Today we examine one of the various ways that content producers can protect themselves during the content production stage from piracy.

One key component is that only a limited number of employees should have access to the products in development. This should not aim to limit collaborative design work; instead it should ensure that only the people needed on the project are involved in the development chain. Too often leaks occur because someone outside the necessary development chain spreads the products to unauthorized users. This occurred during the development of Doom 3 when a non ID Software employee at a graphics card company pirated a pre-release version of the game. The game which had been worked under a fairly large veil of secrecy now became available for both consumers and competitors to try out. The key lesson is to ensure that your internal team is kept to a minimum needed for development and innovation, but also remains manageable. A manageable team helps make content easier to keep track of and protect from being stolen or leaked. Accidental leaks have led to the pirating of many products. A recent example was the downloadable content for the game Dragon Age Origins entitled “Return to Ostagar” was accidentally left on a file server accessible to the public. This led to the product being pirated while the retail version was still being tested (because of a last second software bug that was discovered) and the loss of a large amount of potential revenue. Harsh lessons such as the two examples above demonstrate the need for smaller more manageable teams in content production, balanced with the design and innovation needs