It is a little disheartening to hear stories of high piracy rates of new indie games, dependent on their fans support - so i'd thought i'd pose the question why this is?

Posted by INtense! on May 7th, 2011

For over 9 years now we've been running ModDB and in that time we've never been exposed to piracy since mods are free. But now that we run IndieDB and moreso Desura, we are starting to work with indies that come with a price tag, and are attempting to help them sell games. It is a totally new and challenging area for us, as it is for most indies and one of the tough facts of life is piracy.

Now I get that not every pirate is a customer, but when newly launched DRM free indies (yay) are released and have 10,000 players in the first day via torrent sites but only a handful of sales, I cannot help but feel frustrated and disappointed for them. For a lot of developers their first game either makes or breaks them, as they have invested a ton of time and effort into its creation, so I wanted to kick off a discussion to find out why you pirate (or don't), so we can share this information with others.

So imagine for a moment that it was impossible to pirate games, would you buy more games than you presently do? If your answer is yes... then why do you pirate some now?

To help you answer I have kicked off a poll, with the options:

I don't, I buy them!

To try them, but I usually buy if they are good

It is easier to pirate than to buy

They cost too much

Because I can

To avoid DRM

Because I for one would hate to see promising indie game studios have to rethink if they are doing the right thing and stopping making games, and I certainly don't want people justifying the use of DRM just to gain a few more sales.