Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Persson has told attendees at GDC's Indie Games Summit that the notion of piracy as theft is incorrect.

"Piracy is not theft," he said during the session. "If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world.

"There is no such thing as a 'lost sale'," he added. "Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?"

According to Edge, Persson suggested that developers see pirates not as inherently evil, but as potential customers.

Countering Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata's criticism of small and rampant mobile and social games, Persson pointed to Minecraft as more of a service than a one-off purchase.

Like Angry Birds, Minecraft is constantly updated with new content, and it's certainly got sales to show the model has been successful.

"Treat game development as a service," he said. "Make a game last longer than a week. You can't pirate an online account."

[ Source: Edge ]

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/29 ... t-creator/

Finally some [LIFTED] sense from the industry.

To be fair, he's barely part of the 'industry' really. He's just about the most 'bedroom coder' type bloke I've seen in ages.

Jon

The other thing you can take from the article is a side view
"Give away a cut down version for free, subscribe for the proper content, you can't pirate a subscription

AKA the EA Project $10 for getting users to pay for online access on preowned games, or the WoW model, which has been very successful

Also +1 on being part of the industry, he's talking at the Indie side of it, take someone from an established company that has a working model and isn't a handful of people working together and I'd take it more seriously

I know someone who, if a pirated version of his software is registered with his company (yes, people really do do that - they get cracked serial numbers and register the software using it), he phones them up and talks them into giving him their payment details. They then get a legit serial number, and, of course, the full benefits of being a paid up customer. Seems like a good tactic to take.