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Surely lost sales must exist... Markus is obvioously doing ok, and pirated copies of his game are aiding virality, but still... Software, movies and music are now perceived as free. Which is one reason why many developers are now moving to closed platforms such as Apple's iOs where they are guaranteed payment for installations. That said, I can see the logic behind "going with the flow" when it comes to piracy, especially when cumbersome anti-piracy measures usually only harm legit, legal owners. (E.g. its more convenient to crack Digidesigns ProTools audio editing software and be able to run it on my laptop without any fuss, than to have to insert my legal USB dongle every time I boot the software). I think anti-piracy measures will work if they are baked into a product from day one. And I don't mean contrived, un-user-oriented measures, I mean doing it iOs-style or cloud-style. In iOs the users love the App Store - its an advantage, not a hindrance. And its the same with Cloud-based or hosted software. Its a selling point - its part of the offering. Me and some friends have a SaS app that we changed from free to a minimal monthly subscription. Logically, we saw a decline in sign-ups and follow-through by new users, but this was worth it cos we now make some money from the service. If the software had, instead, been a download, then my guess it that we never would have been able to profit of the small user-base that we have. The free version would be out there, and even though it took off we would never have seen any profits. And then we might not be motivated to cary on creating cool stuff. |