Peter Moore has spoken out about the ongoing battle of the British developers against illegal file-sharers, and unfortunately for the big five, it's not in their support as well.

Speaking to Eurogamer at the Leipzig Games Convention, the British head of EA Sports said,

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

He does, however, agree that there should be a crackdown against piracy, but apparently, this is not his preferred method. While he did say there are other ways of dealing with the issue, he did not give a clear counter-proposal to what Atari, Topware Interactive, Reality Pump, Techland and Codemasters are doing, suing 25,000 people across UK for illegal file-sharing.

[Piracy] is 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.

And commenting on the music industry's stand on the matter (which is to also disagree and distance themselves with what the publishers and developers are doing), Moore said that it's something that the gaming biz should have learned from them: you don't win any friends by suing your customers.

But these statements, of course, are his own, and does not in any way reflect the position of the EA as a company. He says he doesn't know how EA will react to these developments, although it is without a doubt that EA does not condone piracy and that they take the issue seriously. "... People deserve to get paid for the content they create, but as far as I'm aware, we have no plans, that I know of, to partner with Atari and Codemasters and chase down consumers."

And so the chasm deepens.

---

Related Articles:

• Music industry on game devs fighting illegal file-sharers: you're on your own