Slashdot Mirror
How To Ruin Your Game's PC Port
An anonymous reader writes "An article at Ars goes through some of the biggest sins game publishers commit when porting a console game to the PC. At the top of the list, predictably, are annoying DRM and inconvenient game settings. From the article: 'PC gamers like to play with their mouse settings, adjust the amount of detail in the characters or environment, and change the audio mix between the music and the sound effects. We want to adjust the resolution, the aspect ratio, and even the field of view settings. The more options given to PC gamers, the better. While some engines support more options than others, there is a minimum amount of tweaking that should be available when we jump into the game. For an example of how badly PC gamers can get screwed on this issue, we can take a look at Bulletstorm when it was launched. Not only was mouse smoothing turned on as a default, but there was no way to turn it off. You had to find the configuration files, which were encrypted for some insane reason, and then install a third-party program to be able to turn off mouse smoothing and get the game feeling like it should on the PC."
I agree, I also did read the heading as "How To Ruin Your PC's Game Port".
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
1. Require Games for Windows Live to be installed.
2. Require Securom to be installed.
3. Sell the game on steam with the above two.
So? They are getting extra money. They should be doing extra work.