The piracy issue reared its ugly head recently when developer Crytek said that it wouldn't be creating any more PC exclusives, due to the mass pirating of its latest PC work, Crysis.

"[Piracy] is not why [Crysis] didn't sell as many as they wanted," argued Wardell. "Everybody knows why Crysis didn't sell more copies. I couldn't run Crysis. ... I have a $6,000 Alienware box that's obscene, the most powerful setup. And it doesn't run Crysis great. People say I can run it at a lower resolution, but I say look, I have a 24" monitor. I want to run it in its native resolution. If it runs chunky at that resolution, that's not a good experience."

Despite Crytek's piracy concerns, Electronic Arts-published Crysis was able to sell 1 million units worldwide. Stardock's titles aren't such big blockbusters, but Wardell says that they don't have to be in order to be a success on PC. This year's Sins of a Solar Empire, a hardcore 4X real-time strategy game (that was a Games for Windows title), has sold 300,000 copies so far. "Sure 300,000 isn't much when compared to a console title that's gone off and sold a million copies, but at the same time, we didn't spend $7 million or $10 million on Sins. It was more like $1 million to make," said Wardell. He added that Sins hit break-even at about 100,000 units sold, and "everything after that is just gravy."