Rather than lamenting over lost sales, EA boss John Riccitiello is viewing piracy in a different light. He believes it is possible to win back customers through downloadable offerings, stating that pirates can “steal the disc, but they can’t steal the DLC.” He likens the same reasoning to those picking up titles second-hand as well.

“They can steal the disc, but they can’t steal the DLC,” Riccitiello told Kotaku. He added, “There’s a sizable pirate market and a sizable second sale market and we want to try to generate revenue in that marketplace.”

While Riccitiello’s viewpoint does hold merit, buying into the idea of pirates being potential DLC candidates is a tough one to stomach. If they stole your game in the first place, what’s the chance of them shelling out cash for extra content? Not to mention, PC-based DLC unfortunately can be illegally obtained. While that is not the case on console platforms, Microsoft has a hard-nosed stance against pirates and is banning them from Live on sight. If these pirates no longer have access to make micro-transactions, how will they purchase DLC? On PS3, this is completely a non-issue on both fronts, as neither retail games or DLC can be pirated.

At the end of the day, if EA believes they can exploit this market by using DLC as bait, then more power to them of course. I can’t help but think there must be far better ways to attack the situation though.

EA CEO: “I Think Of Pirates As A Marketplace” [Kotaku]

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