News Peter Moore warns against suing filesharers

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/08/22/peter-moore-warns-against-suing-filesharers/1

EA's Peter Moore has some ideas about how to battle piracy, namely going against the idea of suing game pirates.

 

untill those morons start chraging a reasonable price for whatever cd they're selling i'm only buying cd's from the few musical groups i support.
I mean come on 25euro for a cd that actually costs 5 euro to make. those no good celebrities need a profit of 20euro's for each cd? I guess not. The entire music industry is one giant rip off. Why do celebrities have to make more than 1million a month? granted they are gifted (some of them) but the amount of money they get is insane. make cd's 10 euro a pice maximum and my entire collection will be legal.
a game however is different most of my games if not all are legal because u know they make a reasonable profit.

 

Some of those calebrities do not deserve the money they make.

 

I basically pirate all my games and if I like the game ans if ti has reasonable price I buy it, but I'll never pay for over priced 6h playtime games. I really fall in love with the digital distribution too as it offer easy and cheap access to the games.

 

i used to do the same grasshopper, until they slapped a 500 quid court order on me.

needless to say i have stopped downloading games - perhaps a case in point?

 

He is spot on with what he says about learning from the mistakes of the music industry. The way they handled things just showed to many people how out of touch they are, and how they only really care about making as much money as they can squeeze out of people without very much concern about what they are offering. I'd hate to see the games industry carry on along the "almighty dollar" route, although its already a goodly way along that, churning out copy and paste crap as movie tie ins and kids games, just like the music industry churns out repetetive pop.
I don't pirate games as i like to think the games studios and developers get a decent cut of what they make, and honestly believe that the cost of producing a game is far greater than that of producing an album. Not having any inside knowledge of the industry i dont know if thats the case or a fantasy, but its what i tend to think.
The one thing i STILL dont understand is the huge price difference between console and PC games - if anyone knows why that is i'd love an explanation - surely dev costs cant be higher for consoles, as even if its harder to write, they skip all the hassle of supporting multiple pc configs/drivers/input devices etc. I tend to think that price hike is purely because consoles are a captive market and harder to pirate to get around being ripped off, whereas PC games if they charge too much ppl will just download.

 

they have to pay the licensee in order to develop a game for a console

 

Try itunes or one of the many other mp3 sites. 99 cents/pence really isn't asking a lot. And £8 for an album really isn't asking a lot either. Remember, it's not just the cost of the CD, there's everything else in between like advertising, radio play, studio production/video production, royalties, all the middlemen etc etc the list goes on. Oh, and don't forget, the idea is to try and make a profit too. I agree with alot of what Moore says here, he seems to have his head screwed on. Another article I read earlier talked about how the only major games headlines that make mainstream news are either piracy or violence in games - games need o have better press, like, SERIOUSLY better press

 

Sell it online for half the price. Yes they can because they do not need to pay for boxes/cd's/dvd's/distribution/booklets/stores/etc. that is put on the customer. And with your personal ID you can redownload the games you have bought any time you want. hey wait a minute! thats sounds almost like Steam....

 

that really accounts for £15 difference per game? wow....

 

thats how nintendo, sony and microsoft make all those lovely readies my friend

 

Probably since that's where Sony/MS make there money.

And any one who buys music from most of the digital distribution systems really is setting them selves up for a fall. Buy CD's they cost the same (mostly) as an album from iTunes and are distributed in a ISO standard format that can be played on equipment ranging from brand new to twenty years old. Try that on your iTunes album/ Zune.

 

Does this mean that pirating any EA published game is basically risk free... This changes everything

I think he has the right idea though, they need to stop the causes of piracy not just punish the pirates.

Let me give you an example, I never bought the orange box when it was new because of the price, instead I played ep1 and 2 on a friends steam account (how legal/illegal, moral/immoral that is we can save for another day), but the other day I noticed it was now at £25 everywhere, so when I went into tescos I saw it for £25 and made my way to the till, along with orange nail varnish and lip gloss for my GF, we must have looked mad with all the orange stuff. But when it went through the till it was £15, I thought "feck yeah". So after that purchase I went to see if there where any other £15 games.

Unfortunately there was not, at least not any worth buying, but my point is I would have gladly bought 2 games for £30, but I would not have bought 1 game for £30. So is a sale at half the price worse than no sale at all, somehow I don't think so.

 

I totally agree, most people thing that the celebrities are making 99.99% of profit when infact there are studios to pay, staff to pay, equipment to pay for, maintenance costs, licencing fees, and endless other costs. Any music/games you are looking at today I see as a very fair price for the time put into the product.

 

by the way, ars technica also did an article about this interview, where they touched on the fact that pc hardware manufacturers quite like piracy, as people who can get their content for free are happier to spend more on top notch components. Thought that was an interesting point.

 

I think you seriously need to re-evaluate where you buy your music - €25 for a CD? I rarely pay more than £7-8 for a CD, either online or in-store, which is about the €10 you quote. Mostly you can get new releases online for £7.

 

Music: When non DRM lossless flac format is available to buy online with a service ala' steam so I can listen to music streamed from store or download to any pc I'll get back to purchasing music. Otherwise radio and mtv alike channels are fine for me....scratch radio, they play the same krub over and over

I'll buy a game when I know i'm going to play it again and again and get into multiplayer, ie Team Fortress n Portal or even commander keen which I all bought off steam.

 

Have I been transported to an alternative dimension where things have become slightly skewed from normal?

Since when did EA become the voice of reason?

We should be scared...very scared

 

Do a deal with Dell/Alienware and have free games bundled with the PC. Problem solved.

 

u dont live in ******** ripoff belgium.
then again the comment about itunes is right. things are cheaper there still i wonder what their profit margin is. since it costs virtullay nothing these days to distribute songs via itunes they must be making fortunes with it. granted it's cheaper but i still think it's too much.
and the 25 EURO for a cd isn't all that uncommon for a movie score. they rip u off when u genuinly love a genre that isn't adored by the repetitive pop-loving mob.