Just Cause 2 Developer Hates DRM; Hires Hackers

It’s not too often that someone in the game industry with some weight behind their name says something that I completely agree with, but when it comes to Christofer Sundberg, of Avalanche Studios, I couldn’t agree more. It’s obvious that we at Techgage are not too fond of DRM, and as it appears, Christofer isn’t either. In fact, he seems to be starkly against it.

Avalanche Studios isn’t quite a household name, yet, but the folks there are known for putting out a couple of the best adventure games in the past couple of years: Just Cause and Just Cause 2. Neither of these feature DRM schemes, and the reason simply boils down to the fact that the company, or at least the CEO, is against punishing legal gamers.

In fact, regarding DRM Christofer states, “it just punishes the people who have actually paid for the game. It’s completely useless. Forcing people to be online all the time and so on doesn’t show respect to the people who actually buy PC games.” Wow, we sure can’t disagree there!

DRM aside, Christofer also stated that he’s not against hackers of games, but rather has been known to hire them. In fact, up to half of his workforce are hackers that he found value in. If only every game developer in the industry was so open!

“Oh yeah. I absolutely think that’s a fair approach, to think about how these people can fit on the right side of the law. It’s one way, at least. Perhaps the truest pirates are too much down the road of anarchy to ever work with you in a proper way; these are the guys who see us as evil! “But in Sweden the [hacking] scene was huge… As a studio, we’ve found that there’s definitely a lot of talent [in that community].”