There’s been a clarification by Stanislas Mettra, creative director at Ubisoft, about contentious comments he was quoted as making regarding PC gaming and the then-unlikelihood of climbing-based survival title I Am Alive appearing on this platform. In a statement sent to IncGamers, he claims that “I would really love to see a pc build of the game and I don’t think I meant to say “the game won’t happen on PC”, observing that it might have been a breakdown in communication as he’s not a native English speaker. (He isn’t; I met him too that day).

“We are still working to see the feasibility of it,” he says of the PC version, “which is not necessarily simple. I gave some examples to illustrate the problem, but obviously it is not in my hands and not my part to talk about this.” Said examples were the ones about piracy and presumed low sales, which carried more than a whiff of inadequate research. Now he’s saying he was the wrong guy to ask – which was always my personal take on the controversial quotes, to be honest. They came across as one guy coming up with a unprepared response on the fly about a question he probably wasn’t expecting, rather than endemic of company policy, and I wasn’t thrilled that his words were taken by many as an excuse to spank Ubisoft again.



On the Ubisoft preview day in question, the company was clearly very excited about their free to play, PC-only Ghost Recon Online (a hands-on preview wotsit of which I’ll be posting later today), as well as a F2P Settlers and assorted Facebooky things. That publisher still has much to sort out in terms of its oft-icky DRM stance, but I don’t for one second think they’re dismissing or giving up on PC. I reckon Mettra’s unfortunate quotes suffered a molehill to mountain transition, in the way so many dev comments on the internet become cold, stern, blurted proclamations once made into headlines, as opposed to the mere fraction of a flowing conversation they really originate as.

I’m sure the poor sod will be given a more detailed PR cheatsheet the next time he’s wheeled out in front of the media. And maybe someone could give him a better education about piracy and Steam sales and all that jazz, so he doesn’t have to make paranoid stuff up on the spot next time.

“Honestly, which game maker would not love his game to be playable on as many platforms and by as many people as possible?” he adds.

I watched a half hour console demo of the game, and it looks fairly interesting – especially the combat, which revolves around threatening people and hoping they’ll surrender, as bullets are so scarce you don’t want to use ’em unless absolutely necessary.