Piracy Isn't Theft – A Challenge for Japanese Game Developers

the problem of illegal copying of games, also known as "piracy", and continues to plague the game industry, causing severe damage. According to an investigation by the supplier Computer Music Association, between 2004 and 2009, only claims arising from domestic piracy DS and PSP games amounted to a total of 954 billion yen, including damage to the world this figure rises to ¥ 3,186,000,000,000th

domestic Japanese game companies have started looking towards more and more high-level anti-piracy sustava.Nintendo 3DS, released this year, is extremely complex anti-piracy system is implemented. However, even with a copy of the guard in place, there will always be people who will find ways to remove this. Unfortunately, the troubled game of tag between those who create pirate copies of games and those who have pirate copies of their games created and continues to rage on.

However, some smaller game studios in the West - most of which are indie developers - do not see piracy as theft because nobody loses their copy through piracy, so they take the opposite route and intentionally publishing games without protection a copy. And so they suffer bootlegging rate to 95%, such as well-received play, and yet it moves. (Rate of 95% basically means that for every game sold there are 22 cracked version being played.) But why are indie developers do not curse of piracy? What reasons are offered DRM-free - and therefore piratable - Games answer to this question lies in the different understanding and approach to piracy.

Piracy does not necessarily mean loss of income

common industry assumption is that the developers have lost most of its revenue through piracy of games. However, since there is no simple conversion 1:01, not every game is cracked means lost sales. This would apply if the pirates would have bought every single games that are downloaded. But the reality is that pirates took over the program than they could ever afford if you were to buy them all. This means that the average pirate does not behave like the average consumer, and to download the game would not have bought in the first place. So most of the game is downloaded from the expected target users, and piracy is one of those customers is much lower. Until now, this is a shared understanding among indie developers.

In some cases, piracy may even have the opposite effect: increase sales, so long as the player community appreciates the game and spread the word about it. For example, if thousands of users at the end of pirated games, but hundreds buy it, as a result of hearing about it from his pirate friend, a programmer might find yourself making more money than you would without a pirated copy of it at all. But it all depends on one thing: the game sadržaj.Prosječna player bought the game about three years and play them for a long vremena.Razumijevanje to pirate no intention to buy the game mainly comes from the lack of fun in the game or bad game porting between different platforms. So instead of putting effort into the development of copy protection, indie developers to focus on improving the game experience and the fun factor, and the creation of games that the average player would want to buy.