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I agree with others that the OP really over-promised by saying that pirates will convince friends to buy. However, you don't deserve to be down-voted. A large n
by lhnz 16y ago
I agree with others that the OP really over-promised by saying that pirates will convince friends to buy. However, you don't deserve to be down-voted. A large number of people pirating something often causes it to become popular enough to get many sales. Word-of-mouth is not always a pirate explaining to others how to get something for free, it's often them just saying something is 'good' (which for many people implies worth buying).
- _delirium 16y agoIt's especially true in the indie-game sphere, where people get their recommendations from random reviews on blogs, mailing lists, wikis, forums, whatever. Lots of those reviews are not by people who paid for the game, but some people who read them might pay. Maybe not most of them, but often non-zero. It's useful enough that some indie-game devs are pretty liberal with their "review copies"; if you're going to write up even a blog blurb on a medium-traffic blog, they'll just send you a free copy and save you the hassle of pirating it. Really the biggest likely pitfall facing indie-game developers is that they release their game and nobody notices or cares, not even enough to pirate it. There are a ton of indie games that come out every year that never rise out of obscurity, which is the main thing publicity attempts have to overcome, at least early on. Enough people pirating it to generate some forum/blog buzz is one possible way, like underground musicians who get their initial publicity via people trading mix tapes.