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Comment by gtufano | Hacker News Reader

Piracy is not-impactful is not true. The disappearance of indie software that do not depend on a remote server (or that's not software on a remote server) is basically due to the inability to monetize with sales native, stand-alone, software. And that's for the piracy.

In some way, the success of the App Store towards indie/solo developers is because there was a way to sell things without the piracy easily steal your sales.

Yes, I know that "it's not stealing", "it's not theft", etc. Beside the ethical/moral conundrum of piracy, the fact is that it destroys the market for small developers.

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There have been various efforts to estimate the effect piracy has on revenue like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 or http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy

So depending on product category it might be a large drop (EU study finds -38% displacement rate for books) but it might also be a boost (EU study finds +24% for video games), and it is hard to say in general, since even a 90% piracy rate might only mean a maximum of 5%-10% lost sales (from the wolfire blog post). Either way it isn't at the level of "impossible to succeed".

If we are talking about app stores specifically, I bet a much bigger factor in (lack of) success is discoverability, both because your app is literally hard to find and because app store owners allow a flow of cheap clones to compete with your genuine app.

Well, the point I was trying to make, said in another way is that the initial success of App Store (iOS, in particular) was driven that the fact that , suddenly, users thought that was OK to pay for the software. I think that the (relative) lack of piracy and difficulty for ordinary users to install pirated software has been a key factor in the success of it: "there's an app for that, and I can't easily find it for free".

The other point I was trying to make is that the disappearance of "stand-alone" apps, not tied to a web service, is primarily driven by the fact that, this way, you can avoid piracy. You can offer a free-tier (that would be eaten by the piracy anyway) and sell (say) a synchronize, or additional features tied to a web service (so not printable).

May be it's not the only thing, but that's what (anecdotically) I hear from solo-indie-very small developers.

I fully agree with you on both the current discoverability problem and also with games piracy having a different, may be even not negative effect.

> suddenly, users thought that was OK to pay for the software

I would argue almost the opposite way. Users are now conditioned to expect the software to be free with ads of 99 cents. Both greatly lowering the cap on what people can charge for software due to expectations. Instead we've seen the rise of subscription services apps that have no business needing one.

Not sure in which world you’re living. Remember shareware and cracked versions of it? Remember having to jump through hoops to get paid for software (or indeed to pay, if you were a user)? Especially if user and developer lived in different countries.

Apple created a new reality where you pay 99 cents and buy to own. It made so very compelling, through general ease of payment flow that just works worldwide and through a large ecosystem of compelling hardware.

Then, subscription behemoths like Epic started crying how it’s all unfair. Of course, it is to them, but there is no way kowtowing to them is beneficial to small app developers.

Remember that we are talking about small developers.

Yes, Adobe, Microsoft or makers of viral AAA games absolutely benefit from piracy (that’s why they have actually tolerated it for decades): it helps their software penetrate the market and get more users hooked up on their ecosystem. However, to John Doe’s lifestyle business of a couple small niche or utility apps each lost sale is bread off the table.

In addition, piracy on iOS is great for major providers who do subscription services (a device where you can pirate means a device with more users, and more users means more monthly revenue).

Again, the people hit the most are the above-mentioned small time John Does.

The only evidence is that developers think they need to do these things because of piracy, which is not the same as actually needing to. A moral panic about a thing does not prove the thing is actually a problem, and the effects of the panic itself shouldn't be blamed on the thing, either.

Piracy literally cannot affect the economic wellbeing of content or software producers. It is logically impossible!

If it weren't, you wouldn't be experiencing this cascade of downvotes, so get with the program.

This would be true if the only alternative to piracy is not using said content or software. If paying is a valid alternative to a nonzero fraction of pirate users if piracy was not an option, then the piracy does affect the creators economically.

> If it weren't, you wouldn't be experiencing this cascade of downvotes, so get with the program.

Disregarding this statement's general silliness, it is also downvoted. Now we're in a paradox. Downvotes mean you're wrong, so the statement that downvotes mean you're wrong..is wrong?

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