From the very beginning of software development, piracy has been a huge issue for independent software developers. While the rampant spread of lawsuits, virii and malware have helped curb casual piracy on the PC, handhelds currently are mostly virus-free.
Nevertheless, a PC game developer called PosiTech performed a little survey to find out what motivates pirates: surprisingly, very few of them are politically motivated (freedom of information/communism/cleptomania/whatever). The biggest topics were high prices, repetitive gameplay, bad tech support, DRM and lack of digital distribution (aka having to go to the store).
Find our more about why pirates pirate stuff and take a stab at the conclusions our developer drew – hit the URL below:
http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html
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My bet is that 90% of them would not buy the game for 1/10 of the price with an SLA on support!
I must admit that I use some pirated software, the reason behind it is that I simply cant afford it, I am a college student, I don’t earn huge amounts of money (not yet :p ), sometimes I want to do certain things like use photoshop or play certain old game (CS) and I have two options, not to use them or simply pirate them.
Sometimes it is a no brainier, I just go to the bay and presto, however if I can afford something that I really use and has proven to be a good product I just try buy it!
Examples of this are windows and office, my university provided me with a sweet offer, office + XP for about 60 buck, I was running a pirated version of XP (volume license, ran great) however… it was pirated…
If I had the opportunity to buy photoshop for 30 bucks it would be a no brainer, I have used it for years and I really like what adobe has done with that product, however at its current price point… I mean… my computer is cheaper than a license.
Then there are the small developers like you guys
and almost every other palm dev, I really appreciate your work but sometimes your apps are simply too expensive, a sudoku game for palm costs 9 fng dollars!! I know its “hard” to code a a sudoku game but… come on… on other platforms (cough, iphone, cough), you can get a opengl accelerated racing game for the same price and the overall process of buying it is fairly painless (yes, I bought cromagrally although it hurt my pocket but only after trying it) on the other hand I’ve encouraged other people to buy powerdigi which is indeed a good product and at reasonable price, damn! it really works well!.
I’m a developer and I also use pirate software. For many reasons:
-I develope a software that someone paided me to do than after that I offer my software to everyone else if I released it as open source. What I’m tring to say, we developers should be paided by the work not for something we developed years ago and still earn money on it. Its like music, when a singer does a concert he is earning his money but when he sells cds it should be free or at a low cost because its not giving them work to sell it out. Ok they have a cost but if they put there music online, wheres the cost? They live like lords without doing much and theres people working more than them and doing more important work for the world and not earning as much.
-another reasons is the platform, I love palm but any day i may have to switch to another Operating system and all the software I have bought where does it go?
-not all contries earn the same money, well I leave we have the lowest earning in europe and how can we paid the same as other contries earning much more doing the same?
Its not a perfect world and thats why software isn’t perfect either.
“virii and malware have helped curb casual piracy on the PC”
Do you have evidence to support this?
Hi Donald,
yes.
In Austria, the GEMA hired companies that spread defective downloads and files into file sharing systems with great success…
All the best
Tam Hanna
Tam,
Interested… do ou have a link?
Ryan
Hi,
not at the hand.
But it was covered extensively in the German c’t magazine…
All the best
Tam Hanna