The fact of life is, all media gets pirated. It does not matter what kind of media, or what format, if it exists, it will get pirated.
Piracy is something video games have long contended with, and while some publishers have responded to the issue with draconian measures, such as requiring constant internet connections, or limited installs, the publisher of the recent surprise PC exclusive city simulation hit, Cities: Skylines, has an entirely different approach to how to deal with piracy.
Paradox’s answer? Keep working on the game even after it has released, updating it so constantly that obtaining an illegal version, which might be outdated as early as the next day, is unappealing (as is constantly trying to keep up with these updates for those who crack games for piracy).
Speaking on Twitter, Paradox’s Shams Jorjani said, ‘Here are a few small tidbits of info about Cities: Skylines – day 1 we had 0% piracy. Pretty cool. Day 2 16%. As usual our plan for pirates is to make a great game even better through free updates – making it more convenient to use Steam instead. It’s all about offering the superior service. That’s how we bring down piracy. By making the paid experience a superior one,’ he said, before musing about similar situations in other industries.
‘It’s all about offering a superior service. How come more and more use Netflix instead of pirating stuff? Ease of use and convenience.’
That’s certainly a very Steve Jobs way of looking at it, but Paradox, apparently, has history on its side:
‘We updated Magicka 14 times in 13 days. Even the pirates stopped posting new pirated versions after a while. Steams autoupdate was easier.’
Jorjani also took this opportunity to launch a few well earned blows to other DRM systems:
‘Or….we could build our own ecosystem. Call it….P-play….or…Plorigins…or P-vapor or somesuch…yeah let’s do that.’
Very clever, Mr. Jorjani.
Of course, given the incredible success of Cities: Skylines, he probably does know what he is talking about.
If you have not already, be sure to look into the game- it is an amazing and great game, and feels like the true successor to SimCity that the world never got. It can be bought- on Steam, naturally.