PC game developer has radical message: ignore the pirates

[w1z4rd]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/pos...r-has-radical-message-ignore-the-pirates.html

wraith808 points out a story about remarks made by the CEO of software and game development company Stardock about sales in the PC game industry. His suggestion to other developers is simple: ignore the software pirates. From Ars Technica: "'So here is the deal: When you develop for a market, you don't go by the user base. You go by the potential customer base. That's what most software companies do. They base what they want to create on the size of the market they're developing for,' Wardell writes on his blog. 'But not PC game developers.' Don't let people who aren't your audience control the titles you make, and ignore piracy. This is much like Trent Reznor's strategy, although the execution is different. Instead of worrying about pirates, just leave the content out in the open. The market Reznor plays to will still buy the music; he's simply stopped worrying about the pirates. He came to the same conclusion: they weren't customers, they might never be customers, so spending money to try to stop them serves no purpose."

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Unless the product is next to free it won't make sense as pirates will always pirate and sell something to get money.

Ever heard of a pirated copy of Linux? And a pirated copy of Windows? Exactly.

 

[antowan]

I agree. Just because somebody copies music or software doesn't mean the person who pirated it would have bought the product had he or she not been able to do so.

There is no way some (in my opinion most) pirates would have the money to buy the monetary worth of their MP3 collections. It would run in the hundreds of thousands of Rands in some (IMO most) instances.

The ease of piracy also makes it easier for folks to keep music they would also not ordinarily be interested in or known about. I would not be surprised if this trend opened up awareness for some artists who would in a piracy free environment in all likelihood not have had such wide exposure. I have found some interesting new music in mp3 collections of friends...