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Friendly Pirate Challenges Minecraft Creator To Quake 3 Battle
from the what-goes-around-comes-around dept
Minecraft developer Markus Persson, better known as notch, made headlines last year when he proposed to settle a trademark dispute with Bethesda with a Quake 3 match. Now, in yet another example of how being open, human and awesome is the best response to "problems" like piracy, Ashley Sheridan points us to two recent tweets on notch's feed:
Notch is well known for not worrying too much about piracy or believing in "lost sales", and the staggering success of Minecraft speaks for the wisdom of that attitude. It also goes to show that, despite what critics claim, accepting the reality of piracy doesn't mean letting any and all activity run rampant. When you threaten people, or send lawyers after them, they might get scared but they will definitely get defensive (and not like you very much). But by reaching out to the guy, notch had a friendly exchange and the pirate site came down (plus what I assume will be an epic Quake battle on q3dm17, which I gather from Google is some sort of badass space platform map). Are there other pirates who would have ignored notch or set up shop elsewhere? Probably—but they will always find a way to do what they do. Indeed, some people will always be jerks/idiots/dumb kids too, as some of the reactions to the disappearance of the site showed—which notch recognizes, so he took it in stride:
It sucks that some people are like that, but attacking them sure isn't going to change them. It's a waste of time, and can cause people to threaten and drive away pirates like the one with whom notch reached a friendly resolution.
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Sugar and sh*t
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Response to: monkyyy on Apr 12th, 2012 @ 1:55pm
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"Some people have been threatening to kill me over this. Fire up Quake and hop onto *insert server address here* and let's see what you've got."
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Guess what? Now I coughed up $20 and have a legit copy, as does my wife and we've gifted Minecraft to 2 other friends.
Oh, plus we've got the 10 cent phone version. Not because of my fear of getting fined, but because I realized it was a really good game and deserved my support!
Due to notch's relaxed attitude and acceptance of piracy (and the awesomeness of the game), at least in this case he hasn't gotten 1 lost sale due to piracy, but gained 4 sales because of it.
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The fact that it's such an awesome game yet still gains so much support from the fans, monetary and otherwise, is a testament to how much Mojang has done right.
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The guy made something that people WANTED, nothing to do with piracy. Offer me something new and interesting, I'm willing to put some cash forward. Offer me remakes and sequels? I'll embrace piracy because the product is not worth the money.
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Initially notch was just happy to have people exposed to his game - and some of people who pirated then went on to be customers.
I almost guarentee that if he was pissy about the whole thing, the percentage of pirates-to-customers would have been lower.
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But aided by? Most definitely. He's focused on turning pirates into customers for a long time.
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WHO WON!!!!
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