Paradox Interactive Fights 'Cities: Skylines' Piracy With Better Service And Free Updates

Defence attorneys in the Pirate Bay copyright trial hold a T-shirt reading 'The Battle has Begun' following the closing arguments at city court in Stockholm March 3, 2009. Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom have been charged by a Swedish prosecutor with conspiracy to break copyright law and being an accessory. REUTERS/Bob Strong REUTERS/Bob Strong

Paradox Interactive's wildly popular sandbox game "Cities: Skylines" couldn't have come at a better time. The game's open approach to city-building genre has managed to fill in the massive vacuum left behind by Electronic Arts' highly unsatisfactory 2013 "SimCity" reboot. The game has been selling by the truckloads since its launch on March 10, 2015. As expected of any popular game, "Cities: Skylines" is being heavily pirated.

However, unlike most videogame publishers, who take a ham-fisted DRM approach to secure their property from the prying hands of the pirates, Paradox Interactive has taken a more consumer-friendly approach. VG247 cites tweets from ‎the VP of Acquisition and Portfolio Strategy Shams Jorjani who revealed that the game went from no instance of piracy on day one to whopping 16 percent illegitimate copies on day two. The company believes offering a superior service is the best way to fight this menace.

Jorjani illustrated this point by giving the example of Netflix's on-demand internet-based media streaming model. He underscored how a large number of people prefer paying for the convenience of streaming films and TV shows through the service instead of going through the hassles of waiting and hunting for free pirated alternatives. Paradox Interactive's answer lies in the form of an aggressive DLC model for "Cities: Skylines."

What separates Paradox Interactive's DLC model from money-grabbing tactics of most major videogame publishers is the claim that its focus will be on making the game better and adding more value to the consumer through free updates. As PC Games N points out, "Cities: Skylines" will have paid DLCs incorporating "the large, the small and the purely cosmetic" additions to the core game. The revenue earned from the sales will be used to add free updates to keep gamers coming back for more. In effect, even those who aren't on board with paying extra on top of the base price of the game will have something to look forward to with the DLC policy.

"As usual our plan for pirates is to make a great game even better through free updates - making it more convenient to use Steam instead," wrote Jorjani through a tweet. "It’s all about offering the superior service; that’s how we bring down piracy – by making the paid experience a superior one."

Jorjani aims to keep the community engaged through the Steam Workshop implementation. Workshop allows steam users to create, sell and trade in-game add-ons to make a tidy profit. According to an earlier International Business Times report, Valve's official user mod programme for Steam games has earned creators more than $57 million till date. Paradox Interactive believes that such schemes incentivise gamers to purchase legitimate copies.

"Cities: Skylines" seems to have learned well from the mistakes committed by its inspiration – the 2013 "SimCity" reboot. Electronic Arts had faced a great deal of flak for imposing always-online DRM and taking an anti-mod policy, which had irritated gamers enough to shun the game altogether. Paradox Interactive has been wise to avoid an aggressive DRM policy.

The company's encouragement of user modding is evident through a prolific modding scene, which boasts a total of 3400 mods developed for the game in less than a week, according to a PC Gamer report. The mods range from a simple but useful one that adds the autosave function to a more elaborate one that allows gamers to explore their creations in the first-person perspective.

It's no surprise that "Cities: Skylines" has already sold more than 500,000 copies, as reported by IGN. Paradox Interactive's consumer-friendly free DLC approach to fighting piracy and encouragement of user mods should give it an edge against pirates.

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