ESA Boss Talks Piracy, DRM at E3

[Joker]

GamePolitics has already provided a recap of politically-oriented remarks made by ESA CEO Mike Gallagher during his state-of-the-industry address at E3 last week.

But Gallagher also addressed the related issues of piracy and DRM; both are topics of interest to GP readers. In response to an audience question, here's what the ESA boss had to say about piracy:

Piracy is a scourge. Piracy is theft, plain and simple, of the intellectual property and the creativity and the energy of the investors in this industry and the artists who make the great games. Period. Okay?

It's a problem of such degree that it's between two and three billion dollars a year that it costs our industry in this country alone. When you look at piracy across all of entertainment it's a much bigger number when you put in movies and look what it's done to the music industry. So, the going-in proposition has to be a recognition that piracy is wrong, it's illegal and it should be stopped...

In regard to the use of digital rights management (DRM) such as the much-maligned SecuROM, Gallagher said:

There are business models that say, "You know, we're going to build our business model around giving it away for free and having the revenue come in in other ways." We [in the video game business] do that too. We do that too. But for those companies who go forward, they're entitled to protect - using DRM - to protect their content. And I realize that it is a subject of some controversy with gamers and consumers because like other similar types of devices, most often they negativley impact the law-abiding gamer. But it's one of those things that we have to be vigilant about. It's vitally important to preserve the ecosystem and the jobs in the industry and the next great game. If you don't make money off of the games that are made now you're not going to see the ones that come later like you saw at the press briefings already at E3.

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/06/...-piracy-drm-e3

[behp]

[behp]

Couldnt resist with this one

[merlin379]

kinda overrated considering the biggest games out there are MP and you can download the game as much as you want but without a valid key you cant play it so what's the point, and beside companies like EA spend millions on finding ways to stop piracy on PC games to no avail and that bumps up the prices, I bought UT3 special edition for 25 euro the day it came out, why dont more companies do that?