Deep Silver on piracy: 'We typically ignore it'

In conversation with The Penny Arcade Report, Deep Silver CEO Klemens Kundratitz said the publisher's official stance on software piracy was, essentially, to leave it alone. "In a business plan, we typically ignore it," said Kundratitz. "It's not something that is new, it's something that has been part of our business for decades... As a publisher, you just live with it." Deep Silver has seen strong performance from two of its recent titles, Metro: Last Light and Saints Row IV, two IPs its parent company Koch Media purchased from THQ when the publisher folded earlier this year. Both have considerably outsold their predecessors on PC. "Console sales were bigger, no doubt... but PC has a very decent share and it has got a very active and committed community," said Kundratitz. "We keep them very much in focus." Deep Silver and Volition have made strides to accommodate modding for the Saints Row franchise, and in conjunction with a recent Steam sale, Deep Silver's Saints Row community team ran a "pirate amnesty day," offering players the chance to reinstate their community accounts with a valid purchase. Kundratitz said that while a higher chance of piracy kept some publishers from releasing same-day on console and PC, the solution wasn't to avoid the platform or depend on draconian DRM, but just to do better. "I think we just need to make sure that the games we publish are worth the money, and certainly there is always this piracy situation that any publisher has. No publisher can tackle [it], really."