Magicka developer: Cloud-based gaming "inherently flawed"

Patrik Lasota of Arrowhead Games, the team behind Magicka, has criticised cloud-based gaming services, calling them "inherently flawed", but praised digital distribution for its capacity to deliver frequent patches.

"I think that services that force you to be online at all times are inherently flawed," Lasota told Vadejuagos.

"Even tough [DRM] services like Steam [which] are built on the foundation of being online, they do offer an offline-mode. I think that it will never replace having the game on your hard drive."

But digital distribution has been kind to the new indie developer - especially in responding to Magicka's release-day woes.

"The benefits with digital distribution are huge ... Digital distribution means a bigger cut for us developers and that we can keep a lower price for the customer and better margins," he said.

" ... Another benefit is the closeness to gamers. We get really close to our community and we can push patches daily if we want to. For any game, the community is important, but more so for indie games."

Lasota also commented that Magicka could not have been developed for another platform, such as a mobile device.

"The game we wanted to do could simply not be played on a mobile platform," he said.

Thanks, Blue.