkmaster.
Totally agree w/ you.
“Not intended to be a factual statement.”
I may be alone in this; I can’t help but read the original quote as anything other than crashing, sneering sarcasm. To me, it reads a lot like someone saying “expletive expletive, what an expletive stupid thing to do”.