Press Release: October 7, 2002

Reaction to the first week of the FairPlay campaign has been phenomenal. From a standing start, we've attracted many tens of thousands of hits, coverage and support banners from over 40 sources ranging from national press to online retailers replacing their "buy" link buttons with FairPlay banners, and even the ultimate Internet honour, a satirical Penny Arcade strip. Over 80,000 people have replied to polls about FairPlay (around 85% favourably) or signed up to the campaign petition, and there are still seven weeks to go.

Disappointingly, but not all that surprisingly, the games industry has chosen to react to the FairPlay campaign with panicked hysteria, rather than actually dealing with the issues raised. Rather than defend their pricing policies, the industry's response has been to rubbish all of our claims, libellously attack individual supporters of the campaign (knowing that it's almost impossible for an individual to make a successful libel prosecution in the UK), attempt to intimidate FairPlay with ludicrous lawsuits (knowing that no matter how ridiculous the suit, ISPs will usually cave in immediately rather than take even the tiniest risk of legal action), and threaten magazines with financial sanctions if they run stories on the campaign (knowing that most magazines can't afford to lose advertising).

The curious thing about all this is, of course, that if the industry was so confident that its pricing structures were fair and reasonable, it could simply come out and explain them to everyone and FairPlay would have no answer. So in the absence of a proper debate, we'll deal with some of the industry's terrified smears.

The people behind FairPlay have over 50 years of games industry experience, in journalism, development and other areas. We have been responsible for the sales of literally millions of games. We know full well how the games industry works and how its economics are structured.


One of the quotes used to illustrate FairPlay's point was written by veteran games journalist Stuart Campbell. Despite lazy, unresearched claims by the industry to the contrary, Stuart Campbell did not instigate or devise the FairPlay campaign, or design the FairPlay website - he is a journalist and former developer who happens to agree with the campaign's aims and strategies, and has offered it some assistance (including, obviously, allowing use of extracts from published articles). He is therefore a perfectly legitimate source for a quote.


This is an astonishing and offensive claim. Several successful and prominent developers and retailers have already given their support to the FairPlay campaign. It's difficult to see why they would do this if they thought the campaign secretly wanted to destroy the games industry. The games industry is currently putting itself out of business, as is demonstrated by the huge losses and redundancies posted by all but a handful of games companies. Over 70 development companies have closed down already this year. FairPlay wants to save the games industry, not destroy it. The campaign does NOT propose that people stop buying games, or even that they buy any fewer games - merely that they postpone purchases for a single week in order to send the industry a message that we're tired of rip-off prices.


Of course we can't prove that. You can only prove or disprove it by trying it out. But all the existing evidence strongly supports the belief that slashing game prices brings an overall increase in games industry revenue and profits. Don't just take our word for it, though - listen to the industry's trade body ELSPA. At the start of 2001, game sales shot up as consumers bought cheaper games (due, in part, to substantially discounted clearance stock). The industry's total revenue rose by over 5%. ELSPA's explanation? "The increase in sales revenue... is due to a significant fall in the price of discs and cartridges". Lower prices mean higher sales and, crucially, MORE money coming into the industry overall.



FairPlay is happy to publicly debate the issues of this campaign with the games industry at any time and in any manner the industry chooses. But the industry's cunning strategy seems to be "If we stick our heads in the sand long enough, maybe they'll go away." If there's such a strong case for games staying expensive, why is the industry so afraid to let the public hear it?
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