It seems that we hear this claim all the time from PC game developers: piracy is killing the market or piracy drove us to the consoles. Epic Games is the latest company to re-open old piracy wounds, and it's certainly not the first. But what's interesting is that Epic has been in the media spotlight for a least the past few months, coming out of its Hole of Silence and talking about developing perfect FPS games or how piracy changed the world of PC game development. Is the company rounding up a little pre-E3 attention?
Without a doubt, it's certainly a shame to hear that Epic would rather develop games for the console. After all, its classic PC game franchises--Unreal and Unreal Tournament--built the foundation that is currently the Epic empire. However, Epic president Mike Capps wasn't hesitant in admitting that--despite all the PC piracy hoopla--the money is in the console business, plain and simple.
“If you walked into [Epic's Offices] six years ago, Epic was a PC company," Capps said in the latest issue of Edge Magazine. "We did one PS2 launch title, and everything else was PC. And now, people are saying ‘Why do you hate the PC? You’re a console-only company.’ And guess what? It’s because the money’s on console."
He added that perhaps Facebook could still save PC gaming, especially with titles like Farmville under its belt... just don't expect them to look like Gears of War. "We still do PC, we still love the PC, but we already saw the impact of piracy," he said. "It killed a lot of great independent developers and completely changed our business model."
