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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Scrabble Kills Scrabulous – Backlash Brewing?

After months of wondering what they would do, Hasbro acted and has forced Facebook to take down the unauthorized clone of Scrabble, the extremely popular Scrabulous.

“If you try to pull up the popular game, you get the following message: “Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.” If you click, you get a form from the Scrabulous founders asking for your e-mail address so they can keep you posted on further developments.”(via)

Here’s the big question: will Scrabulous users be so mad at Hasbro that they will go find new games to play or will they decide that they really want to play Scrabble and if the only way to do that is through the official site, so be it?

Of course, much will depend on whether or not the official version works as well as the clone.  Hasbro better hope it does or they could be dead on arrival.

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