BioWare: DLC, Gamer Loyalty Can Squelch Piracy

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In an era in which game piracy prompts formerly PC-exclusive studios to make the leap to consoles, Mass Effect developer BioWare has an alternative strategy to buck piracy: provide add-on content for its games and promote simple consumer loyalty.

"We're doing a lot of post-release downloadable content on all of our PC titles going forward," BioWare co-CEO Ray Muzyka told MTV Multiplayer. "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—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," Muzyka added.

It appears likely that the studio's next effort Dragon Age—which the studio plans to unveil tomorrow—will feature some sort of built-in copy protection, similar to the recently released PC version of its sci-fi RPG Mass Effect.

While even those games with the most draconian digital rights management protocols are often eventually cracked, the advent of downloadable content and new features delivered via patch updates have made legitimate copies of titles much more attractive to would-be software pirates.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    July 8, 2008 12:34 PM

    This is, no doubt, why they went with a very lenient copy protection scheme for the PC release of Mass Effect.

    Oh, wait.

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      July 8, 2008 12:42 PM

      Heheh.

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      July 8, 2008 12:59 PM

      It sounds to me like they're trying to send a message through the press to their overlords EA

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        July 8, 2008 3:40 PM

        'Gamer Loyalty' must be code for:
        [i]HELP US! THEIR DRAINING THE ART DEPARTMENTS SOULS, AND WRITING IS NEXT![/i]

        I'll admit to getting Mass Effect, its a bloody good game, however the whole copy protection has me thankful their is the option of a working crack. Sad thing is, its less of an inconvenience to pirates to acquire it then crack it.

        Brand loyalty had a great influence on me getting Mass Effect, I even got it off the shelf here in Australia at nearly twice the price I pay to import it. I loved Bioware, but face it, now that EA owns their arse, what was once a great studio now has the future of a small African Nation with oil. It could continue to prosper, but more likely its going to be raped for all its worth and left in tatters.

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          July 8, 2008 3:57 PM

          [deleted]

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            July 8, 2008 4:00 PM

            his knife is red with french blood, duh

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            July 8, 2008 7:18 PM

            Of course! Its just some tit always misspells rogue and I cannot have my name. I'd go with Rougey, but its a little gay. The knife is just a unique handle. Don't know why I bother with it these days...

            As for the BB code, I remembered shortly after I hit post.

    • reply
      July 8, 2008 9:57 PM

      Exactly my though.

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