We recently asked a bunch of questions to Avalanche Studios founder Cristofer Sundberg about his views on the cancelled AionGuard game–which he revealed was still in development–the Just Cause series, and piracy in general, and he had a lot of interesting things to say to us.
He revealed that DRM solutions which limit the game experience should not exist but also mentioned that piracy is in a way hurting the ability of game developers to make great games.
“DRM solutions which limit the game experience should not exist. That’s my honest opinion,” he said.
“They make us look greedy, which we are not. It treats our fans like criminals, which they are not. With that said, I think that we deserve getting paid for years of hard work and I think piracy is hurting our ability to make great games.”
He is also against adding multiplayer component to a game to prevent the game from being traded.
“I think piracy won’t be as big on the next generation hardware,” he revealed. “I’m actually really happy to see Just Cause 2 on the used-games shelves as it’s a rarity – hard to come by! Games are often returned to the stores, not because they are bad, but because they are too short, offer very little or no player autonomy and does not encourage exploration.
“That’s what we’re trying to change. I mean, still to this day, three years after release, we still have hundreds of thousands of Just Cause 2 players every month. So that pretty much squashes the common publisher argument that every game needs multiplayer to “combat” second hand sales, without even looking at what the game really is.
“Nobody wins in the end; the developer can’t make the great experience that they want to, the publisher doesn’t get its money back and the consumer is disappointed. I am convinced that this mentality contributes to the downfall of the industry.”
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