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Activision Blizzard exits PC Gaming Alliance

By Tor Thorsen, GameSpotPosted Apr 14, 2009 3:11 pm PT

Publisher of world's most popular PC MMORPG abruptly leaves Windows-focused organization it helped cofound in February 2008; Capcom, Epic, Microsoft still on board.

With nearly 12 million subscribers worldwide, World of Warcraft is the planet's most popular PC massively multiplayer game. So popular, in fact, that its publisher's parent company, Activision Blizzard, no longer feels the need to be part of the PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA), the pro-Windows gaming organization it helped found just over a year ago.

Once a prominent part of the organization, the Blizzard Entertainment owner is now completely absent from the member's roster on the PC Gaming Alliance site. In response to inquires from GameSpot, PCGA reps confirmed the following statement from president Randy Stude "regarding the Activision situation."

"The PC Gaming Alliance is an industry consortium that relies on membership dues to perform its research," said Stude. "Membership turnover is a fact of life in any industry consortium, [and] particularly so in the current economy. Recently, a few members have decided they cannot justify the budget (membership and staff) required to maintain an active role in the PC Gaming Alliance at this time. However, we have also added several new members yielding a net gain for 2009."

As of press time, Activision Blizzard had not responded to requests for comment as to why it had left the PCGA, which was announced with great fanfare during the 2008 Game Developers Conference. Then, the body was touted as a nonprofit organization dedicated to "driving coordinated marketing and promotion of PC gaming...and creating forums for member companies to cooperate on solutions to challenges facing the PC gaming industry, such as hardware requirements and anti-piracy."

Remaining members of the PCGA include hardware manufacturers AMD, Antec, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Logitech, and Nvidia. Game publisher, Windows-maker, and Xbox 360 manufacturer Microsoft is also a member, as is PlayStation 3-maker Sony. Despite recent comments expressing skepticism about the PC market, Japanese developer-publisher Capcom remains part of the organization along with self-declared multiplatform developer and middleware-maker Epic Games. Sony DADC, developer of the controversial SecuROM DRM software, is also a member, as is game retailer and Game Informer publisher GameStop.

135 Comments

  • Nodashi

    Posted May 20, 2009 6:32 am PT

    The fact the biggest softwarehouse of PC titles leaving that "aliance" says a lot about the aliance, not PC gaming.

    A aliance leaded by microsoft and their "xbox 360 exclusives" is really ridiculous.

  • Fed__X

    Posted Apr 20, 2009 10:53 am PT

    The Alliance of Noobs

  • RitterXplode

    Posted Apr 19, 2009 3:17 am PT

    Haha Valve, that's nice ac3upmyslee

  • ac3upmysleeve

    Posted Apr 18, 2009 2:36 pm PT

    I don't think PC gaming is dying, and if it did die I'd never buy another version of windows, I'd go pure linux. There should be a new PC gaming alliance headed up by Valve, or this existing group should at least give some sign of union with actual PC gamers.

  • Humorguy_basic

    Posted Apr 18, 2009 8:53 am PT

    I don't think the games industry believes in PC gaming any more.

  • 008Zulu

    Posted Apr 17, 2009 3:47 pm PT

    Never heard of these people before or what they did. A few reads here indicate they have something to do with anti-piracy and worshipping at the alters of Sony and Microsoft. Sony made SecuROM, which doesn't work as intended and Microsoft made Games for Windows Live which is a pretty invasive form of DRM thinly veiled as bloatware.

    So, I don't get it, are they supposed to be good for us PC gamers?

  • okassar

    Posted Apr 17, 2009 2:57 pm PT

    Forget the alliance lol,who cares,I guess Activision,being a really big company now and all,didn't want to get caught up with what the other companies wanted and didn't feel the alliance was worth their time or devotion.I really don't mind that.

  • Welshmun

    Posted Apr 17, 2009 12:51 am PT

    ive been doing at ad bit of research on software piracy and the China and vietnam are the biggest offenders. Piracy is also very common in the west, with USA worst hit by piracy costing her 10's of billions of dollars every year

    i wasnt impressed when people thumbed me down over my steam/onlive comment. In a recent interview, Valve's VP of marketing, Doug Lombardi was asked about the effect of PC games' piracy on their business, and here is his response in full:

    "Well, Steam allows us to eliminate 'Day Zero' piracy - which is between gold and when the game's on the store shelves - and that's when all the real piracy, the damaging piracy happens."

    "Gamers are generally good people, right? They're pretty intelligent, you know, they usually have a job. They're not derelicts out on the street, looting and robbing all of the time. But when they've been hyped up on a project and they really want to play this game and they can't wait to play it... Maybe they bought a new computer or console just to play it, and it shows up on a torrent site and it's not at the store... Temptation's going to come into play."

    But with Steam you can't, right? We tell you to pre-load the game, regardless of where you're going to buy it. Download it now so you're ready to play it the day it comes out. The disc that we send out is useless until we turn it on launch day. So we don't have the problem of sending the disc to replication and having some punk grab it and put it on a bit torrent site and take the sales away from us."

    We saw that in 2004 when we released Half-Life 2. Doom 3, Halo 2 and whichever version of GTA came out that year were all available on the pirate network before they came out at stores. The final version of the games. Half-Life 2 wasn't. The only difference was that Half-Life 2 had Steam anti-piracy stuff in place." so you see u cant stop piracy but u can give it a good kick in the bollacks.

  • darkhunterix

    Posted Apr 16, 2009 3:25 pm PT

    Never heard of this alliance... the same amount of pc games have been released at one time for 20 years. Don't really care about this. -_-

  • Inconnux

    Posted Apr 16, 2009 12:40 pm PT

    Good for activision/blizzard... no PC game developers should be part of a group that includes Securom.

  • razgriz_101

    Posted Apr 16, 2009 7:45 am PT

    Not trying to be funny but piracy will never die no matter how hard companies try its just common sense tbh.

    I mean it can be slowed but at the same time they penalize the consumer with systems like SecuROM.Hopefully a company developes a fool-proof anti piracy system that doesnt hurt the consumer soon.I mean steam does it to an extent but its not completely fool proof as you can crack steam as far as i know.

    But a thing like an Anti-virus in these systems where it updates itself to change and adapt to new threats or bypasses would work i think...which if the software is attempted to be cracked it deletes a critical file.

    GTA4 is the only game i have seen recently that can give pirates a bit of a headache.

  • morgos15

    Posted Apr 16, 2009 7:10 am PT

    @AnarchyRising: No kidding. Case in point - Spore. EA blamed used piracy as a scapegoat for laying off employees because their revenues fell as a result of Spores poor sales. Sure they may have had to lay off employees - but don't make excuses because you released an overhyped second rate game...

  • baal46

    Posted Apr 16, 2009 2:52 am PT

    Just call it the DRM Alliance.

  • AnarchyRising

    Posted Apr 16, 2009 2:34 am PT

    @kojo31 - Piracy will always be an excuse. Why not blame something viral and illegal for not being able to sell a crap game? It's pathetic. Game sucks? Piracy! Game broken? Damn pirates! Can't write descent shader code? Usenet! Torrents! Arrrr matey! SecuROM does nothing but induce rage in the buyer. It does'nt stop piracy... it might slow it down, but nothing stops it. It's the end users that suffer.

    I think ALL DRM games, especially SR should have a requirement that it be forged on the box, in huge red letters, "SECUROM, Buy at own Risk!".

    And that's what grinds my gears; back to you Tom.

  • nurse_tsunami

    Posted Apr 15, 2009 11:42 pm PT

    Ugh, securROM I'd leave too if that is the future they are pushing. I am glad that it seems EA may have seen the light and is going to start putting out DRM-free games (Sims 3) instead of all that DRM crap.

  • dannyatkinson

    Posted Apr 15, 2009 9:00 pm PT

    It almost seems that the PC gaming alliance is trying to kill PC gaming on purpose. Idiots. All they care about is stupid SecuROM.

  • monlosez

    Posted Apr 15, 2009 6:00 pm PT

    Soon all the PC-only companies will go multiplatform. or MMORPG?

  • monlosez

    Posted Apr 15, 2009 5:58 pm PT

    @chechak7
    "i love pc gaming ....it's free ....lol....world just love torrents ...it's free world lol"
    True, most free cheats don't work online, you'll have to pay. I'll stick with consoles for coop play, achievements and trophies, party games, and online.

  • MatzeEdend

    Posted Apr 15, 2009 3:17 pm PT

    I have always preferred PC games to their console counterparts. It has been proven that even ports of console games onto PCs have improved the game dramatically in performance, graphics, and often even the overall gameplay, simply because computers don't need a complete developer overhaul to the design when a part of it becomes obsolete. My computer is about five years old now, and it is STILL capable of better performance than any of the consoles out there with only one or two upgrades I've made over the years that cost me less than half of what these consoles are going for these days.

  • svaargod

    Posted Apr 15, 2009 3:00 pm PT

    wow...this ''group'' sucks bad...

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