Piracy In Video Games

The main thing that Video game publishers and developers must realise is that in their attempts to combat piracy they must punish the pirate without punishing the consumer. Many companies incorporated anti-piracy software onto the install disks. Consumers were getting the sense that they were being punished for what the pirates do. EA games tried to do this with the game 'Spore', they added DRM software onto the disk. It backfired and the game went on to be one of the most pirated games ever. It turned out that pirates could bypass this software protection while consumers were forced to live with it. Publishers therefore must reward the consumer for purchasing the game; this can be done in many ways. They could offer money off the sequel of that game when it comes out, offer free downloadable content or offer free merchandise with every order. One of the main reasons for piracy is that people demand more for their money. 

More and more games are being released per year and the consumer only has a certain amount of money available to spend on video games. By offering a better value proposition the consumer is more likely to purchase the game rather than pirate the software. Punishing the pirates can be done through numerous ways but the traditional way of fining the odd pirate just does not work. Video games must play to their strengths; just recently EA games unveiled 'Online pass' which allows the consumer to enter a code to access the online play, a code is given to anybody who buys a new copy of the game. The importance of this is that people who pirate games will not be able to use one of the most important features in today's games, online play. Of course people could still pirate these games and use the online feature by only paying $10 to acquire a code; this will allow publishers to get extra income from pirates who would not consider paying for any part of the game.