THQ Creative Director Blames Piracy for Iron Lore Closure
The recent closure of Iron Lore Entertainment, the studio behind Titan Quest, was extremely sad news. THQ creative director Michael Fitch has gone on record to blame “piracy, hardware vendors, gamers and reviewers” for the shutting down of such a great developer.
In a post on the Quarter to Three forums, he writes,” If even a tiny fraction of the people who pirated the game had actually spent some god-damn money for their 40+ hours of entertainment, things could have been very different today.”
As it stands, the game’s reputation was marred by pirates who couldn’t properly crack the DRM on the game, dumping users back to the desktop after a play session. He also puts the blame on hardware vendors for making “integrated audio and video” cards that have “little or no driver support, marginal adherence to standards, and sometimes bizarre conflicts with other hardware.”
Fitch also blames the game reviewers for not paying attention to the game, as well as the audience, who can’t carry out “basic stuff”.
“Making PC products is not all fun and games. It’s an uphill slog, definitely. I’m a lifelong PC gamer, and hope to continue to work on PC games in the future, but man, they sure don’t make it easy,” he concluded.