EA Has Finally Accepted What Many Gamers Have Been Saying

Looks like the SimCity series of unfortunate events was just what the doctor ordered for EA to finally acknowledge the point that many industry experts, reviewers and journalists & gamers have been saying for a very long time: DRM = VERY BAD!

EA spoke to GamesIndustry International at GSX, where the president of Electronic Arts Frank Gibeau said,”DRM is a failed dead-end strategy; it’s not a viable strategy for the gaming business. So what we tried to do creatively is build an online service in the SimCity universe and that’s what we sought to achieve. For the folks who have conspiracy theories about evil suits at EA forcing DRM down the throats of Maxis, that’s not the case at all.”

Mr. Gibeau made it very clear that DRM is simply not an option for publishers as a business model anymore, he also adds that EA probably should do a better job when it comes to interacting with the community, but also added that in regards to SimCity’s policy of an always-online gameplay, gamers need to understand the nature of MMO and its need to be always connected.

He added,”That’s not the reality; I was involved in all the meetings. DRM was never even brought up once. You don’t build an MMO because you’re thinking of DRM – you’re building a massively multiplayer experience, that’s what you’re building.”

To defend himself, he said that they weren’t the only ones who had issues with servers and online gameplay experience and pointed out that companies like Activision Blizzard, Steam and Ubisoft had their own share at some point.

While its nice to see that EA’s president has finally acknowledged that DRM simply makes things worse, one will have to see when will EA translate this acknowledgement into reality in their near-future titles.

Source: Games Industry