Video Game Developer Talks To Pirates: Realizes He Can Compete With Free

from the shocking dept

Slashdot points us to an interesting story of a video game developer in the UK, Positech Games, who put up a blog post recently, asking people who "pirated" the company's software to explain why they did it. They did... in droves. Now there's a new post up discussing both the results and how the company is responding. While the guy sounds surprised about the results, they don't really seem all that shocking: people hate, hate, hate DRM of any kind (which should serve as a counter to the guy who showed up here last week insisting that DRM is here to stay). That was the thing they were most vehement about. After that, they were upset about the high price of games and the short demos that were offered that weren't representative of the game.

The good news is that the company is responding. It's swearing off DRM completely, reducing prices on some games and promising better demos. It's also exploring ways to make it more convenient to buy to avoid any "hassles" that users have in buying. It's nice to see someone realize that, rather than freaking out and trying to sue everyone, the proper response to "piracy" is to figure out how to better compete with it by decreasing inconveniences and giving people a reason to buy rather than pirate. So far, it appears that Positech is focusing mostly on that first issue (decreasing the annoyances). Hopefully it takes the second step also, giving people additional reasons to buy rather than pirate.

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