Talking To Pirates

I am not so sure his idea of taking off the internet based registration for any of his games is a good idea. The authors target market is not people who are going to steal his product... it is people who can and want to pay for it.

By giving it away free and simply hoping people will pay for it, he will go broke fast.

He should be happy that people are pirating his game, somewhat, as that creates a buzz that will get people to pay for it who don't want to spend there time messing around trying to get it. The people who steal the game, were likely never going to pay for it, and they are more like a marketing expense.

It's interesting that all these complaints from "IP facisim" to price are usually along the lines of:

I shouldn't pay you because... or I will pay you because...

That's not really a situation of ownership. At least not in the conventional sense. The conventional ownership meaning is 'I will pay you for this because I want it & otherwise I can't have it.' 'If you charge me an outrageus price, I will complain, or even not buy it.'

I mean airport souvenir shops don't get more shoplifting because they have 1000% markup.

Not sure what that means but payment feels voluntary to most people.

I'd be careful about coming to conclusions based on that survey. A large number of people who actually belong in the last category will try to rationalize their theft as "I don't like DRM" or "it's too expensive" (though his games probably cost half of what they spend on SMS each month) "intellectual property is fascism", etc. I'd bet that almost all of them really just want games and don't want to pay for them.