Galaki on 17 September 2010
Indie Game Developer Points Out That It's Better To Give People Reasons To Buy Than Worry About 'Piracy'from the figuring-things-out deptJay was the first of a whole bunch of you to submit the blog post by indie game developer Markus Persson that's been making the rounds, where he talks about why it's better to give people a reason to buy than to worry about "piracy": Instead of just relying on guilt tripping pirates into buying, or wasting time and money trying to stop them, I can offer online-only services that actually add to the game experience. Online level saving, centralized skins, friends lists and secure name verification for multiplayer. None of these features can be accessed by people with pirated versions of the game, and hopefully they can be features that turn pirates from thieves into potential customers.He also notes that the impact of unauthorized copies is somewhat ambiguous: If someone pirates Minecraft instead of buying it, it means I've lost some "potential" revenue. Not actual revenue, as I can never go into debt by people pirating the game too much, but I might've made even more if that person had bought the game instead. But what if that person likes that game, talks about it to his or her friends, and then I manage to convince three of them to buy the game? I'd make three actual sales instead of blocking out the potentially missed sale of the original person which never cost me any money in the first case.In the end, he makes the same point we've tried to make here for years: worrying about and fighting unauthorized copies just doesn't seem to be nearly as productive an approach as focusing on ways to actually give people reasons to buy. He doesn't support "piracy," but suggests that it's happening, and there are much better ways of dealing with it than fighting it. Nice to see more people recognizing this key point. |
