Todd Hollenshead, head of Doom 3 creator Id software believes that rife copyright infringement of PC games poses a huge threat to the future of the industry. He suggested that the PC games industry isn't taking the threat of piracy seriously and that if something isn't done to curb it, companies could soon demote the PC to a second tier platform.

"I find myself when I have a discussion about piracy trying to convince people it's a serious problem," he said.

It is estimated that global piracy cost the US gaming industry in excess of $4bn in 2004 -- excluding losses from Internet piracy.

"In Eastern Europe, Asia and South America the losses are estimated to be 90% plus," said Mr Hollenshead, speaking at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week.

One of his primary concerns at the moment is the circulation of cracked copies of PC games. "The statistics of the amount of net traffic devoted to piracy of PC titles is startling," he said.

Many of the newest & most popular titles are freely available throughout the filesharing community. Games such as Battlefield 2142, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas, Fahrenheit and Need for Speed Carbon can all be downloaded with relative ease.

Developers of Id's latest title, Enemy Territory Quake Wars have had to be extremely vigilant to prevent any internal leaks from occurring because, Hollenshead noted, "Every major project we have worked on has somehow found its way to the internet." All development copies of Enemy Territory have had to be fitted with physical dongles which prevent the game from being played without the hardware key.

He said, "We know a copy of Enemy Territory is out there because someone is posting screen shots." But added "Hopefully some of our protections have worked to keep that from being distributed online."

He believes that people need to be educated about the damage to industry piracy is doing. "There is a serious attitude problem we have about games and game fans especially amongst the PC community who look to hackers as icons. It's seen as a cool thing to be part of the wareZ (hacker) community and share copies of games.

"Hopefully through education and understanding the community who love PC games needs to recognize they are poisoning the well we all drink from," he said.

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Oh booo hooo..blame the consumer and call them theifes never think you have a bad product,that maybe it and the racket in retail might be a problem...