David Reidy Why quit?

[Doddsy]

I was reading this Months RG with the excellent Skool Daze article and I was surprised to learn that Dave Reidy quit the games industry due to all the piracy going on. Fair enough but should he have realised that when he got into this business? In my opinion piracy has always been around - it still is today possibly more so now with the internet. Remember when People used to copy music tapes in the early 80's and record companies had to put that Home taping is killing music logo on them.
I'm not supporting piracy, in fact I prefered to have the original spectrum games in my collection - which I amased a lot back then and sold them all later to get an amiga which looking back now, I wish I hadn't. From what I get reading RG, the early years of the games industry programmers seemed to program games because they had a genuine love of the machine and wanted to write games - the money was nice side effect that got more as the industry took hold!

I think Dave Reidy should have hung on in there for a few more years by supporting the British games industry. If everyone thought like he did back then, then it could have all collapsed.

So what do you all think?

[r0jaws]

Can't really criticise the man for his motives, everyone has to make their own decisions based on what they feel at the time.
Also, I can't say I blame him for quitting. From his perspective it must have been depressing as all hell to be firing out games, having them sell, and then being returned for a refund after having been copied.
Obviously other people stuck it out though, and made a living from it. Fair play to them.
I can hand on heart say that I didn't contribute to his leaving the scene, as I never copied any of his games, as they weren't my cup of tea. I also never returned any game I bought, but I did have a few copies, mostly from friends, so I'm as guilty as the next person of being complicit in it. Mind you, I don't remember playing any of the copied games anywhere near as much as the games I paid cash money for.
In some ways I think you have to pay for a game for it to have any value, otherwise it's just disposable.
These days, I don't copy media for current gen systems that are being actively developed for, and try to instill in my son the value of the games he plays. Obviously we don't buy them new, only second hand, I'm not a millionaire. It's debatable how much the developer's benefit from my pennies, second hand game shops rake it in from me though.

[merman]

I would have suggested a third option in this poll - carried on coding in his spare time.if games were not his only income he could have found the inspiration to try something different. And really, the levels of piracy at the time were not as bad as they would become later in the 80s, yet sales were still strong.

[Matt_B]

I would have suggested a third option in this poll - carried on coding in his spare time.if games were not his only income he could have found the inspiration to try something different. And really, the levels of piracy at the time were not as bad as they would become later in the 80s, yet sales were still strong.

That's easier said than done when your dreams have just been crushed though.

Realistically, I think the piracy argument is a bit of a cop-out. At the end of the day Microsphere had one hit game in Skool Daze, and a bunch of less popular ones that, whilst still very good, were more cult favourites. Despite spending an increasing amount of time on developing games, the money coming in must have declined significantly, as he just couldn't find that sweet spot again.