id's Hollenshead: Piracy 'hidden benefit' for PC manufacturers
Oh, those sly PC hardware manufacturers. As if it wasn't bad enough that they keep building better, more powerful rigs every six seconds, id Software's Todd Hollenshead believes they also secretly benefit from software piracy. No stranger to the public flogging of the illicit C:\ scourge, the CEO candidly told GamesIndustry.biz that manufacturers typically "line up on the wrong side of the argument."
"They have lots of reasons as to why they do that," he said, "but I think that there's been this dirty little secret among hardware manufacturers, which is that the perception of free content - even if you're supposed to pay for it on PCs - is some sort hidden benefit that you get when you buy a PC, like a right to download music for free or a right to download pirated movies and games." Hollenshead believes that this is what motivates manufacturers to stick up for the law-abiding minority when it comes to issues like peer-to-peer sharing.
"I think that if you went in and could see what's going on in their minds, though they may never say that stuff and I'm not saying there's some conspiracy or something like that - but I think the thing is they realise that trading content, copyrighted or not, is an expected benefit of owning a computer." Heck, the only reason we got one was to steal quotes from Tom Bramwell's interviews.
