Fans of Bend Studios’ action-adventure survival horror title, Days Gone, do not deserve to complain about the lack of a sequel unless they supported the game at launch and paid full price. This is according to Days Gone writer and creative director John Garvin, who was interviewed by David Jaffe on Friday and told the God of War director how much he hated the idea of gamers buying games at a discount. Admitting that his opinions were sure to piss people off, Garvin went on to blame piracy for affecting game sales, suggesting that the best way for gamers to support developers is by purchasing games at full price rather than getting involved later down the line. Garvin’s comments follow reports that Sony had opted not to proceed with a Days Gone sequel due to the unimpressive sales performance of the original.
“I can tell you that when we were doing [Syphon Filter] Dark Mirror [on PSP], we got so f-cked on Dark Mirror because piracy was a thing and Sony wasn’t really caught up on what piracy was doing to sales.
“And we would show them torrents, a torrent site had 200,000 copies of Dark Mirror being downloaded. If I remember it right, the numbers could be wrong, but regardless, I was pissed about it then, I was like ‘this is money out of my pocket’.
“So I think the uptick in engagement with the game is not as important as, did you buy the game at full price? Because if you did, then that’s supporting the developers directly.”
Sources: David Jaffe, VGC, Eurogamer