18 years ago, with the imminent release of "Gears of War 2" on XBox
360, CliffyB (nee Cliff Bleszinski, lead designer of the Gears of War
games) indicated that his latest title was /never/ going to be
available on PC because that platform was just too rife with piracy
for any game (especially any high-end videogame) to be successful.

This, of course, despite the fact that there were numerous games (Star
Wars Force Unleashed, STALKER, Left4Dead, Mass Effect, to name a few)
that /same year/ that proved him wrong. To say this comment did little
to endear him to PC gamers would be something of an understatement,
and when his own development company --formed after he left Epic--
went bankrupt, there was a lot of jeering at his expense from that
same crowd.

Well, I'm not /quite/ that vindictive, but I admit I did smile a
little when I saw a new fan-project which ported "Gears of War 2" to
PC. I've never really been a fan of that franchise but it's not a
terrible series of games. I never understood why they were so popular
--they seemed pretty average games to me-- but they're okay. I bought
and played them on the XBox. They weren't great, but I didn't regret
the time or money spent on the titles.

But I did wish that I could have played them with mouse-n-keyboard
rather than a gamepad. You know, like games are MEANT to be played.
And now I can.

Obviously, this port isn't entirely legal. But it does add a number of
features --mouse/keyboard, obviously, but also various graphical
tweaks, higher resolutions, and an option to change the field-of-view.
XBox games always had such a tight FOV forced upon them by the
platform's technical limitations that this latter option is very
welcome. And it all runs natively on PC hardware, rather than through
an emulation layer.

The code itself might pass the sniff-test when it comes to legitimacy; unfortunately, to get it to work you also need a pre-packaged 6GB file
that includes most of the game assets as well, and that DEFINITELY is
going to get the project shut down PDQ. So if you're interested in
grabbing the port, do it sooner rather than later.

CliffyB's tears are free-n-clear, though. ;-)

Details available here: https://www.dsogaming.com/news/gears-of-war-2-gets-unofficial-pc-port-available-for-download/



[note: I actually haven't installed this mod myself. I just enjoy the schadenfreude it represents. ]



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 15:49 this Monday (GMT):

18 years ago, with the imminent release of "Gears of War 2" on XBox
360, CliffyB (nee Cliff Bleszinski, lead designer of the Gears of War
games) indicated that his latest title was /never/ going to be
available on PC because that platform was just too rife with piracy
for any game (especially any high-end videogame) to be successful.

This, of course, despite the fact that there were numerous games (Star
Wars Force Unleashed, STALKER, Left4Dead, Mass Effect, to name a few)
that /same year/ that proved him wrong. To say this comment did little
to endear him to PC gamers would be something of an understatement,
and when his own development company --formed after he left Epic--
went bankrupt, there was a lot of jeering at his expense from that
same crowd.

Well, I'm not /quite/ that vindictive, but I admit I did smile a
little when I saw a new fan-project which ported "Gears of War 2" to
PC. I've never really been a fan of that franchise but it's not a
terrible series of games. I never understood why they were so popular
--they seemed pretty average games to me-- but they're okay. I bought
and played them on the XBox. They weren't great, but I didn't regret
the time or money spent on the titles.

But I did wish that I could have played them with mouse-n-keyboard
rather than a gamepad. You know, like games are MEANT to be played.
And now I can.

Obviously, this port isn't entirely legal. But it does add a number of features --mouse/keyboard, obviously, but also various graphical
tweaks, higher resolutions, and an option to change the field-of-view.
XBox games always had such a tight FOV forced upon them by the
platform's technical limitations that this latter option is very
welcome. And it all runs natively on PC hardware, rather than through
an emulation layer.

The code itself might pass the sniff-test when it comes to legitimacy; unfortunately, to get it to work you also need a pre-packaged 6GB file
that includes most of the game assets as well, and that DEFINITELY is
going to get the project shut down PDQ. So if you're interested in
grabbing the port, do it sooner rather than later.

CliffyB's tears are free-n-clear, though. ;-)

Details available here: https://www.dsogaming.com/news/gears-of-war-2-gets-unofficial-pc-port-available-for-download/

[note: I actually haven't installed this mod myself. I just enjoy the schadenfreude it represents. ]

"Piracy isn't a cost issue, but a platform issue" -gaben
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:00:07 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> said this thing:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 15:49 this Monday (GMT):

18 years ago, with the imminent release of "Gears of War 2" on XBox
360, CliffyB (nee Cliff Bleszinski, lead designer of the Gears of War
games) indicated that his latest title was /never/ going to be
available on PC because that platform was just too rife with piracy
for any game (especially any high-end videogame) to be successful.

"Piracy isn't a cost issue, but a platform issue" -gaben

More precisely:

"Piracy is almost always a service problem
and not a pricing problem."

(Saying it's a 'platform issue' is the argument Bleszinski was making;
that piracy was endemic to PC games simply because they were
availableon PC).

Gabe refuted this by saying that if you make your product better
--that is, easier to use, easier to acquire-- then people will
generally prefer to get it legitimately. Limit your product to only a
few markets, or put onerous conditions on its use, and people will
strive to bypass these restrictions. Remove these, and the monetary
cost becomes much less a consideration.

"If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world,
24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal
computer, and the legal provider says the product is
region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after
the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and
mortar store, then the pirate?s service is more valuable."

--Gabe Newell again, from that same Cambridge Student Magazine
interview. https://web.archive.org/web/20111128000044/http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/interview-gabe-newell/
(original link dead, using Wayback machine archive)




--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)