THQ's Fitch plays the Iron Lore blame game

by Justin McElroy { Mar 3rd 2008 at 4:30PM }

The death of Iron Lore studios (the devs of Titan Quest and Warhammer 40K Dawn of War expansion Soulstorm) was, officially, the result of "several unrelated events." But THQ creative director Michael Fitch was able to narrow it down a little bit in a forum post he made soon after the announcement. Public enemy number one? Unsurprisingly, it's piracy, which he said affected not only game sales, but the game's perception by a public that's playing a buggy, unfinished version.

Fitch also puts the blame on hardware vendors more concerned with bottom line than creating a quality product, and we're 100 percent with him. But he loses us a little when he starts blaming "stupid people" who aren't savvy enough to make their PC gaming-ready. We see his point, but it seems to indicate more of a problem with PC gaming as a whole than the people who pay $50 for a non-returnable product and expect it to work.

Tags: iron-lore, thq, titan-quest

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

please @ Mar 3rd 2008 4:44PM

Consumers are too stupid for PC games. They buy a game that says PC DVD and return it for a replacement 5 times before the realize they don't have a DVD ROM

Marty @ Mar 3rd 2008 4:44PM

Oh sure - because every game released between now and the next 10 years should run on a brand new e-machine.

I understand the guy's complaint, and I agree to some extent. PC gaming has problems sometimes because stupid people don't know what kind of machine they have, and stupid retailers don't tell them in the first place.

And yet I dread the day that PC hardware becomes rated on certain grades just to make it easy for Joe Consumer to upgrade. Dumbing it down will make it harder for enthusiasts and people who actually know what they are doing to find the facts and make their own decisions.

Brandon @ Mar 3rd 2008 4:46PM

Of course it would have been nice if Iron Lore would have fixed a huge bug in the game "rubber banding". Not fixing this bug turned a lot of people off from playing the game and recommending the game to others. I love the Titan Quest games, but support also helps.

herkulease @ Mar 3rd 2008 5:12PM

Yup. I love titan quest but the rubberbanding was annoying. Its hilarous that they try to blame piracy when its obviously it was poorly written somewhere along the lines and they didn't want to fix it.

eldee @ Mar 3rd 2008 7:12PM

I'm getting really tired of developers blaming piracy these days.. the PC market is dwindling, that is for sure, but you can only blame piracy so much. There are plenty of triple-A titles out there that aren't being pirated nearly as much as poorly developed pieces of crap like this game obviously is.

I wish all the developers luck finding new jobs and everything, but seriously.. piracy is not the reason why your company tanked.

ViagraFiend @ Mar 3rd 2008 4:45PM

Oh, there's trouble a-brewin
Adventure is stewin'.
This line has yet to be written.
Hoist the main sails and lash down the jib, Puncture the bullwarks and svuttle the crow's nest.

First to name reference is winner.

antsmarching @ Mar 3rd 2008 4:46PM

nice move, douche: call a good portion of your potential market "stupid people"

Mr Khan @ Mar 3rd 2008 4:51PM

Poor Titan Quest...

ymmv @ Mar 3rd 2008 4:56PM

"Unsurprisingly, it's piracy, which he said affected not only game sales, but the game's perception by a public that's playing a buggy, unfinished version."

The public (or rather the pirates) were playing, badly cracked version. The copy protection made the 'cracked' version crash at numerous points. There were a lot of people complaining on boards that Titan Quest was a buggy POS but all of those guys played the warez version. The retail version was fine. Nevertheless, all of the complaining gave the impression there was something wrong with the regular retail game.

Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School) @ Mar 3rd 2008 5:02PM

And what does that tell you?

If your protections are so draconian that the vast majority of players are playing the crack, and the crack sucks, you will lose far more sales than if the game wasn't protected at all.

Justin McElroy @ Mar 3rd 2008 5:07PM

If it didn't come across, ymmv, what you said is what I was getting at.

Game Artist @ Mar 3rd 2008 4:57PM

Man, the RSS feed crop of this picture was disturbing.

PSN: KillaKornbread (the shirt is a lie!) @ Mar 3rd 2008 5:08PM

crazy. i thought they would somehow blame it on the PS3 lol.

DangerMouse @ Mar 3rd 2008 5:10PM

(this is a generalization, i've never played the game in the article)

If there's really one thing i hate, it's being burned on a PC game after shelling out $50. I've had way too many cases where i buy a game, reviews are decent, and the game in my eyes turns out to be complete garbage. I can't run out to blockbuster and rent it to see how it is, so i have to rely on a demo. Oh, there's no demo for a PC game, which has been a standard for well over 15 years? Well, then go fuck yourself. Even the X-Box 360 and PS3 have adopted the idea of demos, and it makes even more sense for a PC to have it because there's such a broad range of hardware and software that can cause problems. If almost makes me think that they're taking advantage of me because i actually might go out an drop a 50 on their piece of shit game knowing that a demo might change my mind.

I hate pirating, but i hate gambling my money on something that i may or may not enjoy even more. If your game is all that you've made it out to be, then prove it. I never sell my games. If i buy it at full price, i expect it to pay off for me. If not, they most likely won't see my money again.

I understand his frustration, but it's not like the risk isn't foreseeable. It's PC gaming, that have had "do not distribute" labels on games since Doom.

Dave A. @ Mar 3rd 2008 10:53PM

That's exactly how I felt after plunking down $60 on the Neverwinter Nights 2 special edition, only to find out afterwards I couldn't play it at all.

That, and the developer and publisher blaming certain problems on using the cracked versions when the retail game had every single bug they listed. And it's still buggy, even after it's been on the market for over 2 years.

And Atari even had the gall to tell me that it was Obsidian who put SecuROM on there (which can't be removed using traditional methods), but only after going to the BBB. I'm surprised nobody at Obsidian has filed for breach of contract by Atari, as they're supposed to provide support but never did.

BigD145 @ Mar 3rd 2008 5:16PM

90-95% of any population usually fall in the "stupid" category. They buy $500 POS Dells and Gateways and eMachines. You'd better damn well cater to them if you expect to make HUGE profits. Now, if you're content to make just SOME profit, don't complain about the stupid people. If you want to work up loyalty in your consumer, don't complain about stupid people. Deal with them. Be up front with them. Hold their hands and tell them it's going to be ok. It's disgusting, but it's how you make money.

arrakisman @ Mar 3rd 2008 5:22PM

I enjoyed and beat Titan Quest, but IMO, the game should not of run worse than Oblivion on the same PC.

CSeraph @ Mar 3rd 2008 5:29PM

Titan Quest it had much potential, but I'm annoyed about the items and linear slashingness bore me too quickly D=

Always quit after a few quests, only defeated the medusas (sp) and couldn't be bothered =/

eugene @ Mar 3rd 2008 5:30PM

feh, I'm tired of listening to developers complaining that the consumer is at fault because they don't run out and buy a video card every 6 months that costs more then the rest of their rig combined or they don't scour the manufacturer's site looking for every minor incremental driver update... news flash, it's not because we're "stupid" it's because we have better things to do.

Organic_Shadow @ Mar 3rd 2008 5:32PM

I don't know if there's a single, poor, pathetic soul out there that doesn't at least glance at the requirements label on PC game boxes these days. I think, as the OP said, it's more of a problem with PC gaming as a whole than it is the consumer/PC owner.

It's partly the development communities fault for making their games with technology that's not even out yet, forcing everyone to upgrade just to get a decent framerate and avoid slow downs. The Crytek guys even talked about this recently saying how they worked with nvidia on all this beta hardware and alpha drivers, and helped them actually develop their drivers around the game. Wonder why hardly any computer can run it THE WAY IT WAS MEANT TO LOOK at a steady framerate?

Sorry, but you play a game to play it in it's true form. Just because you can put everything on medium and it run smoothly doesn't mean you're playing the game. You're watering it down just to make it playable. There are NO compromises with console games. My Wii plays Metroid Prime the way it was meant to be played, the way it was meant to look. Same with my PS3 and Uncharted.

SeriousKriss @ Mar 4th 2008 6:13AM

"There are NO compromises with console games."

Of course there are, you just can't do anything about it. For example, Call of Duty 4 runs only at 600p and almost no filters on console. Games like Quake 4, FEAR, C&C 3, the Orange Box, etc. look like they run on medium settings compared to the PC version. Are you saying that's not their "true form" then?

Blazur @ Mar 3rd 2008 5:42PM

Titan Quest was a fun game while it lasted, but quite honestly I sold that game because it performed shitty on my computer during multiplayer games. My rig was fairly new at the time and was easily playing F.E.A.R., Unreal 2k4, and other high-end games. But when I played this game with other people the game progressively got worse and worse. My suspicion was the programming wasn't done efficiently, leading to memory leaks or overheating.

Another think which may have hurt them was the lack of advertising. I never even heard about this game until my friends happened upon it and suggested we try it at a LAN. Only when the expansion came out did I start to see banners on other gaming websites about the game.

Those two factors probably had a significant effect on the outcome of the game.

Ralod @ Mar 3rd 2008 6:05PM

So joystiq? Are you going to keep trying to bitch out pc gaming every day? Why is this even news for you? Isn't there some wanna be halo clone shooter #53 you would be better off covering?

Everyday it is another post claiming PC game is dead, and if your not rich you cant game blah blah blah. Give it up already. These same arguments have been occurring for the last 10 years. They were not true then, they are not true now. A shitty studio went bankrupt, I know it's pirates! No way it could be that we made a diablo clone and 3rd expansion for an aging RTS! Or how about a company produces a shooter that is little more then a formulaic graphical update from there last game, I know it's pirates and pc gamers just don't "get it" that's why we can't sell on the PC! It has nothing to do with the fact our games are uninspired pieces of shit. Epic: The EA of shooters.

Stop with the hate please. Stories like these amount to little better then the console flame wars on gamespy. You hate PC gamers, we get it. Just stop trying to remind us everyday.

Evangel @ Mar 3rd 2008 6:20PM

It's probably because PC gamers expect a higher level of quality in their games. We were around when Doom and Wolfenstein 3D were big. Damn did those make me nauseas... didnt help that I was 4 at the time :)

Just re-hashing those games again and again won't make us buy them, and when your company goes bankrupt because people didnt buy the game, don't cry piracy.

Stardock has been raking in the money with their revolutionary concept of "Treat your customers like customers". Their games are copied and downloaded but people buy them because they're good games that are better than the pirated copy.

DangerMouse @ Mar 3rd 2008 6:25PM

They're reporting what the Dev's had posted, something that i would've never found out unless i visited here. I haven't seen anyone flame each other in this thread yet, and everyone's posted something worthy of reading. Except you of course.

I don't see how there "hate" affects you, unless you can't form your own opinion on something that Joystiq may see differently.

The funny thing is, I've see posts just like this for every console on the market. Does that mean they hate on everything? Sounds balanced to me if they do.

Spankeh @ Mar 3rd 2008 6:08PM

Whoah thar - if the game is pirated, it just crashes to desktop? My gods... shooting yourself in the foot taken to new heights.

Oh, and:

1) if someone slates your game with a falsehood then be "man enough" (taken from article) to contact the frickin reviewers and politely request a correction

2) call people stupid and they won't buy your products

3) tie in the game to some kind of server-side verification - PC gamers play online (almost exclusively) and a game you can't take online won't get played (unless it's the exception, frex BioShock)

Oh, and TQ does blow. I bought a copy and everything.

Foetoid @ Mar 3rd 2008 6:49PM

I dont understand the Titan Quest hating. I love the game, play it at least daily, havent found any bugs at all, and it plays well on every machine i've tried it on. My brother has an old Athlon 3000+ with a Geforce 6600 and 2 gig ram and it runs smoothly enough to play. My own PC i built myself runs the game maxed out no worries. I love the game and have never ever had any issuses with it, performance or bug wise, and i always recommend it.

Foetoid @ Mar 3rd 2008 6:54PM

I think most of us are missing the real issue. Dawn of War is one of the best strategy games i've ever played and i think only Starcraft 2 or Dawn of War 2 will replace it. What happens with the Soulstorm Expansion now that this has happened?

Brad @ Mar 4th 2008 12:58PM

Yeah, I bought the game, and planned to play it with some friends, until we found out that it does not support integrated graphics. I have a laptop with intel x3100 integrated graphics and spec wise my card can handle the game, but after reading the games website, we found out that the game doesn't support integrated graphics AT ALL. I think this was a bad move by the developers to isolate the whole market of casual/laptop gamers that just wanted to get together and complete some quests.