A pirating gamer isn't some dirty scum that you disrespect. They are customers. They tell their friends. They're ordinary people. Some games have 80% of their installs due to piracy.
If you can convince even a small percentage of these customers to pay, you win big. Especially in the game of software development.
"A pirating gamer isn't some dirty scum that you disrespect. They are customers. They tell their friends. They're ordinary people. Some games have 80% of their installs due to piracy.
If you can convince even a small percentage of these customers to pay, you win big. Especially in the game of software development."
It's human nature. If someone can get something for free, most will. People don't like parting with their money. This is why you can't make a business out of donation-ware.
However, it's a problem when the torrent and other illegal sites get keywords in the major search engines for legitimate businesses. Many users will go to those sites first and not end up purchasing the legitimate version. You can't tell me that this doesn't effect sales (The actual amount of sales is up for debate).
There also aren't any real stats on how many people that download illegal software actually end up purchasing something from that company in the future.
In my experience, the only reason these people actually purchase software is because the cracks are too difficult to obtain/too much of a pain in the ass or the company they are working for requires it.
Eventually, I think most software will eventually become services. This way, there is no code to share.
It seems that every few years, the reasons why people decide it is their right to other people's work changes (and it keeps moving to more and more industries).
"If someone can get something for free, most will."
I think you also forget that games are usually not essential for survival. So it is not just a choice between pirate it or buy it, people can also just ignore it. That quite changes the subjective value, and in turn you better make people like you. They will probably buy bread from a baker they hate if it is the only baker in town, but why should they buy games from somebody they hate?
Randy Mulholland of the webcomic Something Positive quit his job when he received in a month donations that exceeded his yearly salary.
Most webcomics that are 'full time jobs' for the artist also sell t-shirts, taking them a slight step outside of 'pure' donationware, but including these artists, the numbers of successful donationware vendors go up.
"Randy Mulholland of the webcomic Something Positive quit his job when he received in a month donations that exceeded his yearly salary."
This is nice for now, but will this continue in the long-term? I know nothing is definite, even when you sell a product, but I just don't see pure donationware working in the long-term (without some other way of supplementing income).
If you can convince even a small percentage of these customers to pay, you win big. Especially in the game of software development.