PC piracy has always been a hot-button topic. Most recently, it was Crytek CEO Cevat Yurli who said his game Crysis had a 20-1 ratio of pirated versus purchased copies. For Yurli, the answer to the issue of piracy is to abandon PC exclusivity altogether. BioWare believes they have a different answer. That answer would be to actively engage the consumer in the game and provide content to continue to serve the consumer.
Multiplayer recently had a talk with BioWare co-CEO Ray Muzyka about the rampancy of PC piracy and how to avoid it if at all possible. To this, Muzyka stated:
We think it’s a good thing to encourage players to make them want to buy a PC title. That’s ultimately the best, most successful path to prevent piracy is to have players that want your games, want to believe in them and think they’re high-quality and realize they’re going to get a lot of value out of them as platforms for long time afterwards.
Unfortunately, this may not be as rosy as it all seems. Mass Effect had some hiccups with the copy protection, as it went from bad to still bad when EA postulated quite loudly to consumers about what exactly to do with the title. Also, content costs money just like games do. While I would love to sit back and say that this would fix the issue, I wonder what exactly DLC or quality is going to do to fix this matter. Muzyka’s comments are a welcome addition to the dialogue, but I’m afraid it will fall on deaf ears.
