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

Re:EA is a pirate!

[srothroc]

Someone pirated the game and stole your serial; you're not angry at the pirates who created the situation to begin with, but you're angry at the company that doesn't really have a way of verifying that you are indeed the owner of said game? I'm assuming you didn't register or otherwise tie your serial to you personally here. I realize EA isn't the best of companies, but still, it seems like you're getting mad at the wrong person.

Re:Article

[commodore64_love]

Hmmm.

Still doesn't tell me what a DLC is. People, especially reporters, shouldn't use acronyms without explaining what they mean. I mean, like OMG, WTF? LOL. (shrug). IAAL. TTFN. L8r