Top 9 PC Games of 09, Blizzard's Rob Pardo Interviewed
GamesRadar has posted the cover story from this month's issue of PC Gamer, "The top 9 PC games of 09". The article includes game previews, "the future of gaming on the intarwebs" (Steam, Impulse, XFire, GFWL, GoG.com) and an interview with Blizzard's Executive Vice President of Game Design, Rob Pardo.
Quote:
The subscription model is a pretty unassailable solution to piracy. Are there any other approaches out there that you think are also working?
I don’t necessarily think that the subscription model is what’s combating piracy. The reason we’ve been successful on PC is because we offer extremely compelling multiplayer elements to our games, WoW being the most obvious, of course. But all of our games, a lot of the longevity in the games are the compelling multiplayer, and if you want to play on Battle.net - which I think is one of, if not the best gaming service on the planet - then you have to have a legitimate CD key, so that just cuts out all the piracy right there. That’s what’s unfortunate about the PC business. For many companies, the most compelling part of their product is the single player, or the only part of the product is the single player. At that point, they’re forced to use some sort of heavy-handed DRM solution. It’s difficult right now for them.
Slightly off topic; but I really wish there was a way to tie XFIRE, STEAM (username) and GFWL usernames into a single account. I tried "Raptr" and it simply didn't work for me; but Its a little annoying for me to be logged into 3 different services to play Fallout 3 adequately.
