Lionhead Studios: Pre-owned Sales Are Worse Than PC Piracy

I’m not sure I agree with that sentiment, but Fable III combat designer Mike West has made such a claim to Eurogamer when discussing the newly released PC version of Fable III.

“Piracy these days on PC is probably less problematic than second-hand sales on the Xbox,” declared lead Fable III combat designer Mike West. “I’ve been working on PC games for many years and piracy is always a problem. There are a lot of honest people out there as well, and if they like your game they’ll buy it.

“The pirates, whatever you do on whatever system, they will crack it. It might take no time… I think the longest it’s taken to happen is two days. Someone will crack it somewhere and there’s not much you can do about it.

“It’s just a depressing situation we’re in that people don’t think it’s worth spending money on computer games,” said West. “What they’re doing is making sure there are fewer games coming out in the future and more people out of work, which is a terrible thing.

“Unless you sit down and meet a pirate face to face and have a conversation about what it does, I don’t think anything will stop them.”

West said that any sales Lionhead make of Fable III on PC this Friday and beyond will be “a bonus”.

“For us it’s probably a no-lose even with piracy as it is,” shrugged West. “But, as I say, second-hand sales cost us more in the long-run than piracy these days.”

My argument would be that the people buying $10 used copies of Fable III wouldn’t have bought it at full price anyway. And let’s not forget about the revenue publishers and developers bring in from these people via DLC, too.