Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Chinese piracy catalyst for change business model online games

China's 58o million dollar online games market is changing its business model, because of rampant intellectual property infringement. Instead of collecting a monthly subscribtion fee for massive multi-player games, they are going to focus on selling in-game items.

"DFC Intelligence’s Alexis Madrigal said an increasing number of MMOs in China will become free to gamers next year, while the companies rely on sales of in-game items to bring in profits."

"Chinese game companies are some of the first to get wise to the switch in sales. It’s also smart to run a service off of in-game sales, when piracy of games in China is so prevalent. Chinese game companies find it hard to make money off of the pure-play of games because pirates are always one step ahead."

Read more here.

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