231–240 of 297 posts
Make sure you have a plan for when that eventually happens. Some of those people can be converted to paying customers, but the rest can at least tell you where they got it.
Congratulations! Having cracked versions out there indicates that your software is both useful and notable, which is a point where many developers would love to arrive at, maybe, one day. As to what to do about it, there are two basic tracks, neither of which is incompatible with the other: 1. The legal route: notifying distribution sites that they're hosting content in violation of copyright law, requesting takedown…
I don't use any cracked software, but I sure did when I was a kid without money. And I was so grateful for it, especially all the DAW and music production stuff.
There is an utilitarian argument somewhere in there about free software.
Copyright owners also habe legitimate interests in their products and are afforded with different ways to gain value from a software product that is locally installed.
Also, something like a self-contained, "portable" linked binary that creates value without any dependency on any online service will always be trivial to copy but also maximally useful.
(Edit: languages that depend on an interpreter don't differ too much, I think)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Steam seems to have significantly reduced the market for pirated games. Streaming did that for movies for a while, until every single production company decided start their own.
Almost like Gabe Newell is right, piracy is first and foremost a service problem. There's some irony in things like Denuvo making games worse for legitimate users and creating new incentives to crack it, or players deferring purchases until it's either inevitably removed long after the launch window (where publishers are expecting the majority of purchases to happen).
You can beef up the protection or you can ignore the issue. Without knowing specifics of your software (language, platform, etc.) it's hard to advice on the protection scheme, but a simple option for compiled Windows binaries would be something like VMProtect (which is what Denuvo protection is based on). This will dramatically increase the amount of effort needed for a crack. On the flip side it may also increase th…
Indeed. To understand the motivation of these people see: https://successfulsoftware.net/2011/04/07/interview-with-a-c...
Code something that detects the tampering and either sends the info about it somewhere (that might not work if they just not allowed firewall out tho), then you might be able to send a letter to company (if that is company not just some random non-professional user). Probably illegal in EU tho.
Or just have it display delayed warning/info notice about software being illegal and where you can buy legal copy. Disabling software is probably pointless (if it stops it from working they will find way around), but just "using this is illegal and can get you in trouble, contact with us to buy a legal copy, we offer bulk discounts" migtht get you some
Congratulations! Having cracked versions out there indicates that your software is both useful and notable, which is a point where many developers would love to arrive at, maybe, one day. As to what to do about it, there are two basic tracks, neither of which is incompatible with the other: 1. The legal route: notifying distribution sites that they're hosting content in violation of copyright law, requesting takedown…
There is a third option which I'm surprised no one has mentioned so far: Ignore them. First, people or companies using the cracked version of your software were never going to buy it. These people do not pay for software, and nothing you do will convince them to pay for it. Secondly, whatever measures you put in place to combat the cracked versions will potentially have a negative impact on your actual paying users -…
Congratulations! Having cracked versions out there indicates that your software is both useful and notable, which is a point where many developers would love to arrive at, maybe, one day. As to what to do about it, there are two basic tracks, neither of which is incompatible with the other: 1. The legal route: notifying distribution sites that they're hosting content in violation of copyright law, requesting takedown…
There is a third option which I'm surprised no one has mentioned so far: Ignore them. First, people or companies using the cracked version of your software were never going to buy it. These people do not pay for software, and nothing you do will convince them to pay for it. Secondly, whatever measures you put in place to combat the cracked versions will potentially have a negative impact on your actual paying users -…
If there is no note whatsoever it's very easy to get to situation where user A starts to use it, pirates it, then just dumps it onto file share and tells others to use it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was working on video game cartridges, I discovered that one of my neighbors in my apartment building was a prolific pirate. I introduced myself and we had some fun chats. The Atari 800 cartridge address range could be populated with RAM, and cartridge images simply copied to RAM and run. Copy protection techniques usually involved figuring out sneaky ways to write to that address range (which would crash an im…
These days the companies won and modern game DRM often doesn’t get cracked for the first year if at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a videogame that got famous because it was pirated, it was a management game about setting up a gaming company. Turns out, the pirated copy had a special feature where the player would feel immense economic pressure from piracy, so a bunch of players asked how to win against this, it was pretty hard and really fun for people who knew what was going on. Point is, you could hide an Easter Egg for pirated vers…
The obvious risk with that approach is that if people do not realize that this applies only to the pirated version, you're risking bad reviews, which can cost you actual sales (you don't win anything just by keeping people from pirating your software, you only win if someone who is willing to buy but prefers to pirate chooses to buy instead). I believe there were several games that had a reputation for being horribly…
Any time I've seen game devs try it the comments under those people were "you fix it by buying the game pirate".
And platforms like Steam allow you to review only bought games anyway
Ignore all the “piracy is actually wonderful” posts. Depending on your industry and product, you can lose a great deal of revenue from piracy. Circumventing licensing restrictions, “sharing” keys, customers pretending to be other customers to avoid paying support agreements, I’ve seen it all. Some people view avoiding paying you as a legitimate way to do business, and will happily do so if they can get away with it.…
> you can lose a great deal of revenue from piracy. This argument falls apart when you recognize that people that pirate weren't going to pay anyways. Piracy isn't a lost sale. A lack of piracy doesn't mean more sales, it means fewer users. Yes, I pirated Photoshop (Who didn't?), but if I couldn't pirate Photoshop, the alternative was never going to be buying Photoshop, it would be using GIMP or something else.
There is a spectrum. Some people will never pay (e.g. teenagers, who don't have credit cards). Some people will always pay. A lot of people (most?) are in between. They will use a pirate copy if it is easy and they think can get away with it, otherwise they will pay. So some level of protection is important. But you shouldn't do anything that makes life more difficult for the people that are prepared to pay.