Recently, five gaming companies, including Codemasters and Atari, sent notice to 25,000 file-sharing internet users, demanding 300 GBP each or risk court action. It seems that they were looking to get some cash back from the rampant piracy of their games.
Alex St. John, CEO of WildTangent, feels that the blame should be placed on the industry, and not the consumer.
“Console gamers spend more time playing PC games but they spend one third of the money on the PC,” he said to GamesIndustry.biz. “One reason for that is that the content is free on the PC because it’s easily pirated but that’s another way of saying that the business model on the PC has to be different.”
St. John says that an ad-supported sales model for PC gaming might be the answer:
“For example: if the games were free sponsored by advertising then what would the value be to a pirate in pirating it? The business model is wrong and consumers are finding a way around it…” he said. “The people sending those letters are blaming the consumer for getting their media for free in an open environment rather than saying ‘Hey our business model’s f*cked, come up with a better one’.”
I don’t know: is piracy a good indicator that the model is f*cked? Wouldn’t the price of PC gaming hardware be another indicator?
What do you feel has to change for PC gaming? Or, do you think it’s fine as is?
Published: Sep 8, 2008 12:24 pm