rhaines8: When developers use piracy as an excuse for poor sales, they've totally lost all understanding of the their own market they're selling to. The fact is, is if most pirates can't get it for free, then they won't buy it anyway.
I wonder why they still blame piracy for potential losses while developers and publishers don't address the impact of streaming platforms, Let's Play series, guides without commentary, and other formats shared on major video-sharing and streaming websites on sales numbers and loss of revenue. This content is watched by hundreds of thousands of viewers daily. Content creators and streamers are the ones earning money from it, while developers and publishers can only hope that, based on the viewers' impressions, at least some of them will buy a license.
In principle, it is the same as with piracy. Those who want to see the whole game without paying can do so legally and without paying any money to developers. Unlike piracy, developers and publishers are completely fine with this, instead of trying to protect their content from being watched freely, as they do against piracy. They could add code to scramble output to prevent games from being recorded and streamed, restrict access to Let's Plays and streams to viewers with a legitimate copy, and ask for a fee to watch content. Watching videos and streams is also just like downloading a copy, as in both cases, viewers/consumers gain a good impression, and based on it, a sale is made or lost.
None of them do, of course. On the contrary, they are going out of their way to make it possible to record and stream their content. They are putting in extra work to add censorship options, for instance, names for characters, looks of characters, and other input of any kind, disabling or replacing music or content deemed not 'stream-safe' or 'age-appropriate.' Some go even further than that, for instance, limiting what can be done because someone could be offended by what a streamer does, and developers worry that it will reflect back on them. They are adding streamer interaction (even for single-player games...), and lots of other options, to make it interactive and inclusive for the masses, that players don't need, like, or even care for, just to make them look good.
The rest of the world still has to live with DRM protection, store clients, and 3rd-party launchers, for which they have to pay only not to be accused of being pirates, and without any benefits at all. Content can be changed, games removed from libraries, people can get banned from a store they have been paying money to, losing access to legitimately bought licenses.
If instead, they realized that they could as well sell their games without 3rd-party protection software and without limiting and censoring games for fear of gaining a negative reputation for what someone else does (on stream or in recordings), piracy would still exist, but legitimate customers would at least feel like such instead of feeling like publishers and developers are trying to protect themselves from those paying money for a worthless license. And if nothing else, if they don't make money because of piracy or videos and streams being watched, at least they don't waste any on the attempt to 'protect' their work.
Human nature tends to resist drastic change, and those who are willing to deviate often face consequences because others cling to old ways, views, and opinions. Unless a significant shift occurs and an ultimate developer/publisher protection platform becomes a reality, it will take a considerable amount of time to overcome the notion of 'loss of potential revenue due to piracy.' Even if piracy or streaming platforms didn't exist, there's no guarantee that someone would make a purchase simply because they don't like a screenshot they've seen. Attempting to address a genuine problem but inadvertently causing issues for potential customers, those who are willing to pay instead of resorting to downloading, doesn't seem to be a worthwhile approach. Being more lenient and trusting that games will be purchased without unnecessary restrictions might prove to be a more customer-friendly and effective strategy in the long run.
