Like playing leaked games? Then you’re ruining the experience for all of us

Video Game piracy is always going to be around, like a cockroach on a diet of steroids and Schwarzenegger blood, no matter what methods industry houses use to curb it. While most pirates are happy to rip off the hard work of developers and download a cracked version of their favourite game, play it finished and then moan about the flaws, other digital buccaneers are so desperate to play an upcoming game that they’ll actively seek and download an early version, effectively ruining the gaming experience for other gamers.

In an interview with Edge magazine, Gears 3 executive producer Rod Fergusson described the early leak of their game as frustrating and saddening. “The leak was a pretty old build so it’s not truly representative of what the final game’s going to be. The one nice thing about a leak on Xbox is that it’s somewhat limited. A PC leak is much more devastating so basically everybody in the world could play it if they wanted to, whereas an Xbox leak requires certain modifications, which means at least the audience is smaller. And yeah, the videos can get out there.”

But at the end of the day, it’s people choosing to ruin their own experience, which I don’t completely get. I get people going, oh no, I just watched this thing on YouTube and it’s totally given away something. And I go, well, why did you go looking and why did you watch it?

So for us, it’s frustrating. It’s saddening when people have worked so hard and we’ve been building toward September 20 and then you have this stuff go out, especially going out in an early state. This was a build from before even the beta.

It’s just sort of sad the way people will be seeing the game for the first time is not the way that we intended and not the best. So we’re extremely diligent about getting that stuff taken down and issued a call to the fans to not perpetuate it because it’s not helping anybody to perpetuate that. And just keeping track of those who do. I don’t think everybody’s always aware of the potential repercussions of those types of actions so it’s just a matter of being diligent.”

Fergusson mentioned that with such an anticipated game, it was only natural for fans to “peek behind the curtains”, eager to see what they could expect, something that Epic Games was well aware of.

When I look at being a fan of certain things, I want to consume them in their best form first, and then understand how they were made. Otherwise it has the potential to lessen the experience, lessen the impact. If someone said, “ok, before I do this magic trick, let me show you how it works. So she’s not actually floating. There’s a cable here holding her up, and I’m going to move the ring around it this way. Ok, now let me do the magic trick and I want you to be astounded!”

I love the fact that they’re hungry for information. I love that they’re eager and I want to keep them interested. But at the same time I don’t want that eagerness to hurt the experience for themselves.”

Source: Edge via VG247 

 

Last Updated: August 3, 2011