Piracy

[willevolve]

Does anybody know how piracy effects sales?

I have heard that the people who buy games don't normally pirate games, but considering a crack is available long enough it is sure to filter into temptation for those who would normally buy the game. Therefore effecting long term sales.

Does anybody have any advice on shutting down sites that host large amounts of cracks.

Thanks!

[soniCron]

Please search the forums (http://forums.indiegamer.com/search.php). There have been a number of conversations lately regarding this issue.

However, the data indicates that casual piracy (sharing with friends, co-workers, etc.) has a significant impact, while it is yet undetermined how hardcore piracy (filesharing and cracks) affects the bottom line.

[Thorbrian]

Does anybody know how piracy effects
sales?I don't think I know how piracy effects sales, but I have collected some data on how eliminating piracy affected downloadable game distribution. I posted details of the data here:
http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=9929&page=2

Here are some points about how I interpret the data:
1. It would be inconsistent with the data to say that killing cracks and keygens leads to significant increases in sales. Because it didn't for us.
2. The data indicated that killing cracks and keygens leads to immediate and significant decreases in the number of downloads.
3. It seems likely that eliminating digitial rights management exploits (things end users can figure out and do all by themselves to get free games) can cause signficant and immediate increases in sales (however it would still be consistent with the data to say that it doesn't increase sales, cause we changed multiple variables at once in that case)
4. The data indicated that eliminating DRM exploits caused immediate and significant decreases in the number of downloads.



I have heard that the people who buy games don't normally pirate gamesIf I were going to make statements of that form based on the data I have they would probably be:

There are a significant number of people who would pirate a game if they could do it simply and easily using just their own computer, would buy it if they couldn't.

Most people who are willing to pirate games with cracks and keygens would not even bother with a game if the cracks didn't work.

There have not been a significant number of people who are pirating games with cracks and keygens but would buy those games if they couldn't find a working crack.

[Backov]

I know that when my yacht is boarded at sea by AK-47 wielding savages who steal all my stuff, rape my women and leave me for dead on my burning lifeboat, I don't want to buy software for weeks afterward. So ya, it affects software sales a lot!

Copyright infringement however, not so much.

[ragdollsoft]

:D

Funny, didn't hear that one before :)