I Am Alive Coming To PC September 13th; Hypocrites Much?

Last year, as part of their tirade against the unified PC gaming community, Ubisoft went on and on about the piracy rates for their PC titles. How 90% or more of all PC gamers are pirates, thieves and low-down torrenting scumbags who pay for nothing and steal everything. While belitting and sharing begrudging hate against PC pirates, Ubisoft also claimed that a game like I Am Alive wasn't worth porting to PC due to piracy rates and that the cost of porting would outweigh any potential sales from whiny PC gamers. Well, today, Ubisoft seems to have stealthily announced that I Am Alive, lukewarm post-apocalyptic shooter for consoles, will be making the transition over to the PC platform. So either they're warming up to PC pirates or they're backpedaling for some padded sales.

The sad thing about it is that any game that launches on Steam usually sees some measure of success, so despite ridiculing and insulting the PC gaming community, Ubisoft will still see some benefit from sales across their own Uplay, Steam and other associated digital distribution platforms when the game launches on September 13th, according to sites like GameSpot and Beefjack.

If gamers remember correctly, Ubisoft’s creative director Stanislas Mettra commented about why there would be no PC port, saying...

“We’ve heard loud and clear that PC gamers are bitching about there being no version for them,” ...“But are these people just making noise just because there’s no version, or because it’s a game they actually want to play? Would they buy it if we made it?”

Well even so, would this game even be worth buying? I mean, Ubisoft is still touting around the 95% piracy rate figures with no hard data to back this claim up. What's worse is that their Uplay DRM service has actually become worse! Yes, that's right, the Uplay DRM is now worse than it was before. It doesn't even feature cloud saves or any benefit to the consumer other than being a hindrance for gaming. Guess who doesn't have to deal with bad DRM when they play their games? My MOM! Yeaaaah! Oops, I mean...Pirates! Yeah!

The dumb part about DRM is that pirates crack the darn games before they release and get to play them Scott free without having to worry about intrusive security measures obstructing the gameplay experience. This leaves everyone questioning if Ubisoft will bring their supbar game to PC and riddle it with lots of DRM and then cause tons of PC gamers to ignore the title (or pirate it to avoid the DRM) which then circle-jerks the marketing argument that 95% of PC gamers are pirates.

Hopefully Ubisoft spent the extra time polishing up the PC version; keeping the DRM to an absolute minimum. Maybe if they ensured that the controls and graphics options are there in abundance and that there is polish to the product, it might extend good will towards the consumer base, and will only help in the long run. However, this spiteful attitude towards a large demographic of PC gamers is not going to get people to want to buy the product.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.