Activision Blizzard and Acer Leave PCGA While Gamestop and Sony DADC Join

The PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA), "a nonprofit corporation promoting PC gaming worldwide, while providing an open forum where companies can cooperate to develop and promote solutions and activities that drive the PC gaming industry forward," lost two of its founding members, today.

Activision Blizzard, known for popular games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, and Acer, world's third largest computer manufacturer, both left the PC Gaming Alliance due to membership costs. Randy Stute, the non-profit organization's president, confirmed yesterday that Activision Blizzard and Acer both felt that they could not justify the expense in both money and staff to continue to be a member of the group.

"However Stute also confirmed that gaming retailer Gamestop has just joined the organization on the less expensive "Contributors" level of membership. At the moment Gamestop's membership is not listed on the PC Gaming Alliance's official web site. The most interesting new member, however, is Sony DADC which is the parent company for the SecuROM software solution that several PC game publishers use for their digital rights management set-ups. Stude said that Sony DADC wanted to join the PC Gaming Alliance to give their input on the organization's sub-committee on PC game piracy.

The PC Gaming Alliance now has only three game developers and/or publishers on the board (Epic Games, Capcom and Microsoft)."