Positech Games

Positech Games is an indie video game developer from the United Kingdom. Owned by ex-Lionhead Studios programmer Cliff Harris, the company was formed in 1997 under the name Positech Computing, and has released a number of games for Microsoft Windows. One of the most notable Positech releases is the turn-based political strategy game Democracy. Positech has become known for making complex simulation games, as opposed to the arcade or puzzle games that are made by the vast majority of small casual game developers.

Harris has been, and remains, an outspoken critic of the working practices of the mainstream "triple A" developers of the video game industry, particularly for their long-hours culture and lack of contact between developers and gamers. In August 2008, Cliff wrote a blog post addressed to pirates asking them why they pirated his games. The response was overwhelming, resulting in thousands of posts on sites such as Digg, Slashdot and Reddit. In response to them, Cliff vowed to lower game prices, not use any digital rights management (which was stripped out of older Positech games), and address pirate's concerns over demo lengths and quality.

Interviews

 * Interview with Cliff Harris from GameProducer.net
 * Interview from CasualGameDesign.com
 * Interview from GamaSutra
 * Interview from Gibbage