Item — HN Reader

The one thing that really doesn't resonate with me is the undertone of bitterness.

First, I bought Punch Club on steam, and enjoyed it.

But I think the assumption that's easy to make is "Look at all the money I would have made if people didn't pirate." It's not that simple. Some people who pirate would never have bought it in the first place.

1 comments

> undertone of bitterness.

I didn't read this at all.

Just the facts and thoughts on solutions.

I think it depends on what angle you're looking at it from. The article does kind of read as: "hey look, we could have made 5x more sales if we'd been smarter about piracy". Not everyone agrees with this, and I think this argument is unhealthy in general.

I'd wager that if you made piracy completely impossible, most of the current pirates - who tend to hail from regions where the international pricing is prohibitive - would simply opt out of buying it. This may even have a negative effect by limiting the viral advertising indie hits like Punch Club have ("hey, what game is that on your phone", etc).

This is not to defend the act of piracy as such, but I think if someone wants to have a productive "facts and solutions" discussion, they should frame it differently.

This is an idiotic wager. People are only pirating because they want to play the game. Of course some percentage them would of bought it if they couldn't easily get it for free. The marketing effect doesn't make up for thousands of lost sales. Piracy has completely wiped out music sales, the only reason it hasn't wiped out games yet is because of anti-piracy measures.