Opinion: Game Developers Should Love Their Pirates
In this Gamasutra opinion piece, London-based lead designer and producer Tadhg Kelly tackles the issue of making money in the face of piracy, offering tips and examples to help developers earn what they deserve, without the need for restrictive DRM.
TK: I came across this video from Extra Credits yesterday. It's about piracy, and concludes that although DRM (digital rights management) never works, players should be good folks and pay for their games.
Their argument is witty, but it's not new. It paints file sharing as stealing money from developers' mouths, and so has an either/or perspective. Either we get paid or we go out of business. Either we see sales or we're bust.
They're seeing their business as a content business, where the content is the thing that has value. This is not the case. The games industry, like all the arts, is about finding and interacting with fans, so that value comes from a relationship. As we slowly move into the post-platform, single-franchise future, understanding the difference between the two is crucial.
