I have a lot of difficulty believing that people wouldn't pay to play the games if piracy became impossible ... One of the main reasons for this is that I have had several friends who rarely paid for games who bought World of Warcraft and/or other MMO games because it was impossible to steal those games.
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At the same time, I do think there is an argument for developers changing their business model in order to limit piracy. One of my thoughts is for developers to return to a shareware/episodic content business model where you give away the initial episode of a game with limited or no online gameplay and then you sell additional episodes and/or gameplay modes for a small fee. Personally, I don't have a problem with this model until developers start to gouge people with excessive fees ... for example, $5 to $10 to get a multiplayer mode with 5 to 10 maps is acceptable whereas $5 for horse armor is insane.
