BioWare to beat piracy with DLC

By Robert Purchese Published 9 July, 2008

"Make them want to buy a PC title" - Muzyka

BioWare big boss Ray Muzyka thinks "the best" way to stamp out PC piracy is by offering lots of downloadable content.

"We're doing a lot of post-release downloadable content on all of our PC titles going forward. We think it's a good thing to encourage players to make them want to buy a PC title," Muzyka told MTV Multiplayer.

"That's ultimately the best, most successful path to prevent piracy - to have players that want your games, want to believe in them and think they're high-quality and realise they're going to get a lot of value out of them as platforms for long time afterwards."

His comments echo what NVIDIA boss Roy Taylor told us earlier this summer. He said games need to become an increasingly valued service offering "patches, mod packs, expansions, maps" and more. That, he argued, coupled with digital authentication, is the "direction it's going to go".

BioWare used digital authentication for the PC version of Mass Effect and came under fire for requiring online validation every three days. This was later changed to appease the masses.

BioWare currently has Dragon Age in development for at least PC and maybe other platforms, and some sort of announcement is expected on it today.

We'll keep you posted.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (22) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Xerx3s #1 4 years ago

    Yeah, but then you actually must have something worth buying, unlike that pos bdts.

  • Eraysor #2 4 years ago

    Xerx3s beat me to it, but I was going to say if you want to make people buy DLC, actually make the DLC half decent unlike your last attempt.

  • Darren #3 4 years ago

    I really don't see how this will work. Isn't DLC on the PC generally free anyway so if someone pirates the main game then they can also get the content. And if the DLC comes at a price then how exactly will that encourage PC owners to purchase the game when most expect DLC to be free in the first place?

    Am I missing something here? :?

  • bad09 #4 4 years ago

    Listen carefully developers/publishers/platform holders/retail

    SELL IT CHEAPER AND SELL TO MORE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Look at the sheer number of games flooding out week after week on all platforms (well except PSP!), do they really think most people can pay for it all. Sell it cheaper or you lose sales both at retail and through piracy. Nuff said.

    Oh and digital authentication is useless just like any DRM, eventually someone WILL get around it......

  • rhubarbandcustard #5 4 years ago

    Following on from Bad09...

    Don't just sell your PC games cheaper, give them away for free.

    If the games runs on my machine and is fun I will happily purchase the paid DLC released for it. Instant huge player base and potentially massive profits.

  • steviepunk #6 4 years ago

    "Listen carefully developers/publishers/platform holders/retail

    SELL IT CHEAPER AND SELL TO MORE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!! "

    How cheap do you want it?

    You can usually pick up most PC games at £30 in retailers pretty soon after release.
    Games that are released on PC, PS3 and 360 at the same time tend to be cheaper on the PC, yet the console versions each outsell the PC versions, often by a long way despite the smaller user base.


    "I really don't see how this will work. Isn't DLC on the PC generally free anyway so if someone pirates the main game then they can also get the content."

    It would never be possible to completely prevent that, however I think the idea is that the game has it's own download system (or is part of one, like Steam), which can authenticate the user and validate the install before downloading and auto-installing the DLC (paid or free). Basically, they would make it very difficult to get the DLC working on a non-valid install of the game, making it worth buying the game to access the extra info.

    Alternatively, people may just buy the game because they know that there will be loads of free content available after release and will see it as good value.

  • KungFuSpoon #7 4 years ago

    Simply lower the prices and stop treating all PC gamers like criminals. They add all this DRM stuff but the pirates bloody remove it for the pirated versions so the only people who encounter it are the people who paid for the game in the first place, I played my housemates copy of Mass Effect on 360 and I was going to buy the PC version when it came out except for all this DRM crap I'm not gonna buy it out of principle, I've already played through it once I could spend my money on other games.

    Also stop distributing with the EADM it's the WORST digital delivery system ever, it's not like steam where your downloads are available indefinitely, no you can download it ONCE, or pay £5 to have it available for SIX MONTHS. What a worthless service.

  • alsotop #8 4 years ago

    @Darren:

    If the DLC is downloadable through the game, the game will have to access Bioware's servers to get the download, thus being able to authenticate with them. Usually pirated games have the authentication stripped out of them, since it obviously tells Bioware that this is a pirated copy - so they wouldn't be able to get the DLC this way.

  • KungFuSpoon #9 4 years ago

    @alsotop: That system was used for the Sins of a Solar Empire patches if I recall correctly, and guess what you can find on every torrent tracker? Oh yes SoaSE patches. The pirates always find a way around their rpotection, they'll just distribute the raw files that you have to paste into your install directory replacing the old ones.

  • qoobah #10 4 years ago

    I'm sure that even authentication during the download of the DLC can be pirated, what man coded, man can hack, but as steviepunk said, you -can- try to make the hacking process as convoluted as humanly possible. So those who are pirating the games would have to spend more time fiddling with cracks, 3rd party trojaned programs etc than they would spend playing the game. If they had to repeat the process with each and every new DLC, and if the DLC was coming out often enough, I'm sure it would be a big incentive to get the legal copy, which would be free of all that fuss. I'm sure -some- level of piracy would prevail, but it would be just the hardcore pirates who do it out of "principles" or for doubtful fun.

    However, DRM as seen in ME and all the shit that makes it more complicated for legally paying customer than a pirate is NOT the way to go. Neither is delivering crappy DLC, which would destroy the idea of a game as a long lasting service in the first place.
    Edited by 1 at 09/07/08 @ 11:12

  • hiddenranbir #11 4 years ago

    Sigh.

    No Bioware. We want additional content that is free. Not additional content designed to slowly squeeze more money out of us.

    Seriously, take a page out of Stardock's book. Free updates/content and actually paying attention to USER FEEDBACK.

  • jonbwfc #12 4 years ago

    The guy's comments would carry some more validity if Bioware had actually managed to get the DLC which is already available for the 360 version of Mass Effect available for the PC version any time within like a month of it going on sale.

    Still waiting..

    Jon

  • hiddenranbir #13 4 years ago

    If you mean that extra mission it was included.

    I like Bioware trying to make this big announcement as if they're pioneers. The gits.

  • Wickerman #14 4 years ago

    Just goes to show that a company is only as good (or bad) as its last product, as the DLC they put out for NWN was AMAZING. Still, I guess either a lot of people have forgotten that, or never played any of them. Really, really trying hard to stay away from a console Bioware vs PC Bioware angle here!

  • Shakey_Jake33 #15 4 years ago

    This is from a guy who infected his most recent PC title with DRM, making the pirated versions that bit more appealing, simply because they were less hassle than the legitimate retail version. He is in no position to talk about winning over legitimate consumers.

  • Fallen_Angel #16 4 years ago

    @hiddenranbir

    Except he never mentioned paying for it. They even used ME's addon, which was free on the PC version, as an example. Same with the COD4 maps.

  • thesombrerokid #17 4 years ago

    Emm Mass Effect is the cheapest best title ever released on the PC! it's £20 for gods sake!
    stop moaning and the DLC is free on the PC so stop moaning about that too.

    as for the securom, that was EA's decision not that bad a decision given the massive pirate fest that was crysis, if you stole crysis you have no right to moan about DRM in Mass Effect and Spore, if like me though, you bought them yeah it's unfair on us,but it's not just EA to blame it's all the people who liked crysis enough to buy but stole it because they could, piracy imo has it's place, you download games fair enough but if you liked it and you've got any morals whatsoever you should buy it, and for £20 you'd be a bloody cheapskate not to.

    edit: aww and i played the pirate version and the legit version of mass effect and the DRM as nasty as the concept is is not more hastle than all the bugs and fucked parts of the pirate version.

    edit 2 don't know why i said launch title
    Edited by 2 at 09/07/08 @ 15:56

  • Shakey_Jake33 #18 4 years ago

    ...because the DRM obviously stopped Mass Effect from being pirated. Or not.

  • aldo_14 #19 4 years ago

    Well, at least it fits in the usual developer process of release first, fix later.

  • Dynamize #20 4 years ago

    Man, this seems to be the Age of Customers Being Told.
    Over the past year or two we've been barraged with this stuff. "You want shorter games. You want DLC. You want micro-transactions."

    I fucking don't. I want my £30 game to last 15-20 at least. I want the game and all its features completed when you make the gold master, I don't want you holding back content to bleed my wallet. I certainly don't want to pay money for some shitty horse armour or whatnot.

    It might help if you actually had that Bring Down the Sky rubbish ready a couple of weeks after releasing Mass Effect PC an' all. Instead, you've failed to deliver it in anywhere near satisfactory time. Which is crap, considering that by all accounts it's just another simple, bland side-quest.

  • KungFuSpoon #21 4 years ago

    Amen Dynamize, I enjoy longer games, though I do enjoy extra content I don't want fucking micro-transactions that'll cost more then one big EP. I think the nearest thing to getting the right amount of content for smaller packages is the Knights of the Nine expansion for Oblivion a good few hours of play for a few quid.

  • dacicus #22 4 years ago

    Let me see, NWN premium modules(they were some of the first commercial DLC on PC): overpriced and nowhere near of what the community managed to do with the Aurora Toolset. Mass Effect DLC: nowhere to be seen on the PC.
    The NWN premium modules were pirated. What makes them think that it won't happen again with the DLC for Mass Effect?! Especially if the DLC are of poor quality and asking for more money to play a mediocre(best case scenario) added content.
    I can give a few other examples of pirated DLC: the ones for Oblivion from Bethesda, the ones for Test Drive Unlimited.
    Did you noticed that more companies aren't releasing game editors or mod toolsets anymore? But the fan communities managed to make a few mods even without those(Jade Empire comes to my mind, both KOTOR games and many more). The copanies noticed the fact that there are quite a few talented people and they can offer for free better content than the one those companies are offering.