It seems as though the one thing the forthcoming action horror game I am Alive could not survive is piracy, as apparently this has all but killed the chances for the forthcoming title to find its way to the PC.
I am Alive, which is due for release in the first quarter of next year, will at this point only be available to PS3 and Xbox 360 gamers via the PlayStation Network and the Xbox 360’s Arcade respectively. In a letter to
IncGamers the game's creative director Stanislas Mettra explained that piracy was largely responsible for the likely no-show on PC.
Mettra elaborated that piracy makes porting games to the PC financially difficult, and profitability uncertain.
"It’s hard because there’s so much piracy and so few people are paying for PC games that we have to precisely weigh it up against the cost of making it. Perhaps it will only take twelve guys three months to port the game to PC, it’s not a massive cost but it’s still a cost. If only 50 000 people buy the game then it’s not worth it," he is quoted as saying.
This is a pity, at least for PC gamers, because as the trailer below shows, the game certainly looks intriguing.
It’s also a case in point of
pirates on the PC quite literally shooting their own platform in the foot, almost ensuring that developers concentrate more wholly on consoles. This is highly ironic considering the fact that a PC mouse enables such a larger degree of aiming accuracy. Apparently, game piracy is still shortsighted.
In
recent news, new research conducted at Rice University and Duke University, suggests that eradicating the restrictions imposed by digital rights management (DRM) could actually help reduce piracy.
