Minecraft Creator Says 'No Such Thing As A Lost Sale'

from the give-people-a-reason-to-buy dept

Piracy is not theft. 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'... Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?

If you just make your game and keep adding to it, the people who copyright infringed would buy it the next week.

A lot of big companies try to make piracy like theft; I wouldn't steal a car, but I would 'steal' a good design. If I liked another person's apartment, I would try to make mine look like someone else's... but that's not stealing.

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Last year we wrote about how Minecraft developer Notch (Markus Persson) had been quite vocal in saying that worrying about piracy was a waste of time, and it was much more important to focus on giving people a reason to buy . And has he ever. The game keeps selling like crazy, and we detailed how he was raking in a ton of money , despite not caring if people were using his software for free.In a short presentation at the Independent Games Summit he elaborated on those positions and again told people to stop worrying about "piracy" and focus on giving people reasons to buy . He dismissed the standard party line on these issues:The "lost sale" point is one we've raised a bunch in the past, but people have a lot of trouble grasping it. There is no such thing as a lost sale, because a lost sale just means ato get people to buy. And that's aissue, not a legal one. If a "lost sale" is illegal, then anyone who gives you a coupon to buy their product instead of a competitors is "causing a lost sale." But that's ridiculous. And that's the point Notch is making. There are all sorts of reasons people might not buy from you -- and most of them may be your fault. So it's your job to convince people to pay for something -- which he's clearly done. As he notes:Another report of the talk showed he expanded on the "copying isn't theft" concept:And, of course, he's still making money like crazy. While it doesn't look like he posts historical data any more, he does show a running tally of the past 24 hours , and as of me writing this, he's sold 10,348 copies in the past 24 hours (out of 36,612 registered). At 15 euros a pop, that's over 150,000 euros in the last-- for a small indie game. And these numbers have been going on for months. It's not even a situation where there was a big boom and then sales dropped off. It appears that the game just keeps on selling.But it's impossible to make money because of "piracy" right?

Filed Under: lost sales, markus persson, minecraft, notch, piracy, reasons to buy