EA CEO: Piracy Can Help Us Sell More Games

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Honis

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Isn't Battlefield Heros beginning released for free when if gets out of beta? Did it get out of beta? I stopped playing it after it found it to be just like 5 million other FPSs.
 

trevorblain

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Great story, I love reading about companies with CEO's that really have brains. his stance is very logical and not without merit. There was a lot to be said for shareware and to a lesser extent demos. Their major drawback was usually the method in which the labels opted to cripple the software to create the "incentive" to purchase the full version, ie. expirations, reduced funtionality, banners, etc. Those aren't examples of incentives, those are irritations that I believe in large part pushed people to pirate.

So here's a thought... release the game, a fully functional, playable and enjoyable piece of software in its own right. You know, something that leaves the end user actually WANTING MORE, without penalizing said user for not having actually bought a stupid box and disc to clutter up the desk. That way, if they made a good product, people will want to fork over the cash for the game in it's entirety... and if they made a crap game, well, they'll know it was their own fault.
 

the_garynator

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That's awesome...makes a ton of sense too...I pirated L4D and ended up buying it for multiplayer, same with Crysis. Refreshing to see a CEO in touch with consumers.
 

computabug

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Yea maybe the developers release their own 'pirated' version of the game embedded with some kind of bug/malware to get consumers to purchase the real thing :p I mean like some kinda malware that can won't do to much harm, probably just annoy the user to hell, something the the consumer would know the real game doesn't have, and it's just the torrented version that was infected.
 

ColMirage

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Oh, yeah, sure. That's why they sent a complaint to my ISP which in turn warned me about my download of RA3 : Uprising. I was wondering if it was worth the purchase, so I went ahead and torrented it, as I had no friends who got their hands on it.

But, yeah, it's a smart move, imo. I usually download games before purchasing them. That way I don't spend a single cent of my very limited income on crappy games.
 

Liuqyn

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the problem with this strategy is that the day after sims3 was released you could pirate the whole game along with the other town and all the added content as well.
 
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This makes me laugh... EA is full of crap.

Last week I lost my disc for Battlefield 2142. "No problem" I thought. I saw an advertisement from EA stating that their Download Manager can now be used to register the games you bought into a library for downloading and no-cd play. Out of ALL the games they have, the games SUPPORTED in that library are about nine. NINE games and Battlefield 2142 is not one of them!!! D:

If they really cared about providing paying customers with service they should address the problem of lost media and cracked/scratched discs or just patch the game so that discs are not required. A replacement disc will cost you $13 plus shipping. A new game will cost you $20...

On the other hand, I still don't like the idea of stripping the game features on disc and replacing them with online features. Imagine playing the game once the servers providing the service are taken down. In every EULA for online games that have come out recently they state something to the effect of: "In no way does (X company) have an obligation to provide online features and at any time they may be removed with or without notice."
 

rags_20

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That's exactly what we've been seeing in recent times. Its nothing new. Game developers concentrate on the multiplayer more and make the single player such that it leaves you wanting for more. And you end up buying the game for multiplayer. But the second city in Sims 3 has also been pirated..so much for his logic.
 

twisted politiks

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you know its funny, because i was getting ready to pre-order the sims 3, then i read about their "after third install you have to buy a new cd key" bullshit. so i asked ea tech service by email if this was true, and they said yes, even if im reinstalling because of a reformat on my computer, which i do alot because im lazy and would rather do that then work on making it as fast as it used to be before hand. but anyways, so i found this out, and why the f**k am i going to pay $50 probably once a year for the sims 3, and plus another however many $ for all the expansions. this is just bullshit, if they didnt put a limit on how many times you could install the game, then i would have bought it, but instead i pirated it and got the second town from another pirate, and can get my own custom content from mod the sims 3, so take that EA, hopefully more people take this route to screw EA for being such a money hungry corp that they realize this and start helping their once loyal customers instead of draining their pockets.
 

matt87_50

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FFS EA! just copy steam already! its not hard! you can copy your game files any ware, to any computer, any operating system, and you just click the steam exe and it just sorts everything out for you! the only thing you probably need is a net conection when you first fire up steam after moving all the files. and you can't pirate it. valve will just shut down your account if they think shenanigans are about.

so EA, either do that, or don't use any DRM, cause i will not buy any more games where i have to put the disc in to play, or can only activate it a certain number of times! or have to go through some lengthy download process every time i install to get the rest of the game that you decided not to put on the f*@$ing disk!!, in fact, after using steam, i'm sick of games that you need to re-install after reinstalling your OS, i went from XP to win7 64bit with steam on the other drive, i just fired up steam and within a minute i was playing all my games!

 
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Smart move, tell SecuROM to f'off and give us shareware. If you are on the scene long enough you know what's that implies.
 

anamaniac

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Know what I like? Warcraft 3.
I just enter my serial on battle.net, and download the game. All is done. Blizzard is slowly learning how to do it. Maybe EA should follow suit.
=)

Maybe EA should have given me a better deal on replacing my BF2 disc...

This does appear to be a smart business move though. Kick all the luddites out of office there. Piracy is not going away anytime soon, so learn to profit from it.
 

kingwaldo

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Great Brainstorming dreamphantom_1977, i support those ideas- well done.
dreamphantom_1977 email all the companies you think applicable maybe youll get a great job earn heaps but doing F all.
 

kingwaldo

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Great Brainstorming dreamphantom_1977, i support those ideas- well done.
dreamphantom_1977 email all the companies you think applicable maybe you'll get a great job earn heaps but doing F all or at the very least getting paid for something you enjoy.
 
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