US GameMakers Don't Want to Sue Customers. Sounds Like a Sound Decision To Me.

ARS Technica is reporting that US gaming companies are rather reluctant to follow the lead of UK gamemakers, who are suing P2P game sharers over copyright infringement.

Peter Moore, head of EA Sports, makes this poignant statement:

"If we learned anything from the music business, they just don't win any friends by suing their consumers," he told Eurogamer. "Speaking personally, I think our industry does not want to fall foul of what happened with music."

Now clearly piracy is a problem for gaming companies, and will become even more so as bandwidths of broadband connections continue to grow. But US gamemakers are focusing on innovation rather than lawsuits to mitigate the problem. Says the same ARS Technica piece,

EA actually has some plans in that direction, including free, microtransaction-based games like Battlefield Heroes and of course MMOs like Warhammer Online, games that are functionally impervious to piracy.

Since MMOs are clearly the key growth area of the industry, these seem wise steps indeed.

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