Moore warns against suing file-sharers

By Ellie Gibson Published 21 August, 2008

"I'm not a huge fan of trying to punish your consumer," says EA exec.

EA Sports boss Peter Moore has said he doesn't support the move to sue consumers for illegal downloading - warning, "It didn't work for the music industry."

Moore was speaking to Eurogamer at the Leipzig Games Convention, following the announcement that five games companies are taking legal action against 25,000 file-sharing internet users.

"I'm not a huge fan of trying to punish your consumer," he said. "Albeit these people have clearly stolen intellectual property, I think there are better ways of resolving this within our power as developers and publishers.

"Yes, we've got to find solutions," Moore continued. "We absolutely should crack down on piracy. People put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into their content and deserve to get paid for it. It's absolutely wrong, it is stealing.

"But at the same time I think there are better solutions than chasing people for money. I'm not sure what they are, other than to build game experiences that make it more difficult for there to be any value in pirating games."

According to Moore, there are lessons to be learned from the experiences of other industries. "If we learned anything from the music business, they just don't win any friends by suing their consumers," he observed. "Speaking personally, I think our industry does not want to fall foul of what happened with music."

When asked whether EA has any plans to go down the same road as Atari, Codemasters and the other publishers launching the legal action, Moore replied, "Not as far as I'm aware. Regarding what EA needs to do - I can't comment on that. EA takes piracy very seriously, and people deserve to get paid for content they create.

"But as far as I'm aware, we have no plans, that I know of, to partner with Atari and Codemasters and chase down consumers," he added.

To read the full interview with Moore, where he discusses EA, E3 and the console race, visit Eurogamer.net.

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (52) Latest comment 4 years ago

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

  • ps3owner #1 4 years ago

    DRM
    isn't that EA's chosen route?

  • dsmx #2 4 years ago

    Any form of DRM punishes the consumer.

  • johnnybrn #3 4 years ago

    Atari needs all the money it can get.

    Its given up on making decent games now it's next best strategy is suing the customers

  • Pike #4 4 years ago

    I'd say Battlefield Heroes show a major part of EA's approach to piracy. I suspect it will be the way gaming will go. Subscription based or free to play with microtransactions and/or advertising.

  • penhalion #5 4 years ago

    At least he realises that sueing the consumer guarantees that

    A. They don't touch your product with a barge pole.
    B. They hate your guts.
    C. You end up putting yourself out of business.

  • crozon #6 4 years ago

    "Its given up on making decent games now it's next best strategy is suing the customers"

    i didn't think people who steal their games can be called customers.

  • menage #7 4 years ago

    Another suggestion then DSMX? I'm getting tired of that argument without at least an alternative offered.

  • DutchDemons #8 4 years ago

    well, allthough he's right about not making friends...i don't think there is much room to have friends in this kind of market. making friends is not the issue at hand here.

    people steal it and 'should be' punished. But then again, it's fighting an uphill battle. and allthough i don't want the biz to be ruined by pirates...i can't say that i can't understand it either. I admit to having downloaded games, for all the known reasons. Stopped doing it, for all the known reasons too:-)

  • Pike #9 4 years ago

    As I wrote, menage, subscription based games, or advertising and microtransactions.

    And copying is not stealing, wathever rent seeking publishers try to pretend.
    Edited by 1 at 21/08/08 @ 14:32

  • penhalion #10 4 years ago

    @Crozon

    A lot of people who copy games also buy them legitimately. The problem is that word of mouth is such that a consumer who would have purchased your product more than think twice if they think (however irrationally) that you may sue them if they install it on more than one machine or even if the install somehow goes wrong and reports their copy as being pirated (it's happened before with the windows DRM!)

  • optimusprym8 #11 4 years ago

    I thought it was the law firm in London doing all the investigation / sniffing / spying etc then going to the games companies going "look we found all these naughty people, we'll sue them for you"

  • SpikeRocks #12 4 years ago

    Well the US part of EA cant tuch me, im Swedish. And btw i am one of thosw pirates that actualy buys game after i have tested a pirated copy, if its good enough ofcourse.

  • Xerx3s #13 4 years ago

    "Another suggestion then DSMX? I'm getting tired of that argument without at least an alternative offered. "

    Sorry but we are not paid for coming up with ideas for them. It's perfectly fine to say that we don't want that crap as it eats away our rights. If I buy something, I don't want that crap. They have every right to implement it and I have every right to then say that they can shuff their product up their arse.

  • ps3owner #14 4 years ago

    @SpikeRocks

    I thought that's what demo's are for?

  • loopy #15 4 years ago

    "I thought that's what demo's are for?"

    In my experience demo's are rarely indicative of the quality of the final game.

  • johnnybrn #16 4 years ago

    I think gamers are more fickle than music-lovers IMO. You might hate Coldplay but do you really hate EMI, whereas lots of people hate EA regardless. Plus musicians have other income streams ie concerts, clothing etc, not justifying it though.

    A company could develop a game for millions but if bad PR word-of mouth works against it then they are sunk.

    I dont see this working as a long term strategy of suing the pirates, as people learn to better defend themselves and precedents being made

    Sorry bad spelling.
    Edited by 1 at 21/08/08 @ 14:59

  • Mantra #17 4 years ago

    Good one EA

  • miiiguel #18 4 years ago

    solution: end PC games as we know it and go subscription route á lá WoW.

  • menage #19 4 years ago

    @Xerxes

    Fair enough. I get that. But if you don't want it, it's not really helping to complain about it in a damn forum. Especially in a topic which actually says some positive stuff about consumers and the industry.

    DRM has never bothered me, I also never had to copy anything for backup reasons and such so I just don't get the hassle I guess. And not trying to generalize here. Or accuse anyone. But I still believe a lot of complainers are people who do pirate frequently.

  • mooseman721 #20 4 years ago

    If it's considered stealing then it should be a matter for the police to deal with, not by the use of ridiculously large fines.

  • Bumhug360 #21 4 years ago

    "I thought that's what demo's are for?"

    Which is why most demos come with a disclaimer that says "this demo does not represent the final buid of the game"

    The simple solution to all this is to give the end user value for money and reward them for buying rather than punish. Things like free downloadable content or extra levels for registering.

    DRM is going to be here to stay, but it cant be that hard to come up with a system that lets you remove a licence from your PC. Wouldnt take that much for EA to come up with a launcher for all their games that has a nice little interface to tell you what you have installed on any pc under your login. If your PC blows up simply install first EA game, bring up the launcher app and remove all the games installed on your duff PC so they can be installed on your new one, easy. Could even go one step forward and be able to save your games to a server somewhere, so if your pc does blow up your save games are safe, or if you have more than one PC (say a laptop) you can continue your save game just by logging into that pc.

  • Malixu #22 4 years ago

    WTF?

    The same people who put call-home DRM on Spore are saying publishers shouldn't sue filesharers because it's punishing their customers?

    I think something fundamental to the working of my brain just exploded under the strain....

  • skillian #23 4 years ago

    solution: end PC games as we know it and go subscription route á lá WoW.

    I don't really think that's a solution. I'd probably never buy a PC game again if I had to subscribe to them, and I'd imagine that would go for lots of other players too.

  • Malixu #24 4 years ago

    @skillian, definitely, absolutely, no question about it.

    Had a GameTap sub once. That lasted two months...

  • miiiguel #25 4 years ago

    I didn't say it's a pleasent solution, but I do think something nasty will happen, sooner than later.

  • ryohazuki1983 #26 4 years ago

    Not a bad idea Bumhug360, A suggestion that might work (well not for years or so as technology/bandwidth capacities wouldn't allow) would be to store games that you purchase on a server, so you don't acutally have anything physical or you wouldn't download games onto your PC/console. Then users could sign-in to access games, limit the account to one login only (or something). All content would be streamed....Surely it would be easier to prevent pirates etc as they could see account traffic, and if it does get hacked then they could patch it!
    Edited by 2 at 21/08/08 @ 16:03

  • skillian #27 4 years ago

    I didn't say it's a pleasent solution

    It's not any kind of solution, pleasant or not - it would lose game makers millions and probably put most of them out of business.

  • mazzl #28 4 years ago

    @Bumhug360
    you mean steam?

  • Totoriko #29 4 years ago

    Those who pirate EA games can breathe a sigh of relief

  • dsmx #30 4 years ago

    Combating piracy has no magic bullet to stop it and in truth there is no way of stopping it completely but you can reduce it.

    Currently the gaming world is filled with yearly stat updates and games that are very similar to last years version with shinier graphics. Review sites increasingly don't tell you the whole truth about a game and game demo's constantly say there not representative of the final product if they get released at all. Then you have the fact that games are getting more expensive to buy and you increasingly have no way of telling if there any good. Then if you do buy the game you are treated like a criminal with securom installed on your comp which at best interferes with your enjoyment of the game and at worst you can't play the game at all. Then to cap it all off the game isn't finished and requires a years worth of half arsed updates to get the game into a halfway playable state, whereupon the developers gets fed up with it and releases the next version and the cycle starts all over again.

    The increase in piracy is a symptom of a much larger problem within the industry that the customer is increasingly fed up with the total lack of games worth paying for in the market.

    Piracy is easy so you have to make it so buying your game is as easy as pirating it but because you can't compete with free you have to offer a better service at a higher quality.

    If you accept that your title will be pirated why not use file sharing sites for distribution? However in the game put an option to let people give money directly to the developer of the title, you would still sell the game through stores but you may as well accept that people will pirate you game so why not give them the option of donating money to you later on if they feel like it was worth it. Then offer regular updates for free and communicate with you community regularly and open the game up for suggestions on how to change it for the better. Release your game at maximum £25, price is a big factor in the level of piracy your game will receive.

    It's all about making people like you as a developer if they don't like you as a developer you will have your titles pirated more valve have the right idea with steam and TF2 for example.

    If the current situation carries on as it is piracy will only get worse so these suggestions are just a way I see that you could reduce piracy of your title

  • Machetazo #31 4 years ago

    What about the gradual quality degrading technology? Would that be possible? If they (could, I really don't know too much about how the tech works) set it to start its bad mojo after a week, then it couldn't be mistaken for poor game quality, on the official product.

  • smelly #32 4 years ago

    @Machetazo:

    That's how starforce worked... which is why it pissed off a lot of pirates (hard to find every last bit of game degrading)..

    Piss of pirates and they'll start spouting garbage about your products all over the web..

    Until every man and his dog FIRMLY believes that the product kills your pc.. and everyone knows someones who knows someone who knows someone whos had it happen.
    Edited by 1 at 21/08/08 @ 17:27

  • Machetazo #33 4 years ago

    Ah. Skip that idea then.

  • bad09 #34 4 years ago

    Well said Mr Moore, but quite frankly I'm bored of this whole "wah wah wah we want MORE money" coming from music, movie and games companies.

    They don't feel guilty when releasing utter garbage and try to fool people to cash in or waste millions on the hype machine or star wages. They let people spend money time and again on inferior or just plain bad products so why should I care if some poor people who can't afford, either some, or all of their expensive media download it. (yes I know some people will just do it because they can or are just tight, but if anyone thinks all do it for that reason you're deluded and know nothing of poorer side of life in our society)

    Not once have I heard one of these suits ever say "you know what we know we expect you all to pay too much for the constant stream of games/music/movies and understand why people do download. We will try to look at new ways of selling our stuff to make it cheaper"

    All they will do by shutting down the internet is take piracy away from harmless file sharing to organized crime, there will ALWAYS be a black market of some kind (just like 2nd hand games/music/movies really), get over it, compete with it.

    (sorry for the rant but a lot of people in the world spend so much money in all the entertainment mediums when they have good products the constant moaning about being hard done by is really irritating me)

    Edited by 2 at 21/08/08 @ 18:50

  • hiddenranbir #35 4 years ago

    Well he says the right things but he isn't doing the right thing which is what Stardock are doing. Rewarding paying customers while not hindering them in any way.

    DRM is going to be here to stay

    Stardock, with successful, profitable, despite being pirated, retail games would like to disagree.

    The only thing Stardock have are a product key tied to your account which gives you access to updates and other free content. That is it. It isn't used to authenticate your game or anything.

    Why aren't people following Stardock's lead? Make a game that is solid and highly polished and let the consumer decide if they want to buy it. Chances are, they will.
    Edited by 1 at 21/08/08 @ 20:23

  • Les #36 4 years ago

    Crime is the ultimate expression of capitalism. IP theft is too abstract for the human mind to properly grasp and therefore the moral compass of most of our species doesn't work properly. Only things that help are education and evolution. Both rather slow processes...

  • YourMessageHere #37 4 years ago

    If it's considered stealing then it should be a matter for the police to deal with, not by the use of ridiculously large fines.

    It's only considered stealing by ignorant people who for some reason cannot grasp that, without the element of removing possession of the object from the owner, illegal duplication, which is what pirates do, is fundamentally different from stealing as it in no way represents a lost sale, only the possibility of one. Importantly, it's therefore not considered stealing by the CPS, which is why if someone catches you pirating something, they simply try to extort money out of court first rather than simply shopping you to the cops.

    TO REDUCE PIRACY:

    - make games cheaper, increasing potential market
    - make games better and less generic, increasing perceived value
    - make them more scalable to older machines, increasing potential market
    - make Steam or Steam-like digital distribution outlets
    - frequently produce extra stuff that's free for registered people only
    - stop forcing DRM on people and make the experience of playing at least as simple as pirates find it
    - stop banging on about how bad pirates are, demonising people who are simply doing for gaming what VCR owners do for telly, all while gaming is getting bigger and more profitable with every passing day

    EDIT: "posession"
    Edited by 1 at 21/08/08 @ 21:35

  • Geowolf #38 4 years ago

    (Meanwhile at EA HQ)

    PM: "That's it, ;)

    Keep looking at the filesharers.

    Don't mind our DRM.

    Just keep your attention away from the maximum three installs allowed on Spore.


    Thank goodness that happened to distract their attention from us... OH! I'M STILL TYPING!!!"

  • Geowolf #39 4 years ago

    Serious note. Pirates get what they deserve. Hard to justify your outrage at getting stung when you've been stinging the industry yourself for several years.

    However, the game companies behind this must realise that they have now injured their own argument for game prices being high. As you successfully trample on piracy then you have less pirates and must therefore lower your game prices.

  • smelly #40 4 years ago

    @Geowolf..

    Games arent high in price because of piracy.. games are high in price because they cost a small fortune to make and have a shelf life of a few months max, and a limited user group.

    compared to films.. films cost around the same amount as a game.. but they have cinema, dvd, rental, tv to make their money over a space of decades - and pretty much every one watches films!!!


    As for saying "all games should be good" that'd fix piracy (which someone said earlier) that's the biggest load of nonsense i've ever heard..

  • Zuiyo #41 4 years ago

    Sharing a game for free with other people is NOT pirating.

    Pirating is selling illegal copies of a game. If you profit from distributing illegitimate copies of a game, then you're pirating games.

    If a law says otherwise then the law is wrong and should be changed.

    If you pass a physical copy of your game to a friend, is that pirating? Didn't think so.

  • orakio #42 4 years ago

    Tell that to the judge. I'm sure many tried before

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #43 4 years ago

    My impression is that half of the 360 owners are pirates

    What do you live in China or something?

    I find your half-baked statistic very difficult to believe. Almost everyone I knew had their PS1 chipped, and maybe half of them had their PS2 done. Quite a lot of people I know soft-modded their Xbox, but that's largely so it can be used for XBMC.

    But not a single Xbox 360 owner I know has a modded console. As of last year, the word I heard through our game's publisher was that there were a few thousand Xbox 360 pirates worldwide. Maybe now it's a few tens of thousands, but that's out of 15 or 20 million consoles. Word had it that the loss of revenue was not significant enough for MS or Publishers to bother doing anything about it.

  • sneetch #44 4 years ago

    "Any form of DRM punishes the consumer."

    I don't really buy that; it's only true if you allow yourself to feel "punished" by it, (more often that not in the "oh noes!" style). Personally, it's never bothered me and nor has it even inconvenienced me. Hell, I don't think it's affected me one way or the other. If anything I prefer buying my games over, say, Steam to physical discs (I could do without having more PC game boxes cluttering up the place).

  • sneetch #45 4 years ago

    @smelly
    "@Geowolf..
    Games arent high in price because of piracy.. games are high in price because they cost a small fortune to make and have a shelf life of a few months max, and a limited user group.

    compared to films.. films cost around the same amount as a game.. but they have cinema, dvd, rental, tv to make their money over a space of decades - and pretty much every one watches films!!!


    As for saying "all games should be good" that'd fix piracy (which someone said earlier) that's the biggest load of nonsense i've ever heard.. "

    It's refreshing (and rare) to read such sensible things once in a while. You're completely correct on the reasons for the difference in prices; the games and movie industries are two entirely different beasts. It makes as much sense for me to complain that I can buy a song for 99c from iTunes but a single game costs 50-70 times that! Hell, I can buy a packet of crisps for 50c too! Similarly, The idea that people are pirating games because those games aren't good enough to buy is a pathetic excuse. It's broken logic implying that "I only pirate games that are crap" if you think they're crap then why would you want them?

    These are prime examples of the human tendency to seek out a reason that justifies their actions (rather than, say, reasoning first then acting).

  • Matfink #46 4 years ago

    "If we learned anything from the music business, they just don't win any friends by suing their consumers,"
    He's missing out the fact they had no friends to start with...

  • Geowolf #47 4 years ago

    @Smelly

    "Games arent high in price because of piracy.. games are high in price because they cost a small fortune to make and have a shelf life of a few months max, and a limited user group.

    compared to films.. films cost around the same amount as a game.. but they have cinema, dvd, rental, tv to make their money over a space of decades - and pretty much every one watches films!!!
    "

    I didn't claim that games were high in price because of piracy. This HAS been one of the industry's excuses though. Furthermore, if you figure that you can preorder Infinite Discovery for £29.99 ( a two disk title) despite having an RRP at £49.99, Dragon Quest IV for less than £18 and that previous games such as Spectrobes, etc have also been available to preorder for less than RRP then the set RRP is questionnable no matter what. Retail is not ordering in these games to sell at a loss. A modern home console title could easily be set at an RRP of £29.99 and portable titles at £24.99 to £19.99.

    This allows for the extra cost in developing these titles. The film industry excuse is an interesting one. Normally heard from game publishing houses. The problem here however is that many films now run at over £100 million in development. A lot of modern game titles make more in profit than a lot of movie titles.

    The other excuse is that only about a third off games make a profit. Thus you are subsidising the failures in order to keepthe company going. However the difference in price that retail can make for preordering these titles already demonstrates that a lower RRP would not affect the developing houses. Just retail.

    Retail does not get anywhere near the sizable sums of money in profit from DVD that it does from games. Arguably the profit margin maximum should be a legally established percentage in order to protect the consumer in all products. However that does not happen in reality.

    The argument of mass market for films against cult for games is also no longer relevant. 20-30 years ago this was case but those generations have grown up and form the modern consumer. At any case, seeing a RRP of £49.99 as opposed to one of £29.99 is clearly going to dissuade a large number of people from taking it up as a hobby, regardless of available shoparound pricing.

    If only the larger component of profit was going to the game makers then I would be happier in accepting a slightly higher RRP. No more than £39.99 but this isn't the case.

    Working practices in the industry also add to the extra cost. High staff turnovers from overworking and underpaid status lead to an experience leak as game titles find themselves constantly with a largely unexperienced workforce. Development times therefore do not improve for each subsequent game title. Long work hours have already been proven to be counterproductive with the only product being a large increase in error rate. Errors which then take time to fix at the debugging stages.

    Speaking as someone who has software development experience in AI, graphics and physics as well as software research in non-game disciplines. Most of our modern great games are not that difficult to code. I managed to write a one level Mario Galaxy 3D inspired game in about 20 hours from start to finish using C++ , Ogre and Havoc. This included developing my underlying resources first hand. This wasn't difficult programming just programming that required a sound understanding of mathematics in order to simulate the gravity forces when running around a 3d planetoid. Now granted that I wasn't producing a full game nor was I aiming at anything other than sound N64-esque graphics but it stands that the development times and costs in games are largely compromised by poor development models.

    My own research expertise area is AI. More advanced AI in games would require some additional research expense however decent AI (considering what is actually possible) is largely absent in the game industry. The industry largely employs basic state machines.

    Basically, I'm arguing that the game industry really isn't doing anything really new in order to justify its development cost claims. Rather costs are incurred from poor management and an absence of trust in the actual programmers and designers who know their jobs and how to make things happen.

    If the industry really needs these high RRPs then reduce the profit to the retailer and give the extra to improving work conditions and advancing true game innovation and research.


    ...

    Piracy however is still wrong.

    Part of the problem though is that in the software industry the UK still will not allow decent IP patenting. UK and europe has an ethos of neglecting the realisation that IP has real value and I guess this could be argued as being an ethos that inpires consumers as well. Personally, I think that it's still a weak excuse but people who wish to pirate can hold up any excuse.

    At any rate, my real point previously was that EA is not sincere in their comments rather they are using it as an opportunity for deflection from their own dubious DRM practices.
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/08 @ 15:54

  • timberwolf #48 4 years ago

    one. why pirate any game by atari or codemasters. two. atari and codemasters are just trying to drag the consumer down with them.

  • Pro_wrestler #49 4 years ago

    Populism! Those "consumers" get what they deserve. Maybe I will buy some Atari and Codemasters games to show my support. Piracy is trying to suffocate everything in this world that is fun it seems. Should the only profitable careers be held by insurence people and stockbrokers in the future? I pay money for the things I actually LIKE. What kind of shit these pirates spend their money on I don't even want to know.

  • wayneh #50 4 years ago

    I agree with previous posts that game prices are now too high £40-£45. With music we have radio and MTV that will play a song which you decide you like so based on that you will go out and buy the single or album. With a game we rely on demos which carry disclaimers, previews that are not based on final build and reviews that can be biased ie Halo 3 and almost any early PS3 reviews (IGN are one of the few sites I trust but even they rated Halo 3!) If the price was lowered to £30 it would make a huge diffence and many more people would buy games. I can no longer see the point of file sharing? What are people actually sharing? Its all pirated music, games, apps and porn and not what file sharing was meant to be! I would like to see the ISPs become more involved and although I don't like the idea of banning people from the internet if someone was found to be pirating software they could have there bandwith severely limited to only say 50Mb enough to allow them to e-mail and do a bit of ligitimate shopping.

  • actionfitz #51 4 years ago

    EA Exec in Common sense Shocker!

  • zedzee #52 4 years ago

    "People put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into their content..."

    I didn't know games development has now resorted to 'punch-ups' when it comes to writing new games! What's with the "blood"?!