Let's look at what MR. Chalk wrote down objectively:
He wrote that Titan Quest was "marred by pre-release piracy". Now this game was released before Steam or digital distribution was even considered, let alone in frequent use, so the only way it could have been afflicted by pre-release piracy was if it got out before release physically. That indicates a problem in security on the publisher's side, aka Mr. Frazier was responsible for it.
He also wrote "an undocumented security check that dumped players out of illegal copies of the game." This is DRM, despite Mr. Chalk's claim to the contrary. Creative, but not well known. Considering that this was not explained (as was done with Batman: Arkham Asylum, which used the same technique), it led to the understanding that this was a fault in the game as opposed to intentionally programmed inside. Failure to communicate (a responsibility of the company) led to this misunderstanding, not the "ebil pirates".
"That led to some very negative word-of-mouth about its buggy, unfinished state prior to launch, which turned out to be inaccurate but still hampered sales and contributed to the studio's demise." A number of professional reviewers, even those who gave overwhelming positive scores, also cited problems with the game design. Requirements higher than expected or advertised, choppy gameplay even at lower settings, and problem points not attributed to the "intentional illegal copy crash" all pop up to varying degrees. This is a problem in game design, which is the responsibility of the company (additionally from personal experience, every demo display I had witnessed for the game showed considerable levels of graphical problems despite being run on systems that met the recommended specs).
To put simply, the problems that resulted in the shutdown of Mr. Frazier's company was a lack of responsibility on Mr. Frazier's employees and himself in the form of security, quality control, and Public Relations. Instead of acknowledging those problems, he sees fit to blame others, including potential customers for his lack of responsibility.
It's not the first time I have witnessed such a claim. Epic Games made similar claims on Unreal Tournament 3 despite issues of alienating PC users being a more accurate cause and Crytek in the issue of Crysis despite a more accurate summation of their game requiring bleeding edge systems to run the game well and a response from being essentially "tough luck" when confronted with this evidence.
Poor management, not piracy is what killed Mr. Frazier's company.
He wrote that Titan Quest was "marred by pre-release piracy". Now this game was released before Steam or digital distribution was even considered, let alone in frequent use, so the only way it could have been afflicted by pre-release piracy was if it got out before release physically. That indicates a problem in security on the publisher's side, aka Mr. Frazier was responsible for it.
He also wrote "an undocumented security check that dumped players out of illegal copies of the game." This is DRM, despite Mr. Chalk's claim to the contrary. Creative, but not well known. Considering that this was not explained (as was done with Batman: Arkham Asylum, which used the same technique), it led to the understanding that this was a fault in the game as opposed to intentionally programmed inside. Failure to communicate (a responsibility of the company) led to this misunderstanding, not the "ebil pirates".
"That led to some very negative word-of-mouth about its buggy, unfinished state prior to launch, which turned out to be inaccurate but still hampered sales and contributed to the studio's demise." A number of professional reviewers, even those who gave overwhelming positive scores, also cited problems with the game design. Requirements higher than expected or advertised, choppy gameplay even at lower settings, and problem points not attributed to the "intentional illegal copy crash" all pop up to varying degrees. This is a problem in game design, which is the responsibility of the company (additionally from personal experience, every demo display I had witnessed for the game showed considerable levels of graphical problems despite being run on systems that met the recommended specs).
To put simply, the problems that resulted in the shutdown of Mr. Frazier's company was a lack of responsibility on Mr. Frazier's employees and himself in the form of security, quality control, and Public Relations. Instead of acknowledging those problems, he sees fit to blame others, including potential customers for his lack of responsibility.
It's not the first time I have witnessed such a claim. Epic Games made similar claims on Unreal Tournament 3 despite issues of alienating PC users being a more accurate cause and Crytek in the issue of Crysis despite a more accurate summation of their game requiring bleeding edge systems to run the game well and a response from being essentially "tough luck" when confronted with this evidence.
Poor management, not piracy is what killed Mr. Frazier's company.
