Indie Company Strikes Back at Piracy

A lot of people have this idea that piracy occurs as some sort of quality-control method. Like if the product was good enough people wouldn't pirate it. Or if there was a demo available they wouldn't do it. Or if they could afford it then they wouldn't do it.

The truth is a lot of the time if you give people the option of paying or not paying, they'll choose not to pay. Even if that hurts the developer, even if it's technically illegal. If the option of piracy is there, they'll take it - even if they would have paid if the option WASN'T there.

We (DragonByte Tech) suffer a lot from piracy despite going out of our way to put out free versions of our software that contain 70-80% of the features of the paid "pro" versions. We also have lots of pirates still visiting our site to try to get free support and use more of our time for products they stole from us. When confronted about 5% of these pirates will proceed to purchase a license for the software.

If that 5% actually purchased our products without us having to find them and ask them to please stop stealing our content, our sales would more or less double. That's why so much effort goes into DRM and anti-piracy.

That being said we don't put DRM in our products - if it's something that would inconvenience the customer then it's not worth it in my opinion. Just thought I'd pop in here and say that even when companies do everything "right" when it comes to piracy (No DRM, very fully featured free versions available, no heavy handed lawsuit tactics) people still pirate it just as much.

People don't realise that just by downloading things they are supporting piracy and hurting the companies - if someone pirates a product and no one downloads it, they won't bother pirating the next one. The more people who download it, the more likely they are to pirate it and the more places they will release it to making it more and more likely people will find and take the pirated version instead of paying the developers. It's really quite depressing, especially for smaller companies.
 
Kim said:
Just bought the game to support them.
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I'll read up on the game if it's any good, or sounds like my cup of tea I'll make the purchase. Quite a smart move to make though if you think about it and get the public though to give up 5ml of "sympathy purchasing". If the game feels like garbage though I won't be purchasing it. :)

I'm surprised they didn't throw in a byline "we haven't been able to afford to eat since Wednesday". :eek: Shame on them, :P

:laugh: I'll probably purchase the game to support them.
 
DragonByte Tech said:
A lot of people have this idea that piracy occurs as some sort of quality-control method. Like if the product was good enough people wouldn't pirate it. Or if there was a demo available they wouldn't do it. Or if they could afford it then they wouldn't do it.

The truth is a lot of the time if you give people the option of paying or not paying, they'll choose not to pay. Even if that hurts the developer, even if it's technically illegal. If the option of piracy is there, they'll take it - even if they would have paid if the option WASN'T there.
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There will always be people who will simply try to get everything for free. Just like there will always be thieves who try to steal your wallet. However, I think the majority of the pirating gets done because the product either isn't worth buying, is too expensive for what it does, or is simply the best way to get it, because other methods are inferior to it. And honestly, in a lot of cases I think that if there was no pirated version of something available, a lot of them still wouldn't buy it.

A DRM available in a game called Red Alert 3 was that you could only install it up to 5 times. You could gain an extra install by disabling it on a computer, rendering it unavailable on that computer. However, that doesn't cover the fact that this only works if you can get into the game to deactivate it. If you can't, the install is lost forever. (think pc crashes, bios issues, virusses). Pirate it? Same game, no restrictions.

They also released an expansion pack, digital download only. If you bought it, you could download it for x time (a year, I think) as often as you want, and never after. You could expand this to be longer (3 years I think) but you had to pay extra. If you pirate it, you can download it at a faster speed (the server couldn't handle the many people who tried to get the game), download it again if something ever happens and you're sure to be able to play it.

I bought both of these games legally, but it does raise the question on why they insist on giving me an inferior product compared to the pirated version. Even if I never need the 5 installs, or never need to download the game after a year (or 3), it's still something I'll keep on remembering.

Edit: Just for clarification, I'm not in favor of piracy in any form, I simply think that it's not as easy as "without piracy, everyone would buy it legally" and I strongly feel part of the problem lies with how sales / DRM / etc get managed.
 
Sador said:
There will always be people who will simply try to get everything for free. Just like there will always be thieves who try to steal your wallet. However, I think the majority of the pirating gets done because the product either isn't worth buying, is too expensive for what it does, or is simply the best way to get it, because other methods are inferior to it. And honestly, in a lot of cases I think that if there was no pirated version of something available, a lot of them still wouldn't buy it.

A DRM available in a game called Red Alert 3 was that you could only install it up to 5 times. You could gain an extra install by disabling it on a computer, rendering it unavailable on that computer. However, that doesn't cover the fact that this only works if you can get into the game to deactivate it. If you can't, the install is lost forever. (think pc crashes, bios issues, virusses). Pirate it? Same game, no restrictions.

They also released an expansion pack, digital download only. If you bought it, you could download it for x time (a year, I think) as often as you want, and never after. You could expand this to be longer (3 years I think) but you had to pay extra. If you pirate it, you can download it at a faster speed (the server couldn't handle the many people who tried to get the game), download it again if something ever happens and you're sure to be able to play it.

I bought both of these games legally, but it does raise the question on why they insist on giving me an inferior product compared to the pirated version. Even if I never need the 5 installs, or never need to download the game after a year (or 3), it's still something I'll keep on remembering.

Edit: Just for clarification, I'm not in favor of piracy in any form, I simply think that it's not as easy as "without piracy, everyone would buy it legally" and I strongly feel part of the problem lies with how sales / DRM / etc get managed.
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Just to clarify, I wasn't suggesting everyone would buy it - I was saying my own experience/research suggests that about 5% of people who pirate would buy if a pirated version wasn't available. Most software/games get pirated at a rate of between 10 pirated copies to one sold, or 20 pirated copies to one sold meaning they could DOUBLE their sales if they can make the game impossible to pirate. That's what leads to draconian DRM measures basically. People who CAN and WOULD buy the game instead choosing to pirate it.

There are companies out there who project ridiculous and inflated views of the losses piracy places on them, but the truth is the real numbers are perfectly damaging to smaller developers especially without needing any padding - and that's without getting into the people who make fraudulent transactions to get the products using stolen credit cards/PayPal accounts which then get reversed, costing a free. People might not realize it but the majority of the time some "warez" site puts up a piece of online software, that's how they got it.

Truth is that if someone doesn't think something is worth the money they have the option of *not buying it*. That's consumer choice. Think it costs too much? Vote with your wallet, don't buy or use the product. How many pirates steal a product then donate however much THEY think it was worth to the creator? Pretty much zero, making a lie of their arguments about value.
 
DragonByte Tech said:
Truth is that if someone doesn't think something is worth the money they have the option of *not buying it*. That's consumer choice. Think it costs too much? Vote with your wallet, don't buy or use the product. How many pirates steal a product then donate however much THEY think it was worth to the creator? Pretty much zero, making a lie of their arguments about value.
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Actually, this is a rather interesting concept that I hadn't really thought about. Not really viable for the big corporations (which what I was mainly talking about, I think pirating from small developers is really rather wrong) but certainly something interesting to think about. Thanks for the insight.
 
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