Patrick Marchal, technical director at Cities XL developer Monte Cristo has warned that piracy will be the death of PC developers, attacking the ongoing Spore outrage in the process.
“We have looked at what happened with Spore and, even if we are not fans of DRM, we think that the outcry was a bit over the top,” claimed Marchal. “I think that people need to recognize that piracy is going to kill PC game developers. We will have to find the best way to defend our property without being harsh on legitimate clients.”
Trouble is, publishers have so far been quite careless about that last, important factor — not being harsh on legitimate clients. DRM only affects paying customers. There isn’t even any justification for using copy protection anymore. It doesn’t work and publishers know it.
I want a publisher to admit that they care more about second-hand games when they impose these limits. That’s the one thing DRM is “good” for, and if all Electronic Arts or any other company cared about was piracy, junk like SecuROM wouldn’t even be in the equation.
