BioWare's Answer To PC Piracy: DLC, Multiplayer, Loyal Fans

Piracy continues to hurt PC gaming, and no one has a clear answer to the problem.

Development studio Crytek has proposed abandoning PC-exclusive game releases. BioWare, however, is less radical. They're looking at downloadable content, access to multiplayer and -- here's a new one -- simply encouraging consumer loyalty.

"We're doing a lot of post-release downloadable content on all of our PC titles going forward," said BioWare co-CEO Ray Muzyka to me last week. "We think it's a good thing to encourage players to make them want to buy a PC title. That's ultimately the best, most successful path to prevent piracy -- to have players that want your games, want to believe in them and think they're high-quality and realize they're going to get a lot of value out of them as platforms for long time afterwards."

Muzyka said "Dragon Age" -- to be revealed tomorrow -- will join "Mass Effect" as a BioWare game supported long after launch with new content.

It won't be long before we find out how BioWare's hypothesis pans out.