Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford Stands Up To Sony

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has another bone to pick with Valve, and, this time, it's about Left 4 Dead. He didn't point any eye-gouging fingers towards Chet Faliszek and his kick below the belt at the PlayStation 3, but he strongly criticized the zombie-shooter's developer for its stance regarding Sony. “Doug Lombardi had to take a swipe at the PS3 again, and I thought it was foolish,” the CEO said, speaking with the Official PlayStation Magazine, Kotaku reports.

“I read it the same way I read fanboys,” he added. “Like there's a guy who bought the Sony platform and he's a Sony guy, so he decides he's going to spend a certain percentage of his time bashing Microsoft. And there's a guy on Microsoft doing the same thing. Those guys are childish and narrow minded; It's the same kind of thing.” His problems with Valve didn't end here, and he further complained about how the Orange Box received some obvious preferential treatment for the PC and, most importantly, for the Xbox 360, as opposed to the PS3.

“I'm actually kind of mad at Doug because with the Orange Box, he said the 360 and PC versions are the good ones and the PS3 version is like the stepchild because some other developer made it. Well you Valve don't really think that, because look what you've done on the PC side,” Pitchford pointed out. “You've supported that, you've added all this content to Team Fortress 2, and you've left us hanging. It's hard to accept that genuinely, because I know the business, I know you guys make half the money on the PS3 version because you've got other fingers in the pie, and other developers getting a cut. It benefits you if nobody buys that, and only buys the PC version, because you make the most money. There's this underlying sleaziness.”

It's a common thing for titles to be quite different as regards their release platform, but most of the alterations are related to the games' porting, their controls and so on. Still, each console offers different features and supports different content directly connected to its manufacturer's policy, but it's a bit unsettling when the developer gets in on the game and fiddles with the actual product.