Yes, it’s a topical subject. And since it’s a sensitive subject, please bear in mind that these are my personal opinions.

With the recent Pirate Bay sentences, there’s a lot of talk and even rejoicing about it. But, in my opinion, the rejoicing is in vain, even if the Pirate Bay is closed (which I seriously doubt), there will be other sites. The sentences will not generate a single sale for anyone, and the only people making even a penny out of it will be the lawyers and – maybe a bit surprisingly – the Swedish Pirate Party, which saw a great elevation in the number of supporters within the last few days.

It should already be clear to anyone that DRM has close to no effect on piratism, although it does piss off legitimate  customers to a great degree. I’ve opted not to buy some games due to the nasty pieces of DRM they include (although I’ve not pirated the games either, but the effect is the same: a lost sale). The only really effective way is online authentication, but that is mostly applicable for online multiplayer games. Every method of DRM can and will be cracked, so piratism is unavoidable and we just need to learn to live with it.

Since the piratism is pretty much a lost cause, some companies have begun to attack perfectly legit forms of business, such as rentals and used games sales. That’s, if anything, a good way to show how desperate you are.

But, for any pirate who seems himself (or herself) as a glimmer pillar of virtue, or a Robin Hood fighting against the oppression of Great Evil Media Mega Corporations, you’re kidding yourself. While pirates are the reason DRM exists, every pirated copy of a game without a DRM scheme is a shot in your own leg. It’s proving them right.

And, as a possible consequence, you’re killing the open source community.

Does that sound strange? Well, think about it. If no one pirated Photoshop, how many users of Gimp would there be? Or Blender, or Open Office? If there were no pirated copies of Windows, what would the Windows/Linux ratio look like? Yes, the usual reason for not choosing Linux is that there aren’t many games or [the software of your choice] for it, but if everyone who can’t afford or chooses not to pay for a legitimate copy of Windows, how many Linux PCs would there be? And with that ratio, how many ports of software that are currently available only for Windows or Mac?

Think about it.

And as for company policy, we believe that the best way to sell our games is to respect our customers. Even though we’re aware that piracy does exist on iPhone, it’s still much easier to pay for a product than to jailbreak the device and find the cracked versions. Also, we will have free demo versions (that are not time limited or show an annoying “Buy this game” pop up every ten seconds) available on this website, so anyone in doubt whether our games are worth your hard earned dollars, euros, or gold coins can freely try them out.

Up next, some info on our first game, so stay tuned :)