James's Weblog

Apparently some software developers think it’s a good anti-piracy measure to sabotage a user’s computer. There’s one scheme that makes pirated games buggier, and there are some programs that delete your data if pirated.

That’s just retarded.

• You can’t lose something you never had. Anti-piracy advocates always love to claim that the software industry loses billions of dollars each year to piracy. Did developers actually lose money? Did nasty pirates break into their bank accounts and withdraw all their cash? The only thing that companies can claim to lose are potential sales. Do they really believe that every pirate would have purchased their software if it were uncrackable?

  (Or maybe what the advocates really mean is that the software industry wastes oodles of money each year developing new and ultimately futile anti-piracy schemes. That I’d believe.)

• Who says there’s no such thing as bad publicity? If you want your software to act buggy if it thinks it’s pirated, go ahead, but don’t expect word-of-mouth reviews to be positive. If anything, the presence of bugs, intentional or not, will make people less likely to give you money. Will people be able to distinguish real bugs from the deliberate copy-prevention bugs? Will people think your game is fun if its physics are amiss and their bullets keep missing?

  And if you destroy people’s data, forget it. You’ve just guaranteed that you never, ever will see a dime from them or from anyone within complaining distance. Congratulations, you’ve alienated potential customers.

• Free advertising is better than bad publicity. To some degree, piracy can help software companies. Piracy can help build name recognition. It can lead to de facto standards. Would Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office be as widespread if users didn’t copy them from their workplaces? Piracy levels the cost of Windows down to $0, and at that price, it’s hard for Windows not to outcompete Linux. Microsoft doesn’t gain money directly from this, but it does gain market- and mind-share. As other examples, look at Adobe Photoshop, 3DS Max, and Maya.

  Even if you could make your software uncrackable, are your competitors’ products uncrackable too? Do you really want to drive your users—paying or not—to them?

  Software developers should be happy that people are using their products at all.

In the end, I think the best defense is a strong offense. The best anti-piracy measure is to make a good product that’s worth buying. People take pride in doing things that are worthwhile. (And for goodness’ sake, make sure your product is easy to buy!)