Tom Ivan's
Shiny Entertainment founder and Acclaim executive Dave Perry says that the industry must adopt new business models if it wants to overcome pirates.
“I'm one of those people that is all about the industry moving forward, as technology and pirates always will,” he wrote on his blog, following the conviction of the founders of The Pirate Bay, one of the world's largest file-sharing websites.
“This decision will slow down the "overt" sharing but it's an impossible battle to win. It's like Sony when they release new firmware updates for the PSP handheld because hackers keep breaking the previous one. After countless firmware updates, at some point you accept that this battle is going to go on forever. Jail-broken iPhones being another example. It's actually impressive to last a full 24 hours before the next crack happens."
Perry believes that a switch to server based games and free-to-play models can help combat piracy.
“So what can you do to change the video game piracy paradigm? People are trying... For example, China, where Piracy was a massive problem until they switched to server based games. That stops it stone cold.
“I personally am investing my money into game streaming, hoping that it will give people a dramatically cheaper choice, and (for pirates) be way more convenient than having to download, burn, install, fix drivers and patch (then worry about malware.)
“At Acclaim.com, all our games are free to play, you only pay if you fall in love with the game. For me, there is no better business proposal for the gamer.
“Our industry has very smart people too, and so if anyone can get this right, our industry can. But the solution isn't to fight in courts, or to play "revision ping pong" with hackers, it's to move forward and design convenience, quality and access at a mass market price. That's what will get people to pay, even if there's an inferior pirate version available on some dodgy website.”
