doug@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (douglas.sulpy) (08/03/89)
In article <1989Aug2.144138.24257@ddsw1.MCS.COM>, karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) writes: (A bunch of stuff about the evils of piracy) It seems every month or so one of the Programmer/Developers feels the need to remind us that Amiga piracy is rampant, and if it keeps up he and all his friends are going to go away and make us write our OWN Amiga games. Two comments to this: > > 5,000 potential sales > 90% steal rather than buy > 500 actual sales > Again, as has been pointed out, you are making the mistake of assuming that ALL the people pirating software are potential sales. Certainly, some percentage of them ARE, but I'd be willing to guess that most of them are not. Secondly, I wonder about such claims of "rampant piracy", and the dire threats that it's ruining the business. How would YOU (or anyone ELSE) know just how rampant piracy is? Have you taken a poll (under oath, of course) of every person who's registered their Amiga? And, of course, once you do this you'd have to do it for every person unfortunate enough to use a different computer, to see how the piracy situation stacks up between machines. I don't like piracy either. But I also don't like having a shelf full of games which kind of lost their appeal after an hour's play, because the game wasn't quite the fantastic experience that the packaging led me to believe. I don't like having SimCity bomb out because they released it with a bug. I don't like wondering if TODAY is going to be the last for my poor, overused Dungeon Master disc (But, hey, I can just whip out another Ten Bucks for a replacement, right? :-)), because I can't copy it. I think all these things encourage piracy, and the frame of mind that condones it, and I think the people who make the software should ignore the shining dollar signs for a moment, and try to think straight. Really, I think that most Amiga people are generally honest.