An Open Letter To AAA PC Game Developers And Publishers

Dear AAA PC Game Developers and Publishers,

For too long we have been sidelined. But now we stand united. With healthy competition between a host of digital distribution platforms, chiefly Steam, Origin, Uplay and others such as GamersGate, Green Man Gaming, Good Old Games and the Humble Store means that we are not short on options. There is no shortage of games either, there are a plethora of indie developers and more and more AAA games are being crowd funded nowadays.

No longer shall we accept shoddy PC ports that run worse than severely underpowered consoles. We are not asking for better graphics (even though our platform is clearly capable of it) but performance parity across similarly configured hardware. The Xbox One has a 1.75 GHz CPU while the PS4 is clocked at 1.6 GHz. I’m fairly certain most PC gamers have a CPU that outclasses those CPUs by a laughable margin, I’m personally gaming on a 4 GHz/4.2 GHz Turbo Core i7 for example even (that’s without overclocking) paired with a GTX 980 overclocked and even then I don’t consider myself on the bleeding edge.

No longer shall “graphics API overhead” be blamed for poor performance.  AMD ‘s Mantle has been a thing for a long time and Vulcan and Microsoft’s Direct X 12 is gaining traction which offers lower level direct access to the hardware, ala consoles. Please use them effectively.

No longer shall we be limited to simplistic graphics options. FOV sliders are a must. Give us the option to tweak and tinker to our hearts content that is inherent to the PC platform so that no matter the hardware, we can play any game that we want, how we want it.

No longer shall we be limited to 30 FPS. Please don’t.

Refunds are a thing now (seriously? It took the PC games industry this long?!) and we simply won’t accept games that don’t meet the minimum level of standard for enjoyment. We are not second class gamers; we pay full price similar to those of console games. And with no Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo “tax”, I’m pretty sure it lines your pockets very well.

No longer are we a small market. Ubisoft who isn’t usually PC gamings poster child, has admitted that we, the PC gamers, make up their second biggest customer base ahead of the multi-million dollar advertising fest that is the console gaming market. Talk about a turn around.

No longer do we game on small screens. There’s a thing called HDMI and Big Picture mode. This allows us to play games on a big HDTV (talk about magic!) in the living room. With Mini-ITX form factors and Steam Machines and tiny Steam In Home Streaming devices, the living room gaming is not exclusively a console domain.

So, dear AAA PC Game Developers and Publishers, please treat us with the respect that we deserve. No longer are we PC gamers at your mercy. There are a multitude of indie developers vying for your market and crowd funded AAA games foaming at the mouth to fill that gap.

Just to let you know that if you don’t give us the games that we deserve I’m pretty sure someone else will, and make millions.

Sincerely yours,

Millions of PC Gamers Everywhere