Devil May Cry 4 for the PC isn’t doing so well at retail, leading one Capcom executive to point out that the game is being “pirated to hell and back.”
In a message posted on the official Capcom community forums, Christian Svensson, the company’s vice president of business development, wrote, “I’m not sure how Capcom in general feels, but [Devil May Cry 4 for PC] is not doing as well as I would like in the U.S. at retail. It’s such a good version and it really deserves better sales.”
“I know it’s getting pirated to hell and back (it was up on torrents literally the day it shipped),” he added.
When pressed about how much of an impact piracy is actually having on the game’s sales, Svensson said, “Piracy’s not the ultimate cause… but it’s a factor.” But he also went on to admit that the game’s well-known console roots may also be working against it in the PC market.
“Most reviewers write it off as ‘console dreck’ because it’s not an RTS, an FPS or an MMO,” he said. “Indeed, it’s content that doesn’t often show up on the PC, and I think that’s part of the reason we wanted to put it there. We think there is an audience for action games on the PC (that aren’t FPSes), even if they are sometimes best played with a gamepad rather than a KB and a mouse.”
He also spoke out in support of DRM schemes in fighting piracy, saying, “To my knowledge, Mass Effect still isn’t fully cracked (tripwires still result in certain bugs in the pirated versions… pirates haven’t found them all yet). And our data collected on BioShock is pretty damn solid too from certain audit services, and their integration wasn’t as deep as Mass Effect’s.”
“They are more effective than people think,” he continued. “Part of the problem though is that EA and T2 didn’t actually communicate what’s supposed to happen. The result of that lack of communication is that the pirates just think the game is buggy.” THQ Creative Director made similar comments in March as part of a notorious rant about the role of piracy in the downfall of Titan Quest developer Iron Lore Entertainment.
The full conversation about Devil May Cry 4 for the PC can be read (or joined) at capcom-unity.com.
