THQ man angry about Iron Lore closure

By Tom Bramwell Published 3 March, 2008

Blames piracy, vendors, gamers, critics.

THQ's creative director Michael Fitch has spoken out about the closure of Titan Quest developer Iron Lore Entertainment, blaming piracy, hardware vendors, gamers and reviewers.

"If even a tiny fraction of the people who pirated the game had actually spent some god-damn money for their 40+ hours of entertainment, things could have been very different today," he wrote on the Quarter to Three forums (thanks, Kotaku).

Apparently the game's word-of-mouth reputation was severely damaged after pirates whose game sessions were cut short by copy protection routines - one of which dumped the player back to the desktop at the start of quests when a security check ran - started having a go on forums.

Beyond piracy, Fitch rips into hardware vendors who "make it harder all the time" with integrated audio and video ("two of our biggest headaches") that have "little or no driver support, marginal adherence to standards, and sometimes bizarre conflicts with other hardware".

As for the audience, "There's a lot of stupid people out there." That's on account of not doing "basic stuff, like updating your drivers, or de-fragging your hard drive, or having antivirus so your machine isn't a teetering pile of rogue programs."

"There are few better examples of the 'it can't possibly be my fault' culture in the west than gaming forums," he says.

Finally, reviewers. One chap complained that the game made him carry stuff around, apparently having missed a teleport system, while another had a problem with a bug in a review build, but mentioned it despite it having been fixed, according to Fitch.

"Making PC products is not all fun and games. It's an uphill slog, definitely. I'm a lifelong PC gamer, and hope to continue to work on PC games in the future, but man, they sure don't make it easy," he concluded.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (38) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • jiveguy #1 4 years ago

    PC gmng s dd.

  • crozon #2 4 years ago

    never got the game cause it wasn't my cup of tea. that said tis a shame they had to close down.

  • Ihya #3 4 years ago

    Never played Titan's Quest but I'll prolly buy their DoW pack. I share his pain, so many bottom feeders in the PC gaming community its untrue. As a kid back in the Atari ST days I was part of the schoolyard floppy pirating racket but since becoming a responsible adult I've seen the impact on gaming I 'aint ever going back.

  • SentientNr6 #4 4 years ago

    Being a dev myself I understand these frustrations.
    I got countless conversations with support people that went like. "A customer got a crash in... Did he install latest drivers? Euhm don't know." Sometimes these drivers were older than a year and running on vista!!!
    Try to get anything to run on integrated graphics.
    Oh and piracy is one thing but people complaining about bugs in pirated software...

    It's very sad they had to close shop because of the mentioned issues.

  • Altrezia #5 4 years ago

    THQ could have paid them more.

  • Turambar #6 4 years ago

    "There are few better examples of the 'it can't possibly be my fault' culture in the west than gaming forums,"

    Irony summed up by Michael Fitch.

  • FortysixterUK #7 4 years ago

    ...or the game could have been sold for a cheaper price? Who knows, but the old argument about " if games prices were set at impulse buy price level, would people bother to pirate them? and would more copies sell ?" possibly raises its head here.

    Maybe if everything media based, like CD, DVD etc were at a constant reasonable price it would sell better.
    Maybe a CD should be £4.99 at all times, A DVD £7.99 and a bluray £9.99, regardless of its age or it's perceived quality?
    Then a game ( in my opinion, easily the most value packed of all media's ) could sell comfortably at £14.99 on ANY format and sell well.

    At £14.99 for the latest release, who would bother with some dodgy car boot copy of a game with it's title written is pen on the face of the disc , when you could have an original in its packaging for such a low price?

    I personally think gaming needs to have a standard price set for ALL it's media ( and I don't mean the standard massively high price it is already set at). Every game, regardless of format, brand new release = £14.99. Gaming would surely reach a whole new market?

  • Hunam #8 4 years ago

    It's all well and good stating prices when you have no idea of the cost that has gone into making them.

  • FortysixterUK #9 4 years ago

    Hunam
    03-Mar-08 09:32:36

    It's all well and good stating prices when you have no idea of the cost that has gone into making them.

    ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------

    HUNAM posted this in response to my plan for world media order, but surely the same can be said for CDs & DVD? A new album or movie must cost a bomb to take, but the mediums sell at a far more reasonable price? Is that because they are sold at a price the producers of said media KNOW will sell? i.e. reasonably low prices ?


    I'll skip blur ray for now as they are obviously set at humongously large prices at this time, and deserves to fail as a format unless its price is almost halved in my opinion. Currently a retail price for a new blu ray is £24.99. Why the hell would you buy up blu rays to replace your older but already pretty good quality DVD collection for such an un-manageable price? Ludicrous.

    Please don't take my comments as support for piracy, they aren't. I just want to inject some sense of reason into the price of gaming. It's too expensive , full stop. It needs to be cheaper to become greater saturated into western markets

  • MGG #10 4 years ago

    I've said this on the other thread, I'll say it here again:

    AAA game can, and does, cost as much as films to make. Music is, in comparison, cheap as chips to make.

    However films have 4 avenues to get "paid": Cinema, Rental, Purchase, TV.
    Music 3: Radio, Puchase, licensing (as in use in adverts, films, games, etc)
    Games have: Purchase.

    So yes, in your lovely dream world, 15 quid is a fair price for a game. On any format of course. As a console game costs the same to make as a PC game, doesn't it?



    Oh hang on, it doesn't.


    [edit to add music]
    Edited by 1 at 03/03/08 @ 09:49

  • Wolfman #11 4 years ago

    MGG has it spot on.

    Plus films & music don't have to subsidise hardware that gets sold for less than the manufacturers make them for (apart from the Wii!).

    -wolfman

  • UncleLou #12 4 years ago

    "There are few better examples of the 'it can't possibly be my fault' culture in the west than gaming forums,"

    Irony summed up by Michael Fitch.


    Um, no, not really. Maybe you should read the link instead of just a few quoted tidbits.

  • Turambar #13 4 years ago

    "Um, no, not really. Maybe you should read the link instead of just a few quoted tidbits."

    I read his post last night and formed my opinion last night as well.

  • kangarootoo #14 4 years ago

    @FortysixterUK

    The actual media is used for delivery is only one cost in game production, and often the smallest cost. its not the media that is controlling prices, its development cost.

    You wouldn't price a car based on thge weight of steel that went into making it would you? You would find out how much it cost to make and market, then add on your profit margin to get tie final price.

    That said,

    "However films have 4 avenues to get "paid": Cinema, Rental, Purchase, TV.
    Music 3: Radio, Puchase, licensing (as in use in adverts, films, games, etc)
    Games have: Purchase. "

    I rent games. Games can also contain adverts. Some games are given away as part of other promotions, or raise promotion revenue by other means (Halo 3 beta on Crackdown disc for example).

    I agree with your points about the production cost of games, but your assertions above are a bit over simplified.

  • kangarootoo #15 4 years ago

    @Arbiter

    Good points, especially the bit about the piracy protection method used in this instance (which was idiocy attributable to no-one bu the publisher/dev).

  • Wolfman #16 4 years ago

    I agree with Fitch's arguments. Its not idiocy to crash the game to desktop if its a pirated version. You don't want pirates playing your game full stop. However even doing a "silent" change to a game will still generate people complaining about the game.

    Imagine your copy protection makes a game slow down gradualy over time if its a pirated version; Imagine if you adjust the quests so that you can't complete the side quests; Imagine you change it so that it never drops uber magic weapons. Now everyone that pirates the game is going to complain that your game is buggy because it slows down, the side quests are crap and that the weapons you pick up are rubbish.

    Developers can't win against pirates thats what the problem is! Its a loss-loss situation. Now don't tell me that piracy isn't a bad thing! Ok im not saying piracy was the reason that IL closed because I don't know but it may have been a factor. Whatever the outcome its never a good thing!

    -wolfman

  • MGG #17 4 years ago

    @kangarootoo:

    I wouldn't say my argument is over-simplified at all - you can rent games, but that market is tiny compared to both sales of games and the rental of films (which is a long-established practice, so something consumers are used to and understand the concept of). Plus, there is a habit of buying films even after you have already seen it - in fact, speaking from my own experience, I rarely buy a film that I have not already seen all the way through - would that be the same for games? I very much doubt it. Not every medium is suitable for every possible revenue creating avenue.

    As for advertising in games - yes, it is getting bigger, I will grant you that. Mind, I remember not too long ago working on a game where we had to pay the brand name in question simply to use their products in game - thats right, we were paying to advertise their product! But do gamers really want to see more advertising in games? Do we really want to see more advertising in our world at all? After all, its another false economy, as someone, somewhere has to pick up the price of the advertising - and I'll let you know a secret who it is - the consumer. But thats ok, as long as it makes the game slightly cheaper, I'll continue having to pay a fortune for my cola/trainers/sportswear/razor/whatever-is-disposable. I may be getting old, but I would much prefer that games could stand on their own 2 feet and make enough to survive and even prosper without having to sell their souls (and their creative vision).

    Its not like music does it, is it? And even films, apart from the odd exception (Minority Report was especially bad I seem to remember) dont go too over-board with the advertising/product placement.

    Plus, as Wolfman says - games cost more on consoles mainly because of the "Nintendo/Gillette" approach - sell the console for a loss, but charge people to release games on it. You make a hell of a lot more money selling the blades (games) than the razor (console) with this method. But the buying public just look at the initial cost price of the console/razor and think "ohh, thats cheap...". The irony being that Nintedo actually now sell their console for a profit *and still* charge people to release games for it. Ummm, isn't that a form of protectionism thats illegal?

  • FortysixterUK #18 4 years ago

    I fully agree that my comments may be over simplified, but they were so to highlight a point, maybe a re-thinking of the entire cost structure of producing software needs to be carried out. Agree with my previous comments or not, in general , video games are priced way too high. Xbox360 39.99, ps3 £44.99, PC £29.99, Wii £39.99 ( high street prices).

    The more savvy of us will go to online retailers, and maybe get a tenner off those prices on a good day, but lots of people still rely on the high street, where they are charged a premium price to buy their games.

    Soon you will have a few major publishers dictating HIGH prices to us, buying up developers, and closing them when their product doesn't bring in enough revenue. Alternately, sell the games for much cheaper prices, and hopefull everyone, including the consumer ( without which none of this matters anyway) will win.

    I think being able to sell games on a cheaper mass market level does not begin with the companies writing the code, but with the corporate giants who charge the earth for their DEV & test kits ( Sony, MS, Ninty ). The games have to start out at point of origin costing a lot less, or we will never realise reasonably pricesd gaming. If reasonably priced gaming does not occur, then the allegedly rife act of pircay so often discussed will never stop.

    Vicious circle.

    Although I'm not convinced piracy is a big as everyone thinks, I think it's pretty hardcore rather than general gamers who do it,but that's a whole new conversation piece.

  • kangarootoo #19 4 years ago

    I don't doubt that the prevalance of renting in games in lower than in films, though I would be interested in seeing figures before I dismiss it as "tiny". Tony is a pretty subjective word, so without context its hardly realiable.

    To be honest I think we mostly agree. I just thought your statement that games only have one source of revenue was misleading.

    "I wouldn't say my argument is over-simplified at all - you can rent games, but that market is tiny compared to both sales of games and the rental of films (which is a long-established practice, so something consumers are used to and understand the concept of)."

    That above is a more detailed statement, less simplified than your previous "Games have: Purchase", which we both seem to agree is incorrect. Which is kind of my point. I'm not trying to blow it all out of proportion here, I was just picking on what I saw as a biased example.


    And everytime the advertising discussion comes up people use examples of it being done badly, but they prove nothing more than it is POSSIBLE to do it badly. Advertising in a game is not inherrently negative when it comes to player experience, and sometimes advertising can create amore immersive and realistic environment, its just often as not its done in a piss poor unimaginative way (so blame talentless individuals, not the concept they failed to execute on).


    As for Nintendo making profit on consoles AND games, they have spent money developing technology and when you publish a game on their platform you are licensing the use of that technology. There is nothing illegal about it and neither should there be.

    You suggest that them making profit on the console itself changes things but I don't see why. Whether they are allowed to license their technology is one discussion. Whether they manage their cashflow and costs in a way that allows them to make profit on any given product is surely something else entirely.

  • kangarootoo #20 4 years ago

    "Although I'm not convinced piracy is a big as everyone thinks, I think it's pretty hardcore rather than general gamers who do it"

    I completely agree. Same applies to importing games and films. None of them are mainstream pursuits.

  • gnarl #21 4 years ago

    Or it could be the case that most people played the demo thought Diablo II was still better. Or perhaps just one.

    And for Pete's sake, who thought it was a good idea to bug pirate versions? Silently? That was unlikely to end well. The only game that did that cleverly was Darwinia. Although, perhaps it was just a side effect of the crack used, rather than a deliberate effect.

  • Schiraman #22 4 years ago

    @Turambar: +1

    Piracy and forum gossip, sure - that's why TQ didn't sell well. It couldn't have been anything to do with the stunningly boring demo then? Don't get me wrong, they probably did lose some sales because of their stupid DRM, but I think most people who avoided TQ did so, like me, because it looked like a tired rehash of Diablo 2.

  • GamesConnoisseur #23 4 years ago

    All the quibblings about 'should haves' and 'should nots' still does not change the simple fact that piracy is a crime and that IT is costly in lost revenues to devs/pubs.

    I will own my hand up and say yes I have dabbled in it, yes I did use C90 tapes for Spectrum, yes I did pirate Amiga games onto blue floppy disks, and er I did pirate odd PC games some years ago before it become too bothersome to keep at it.

    The key point I am trying to say is, simply the fact that those games I did not own add up to a huge amount of lost revenue, multiply it by X factor of number of gamers? Is piracy at any time an acceptable alternative? Do those involved in industry would be willing to pirate other devs work when they know they would not stand for their own work to be pirated out?

    Of course Iron Lore may be out of business by other factors more than just piracy BUT it still contribute to a certain degree.

    I am not sitting up on my high horse being superior, I m just as guilty, its need acknowledging as simply DAMAGING for us all.


  • gnarl #24 4 years ago

    "Tony is a pretty subjective word, so without context its hardly realiable."

    Some people things are a lot more Tony than I do, I agree. I assume we using him as a unit of grrreatness? I think a standardized agreement on what one Tony of sugared cornflake goodness would help a lot of discussions.

    (I'm not making fun, I just couldn't resist.)

  • paketep #25 4 years ago

    Please!. I'm sad to see Iron Lore go, but... Piracy again?.

    The Copy Protection was atrocious, and just BECAUSE of that they lost my purchase and many more. Not because of piracy. You see, I buy my games, and THEN I crack them. And seeing the bugs the game had (and not just because of the crack), and after having a friend *with an original game* lose a lvl 22 character and ALL its savegames after an update, I decided TQ was not an experience I wanted.

    Now, if they had dropped the stupid copy protection, they could have sold a lot more. But of course, it is always easier to blame piracy.

  • StarchildHypocrethes #26 4 years ago

    I really don't understand any of the complaints surrounding the copy protection. Companies have to find a way to protect their products and as long as you buy the game, you've got nothing to worry about, how much effort is it to put a DVD in your drive?

    Sounds like quite an ingenious system to me, that if employed across the industry would really stick a spanner in the works of the pirates out there.

    Obviously it didn't really work in this single case though... :)

  • Freek #27 4 years ago

    Stardock, publisher of (among other things) Sins of a Solar Empire does't putt any copy protection on their games at all. The reason being that you only end up hurting your legitimate customers anyway since the pirates crack the code.
    And they're proffiitable, despite making niché strategy titles.

    There's a lesson to be learned there for PC devs/ publishers.

  • Moz #28 4 years ago

    blaiming piracy is one thing,

    but customer stupidity is not a valid complaint, maybe dev should include a system scan in the installation that goes off and get the upto date drivers for the customer

    edit// spelling
    Edited by 1 at 03/03/08 @ 13:45

  • Silvervein #29 4 years ago

    What's interesting in the rant of THQ person is that among the all parties at fault, he didn't mention iron lore and thq.
    But I guess, big publishers and medium sized developers don't make mistakes. They did release flawless blockbuster hit,
    unofficially known as Another Diabloesque Hack&Slash #3455324563: Titan Quest. And their pricing was so far below production costs that they were giving it away for free. Two flawlessly executed points...and such a failure at the end. How can this be?

    While I symphathize with people losing their jobs, I don't sympathize with industry as a whole, who seems to be overrun with huge companies squeezing every last possible penny out of consummers in a bid to please shareholders,by releasing sub par titles that show advancement only in one area: Advertising. I often wonder how much money from games sold by, say, EA, goes to people who make games, and how much to people who don't give a jack about games but leech off them: accountants, executives, public relations and so on. Quite often people who don't play games themselves, and use them only as means of getting next mansion or that dream car.
    I'd really like of ever member of game industry sit back and think about their reasons for being in the game industry. If it's mostly for money, perhaps they should have changed jobs to banking or some such. Which, I suppose, would be a win/win scenario both for them, and gaming public.
    Edited by 2 at 03/03/08 @ 13:42

  • Deepo #30 4 years ago

    I bought Titan Quest and the expansion on Steam, so it can't possibly be my fault.

  • Sar #31 4 years ago

    Boring demo? It was the demo that convinced me to buy Titan Quest and the expansion pack together. Quite a few other people too.

  • paketep #32 4 years ago

    @StarchildHypocrethes:

    It's employed across the industry. Doesn't work. It's stupid. Hurts customers. Hurts sales.

    I don't buy anymore:

    - Games with StarForce. F***ed up a burner in one of my computers. Ok, you don't find games with StarForce anymore.

    - Some games with SecuROM. Some versions installed a service in your machine, put it on automatic, and the games would refuse to work if you didn't have it running. Also, they put entries in your registry that YOU can't touch. I talked to SecuROM support asking how to delete them (after uninstalling the game) and they refused. They told me if I did that, their protection wouldn't be useful. Is it MY machine or theirs?.

    You know what?. I can download a .EXE file and break both protections, in like 2 minutes. I'll play DVD free and paying customers will have to suffer through the protection schemes. You know what else?. I refuse to give my money to companies that treat me like that.

    Iron Lore had a bad protection scheme, PLUS they released a really buggy game, just look at Blue's News and look at the changelogs. Also, TQ was just an OK Diablo clone, but nothing really special. So, they have only themselves to blame. A pity, since I have a really high opinion of Brian Sullivan.

    Also, if a reviewer misses the teleporting system, what's a casual gamer going to do?. Did he stop to think that perhaps it wasn't indicated that well?. And please, about the drivers thing... Is Joe Casual Gamer going to think "ohh, I need to update my drivers". Hell, no, he's just going to think "this doesn't work" and tell his friends. If old drivers make your game crash, you're simply not doing your programming correctly. Check for drivers version or protect yourself the way you should. When someone like my friend loses a character with tens of hours in it, you can be sure he's not going to buy anything from you ever again.

    Edit: me cannot write English.
    Edited by 2 at 03/03/08 @ 15:16

  • Machetazo #33 4 years ago

    "I agree with Fitch's arguments. Its not idiocy to crash the game to desktop if its a pirated version. You don't want pirates playing your game full stop. However even doing a "silent" change to a game will still generate people complaining about the game."

    How about if that change caused the game to initiate a frankly ridiculous dead-end plot arc, so far away from what the pirate is expecting, that concludes with a purposefully crude, blunt "GAME OVER" on a plain black background. They're told to press enter, and then land up at the main menu again! :) You could change it for other genres, too, so, for example platformers trigger a strange door to appear at the end of the first level, as opposed to the regular target, racing games vehicles lose their wheels, after a certain point, lol...

    If it's possible, that's what I think might work.

  • Feanor #34 4 years ago

    "I really don't understand any of the complaints surrounding the copy protection. Companies have to find a way to protect their products and as long as you buy the game, you've got nothing to worry about, how much effort is it to put a DVD in your drive?"

    It's a lot of effort, actually. I got my wife The Sims 2 for Christmas and it sounded like a helicopter was taking off every time she started the game, and the DVD drive also whirred and made noises just when I turned the computer on.

    Eventually I got a No DVD crack and now the game loads 100 times faster, plus my DVD drive is empty and therefore doesn't automatically start doing shit every time I turn on my computer.

    I'm not going to buy any more boxed PC games unless I already know I can easily find and install a No DVD crack. Steam ftw.

  • paketep #35 4 years ago

    Rereading the original thread:

    One guy went so far as to say he'd bought the retail game and it was having the exact same crashes, so it must be the game itself. This was one of the most vocal detractors, and we got into it a little bit. He swore up and down that he'd done everything above-board, installed it on a clean machine, updated everything, still getting the same crashes. It was our fault, we were stupid, our programmers didn't know how to make games - some other guy asked "do they code with their feet?". About a week later, he realized that he'd forgotten to re-install his BIOS update after he wiped the machine. He fixed that, all his crashes went away. At least he was man enough to admit it.

    Whoa whoa whoa!. Someone couldn't get the game to work and had to update his BIOS?!?!?. And he's blaming the people for not having the updated drivers?. How in hell does he expect the average gamer to do that?. And what kind of software depends on the BIOS version to work properly?.

    Amazing. Simply amazing.

  • Meho #36 4 years ago

    Copy protection is there just to discourage casual users. I see little point in it being very elaborate and difficult to crack as it will just bait the crackers more and WILL be circumvented in the end (remember, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory was cracked after more than 400 days) but it will also piss legitimate users off no way. StarForce is bad for business, full stop. When you actually prevent legitmate users from playing your game because you are trying to prevent a POTENTIAL loss of purchase by SOMEONE out there who is smart enough to download torrents and mucjk around with Daemon Tools and shit, you're bad about your business.

    So, yes, copy protection is there to discourage little Timmy when he tries to burn a copy of his new game and give it to his classroom mate and that's what it realistically can do. It never stops REAL piracy. How could it??? The dev companies have what, 100 people working on the game and another what, 10 or 20 people working on copy protection. Hackers are out there in hundreds and thousands. Everything made will be hacked.

    And, of course, I won't say that piracy doesn't hurt sales, it most certainly does. However, from personal experience it is pretty clear that where there is a convenient legit market, piracy is restricted to a small fraction of the population. In my country, the rate of pirated versus legit products ten years ago was around 1:4. Because we were a poor market with little to no products on offer and what was there was pretty expensive. Talking about all kinds of media, not just games. Today, we have much healthier markets with numerous companies working in it and it works a lot better. We had midnight queing for Burning Crusade over here even though people still can walk into a badly lit passage and purchase a cracked version of this game and then proceed to play it on a hacked server without paying. But, as I said, it's all about the market being there. I mean, for instance, all PSP's you buy here come pre-hacked and the last time I was buying games for my PSP (legit games in a legit shop) the guy working there told me they sell very well. I have four hacked consoles and a PC and I still spend ridiculous amounts of money for legit games because I love them products. Even when they don't love me back. I purchased Bioshock even before it came to shops over here (travelled to Hungary and got it there) but I never ever installed the legit version (downloaded the cracked torrent version instead) because I didn't really care for their absurd and insulting copy protection.

    So... I am sorry about Iron Lore and I am also sure that piracy most definitly had its share in its demise. But it was far from being the definitive factor.

  • Avenger1324 #37 4 years ago

    Titan Quest, and Immortal Throne are really fun games, so it's suprising and sad to see Iron Lore folding.

  • THEGREATMADMAN #38 4 years ago

    Never tried Titan Quest. Might check it out