The creative director of Titan Quest on the reasons their business closed:http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=42663Basically, he says software pirates spread badly-patched versions to evade the copy protection. That led to TQ (a) losing sales to piracy and (b) being unjustly criticised as a buggy game, losing more sales from people who'd heard it was buggy.This is bad news for all PC gamers, of course, with many games developers moving to console-only or console-first releases where there is relatively minimal piracy. That means we end up with fewer, more simplistic games that don't take advantage of the platform's strengths.If there's an upside to this - it also bolsters the appeal of platforms like Metaboli for publishers - and so we are seeing more quick releases on Metaboli and even first-day-releases in a few cases.Still - sad news.

Hi there,You are totally right about that being a very sad fact, as the team had created one of the best hack and slash since Diablo (IMHO). I loved both the game and its extension, and still play them.As a matter of fact we actually have both games here available for you to play! (please note the extension will be coming soon!) And, Big news, Soulstorm (the last extension to the brilliant DoW game), should soon be available on our sister site gamesplanet (metaboli shop!)... I'm saying this because the guys at Iron Lore helped Relic on that one=)Enjoy, and weather the bad news.

Its sad but its also untrue that pirates ruined the company. Here me out. Diablo II when it launched held the quickest selling game of all time (in its day, things have changed now) , that was until The Sims launched and Halo 2 for the Xbox. Theres a reason Diablo II sold so well and that reason is Battle.net. IronLore made a (and this is only my opinion) bad hack and slash with poor multiplayer features. Lets face it a hack and slash needs multiplayer otherwise its just boring. It has multiplayer but theres nothing stopping people from using hack characters. If some of you remember Dungeon Seige and its MP, TQ was in the same boat.Then it comes down to, why bother buying a singleplayer hack and slash that was buggy at launch?Lets face it, Singleplayer is on its way out and has been for a long time. PC's have had multiplayer gaming for years over consoles but yet we still see companies pump out weak multiplayer support. Long story short. Make a game that works singleplayer ( TES series for example) for make a combo of the both with decent multiplayer. Give people a reason to buy the game.

I'm not so sure, Dragon-RD.Since I joined Metaboli in December, Titan Quest has consistently featured in the top ten most-played games shown on the home page. So clearly, the game does have some considerable appeal - being in the top 4% of the games on this site. The addition of the expansion soon (please!) is likely to consolidate that position.Single-player still has considerable appeal for some styles of game (puzzles, story-telling RPGs and adventure games, for example).Sure, TQ isn't the most original game in the world, but its unique setting and class/skills system does bring something new to the genre, IMHO. Clearly, metaboli players en masse agree. Arguably, it's more 'fresh' than Diablo 2, which was simply Diablo 1 done better.I'm also prepared to believe the developer's numbers when it comes to piracy. See this recent post from another developer that did the maths on this:http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350and this one about how piracy destroyed the games industry in Brazil:http://www.gameproducer.net/2008/02/26/how-piracy-can-break-an-industry-the-brazilian-case/

I agree with you to some extent Nianox but lets look at it for a second. When TQ was announced it had alot of hype as a Diablo killer. I thought "great" being a fan of both Diablo games for years, and playing D2 online for about 6 and a half. It launched, it was fun for a short while but firstly the protection caused the game to CTD leading me to search for a crack. No problem I was sorted although slightly angry at the fact i'd brought a game with protection that ruined it.It was also a buggy game. Not as bad as alot of titles that launch on PC but you were likely to encounter a few. Reviews hurt it Ill agree with THQ on that one. But the fact remains, give the reviewers a game they can rate well. Though, in TQ's defence it wasnt rated badly. (Keep in mind, that alot of what I write here is likely to be bias on the gameplay as for me it wasnt even close to being D2)Another thing to note was the way the characters looked. This would have effected sales im sure. Diablo got away with it being 2D and back then, well it wasnt bad. But TQ everyone looked awful. Armour graphics were horrid limited character customization tunic and gender if I rememeber correctly.The last boss was also very very easy. Although a patch popped out to fix this. Cant comment on the expansion as I havnt bothered with it so im talking the base-game here. Thirdly I found the storyline to be weak while Diablo did at least make an effort to pop in a decent story but in truth. It didnt change on Diablo enough and it felt like a "been there down that" from the get-go.As for THQ's piracy figures no one brought it because it wasnt enough of a change over Diablo and didnt offer anything like Battle.net. BNet would wack in just over two or so million in D2's peak (could well have been higher if you've got an old guinness book of world records it should be in there so clearly two million people liked to play multiplayer. And even if you didn't there was nothing stopping you from creating a private game to singleplayer game. Anyway, forgive me for drifting off topic here once word spread about it not offering a B.net like service im sure that turned many of the heads away. It would have done for me if I hadn't have been curious to find out what all the fuss was about.As for piracy in Brazil, it comes as a surprise. I think I miss-worded my first post as piracy is huge and no doubt killed the company. But in truth there just wasnt enough reason for many D2 fans to buy it, off hand I can't think of anyone who played D2 singleplayer over multiplayer. Though like I said above you could play singleplayer on battle.net, and knew someone who would only level on his own and join the rest of our group for cows (pre 1.10 patch) and baal runs (1.10).People who disliked diablo in the first place were unlikely to like TQ. So they were counting on Diablo players buying it or new people to the hack and slash genre. The majority of Diablo players didnt like it (the 5 people who play singleplayer aside . And how many new hack and slash gamers are there..well the sales speak for themselves. Even Sacred (another game I like) was full of ex Diablo players, and it featured a battle.net system as a result Ascaron are making Sacred2.So its only my opinion but Hack and Slash games don't work unless they feature a solid multiplayer service.Ps. Forgive grammar mistakes rushed this post and the last. *Hear rather than Here for the police out there

We've started discussing two different things here:(a) Is TQ a good game? I am still enjoying it; so are a lot of metaboli folk if you think the stats on the homepage mean anything. You don't like it - and you clearly have a lot more experience than me in this genre. But let's agree to differ.(b) Is piracy killing PC game developers? The Iron Lore case (and the cases from Ricochet and Brazil) would suggest it is. The experience of having more and more games developed for console first and then grudgingly converted for PC six-twelve months later would also suggest that.If we want solid PC games that offer the complexity that PC gamers want (and I've clearly strayed away from TQ here [;)] ), then we need to reward developers for their efforts. They don't expect and can't have all have smash-hits all the time and they don't budget for that. But when 9/10 (at least) players of their game haven't paid for it at all, and have no reason to, then it will kill the industry. And unlike the music industry, which is moving to merchandising and events as the main revenue earners, the games developers have no real alternatives to the price on the box.

Well as an Ex-Pirate (due to a long period of unemployment) I can see why so many people do turn to piracy. A lot of games are clones of other games and offer nothing new, some games on release are just unplayable or even complete failures that when you purchase them you feel cheated out of your money. Sometimes playing a demo doesnt give you the same experience as playing the full game because demo works perfectly game is unplayable (MoO3 for the first few months after release for example)I dont believe it kills the businesses, yes there is a load more players using your game free but 90% of them couldnt afford or never wouldve bought the game anyway. Some may buy the game after pirating (I would if I enjoyed the game even with a tight budget) Half will likely stop playing after a short time and maybe 20% will keep playing it without paying despite loving the game.With the brazil example, it wasnt piracy that killed it, it was bad government and very poor product distribution/marketing. The article talks about the PS2 being the problem, the thing is the PS2 was never released in Brazil and Nintendo likely only had the SNES over there and thats out of date. So yeah they imported PS2 machines Modded them and used illegal copies because this was the only market available for the product.If the government here decided to ban all games Im sure most of us would look to piracy as a means to getting games if that was the only way to get them.As for Reflexive, well I think they only have themselves to blame in thier case, the games are £10 each for things you will find in the Family section here on Metaboli. In my opinion thats vastly overpriced and likely people pirate them just for that reason, halve the cost and maybe theyd sell more to these people who pirate the games. Nor do they get much extra from it, while the statistic of 70% increase of sales due to counter piracy thats not a massive increase considering the actual increase of sales to pirate ratio only increased by 6%. They also dont specify a lot of other details like time of year and time period it was done over. I mean most shops will have a 70% increase in sales at christmas compared to other times.

I think people who produce the games are to blame for piracy. Games are way over priced, and no matter how good a games is, it's still only something you play for a certain time, then either get fed up with it or complete it.If the games where priced accordingly say 7 to 10 pounds as they do with older titles instead of almost 30 pounds for top titles then there would be less need for pirate copies. They are victims of their own greed in most cases. people arent stupid and we all have a sence of what something is worth, and when things are priced fairly we then dont mind paying for it. piracy comes about because we know we are being ripped off but have no choice but to shell out. Thats one of the plus points to Metaboli, you can play many games, some which you wouldnt usually have had the chance to play because of the cost of experimenting with unknown games. like most things, if companies try to get more for their product than it is worth, there is nearly always a backlash, and there is always somebody clever enough to give the public what they want.

Defending piracy with the response - "games are too expensive so I (a) blame the developers/publishers/retailers for piracy or (b) am forced to pirate games" don't really wash.I'd love to drive a Ferrari, but unfortunately I can't afford one. From this point of view, it's perfectly acceptable to steal one in that case.It's not: it's against the law; it's anti-social; the consequences when I got caught would be very bad; the manufacturers of the car might give up doing that if people just took them for free; the showroom owners would install guard dogs and refuse test drives (DRM).People think stealing games is different somehow (because it's on the internet? because it's copies rather than physical products? that they have a right of some sort to own games?).It isn't - the only difference is that, most of the time, people can get away with it without any short-term consequences to themselves. That doesn't make it any more ethical or less damaging in the long term.I don't disagree that the cost of AAA games is high. Most of those high costs go to retailers and publishers, some of them go towards offsetting the sales that have been lost to piracy. Sadly, though, it's the bottom of the chain, the development houses, that go to the wall when people steal, because their margin on a game is smaller than everyone else's in the chain, while their time investment is higher.Thankfully, alternate distribution models like metaboli, like steam, like indy developers setting up their own shops are adjusting that.[Edit: I didn't address the point that games are too hit-and-miss in their quality to justify the risk of investing in them. I've got a bit more sympathy for this, though I don't think it can justify theft. Films are hit and miss, but it's not OK to sneak into cinemas without paying, to avoid risking spending money on seeing a bad movie. Instead, you watch the trailers and read the reviews. Occasionally, you'll still end up seeing poor films, but not so often that you'll stop going to the cinema.]

Completely agree with nianox on this one - there is no excuse for piracy - period.I don't agree that games are over-priced, especially when you take into account the fact that they drop in price dramatically if you are prepared to wait a few months - your choice.Here is how I figure it:- Computer games are comparable to movies.- You can go and see a new film and it'll cost somewhere around £5.- That film will last about 2 hours = £2.50 an hour.- A new AAA game will cost about £40 (probably less if you shop around).- I would hope to get between 15 and 30 hours of game play depending on the type of game = £2.66 to £1.33Games win over films therefore games aren't over priced.Games win big time if you put Metaboli in the above equation - or even just that little bit of patience before you buy the game.I actually believe that services like Metaboli could be a major weapon in the fight against piracy. I think that a lot of "casual pirates" do so without thinking due to the simplicity of downloading cracked games and like the way they can pick and choose more freely than if they had to pay for each one. Metaboli satisfies both these urges - its easy to download any of the games you like as and when you like and you are not tied to the game you just bought.