Mutant Mudds and Dementium developer Jools Watsham has once again taken to his blog, but this time to clarify earlier comments he made regarding piracy on the Nintendo 3DS.
In a post written last month, Watsham expressed concern regarding the progress being made in hacking the 3DS. After recalling the effect piracy had on the original Nintendo DS, Watsham warned that if it got bad enough on the 3DS he would have "no choice but to stop supporting the platform with new games." Some interpreted this as an attack on Nintendo and responded with rude and hateful comments.
In a follow up post, written today, Watsham sought out to clarify his comments. He assured he is not taking a stand against piracy or taking his business elsewhere in protest.
"What this means is if we cannot make money from developing games we can no longer develop games," Watsham explained. "That is what can happen if piracy gets bad. If enough people choose to illegally obtain copies of my games for free instead of paying for them, it directly affects my business and my home."
"I understand that piracy is always going to exist, and that every market has some form of piracy," he added. "I accept that piracy will exist on the 3DS. The question is how much is it affecting the market? Some markets maintain a healthy business environment alongside piracy. I believe this is due to many factors, not least of which is the service provided in that market."
In his prior post, Watsham suggested his past game Dementium II was a victim of piracy on the DS. Watsham did acknowledge that piracy will always exist in some form and that he didn't think there was a solution to it.
"We just need to make sure the price of games is affordable," he suggested. "We need to make it easy to buy and own games. The availability and access player's have to their games needs to be at least as easy and convenient as the ROM sites make it to illegally download a game file. Ideally, it should be better."
"I hope this helps explain where I was coming from a little better. We have games planned for the 3DS into 2014. Our support of the 3DS platform couldn’t be stronger," Watsham concluded. "I expect the cynics out there will discard my words as an attempt to just smooth things over. No. I just want to try and get my original intent communicated. That is all."
You probably already know my stance on pirating; and that's that pirating is wrong. As someone in the industry, I see the effects it has on developers. Just see what it's doing to app developers.
