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by Pedro_Magna 1255 days ago
Great book, already read it! I don't think GOG is very good for the developers, and not having DRM would also harm our business as we'd miss out on subscribers that pirate games and leave.

I appreciate your opinion on the value prop too. I'm curious though, is there anything you feel is missing out from these other stores that maybe we could do?
2 comments
gizmo 1255 days ago
You don't have to prematurely worry about losing subscribers when you're bottlenecked at getting new subscribers. Even if you have 10% monthly churn because of piracy that's fine because it means your service is good enough for gamers to sign up in the first place! The strategic (but not very nice) thing to do is to introduce DRM long after you've got traction. Right now, DRM is a solution for a problem you don't have.

Other than exclusives, I can't think of anything that would tempt me to join your platform.

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vernon99 1254 days ago
That’s a very good point very well put - I fully subscribe. At that stage the problem is players and catalogue - focus on those extremely hard, don’t misplace your limited efforts into solving a not yet existing issue.

Edit: typos

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motoxpro 1254 days ago
I always think thoughts like this miss that the value prop right now is for "People who want to play games". By not having DRM, you're getting more customers, but you're also expanding your TAM to include "People who want to pirate games."

The reason "add DRM later" is problematic is that you hit product market fit with the a lot of the second group, meaning they will be upset when you add it.

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lelanthran 1254 days ago
> I always think thoughts like this miss that the value prop right now is for "People who want to play games". By not having DRM, you're getting more customers, but you're also expanding your TAM to include "People who want to pirate games."

That's valid if the target market is "people who want to play games". It's not in this case, it's "people who want to play indie games", which is a different target. By removing DRM, it's expanded to include "people who want pirate indie games" which is a ridiculously tiny segment.

> The reason "add DRM later" is problematic is that you hit product market fit with the a lot of the second group, meaning they will be upset when you add it.

So? These are gamers we are talking about. Bugginess, poor quality and everything else that they claim upsets them still doesn't stop them from buying the game!

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lelanthran 1254 days ago
> I don't think GOG is very good for the developers,

I don't think that matters in the context of revenue for a business - if you want paying customers, then you have to offer people value for the money they hand over, which GOG does.

If you could distil the value you are offering to customers in just a few short sentences, what would those sentences be?

Anyway, good luck :-)

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