Reckoning dev: ‘Rampant’ piracy makes big budget PC exclusives unlikely

PC game piracy is hardly a new issue, but it is one that continues to illicit strong words and stances from developers, publishers and players. 
It was only earlier this month that download site TorrentFreak released information about the games that had been illegally downloaded most frequently in 2011. On PC, Crysis 2, Fifa 12, Battlefield 3 and Portal 2 had all been downloaded over 3 million times. A full run-down of the numbers can be found here.
Further, The Witcher 2 dev CD Projekt RED indicated that it estimated the game had been downloaded over 4.5 million times.
Ian Frazier, lead designer on upcoming RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, is the latest developer to weigh in on the issue. When asked by IncGamers whether or not a game of Reckoning’s budget was possible as a PC exclusive, Frazier replied: 
“No, probably not. A game this big is very expensive to be blunt about it. The PC, with piracy being as rampant as it is, is really hard to make money from. My first game was Titan Quest, a hack ‘n’ slash RPG, which was PC only but the amount that it was pirated was the difference between us staying in business and going out of business.”
Frazier concluded by saying that “it’s really, really hard to be profitable by concentrating only on PC. Unless you’re an MMO.”
Our full interview with Ian Frazier will be published in the coming days, as will our review of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
In the meantime, you can read our most recent hands-on preview of Reckoning to find out why we think it’s “full of potential”.