The developer of Titan Quest, Iron Lore Entertainment, closed its doors last week because of a lack of funding, just as the viability of the PC as a gaming platform is a hot topic on the Net. Developer Michael Fitch posted a heart-breaking message on the Quarter to Three forums about how harder it is to develop for the PC because of hardware and piracy:

"(...) the numbers on piracy are really astonishing. The research I've seen pegs the piracy rate at between 70-85% on PC in the US, 90%+ in Europe, off the charts in Asia. I didn't believe it at first. It seemed way too high. Then I saw that Bioshock was selling 5 to 1 on console vs. PC. And Call of Duty 4 was selling 10 to 1. These are hardcore games, shooters, classic PC audience stuff. Given the difference in install base, I can't believe that there's that big of a difference in who played these games, but I guess there can be in who actually payed for them.

Let's dig a little deeper there. So, if 90% of your audience is stealing your game, even if you got a little bit more, say 10% of that audience to change their ways and pony up, what's the difference in income? Just about double. That's right, double. That's easily the difference between commercial failure and success. That's definitely the difference between doing okay and founding a lasting franchise. Even if you cut that down to 1% - 1 out of every hundred people who are pirating the game - who would actually buy the game, that's still a 10% increase in revenue. Again, that's big enough to make the difference between breaking even and making a profit."

Whenever a game company dies, I can't help but think of the demise of New World Computing a few years ago (it seems like yesterday). We'll tolerate posts about piracy in this thread as long as nobody links to a warez site.