EA: "Pirates are a marketplace"
According to EA pirates are nothing but an untapped marketplace which can be explored via DLC.
What's more, EA is currently searching for ways to exploit that market and generate profit from it, rather than fighting back at it through DRM and copy protection systems.
The key, Riccitiello claims, may be using downloadable content packs (both free and premium) to generate more profit and help drive customers towards legitimate purchases rather than illegal copies.
"They can steal the disc, but they can't steal the DLC," he said in an interview with Kotaku.
"The consumer seems to really like this idea that there is extra stuff...The consumer wants more, and when you give them more or sell them more it seems to be extremely well received," he added.
"I don't think anybody should pirate anything," he said. "I believe in the artistry of the people who build [the games industry.] I profoundly believe that. And when you steal from us, you steal from them. Having said that, there's a lot of people who do."
Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyLol, tell that to all the people who pirated all the Fallout 3 expansions and Sims 3 addon crap. :L
+1 :D
The prices are irrelevant - people will happily spend hundreds on graphics cards every few months, yet £25 for a game seems too much like hard work for them. People pirated Crysis for crying out loud - if you have a PC that can run it, you can probably afford to pay for it.
Reducing prices works for people who already buy all their games - that Steam sale brought the Steam website to its knees whenever the clock ticked down to zero, but whether it encouraged any pirates to pay for a game, who knows.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - pirates need to be made to feel very very unwelcome on forums such as this - admins should wave the ban-hammer at any self-confessed pirate and anyone who dares to brag about it. The community needs to help stamp it out for our own benefit.
What?
I pretty sure I'm not the only one who hates DLC and thinks if I buy a game it should come with all the content included in the original price and not have to worry about making further expenditures further down the line.
Way to stereotype PC gamers as menopausal Sims 2 players EA
This. What consumers have they been talking to that are happy with buying something which is incomplete then having to pay more for the rest of it?
Yes, games where devs truly support the community by continuing to create content after release are a good thing, no doubt. And it's right that this content should be paid for if it extends the playability of the game.
However, as with most things that sound good in a commercial world, they get corrupted as soon as you let marketing weasels get involved. They will start deliberately not giving you everything when you buy the game expressly so they can make you buy more later - in fact this is already being done, didn't dragon age release with "extra" DLC already in place on release?
The worst ones are where the content is actually in the game but you have to pay to "unlock" it - To be honest that kind of behaviour is more likely to send paying customers into piracy to get the DLC rather than making pirates cough up.
The only way I would support this model is if they reduced the initial cost of the game accordingly so that consumers end up paying the same as they normally would. I might then believe that it's an attempt to combat piracy and not just another way of gouging customers.
Didn't buy any game because of those extra DRM...
I DID buy Mirrors Edge, completed it 3 days later, not once did i see EADM... i think you missed out sir!
+2 :D
And what a load of BS, you can pirate anything on any platform, weather it be pc/ps3/360/wii or the god dam amiga
Maybe Mirro's Edge didn't have it... :/ I know, that I saw 2-3 EA games and all had EADM or some sort of DRM... Anyway, the game only lasted 3 days?? :/ that sucks
What ? you would give up gaming and sell you're pc? come on m8, pull the other one!! LOL
At the end off the day, it dousn't matter how responsibly you file share. For every one person who file share's propperlly (Ie If you play the game to more than a third then you buy a copy) there's allways gonna be 10-20 people who will abuse the system and just download whatever they want and not care about the consequenses.
Not to mention the file sharer's who beleive that they hold the moral high ground (i.e. against the reckless profiteering off large scale company's).
There's no getting away from it. If you file share or hack games (without perchasing a legal copy at the very least) then you "are" harming the future off Pc gaming.
Pc are expensive, inneficiant, Not very user freindly (compaired to say an x box 360) and time consumming. There only real redeeming feature is that Pc's have the hardware to make games much more realistic and push the bounderies off gaming farward. (not to mention the fact that they are at least £10 - £20 cheaper)
If the industry stop's making high quality "pc only" releases that really tap into the pc's potential like crysis and dow2 Ms's flightsimulator X, what reason is there to build an expensive pc??
It will cost you hour's off life in troubleshooting and "fixing" buggy releases??? and you can get a consol and just plug it in and play for a third off the cost..!!!
Please if you love you're pc, go out and "BUY" some off those games you've nicked??? or we'll all end up on x-boxes or ps3's!!
technically you can pirate them you just can't play them on a ps3
anyway blueray's encryption was bypassed years ago as far back as 2005/2006
and when you hack games it depends on what you do becasue some people like me buy the game but dont want to use the dvd
1. becasue its noisy
2.its slower
3.the game is ususally fully installed on the pc anyway so why use disk
i think that they shouldnt release all these no-cd patches and things on the internet becasue it makes it very large the amount of people who pirate if they simple just had guides on how to do it i bet there would be less than a quater of pirates as there are now
what ever encryption they choose/make it will allways be cracked becasue the pc is an open platform
Well quite.
I play games when I want to a quiet evening in on my own (at least, those quiet evenings when I don't feel like engaging in the All-Time Number-One Solo Male Pastime). The last thing I want is to be forced onto some hideous online service filled with M0R0nZ who t@lk l1ke DIS!!!!1111 in order to spend some quality time watching a progress bar.
+1
i also would do that if i had a garage sized 3d-printer :D
+1. It's illegal, immoral and ultimately self-defeating.
My one worry with DLC is that it encourages publishers to lock down their games and not release any mod tools, so that they are the only providers of new content. Though Bethesda have in the past proved exceptionally resistant to this temptation, other studios are notably less generous a la Bioware and Activision.
Well I completed the game, I left the game on pause while I went to get some lunch so maybe 30 minutes. By the time I had completed the game steam said I had played it for a total of 4.3 hours on normal difficulty, which is the hardest until you complete it then you unlock hard. So basically I completed it in under 4 hours on the hardest difficuulty available. But for £3 you can't complain, under a pound an hour for entertainment.
As for this piracy row. I admit that I previously pirated a few games (when I was younger), now I either wait for them to be cheaper, or don't play them. I can always play through the entire half life series or garrys mod with some mates while I am waiting. I think piracy is a bit of a phase, I don't know many 21+ pirates. They are between the ages of 14 and 18 from my experience. Anyone who does it older than that is just a criminal. I know technically you are still a criminal within those ages, but it seems almost expected at that age to do it. A 14 year old with no money seeing that they can get something for free with seemingly no consequences, damn you would have to be a fool not to.
And why the anti DLC, if we had to wait for all the DLC for games to come out with the game then they would take a lot longer and cost more. It makes perfect sense to create DLC, you buy a game within a few weeks of release, finish it and are left wanting more a few days or weeks later and DLC is released, you might want to play through the whole game again and then have the DLC continue the story. If that was included you would not even notice the extra and would still be left wanting more. And you probably wouldn't play through it again.
Saying you want DLC included within the game at purchase price is like saying you want all the aftermarket mods pre installed on your car. Which leaves the people want a standard car spending more on something they don't want, and the people who would buy the parts nothing to buy.
And if they are relying on DLC being the only thing to get pirates onboard, what does that say about the game in first place? I am sick and tired of games being released then charging for DLC, they used to give it away for free!
ea ceo is basically an idiot if that's what he believes.. I think he's just trying to net saddle pops- they probably look at the market like a botnet- there's so many people in this world, you just need to find that sweet chunk of clueless and your rich
I bought my last E.A. game a while back. Why?
Because they don't fix the problems they create. 2 months to 3 years to fix minor to MAJOR problems? Excuse me?
Battlefield Heros is a game entirely supported by ads and DLC. Which is their new direction, however they need to keep in mind, in order for people to purchase DLC, you have to make it worth it to them and prove you are going to give them a good customer experience (and keep working on the game), BFH is not a good experience. The funny part it, the ones spending the most on the game, are the cheaters.
Sorry E.A., you have to do better if you want my money.
You have a history of a lack of support and terrible patch history. DLC is web based, so it requires servers. You just laid off 1800 workers. So I spend $200 on the game and next month you decide it's no longer profitable and pull the plug. Nope, sorry. At least with a normal game I can still play it when you are gone and re-install without your crappy patches and play solo.
Trust is a big issue with DLC, and you haven't earned it.
I dont see it as clear cut as this though. Ill freely admit that i have pirated games, but at the same time if i like the game ill quite happily pay for a 'proper' copy, if i dont like it, it gets deleted. I can safely say hand on heart that i have no pirated games on my computers, just lots and lots of legit ones.
Im not a fan of piracy by any means, and im quite sure im in the minority with my downloading habits.
I dont mind paying for DLC as long as it adds something worthwhile to the game, Providing the game was complete without it.
Full retail or steam doesn't get any ad. Pirated ones have them. Not sure how to accomplish this thou... Perhaps a legal download from the publisher's site with all the ads.
Yes you can! As easy as you can in PC. The only thing is that you need to burn a copy into a DVD, alas in PC all you need is the image.
this. +1 .. I think it's a step in the right direction.. certainly a better idea than increasing DRM.
If game pirates actually stole discs from your retailers, you wouldn't care and you couldn't stop them from obtaining the DLC's.
The publishers / devs make no money out of that market and most of the people I know who game on xbox or ps3 rarely buy a new game...
you're technically not downloading the car, but an exact copy of it :D
Can you imagine if 3d printers become common, and people pirate schematics for electronics. :o
Using Warcraft 3 as an example, it's easy to worry about DLC ruining game modding. If Blizzard charged people for new maps, and removed the "world editor", that game would have been dead and gone 4 years ago. Yet it's still one of the most popular games because of DotA and other popular custom-made maps that bear little resemblance to the original playstyle, but are far better than the original playstyle ever was. DotA is a prime example of why having free customization and modding abilities can make an average game into a great game. DotA has like 60 different heros, a ton of options, all sorts of custom items and spells and abilities, and regular Warcraft 3 has like 12 heros, boring items and abilities, and an mediocre game.
Steam, I actually like. The DRM isn't obtrusive at all, and the amount of content available for the price is amazing. The $10 Orange Box was the best $10 I have ever spent on software.
I know episodic gaming gets trashed a lot, but I for one like it. With story-based games, I like games that have more fresh content and new missions, maps, expansions, side missions, etc. I can point out a few games that IMO were under-developed in that they had an interesting plot, lots of options, and were a very promising game that rushed you through them with a plot that was good but far too short. Biggest offender IMO is the game Freelancer. It was an epic MMO-style game that had like 50 different solar systems, all with cool missions and exploration options and unique spaceships and weapons. The singleplayer plot was a 12-hour long piece of crap that, while exciting, rushed you through the bigger parts of the universe. You end up visiting about 12 of the 50 solar systems, and flying maybe 6 of the 30+ different spaceships available. There was easily enough in-game content that it could have taken you through much more of the universe and given you a chance to fly more ships and fight for more factions. The single player was 12 missions. You went to a solar system, met a new character, did one generic easy mission, then did one storyline mission, then moved onto the next one very far away, without ever exploring the nearby ones. There was so much more available. There are entire regions of space that you never visit, spaceships you never see, military factions you never encounter. The multiplayer has all this content, but suffers from a lack of excitement. In multiplayer, there are no multiplayer missions, custom missions, big fights, or anything. It's just flying around alone, and occasionally coming across another player. Plus, the original game was set up to have a number of different ships. The major factions were Liberty, Bretonia, Kusari, Rheinland, Corsair, Outcast, Bounty Hunter, Civilian, and Rogue, each one having various sub-factions. Each faction had a full set of spaceships - a light fighter, medium fighter, heavy fighter, and freighter. So all in all, almost 40 ships. However, the price and ability of the ships is scaled for singleplayer, which takes you on a pre-determined path through the different regions. To compensate, the ships in areas that you visit later in the SP campaign are stronger than the ones in the starting area. This kills multiplayer, because there is no reason to travel to the intermediate stages, you just rush to the region of space with the best ship. IMO, the multiplayer would have been much better if the different factions' ships were balanced with each other, with each faction having its own minor advantages and disadvantages. So, of all this variety, you end up with players using only Outcast ships, because they're better in every way than any of the other ships.
This is an instance where downloadable content would have really improved on a good game, but skimping on the storyline and not balancing multiplayer separately from singleplayer resulted in a game thats really fun for about 12 hours, then just falls on it's face and died. With a re-balanced and customized multiplayer missions, it could have been so much more than a mediocre 2003 RPG game that was popular for a few months then died.
I think you have a very good point, as many noticed I'm happy to tell people I pirate and if I looked back over the years I'd say I've pirated about 250GiB of games (absolute max) but I'm getting to the age now where money is nowhere near as much of a problem as it once was (18 in 7 months) so now I'm buying a lot of my games, I got a 360 in september and already have about 20~ games and with my PC I own about 10-15 on disc (somewhere :() but thanks to steams great deals I'm currently downloading about 200GiB in games to backup to my F3 1TB completely legally, pirating games is much more trouble than it's worth when you've got money you could use to buy them and dealing with the endless hassle of trying to find a good working copy of a game and finding out what DRM it uses is just a pita. That said there are still games that I pirate, FF7 for example because you can't buy it new anymore so there's no harm in pirating it but maybe one day I'll buy it just to drool over the awesome discs :D
EDIT: Actually looking at my backups and my memory of downloading games over the years it's much closer to 100GiB than 200GiB.
EDIT AGAIN: Nope when you take into account Wii/PS1/PSP/NDS games it's definately 200GiB :P
You can its just extreamly unfeasable, it requires (iirc) cracking open your console and having a seperate hd to store the game, and again iirc you can only have one game loaded at a time so it never caught on.
that's quite easily remidied by them releasing all of the DLC in one pop on a disk, though.
In reality, this is just another extension of EA's "The game is a marketplace" logic. That said, the future of games may very well be incredibly cheap base packs / cores ($10, for 3-4 hours of gameplay, one module, let's say), and then DLC, or added content to come. it would be the return of episodic gaming, which sort of fell apart on the SiN episodes.
Though Traveller's Tales has been doing it VERY well.
Exactly!
Didn't they just reveal a 3D printer that can print copies of itself?
The more they focus on DLC, the more the pirates will.
People would pirate games if they cost £5. How anyone can moan that pc games are too expensive is beyond me, although I agree that the download prices are too high. I bought PES 2010 and ARMA 2 for £17.99 on the day of release. That is categorically not expensive.
People download pirated games because they have no integrity and are lazy. Bottom line.
That would be a great idea....sort of get a core of the game for free so you can see if you like it...if you do then buy the rest via download.....sort of like trialing a more extended demo.
There has got to be a better way of tackling piracy than through the courts etc....think the industry is right in recognizing this is just a vast untapped market and they just need a better approach.....I'm sick of buying games that turn out to be crap for £30 - £40.
Naah, that's done by the guys that get the game for free for reviews, just as with DVD's :D
You hit the nail on the head. That is the bottom line for piracy IMO. If kids aren't brought up properly to know that stealing a game is not moral or legal then they will do it. It's VERY easy to say to yourself "it's just one copy, no one will miss it." It's all just a symptom of where the world is right now. No one cares about anyone but themselves.
+3. Who needs 0% APR?
I dont understand why some people whine so much about piracy. As long as there has been money there has been stealing. If someone didnt want it stolen they would either make it hard to steal or just give it away. In computers as long as you know the code you can get anything you want for free. If EA was smart then theyd make anything not on a disk free.
Im not saying piracy is stealing btw
DRM-free (or at least, just tied to the license key) cheap and universally available DLC can be a good thing - EA's offerings currently fail in all these areas and are likely encouraging piracy (of the DLC at least) as a result.