Game developer listens to pirates, and changes strategy

[Dalo Harkin]

We’ve heard plenty of game developers complaining about piracy recently, but it’s not often that you hear about a game developer actually listening to the pirates to find out why they pirate games. That’s what indie game developer Positech (developer of Democracy and Kudos) did, when its founder, Cliff Harris, publicly asked pirates to tell him why they pirated his games on his blog a few days ago. After being inundated with blog comments and emails, Positech has now responded, and has decided to change the way it works on a few key issues.

 

One of the interesting changes in strategy regards DRM, as Positech had underestimated just how much people hate it. ‘The extent to which DRM is turning away people who have no other complaints is possibly misunderstood,’ explains Harris, adding that: ‘If you wanted to change ONE thing to get more pirates to buy games, scrapping DRM is it.’

 

Harris says that he’s now ‘read enough otherwise honest people complain about DRM to see that its probably hurting more than it help's [sic].’ Positech has now removed DRM from its games that featured it, and says that it will ‘now use no DRM at all.’

 

Another common complaint was the short length of game demos, which didn’t give you enough of a feel for the game, which Positech also says it’s going to address. ‘I'll be making my demos much better, and longer, and will retrospectively change this when I get around to it for some of my older games,’ said Harris.

 

Harris also acknowledged that the pirates who had responded to his blog had ‘revealed a huge group of people who really appreciate genuinely good games,’ and says that he plans to put a lot of effort into making his future games as good as possible. ‘I get the impression,’ says Harris, ‘that if I make Kudos 2 not just lots better than the original, but hugely, overwhelmingly, massively better, well polished, designed and balanced, that a lot of would-be pirates will actually buy it.’

 

Of course, while it’s great to see an indie game developer listening to people’s complaints and realising how unpopular DRM is, it could be a long time before we see the larger game developers following suit. Has Positech made the right decision to listen to the pirates’ complaints? Would you be more likely to buy a game if it had a longer demo and no DRM? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.