The creators of the “World of Goo” released their game without any DRM and it seems that their piracy rates were the same as another indie game “Ricochet.”  The creators of Ricochet spent lots of time trying to crack down on Piracy by fixing exploits in their DRM system.  What they found was that for every 1000 stolen copies they prevented, they generated 1 additional sale.  This brings up the question of whether or not the additional man-power to create security (and inconvenience to honest customers) is worth the additional sales.

The only two approaches I think that are viable to combat piracy is to have no DRM with a considerably low price, thus increasing the number of sales, and creating content that is only accessible by having an Internet account such as access to patches and downloadable content accesible to legitimate accounts.

One of the biggest excuses I’ve heard for software piracy is because “Corporations rip off the little guy.”  If this was true then why does an indie game such as the “World of Goo” have a piracy rate of over 90%?  The makers of the “World of Goo” are just two guys who have no office and do their programming and art in coffee shops.

It’s a counter productive argument when many people complain that a big corporation slaps on tons of DRM protections and suddenly their games are “inaccessible.”  But at the same time, when there is no DRM, you can find a free cracked copy of the game even BEFORE the game has hit the streets.

Another Indie, Cliff Harris of Positech Games, who made a name for himself in his open-letter to pirates has taken on the DRM issue and plans to release no DRM for his future games to see if the piracy rates of his software would be lower.

I think Cliff’s article on “Talking to Priates” has basic economic principles as its strongest point, rather than the DRM issue.  The issue was supply versus demand.  Many pirates said that if the quality was better and the price lower, they would have paid for the game on an impulse buy rather than look for a free alternative to a game they considered to be sub-par in quality for the price of $20.

The plain fact of the matter is that piracy is theft, no matter how you slice it – whether it is against big faceless corporations (who happen to feed dozens if not hundreds of families) or the 2 indies who worked hard to give you one of the best and most innovative games on the market.