EA CEO wants to turn pirates into paying customers with DLC

As much as he doesn’t want people to pirate games, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello concedes that there’s a sizeable pirate market out there, and he wants to turn them into paying customers. How? By selling them post-release DLC.

As much as he doesn’t want people to pirate games, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello concedes that there’s a sizeable pirate market out there, and he wants to turn them into paying customers. How? By selling them post-release DLC.

“There’s a sizable pirate market and a sizable second sale market and we want to try to generate revenue in that marketplace,” he told Kotaku in a recent interview. Riccitiello suggested that since EA’s download services can’t perfectly distinguish between used and pirated copies, they end up selling DLC to both the used and pirated markets. And judging by the sales of some of their DLC, people are lapping them up even if they’re paid downloads.

Riccitiello also added that instead of the music industry’s reaction of “demonizing” its consumers, EA has an obligation to entice people to play games legitimately. To that end, Riccitiello hopes that EA’s DLC releases as well as services like the BioWare social site that interfaces with Dragon Age: Origins will make it “increasingly less likely that people will pirate because there is so much value on the other side of the door.”

Still, the EA CEO made it clear that pirating games is bad. “I don’t think anybody should pirate anything,” he said. “I believe in the artistry of the people who build [the games industry.] I profoundly believe that. And when you steal from us, you steal from them.”

It’s worth noting that one of Riccitiello’s comments — “They can steal the disc, but they can’t steal the DLC.” — isn’t entirely accurate, but I guess that can be excused as long as they keep steering clear of insanely frustrating DRM practices and focus on quality releases instead.

[Kotaku]