The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, an Xbox 360-only indie game that a Russian pirate “ported” over to PC as “a restoration of justice” will get an official PC release, the game’s studio said this evening. Ska Studios said a PC version of Vampire Smile had always been envisioned since the game released in 2011, but the time and money of bringing it out for that platform got in the way of other projects the indie shop was working on, such as its upcoming game Charlie Murder, due later this year.
“The reason The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is not on PC is not because of something secret and evil,” James Silva wrote. “Porting is a huge hassle, it’s not trivial, and I simply haven’t made time for it.”
That said, the cracking-and-porting job done by one “Barabus” has focused attention on the game and therefore Silva’s attention toward officially releasing it on PC. “Of course, we can’t condone it, but we definitely recognise that the only thing we can really do about it is the original plan: port to PC,” Silva wrote.
“Nothing’s set in stone, but we got the go ahead to make a pre-announcement: we’ll be working with Microsoft to bring our stuff to PC,” Silva promised.
To Kotaku, Silva said “the PC port was something I had been wanting to do for a while,” and something his studio had brought up with Microsoft on Friday, four days before the hack. “Once that news hit, we all decided it was a good opportunity to follow up with an announcement. It was a bizarre coincidence, and we’re actually more flattered by the positive attention Vampire Smile’s getting than anything, but I’ve said that already.
“The most common misconception about porting is that it’s entirely a policy-based process, when the real issue for me has always been the months of dev time I’d personally have to sink into it,” Silva elaborated. Once Charlie Murder launches, they’ll have more time to devote to creating a proper PC version of The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile.
Vampire Smile, Charlie Murders [Ska Studios]
Comments
6 responses to “Forcibly Ported Indie Game To Get ‘Enhanced Director’s Cut’ For PC”
And as much as i condone what the russian guy did, i’ll buy this when they release it as well.
What a coincidence. Talked about it just last week. Didn’t do it earlier because its a hassle.
Stock response.
They started work on their next game as soon as Dishwasher was released, I don’t think an indie studio has the resources to work on a port during that time.
It is XNA. Porting it is not a major undertaking – the guy that made the unofficial port did it in a couple of days – that’s not a huge outlay to add a new distribution channel.
Or, the bloke who ported the game also had hacked the company’s emails and got information they were in talks of making a PC version for the game.
His been working on this for a long time and has a robin hood complex. As he doesn’t want to be seen as the villain in the story, he opted to release his version out before the announcement was made, allowing him to bathe in the little glory of the people who respect his actions.
And yes, my imagination runs wild…the Aliens are reading my mind…I must put on my tin foil hat.
Everything Silva says seems very reasonable and neutral. It’s like… ‘Hey. I’m just working here. I had a project to complete before I could do that one you were so passionate about, but since you went and screwed that schedule up, I guess my priorities got shifted around without my permission. Sigh. I love when other people reassign my priorities for me for no tangible benefit. Really.’
I work in a different industry, but I can relate to the ‘interference in your project timelines’ hassle.
Oh well, just steal the port code from the hacker back and optimise it further. This guy’s ‘restoration of justice’ just made the original devs job easier for them.
If it takes so long and is so arduous, how did a cracker do it so easily?
It’s an XNA game. He’s bullshitting when he says porting to PC is difficult.