Thechineseroom, developers of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, have shared their thoughts on DRM and always online connection for the next Xbox, in a yet to be published interview on GamingBolt.
We asked Dan Pinchbeck, Creative Director of the studio about what he thought about the rumors surrounding Microsoft’s next Xbox like no used games and always online internet connection requirement.
“I’m ambivalent about used games – a used game makes the developers no money, which means you are hurting developers buying them,” he told us.
“Especially given you can pick up older games really quickly and easily on sales, where the developers actually get a cut, I think if you love games as a medium, you should be doing that wherever you can. I think blocking is not so good though, I think it’s better to work on the basis that most people are basically honest and do the right thing than to over-police it.
He also finds the always online requirement really intrusive and says it’s a DRM exercise.
“Always on.. Well, unless its a multi-player game there’s no reason for it, it seems like a pure marketing and DRM exercise, and I think it’s really intrusive. If I buy a game, I want to own it, so I can transfer it to any of my devices, play when I want, where I want, on or offline. It’s part of this horrible conceptual shift like iTunes where although it looks like you are buying media, actually you only really are renting access to it, and I have a pretty big problem with that.”
Ian Livingstone, life president of Eidos, said something similar in our interview with him which you can read over here.
What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments section below.
Stay tuned for the full interview and more information about Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.
