News EA: "Pirates are a marketplace"

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/12/09/ea-pirates-are-a-marketplace/1

EA CEO John Riccitiello has said he thinks of pirates as nothing but an untapped marketplace.

 

This is exactly what Gabe Newell said a few months/years back. Way to quote him a few years late, Riccitiello.

 

I would download a car.

 

"They can steal the disc, but they can't steal the DLC,"

Lol, tell that to all the people who pirated all the Fallout 3 expansions and Sims 3 addon crap. :L

 

You can pirate anything on pc, including DLCs. Just lower the prices (at least for digital sales) and eliminate the useless DRM. That's how you reduce piracy.

 

I won't complain if they start releasing all their PC games for free except the DLC!

 

+1

 

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

 

The thing is, if I can't get my games for free, I wouldn't buy them anyway...

 

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.

 

There were a few EA games in Steam at a good price, that 5 day promo... I went to buy Mirror's Edge (had EADM), Dead Space (had EADM), and a few other EA games... I have STEAM for gods sakes! Why the hell do I need another DRM bulls*** in my pc?

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!

 

I do pirate, but I also buy good games. Lesson to learn? - Make good games that are not overpriced and have longevity.

 

+2

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!!

 

I don't think you can pirate PS3 games.

 

Funny that ey, PC games are the ONLY thingS that I actually buy along with my licence of MS XP and 7.

 

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