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When content creators pour time and money into creating something they hope people will buy, it must be frustrating to see masses of pirates consuming those products for free. Nevertheless, a games developer is now advising companies with a perceived piracy problem not to antagonize pirates, since that only leads to stress and a toxic environment.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Dealing with pirates raises all sorts of issues for content providers and entertainment companies. On the one hand these are people trying to get something for nothing but on the other, many pirates are potential and even current customers.
Converting pirates into paying customers is a puzzle that many companies have tried to crack. Many do so with free trials, hoping that after tasting the real thing people will like it enough to come back for more, wallets in hand. Some innovate, offering a product or service that cannot easily be emulated. Others prefer to intimidate.
As reported last week, UFC President Dana White enjoys tackling pirates with threats and profanity, treating them as a danger to be eradicated by any means. The jury is still out on whether consumers ever respond to this type of approach but if we think of consumers as regular people, few – if any – appreciate being shouted out and called names.
Judging by the number of insults leveled at White late weekend, it’s pretty safe to say that his actions rubbed many people up the wrong way. To be clear, White will not give a damn if this is the case but according to games developer Adam Coster of Butterscotch Shenanigans, being hostile to pirates isn’t an approach he recommends.
Writing in GamesIndustry.biz this week, Coster explains that the problem of piracy is emotionally charged but the overall goal should be to limit the harm, not only on the business itself, but also on the people creating the content.
“We don’t want to spend our time and resources fighting piracy — it’s exhausting, expensive and, frankly, doomed from the start. We want our time going into making games and building an amazing community,” Coster says.
“We certainly don’t condone or accept piracy, and we explicitly tell our players that when the topic arises. We also don’t allow players in our communities to advocate for or help others pirate games. But when we discover pirates in our midst we stay friendly.”
While big companies tend to be outwardly hostile to pirates, stating that “theft-is-theft” and there are no excuses for getting something for free, Coster doesn’t mind acknowledging that there can be reasons why people go down that route. People without financial resources, for example, or people seeking access to his games where they aren’t legitimately available.
Despite his understanding, Coster doesn’t condone freeloading behavior but still prefers to keep things civil. There are benefits to that, he says, including keeping the environment around games consumption (and indeed, games creation) a nice place to be.
“Our non-hostile approach has helped foster a positive community, including a handful of converted pirates. But more importantly, it has been essential for our team’s mental health. Adversarial relationships take a terrible toll,” he concedes.
Keeping the pirating masses happy – or at least emotionally compliant – has some interesting benefits for Coster’s company. He believes that almost all of his potential players are pirates so it makes little sense to have an adversarial relationship with them – especially when a “jillion angry people” descend on community management and customer support teams to air their displeasure.
Given that this is one of the likely outcomes of being hostile towards pirates (or if one prefers, potential customers, who may walk away after being threatened) Coster says that anti-piracy measures should not be about the pirates. The starting point, whether he likes it or not, should be an empathetic approach along with gentle encouragement to buy his games when they can.
“People will try to steal your game. Huge numbers of them. This is just the reality. Treat it as a design constraint,” he says.
“This is a business problem. Do your best to ignore how you feel about it. Yes, this is far easier said than done. Now get out there and make something worth stealing.”
The full piece, which is a must-read for developers, can be found here
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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Enlarge (credit: Lobanovgo | Getty Images)
In 2010, British designer Harry Brignull coined a handy new term for an everyday annoyance: dark patterns, meaning digital interfaces that subtly manipulate people. It became a term of art used by privacy campaigners and researchers. Now, more than a decade later, the coinage is gaining new, legal, heft.
Dark patterns come in many forms and can trick a person out of time or money, or into forfeiting personal data. A common example is the digital obstacle course that springs up when you try to nix an online account or subscription, such as for streaming TV, asking you repeatedly if you really want to cancel. A 2019 Princeton survey of dark patterns in e-commerce listed 15 types of dark patterns, including hurdles to canceling subscriptions and countdown timers to rush consumers into hasty decisions.
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60 years later, new evidence points to a peculiar kind of avalanche as the culprit.
Enlarge / A view of the tent the adventurers stayed in as the rescuers found it on Feb. 26, 1959. The tent had been cut open from inside, and most of the skiers had fled in socks or barefoot. (credit: Anonymous | USSR investigators)
By the time the rescue team helicoptered to the remote Dyatlov Pass in late February 1959, the nine Russian adventurers—seven men and two women, all highly experienced cross-country skiers—had been dead for nearly a month. Nothing about the scene seemed right. The adventurers’ tent had been sliced open from the inside, and in its husk lay rucksacks, neatly arranged boots, and a plate of sliced pork fat. The rescuers found the victims themselves over half a mile downslope from their camp, some of them barefoot and almost naked. The primary cause of death was hypothermia—temperatures would have been well below zero degrees Fahrenheit the night they fled—but two of the deceased were missing their eyes, and another her tongue. Four had suffered severe trauma to their heads and chests, as if they’d been in a car crash. These were not injuries consistent with a death by avalanche.
Over the decades, what became known as the Dyatlov Pass incident has prompted many a conspiracy theory. It must have been aliens that made the Russians flee to an icy death, as evidenced by the fact that some of the adventurers’ clothes bore traces of radioactivity. Or a Yeti had stumbled upon the camp. Or, more plausibly, the local humans didn’t appreciate the group’s intrusion on their lands. In the end, none of these were particularly convincing to the Russian government, which officially blamed an avalanche as the culprit, all those curious circumstances notwithstanding.
Now, more than 60 years later, scientists say they’ve got new evidence to back up that claim, but with a twist: The killer was probably a peculiar kind of avalanche. Inspired by previous work that modeled realistic snow for the Disney film Frozen, the researchers simulated how a relatively tiny avalanche could have struck the camp, forcing the adventurers to flee, and severely injuring some of them.
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