EA Sports Boss: We Shouldn't Sue Pirates

EA Sports Boss: We Shouldn't Sue Pirates EA Sports Boss: We Shouldn't Sue Pirates

Earlier this week, five major videogame companies - namely Atari, Codemasters, Topware Interactive, Reality Pump, and Techland - announced that they suing 25,000 British gamers who have been caught while illegally downloading games through p2p networks.

The British file sharers will have to pay a settlement fee of £300 or risk taking their cases to court.

But Electronic Arts won't join the group, at least not according to its Sports division president, Peter Moore, who warned that such tactics "didn't work for the music industry".

"I'm not a huge fan of trying to punish your consumer," Peter Moore said. "Albeit these people have clearly stolen intellectual property, I think there are better ways of resolving this within our power as developers and publishers."

"Yes, we've got to find solutions," he added. "We absolutely should crack down on piracy. People put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into their content and deserve to get paid for it. It's absolutely wrong, it is stealing."

"But at the same time I think there are better solutions than chasing people for money. I'm not sure what they are, other than to build game experiences that make it more difficult for there to be any value in pirating games."

EA Sports has recently announced Adidas Live Season service for FIFA 09 where in-game players' stats are updated weekly to reflect their real life performance; but this is hardly a game defining feature.