Pirates as a Marketplace

John Riccitiello, the CEO of Electronic Arts, made some revealing comments in an interview with Kotaku about how the company's attitudes are shifting with regard to software piracy. Quoting: "Some of the people buying this DLC are not people who bought the game in a new shrink-wrapped box. That could be seen as a dark cloud, a mass of gamers who play a game without contributing a penny to EA. But around that cloud Riccitiello identified a silver lining: 'There's a sizable pirate market and a sizable second sale market and we want to try to generate revenue in that marketplace,' he said, pointing to DLC as a way to do it. The EA boss would prefer people bought their games, of course. '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.' So encourage those pirates to pay for something, he figures. Riccitiello explained that EA's download services aren't perfect at distinguishing between used copies of games and pirated copies. As a result, he suggested, EA sells DLC to both communities of gamers. And that's how a pirate can turn into a paying customer."

Comments

Thanks buddy

[Jedi Alec]

And that's how a pirate can turn into a paying customer.

And why I, a legitimate customer, can't play Dragon Age if my net connection is down, because the game checks if I'm really entitled to start that savegame with DLC content in it.

In other news, the amount of legitimate Dragon Age + DLC owners planning on getting a pirate copy of Mass Effect just increased by 1.

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[Mr_Silver]

The link to the article might be useful: http://kotaku.com/5421466/ea-ceo-i-think-of-pirates-as-a-marketplace