Piracy is killing PC games, says COD4 developer

Infinity Ward, developer of Call of Duty 4, has cited piracy as the main reason for the decline in PC gaming. Infinity Ward’s community relations manager expressed his amazement in a blog entitled They Wonder Why People Don’t Make PC Games Any More.

“On another PC-related note, we pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer (which was fantastic),” wrote the unnamed employee. “What wasn’t fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only the people playing online).

“Not sure if I can share the exact numbers or percentage of PC players with you, but I’ll check and see; if I can I’ll update with them. As the amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding. It blows me away at the amount of people willing to steal games (or anything) simply because it’s not physical… it’s safe to do on the internet.”

Despite the claims, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was still the number one game for PCs earlier this month, pushing World of Warcraft into the number two position.

Meanwhile at MacWorld, Aspyr Media has announced it is to publish the game for Macs. The game is scheduled for a May release and will be available for $49.99.