EA Actually Understands How to Compete with Pirates

EA had the potentially dubious distinction of releasing the most pirated game in 2008, The Sims 3, an early release of which was downloaded (primarily in Poland and China) over 200,000 times.

Instead of trying to track down, sue and/or imprison anyone who had anything to do with this nefarious crime, EA CEO John Riccitiello understands that this was actually a whole lot of free promotion for a game that can only be fully enjoyed by purchasing a  full copy and gaining access to all the game’s add-ons availabe online.

Here, Riccitiello, lays out everything you need to know to fight and win when it comes to pirates:

And here’s the trick: it’s not the answer because this foils a pirate, but it’s the answer because it makes the service so valuable that in comparison the packaged good is not. So you can only deliver these added services to a consumer you recognize and know; people don’t pirate servers very often, but it has happened. So I think the truth is we’ve out-serviced the pirate. … By the way, if there are any pirates you’re writing for, please encourage them to pirate FIFA Online, NBA Street Online, Battleforge, Battlefield Heroes… if they would just pirate lots of it I’d love them. [laughs] Because what’s in the middle of the game is an opportunity to buy stuff.    LINK

Got that? Don’t sue potential customers.  Earn them back instead.

EA’s DRM for Spore = BIG FAIL

These are the sorts of stories that must scare the hell out of big media corporations.  According to TechDirt, Spore, the hugely anticipated and horribly DRM‘d game for Electronic Arts, is now the number one most pirated videogame in the world.

Yup.  As TechDirt puts it:

“In other words, EA’s “antipiracy strategy” backfired almost completely. The company got a huge PR blackeye which probably only encouraged more people to download the game via file sharing. Can someone explain, again, why any company thinks DRM works?”

I think of this as a rhetorical question, but, honestly, can anyone explain it?

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Do We Want To Go Virtual?

In sorta big gaming news, The Sims is becoming EA Land, an online virtual world ala SecondLife and There.com.

One of the main reasons I find myself emersed in new media today is due to my love of cyberpunk as a kid.  The idea of a full virtual reality that we could plug into was just completely enthralling to me at the time.

However, though I was a very early internet adopter and user I never got excited by things like SecondLife or There.com largely because they just seemed like toy – there is nothing that one needs to do in SL and most of the possible activities are pretty much things I do in my real life.  That’s all fine as a temporary escape but it doesn’t emerse one in  a useful alternative world.

It is still quicker and easier to navigate the 2D web via links and scrollbars than it is to wander a Virtual town looking for the “library.”

As a social alternative there is some real potential in these virtual worlds but the idea i had as a kid that we would be living part of our lives inside the machine seems silly to me now.

However, the notion of a “filter” that puts the web over the real world, like explored in Gibson’s last book, Spook Country, is potentially REALLY exciting.