Notes that “It didn’t work for the music industry,” and that there are better ways of resolving this within our power as developers and publishers.”
Recent plans by five of the world’s top game developers to sue up to 25,000 accused file-sharers have led to some within the video game industry to speak out and criticize their efforts.
In an interview with Eurogamer at the Leipzig Games Convention, EA Sports boss Peter Moore said he think it’s a bad idea to “punish your consumer,” noting that the plan “didn’t work for the music industry” and in no way does he wish to repeat their mistakes.
I’m not a huge fan of trying to punish your consumer. Albeit these people have clearly stolen intellectual property, I think there are better ways of resolving this within our power as developers and publishers.
Yes, we’ve got to find solutions. We absolutely should crack down on piracy. People put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into their content and deserve to get paid for it. It’s absolutely wrong, it is stealing.
But at the same time I think there are better solutions than chasing people for money. I’m not sure what they are, other than to build game experiences that make it more difficult for there to be any value in pirating games.
If we learned anything from the music business, they just don’t win any friends by suing their consumers. Speaking personally, I think our industry does not want to fall foul of what happened with music.
Even if the lawsuits against the 25,000 suspected game pirates are successful, all it will end up doing is making them less likely to purchase titles from those game developers who targeted them in the future. In the end, piracy of their games will still continue and the only real effect will have been to dissuade people from being future consumers of their products.
Focusing on game experience is a far better solution. Just as people will pay to see a good movie or to listen to a quality album, so too will people pay to have a game which offers an experience worth the investment.
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At least someone in other industries recognize that the initiatives of the music industry has alienated a great deal of consumers. When file sharing of music first started the majority of people still bought music to support the artists. If you talked to people on Napster they we’re there to discover new music. But with all the lawsuits attempts to restrict consumer rights overly restrictive DRM claims by millionaires that they are poor etc.. People stopped caring and started to really get pissed off to the point where file sharing became a form of protest. Now you have people uploading music for the sole purpose of affecting the sales of the big 4. If they would of been more open more willing to work with filesharing the industry may have been salvaged. From what I can tell now the future will be in artist promoting distributing and developing their music themselves. No label no producer no manager music will become a small business for some with loans coming from the bank.
I agree with this very well written article in every aspect! Game developers should focus on quality games and not soely on how much can we make mentality. Of course the same is true with the music industry. The studios will recruit or create fly by night talent to simply turn a buck quality and real talent is often left on the wayside. Maybe if file sharing ends their monopoly of restricting genuine talent from emerging we might see more raw talent appear in our lifetimes.