Latest crappy solution for game piracy: buy half a game, pay for second half later

F1 2010 maker Codemasters has had it up to here with people pirating its games. What can it do to combat it? Company CEO Rod Cousens has an idea! And it’s terrible!: release only half a game, and sell the rest as downloadable content later on. Groan.

While I shall always unconditionally love Codemasters for giving me Micro Machines, I’m guessing Cousens thought this through for all of four seconds, tops. Here he is peddling his nonsense to GamesIndustry.biz:

“It’s not inconceivable to say that we send out a Formula One game that’s not complete – maybe it’s got six tracks. Then [players] have to buy their next track, and you follow it around the world. When you turn up in Abu Dhabi you have to pay for the circuit, and whatever the changes are to the cars that are put through. That, I think, would deal with a lot of it, and also address the pre-owned issue.”

Rod seems to forget that (a) not everybody has their console connected to the Internet, (b) you’d be punishing gamers who just want to pay for and play a full damn game, (c) people have every lawful right to sell on games they have already shelled out for, and (d) greedy retailers would be delighted to fleece gamers by selling half a game for full price.

Apart from that, ZOMG GREAT IDEA ROD.

[Via GamesIndustry.biz]