<story><title>Piracy is not theft, Lost sales don&apos;t exist, says Minecraft creator (2011)</title><url>https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-is-theft-ridiculous-lost-sales-they-dont-exist-says-minecraft-creator-110303/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yarcob</author><text>I make client side Mac app with trivial copy protection and unlimited free trial, and people still pay for licenses.&lt;p&gt;My app is practically almost free except for a nag dialog, and I still make a living from it.&lt;p&gt;Piracy may matter to big companies that have lots of employees who try to extract every possible cent from their audience.&lt;p&gt;If you just want to make a living from your software, you should not waste time worrying about piracy.</text></item><item><author>mindcandy</author><text>As a game developer, there are two conflicting stories I have heard about game piracy for multiple decades.&lt;p&gt;From the consumers: Piracy doesn&amp;#x27;t matter.  Pirates were never going to buy anyway.&lt;p&gt;From the AAA producers:  &amp;gt;50% of lifetime revenue for a game is made in the first 3-6 months after release.  During that time, they sit and wait in dread for &amp;quot;Crack Day&amp;quot;.  The exact day the DRM crack is released, revenue permanently drops hard.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve read similar stories from small non-game desktop ISVs here on Hacker News.  That they can clearly see on their revenue graphs the release dates of updates that contain DRM changes.  Of course, most people on HN work on web-based software.  Web based software has pretty much completely overtaken desktop software because of it&amp;#x27;s many advantages --such as being impossible to pirate.&lt;p&gt;I wonder how many people here have actually worked on a pirate-able product?  Phone apps are technically pirate-able.  But, like console games, pirating is such an inconvenience (compared to desktop piracy) that it is relatively rarely done.  But, even on phones, most of the revenue is to unlock server-based features.  I can say from experience that app hacking for client-side features in phone apps happens quite a lot despite the inconvenience.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, Minecraft was a story of someone in exactly the opposite situation from a AAA developer.  Having zero reputation and zero marketing budget, it made complete sense for Notch to give away his game for free at first and slowly increase the price as consumer awareness and confidence grew.  At all points Minecraft was the Indie Dream Story of starting as a nobody and gradually growing an audience who hands you money out of respect for your product rather than as a requirement of transacting with you to attain it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TheOtherHobbes</author><text>Conversely I know a number of music software (VST) developers who simply &lt;i&gt;gave up&lt;/i&gt; because piracy nuked their income.&lt;p&gt;There are specific niches and specific relationship models where piracy won&amp;#x27;t do this. But there are far more where it will.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately it comes down to the ridiculous notion that because cost-of-copying is effectively zero then so is product value.&lt;p&gt;This handily ignores the hours&amp;#x2F;days&amp;#x2F;weeks&amp;#x2F;years of development effort that can go into a product, and the use value - which may translate into income - that it offers users.&lt;p&gt;As a creator you certainly have the option to decide on the relationship model you want with your customers. &lt;i&gt;Piracy removes that right.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Piracy is not theft, Lost sales don&apos;t exist, says Minecraft creator (2011)</title><url>https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-is-theft-ridiculous-lost-sales-they-dont-exist-says-minecraft-creator-110303/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yarcob</author><text>I make client side Mac app with trivial copy protection and unlimited free trial, and people still pay for licenses.&lt;p&gt;My app is practically almost free except for a nag dialog, and I still make a living from it.&lt;p&gt;Piracy may matter to big companies that have lots of employees who try to extract every possible cent from their audience.&lt;p&gt;If you just want to make a living from your software, you should not waste time worrying about piracy.</text></item><item><author>mindcandy</author><text>As a game developer, there are two conflicting stories I have heard about game piracy for multiple decades.&lt;p&gt;From the consumers: Piracy doesn&amp;#x27;t matter.  Pirates were never going to buy anyway.&lt;p&gt;From the AAA producers:  &amp;gt;50% of lifetime revenue for a game is made in the first 3-6 months after release.  During that time, they sit and wait in dread for &amp;quot;Crack Day&amp;quot;.  The exact day the DRM crack is released, revenue permanently drops hard.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve read similar stories from small non-game desktop ISVs here on Hacker News.  That they can clearly see on their revenue graphs the release dates of updates that contain DRM changes.  Of course, most people on HN work on web-based software.  Web based software has pretty much completely overtaken desktop software because of it&amp;#x27;s many advantages --such as being impossible to pirate.&lt;p&gt;I wonder how many people here have actually worked on a pirate-able product?  Phone apps are technically pirate-able.  But, like console games, pirating is such an inconvenience (compared to desktop piracy) that it is relatively rarely done.  But, even on phones, most of the revenue is to unlock server-based features.  I can say from experience that app hacking for client-side features in phone apps happens quite a lot despite the inconvenience.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, Minecraft was a story of someone in exactly the opposite situation from a AAA developer.  Having zero reputation and zero marketing budget, it made complete sense for Notch to give away his game for free at first and slowly increase the price as consumer awareness and confidence grew.  At all points Minecraft was the Indie Dream Story of starting as a nobody and gradually growing an audience who hands you money out of respect for your product rather than as a requirement of transacting with you to attain it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>finiteseries</author><text>macOS software automatically excludes &amp;gt;95% of the human population from its user base, and the remaining bit is  incredibly wealthy and used to the macOS tradition of high quality botique software for a price.&lt;p&gt;The PC and Android gaming markets are slightly different beasts.</text></comment>