According to head of franchise development Oskari Hakkinen, “Of course we care about it. We spent five years creating this game and went through a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Hopefully people see it’s a cult classic. We’re a small team of 60 people.”
”But some people are going to pay for it and some people aren’t. At the end of the day for us it’s about entertaining as many people as possible,” Hakkinen sighed, adding, ”Of course we hope people will pay for it, but if they don’t, at least enjoy the story. Maybe they’ll get something else in the Alan Wake universe somewhere down the line.”
Hakkinen went on to compare piracy of Alan Wake with such iOS titles as Tiny Towers, which is a free game but invites microtransactions such as Tower Bux to accelerate the game. Hakkinen stated, ”You get to pay Tiny Tower for the first 40 minutes and then it asks you, well, you can carry on grinding and building your burgers and selling fries by sending people up and down the lift, or you can pay. So they give you something for free and if you enjoy it after your 40 minutes maybe then you start investing in the game. If you want to play a little bit more maybe you just put in a pound and you can play some more.”
Hakkinen then admitted, ”It’s not the same, but maybe there’s something in Alan Wake they enjoy and they didn’t realise they were going to enjoy it. They grabbed it because they’ve just heard, it’s okay, but not something they’ve sought after. They enjoy it and then they grab something else we make.” Of course, that’s with the assumption that the pirates would pay for it as well.
In the end, Remedy is resigned to the fact there’s nothing they can do about people stealing their five years worth of labor. ”You can’t fight it, really,” Hakkinen concluded. ”It’s just the way it is. Of course I hope people go on Steam or get the retail copy. But if they don’t, they don’t. I’m not going to get a stomach ulcer from it. It’s just the way it is.”
Alan Wake has sold 1.1M copies on the Xbox 360 to date.
