jimhsu
join:2001-06-26
Sugar Land, TX
4 edits | reply to Time
Re: lost revinew By far the most effective way to prevent piracy, IMO, is by making the non-pirated product superior to the pirated one. And the most effective way to do this? Implement a community that all players, whether single or multi-player, want to participate in. Not the "EA social community" which largely consists of Facebook spam, obtrusive promotions to other games, and celebrity appearances, but a genuine, non-commercial (as much as possible) endeavor. Just to name some examples: Battle.net, the Garry's Mod community, Supreme Commander's modding community, etc etc. Let the community (and associated user contributions, modding support, patches, expansions) reside behind online access validation. In turn, strip all that validation from the game itself. Bingo, pirates now have an inferior product that they can't rectify by "releasing cracks" or all that other business. And would be users that download the (totally working) pirated copy play, but then realize all the stuff that they're missing, giving even more incentive to buy the actual game.
The only con, of course, is dealing with idiots posting in forums with "HELP I PIRATED (insert your game), WHY CAN'T I PLAY MOD X?" But that can be entertaining, at times. Bonus points if they get banned 5 minutes later.
People are simply following the laws of economics, after all. |
