Monday, 23 April 2012

Vidya games, music and information

So you're trying to sell something that's infinitely reproducible at zero cost and you're annoyed that people aren't paying you money for something they can get for free. If your goal is to make money then suing your potential customers and insulting them is not going to work in your favour, if your goal is to piss off potential customers and ruin your own reputation, then continue doing that.

So, assuming you're not an asshole, let me tell you how to make money selling something that's free. If you make your product better and easier to get you will make more money, regardless of how many people torrent it. It's really that simple, if you didn't make a lot of money from trying to sell something that people can get for free, it's either because you made it too expensive so nobody was willing to pay for it even though they would be at a cheaper price, you put too many hoops for people to jump through which makes it easier to just torrent it than actually pay for it, or nobody wanted it anyway in which case people downloading it for free is not a problem.

Things that aren't going to work, conflating downloading with theft, I'm not going to insult you by explaining how these things are not the same, although I think there maybe an unseen negative effect from trying to shove that nonsense in to peoples faces repeatedly. Given that people intuitively see that as a ridiculous notion, it makes actual theft comparable to clicking a few mouse keys and downloading something, which it is not as theft requires that you deprive someone of something. In the same way being repeatedly exposed to a barrage of serious potential health side effects on commercials in America for every drug advertised eventually loses meaning. When that law was initially introduced people were taken back, hay fever drugs may cause a heart attack, holy shit, but eventually after being repeatedly exposed to that for every drug it loses it's impact. Then when a drug actually has a significant health risk that you should probably take seriously, it is not. I'm claiming trying to conflate downloading with theft may have a similar effect.

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