The Escapist Bulletin: EA is the smartest publisher of all

EA has decided to stop taking measures beyond a simple disc check to prevent piracy. Simply put, EA has given up trying to fight the pirates, realising that the heavy-handed efforts it has used in the past have proven ineffective, and has instead elected to treat pirates as just another market that it can sell downloadable content to.

In related news, pigs flew the Atlantic this week, and it’s believed that Hell is experiencing freak cold weather.

Sarcasm aside, EA’s move is something of a surprise as the company has a reputation for going nuts for DRM.

That’s not to say that EA is okay with piracy now. It would still rather people paid for the game as well, but the company is finished throwing money away over a problem it can’t solve. It’s a weird inversion of EA’s former piracy policy. The company’s efforts to stem the tide of piracy cost it money and angered its customers, while its new initiative will cost it no money and will only please its customers.

The very first Bulletin talked about the bad press that EA garnered for itself with the restrictive SecuROM system, which proved ineffective in deterring piracy and only seemed useful for alienating legitimate consumers. For EA to do such a dramatic about-face seems like a surprising change, but not an unwelcome one, as the company’s solution – as outlined by CEO John Riccitiello – is probably one of the smartest things a publisher has done in recent years. "They can steal the disc, but they can't steal the DLC," said Riccitiello. "There's a sizable pirate market and a sizable second sale market and we want to try to generate revenue in that marketplace."

EA is be applauded for its decision, not solely because it shows a company finding a solution to a problem that is non-adversarial, but more importantly, it now puts the onus on EA to make quality games that people will want to buy DLC for. Dragon Age made $1 million (£600k) from downloadable content in its first week, which simply wouldn’t have happened had people not been engaged by the game and wanted more of it. It’s hard to sell additional content to people, whether pirate or legitimate consumer, for games that aren’t very good.

What this also means of course is that day one DLC is here to stay, with all the problems that come along with it. The Warden’s Keep DLC for Dragon Age has already elicited accusations that EA is leaving things out of games in order to sell later, and if day one DLC becomes the policy for all games, it will be interesting to see how gamers react. EA has done a good job so far, however, of making additional content very easy to purchase, to the point where you can buy it without every actually having to leave the game.

But whatever happens in the future, on thing is for certain: EA has hit upon an answer to piracy that actually has a decent chance of working – or at least not being a miserable failure like its previous efforts – with the knock-on effect that regular gamers will benefit from games that have been designed to make them want to keep playing them.

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