EA: Piracy didn't hurt 'Spore' sales
There doesn't seem to be much disagreement that Electronic Arts botched the launch of Spore with heavy-handed digital rights management. However, the company reacted quickly and was able to update the game with a less oppressive scheme that calmed most of the masses.
One statistic that repeatedly popped up was the fact that more than 500,000 copies had been downloaded off BitTorrent sites. EA claims to have sold 1 million copies since launch, which would mean that there are potentially 1.5 million Spore instances. The big question is whether EA is losing money from this pirating.
The blog Game Set Watch talked about the matter with Mariam Sughayer of EA's corporate communications office:
Downplaying the piracy issue in this particular case, EA's Sughayer says: "We've talked to people that made several unsuccessful attempts to download the game and ended up with incomplete, slow, buggy or unusable code. In one case, a file identified as Spore contained a virus.
"To say that every download represents a successful copy of the game--or that there's been more than 500,000 copies downloaded--that's just not true."
"Stepping aside from the whole issue of DRM, people need to recognize that every BitTorrent download doesn't represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale," she tells Gamasutra.
What's interesting here is the acceptance from EA that there will be piracy and that maybe it's not affecting sales that dramatically.
In my original post suggesting that EA could learn from open source, I said "maybe a better approach for EA would have been to consider a 'community' and 'enterprise' version of Spore, where it's usable but not good until you pay," and I still think that's a good idea. If there are "users" and "customers" and they are both on your side, you always win.
Dave Rosenberg dishes up "Software, Interrupted" with nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs to open-source enterprise software companies. He is co-founder of MuleSource and currently serves as the general manager of Hardy Way. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can contact Dave via e-mail at softwareinterrupted@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @dr138. 





You have GOT to be kidding me. Considering that EA's initial projections for September sales were TWO Million units, I'd consider a loss of 50% to be failure. Also, the 500,000 pirated copy number is already two weeks old, the current number is close to the Milion mark itself. So, a 1:1 ratio of sales to pirated copies for the first month, again, failure! If I were an EA stockholder, I'd be looking for a change of management very soon. It's not like the current stock market conditions aren't causing enough trouble without also ACTIVELY aleniating your customer base.
I find this statement ironic.
"Stepping aside from the whole issue of DRM, people need to recognize that every BitTorrent download doesn't represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale,"
Aren't these the same people who were claiming that every torrent download equals a lost sale? Now they're saying that's not true? So EA is basically admitted they lied to us when they were trying to justify the DRM. I guess though a lot of that is from legitimate gamers who legitimately bought the game then downloaded it to circumvent their Big Brother-esque DRM. These people really need to pull their heads out of their backsides.
I felt extremely violated having my IP address, hardware, ect... logged before being allowed to play the Blu-ray I just purchased as a customer. No where on the outside of the box do they ask you to agree to this before purchase, and it is only found in fine print on the inside of an insert inside the box. Well, after disconnecting my wireless I was able to watch my movie, but I don't know what the world is coming to when I can't even watch a legally purchased movie without sending my information to a company.
- by ReVeLaTeD October 2, 2008 2:04 PM PDT
- Sounds like the developers are not aligned with the big *AA's.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(12 Comments)Developers: "Just beacuse it was downloaded, doesn't mean it was the actual game/movie/song/etc, and it doesn't automatically equal a lost sale!!"
RIAA (for example): "every song downloaded is money lost. We don't have to prove it, just look at the numbers!"
Yeah, alright.