Stardock CEO: Focus On Your Customers; Don't Worry About Pirates

from the exactly dept

Given our earlier posts about Stardock's new game, Demigod, and how the company was dealing with the fact that there were plenty of unauthorized copies, this shouldn't be a surprise at all: The company's CEO has taken to his forums to make it clear that, while no one likes unauthorized copies, his job is not to worry about "pirates," but to focus on pleasing his customers. And on that front, the game has been a huge success. In his post, he points out that even if the game had been a failure, he wouldn't be blaming it on pirates, but on the company's own mistakes -- but, of course, the game hasn't been a failure. It's been selling like crazy.

This isn't new or surprising. It's what Stardock has always said. And it's the same sort of attitude that others who have found success with content these days have had, as well. It's never pleasant to find someone is copying content/software/whatever you've made, but you can't worry about them. It's a waste of time and effort. People will always make unauthorized copies, and any effort to stop them will only hurt those who actually want to give you money. So focus on providing real value for those who want to buy, and stop worrying so much about everyone else.

The reality that most PC game publishers ignore is that there are people who buy games and people who don't buy games. The focus of a business is to increase its sales. My job, as CEO of Stardock, is not to fight worldwide piracy no matter how much it aggravates me personally. My job is to maximize the sales of my product and service and I do that by focusing on the people who pay my salary -- our customers.

You can waste an awful lot of energy and resources "fighting pirates" and losing, or you can focus on actually serving your customers and making money. Which seems more intelligent?

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Despite Piracy Worries, Stardock's Demigod Did Quite Well On The Sales Front

from the not-so-bad... dept

While many people falsely claimed that the server troubles Stardock dealt with recently, due to unauthorized copies of its new game Demigod effectively pinging its servers, showed how Stardock's trusting (no DRM) model doesn't work, that was clearly incorrect. Even throughout the stories last week, the execs at Stardock didn't seem particularly upset or worried about the fact that so many unauthorized copies were out there -- but about getting the servers set up properly to handle the load. And, now, as reader Christopher Chapman points out, Demigod has debuted as the number 3 best selling PC game, suggesting (yet again) that you can get plenty of sales even when you don't treat your customers like criminals.

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Demigod, Piracy And Good Business Models...

from the let's-walk-this-through... dept

Lots of folks have been submitting variations on the story about how Stardock's new game, Demigod, has been widely pirated, and that's resulted in server troubles for the company, as many of these unauthorized users try to connect to Stardock servers. Many are claiming that this shows that Stardock's customer friendly approach to video games fails. But, that's not true or accurate at all. It's just an issue of properly lining up the incentives and the infinite goods vs. the scarcities. In this case, one of the key scarcities was server access -- but Stardock set things up such that unauthorized copies could drag that down. The good thing, though, is that the company quickly got on top of the problem and has been implementing a technological fix rather than screaming and complaining about pirates. Meanwhile, some others have sent in links to the Demigod forums, where people recognize that many of the unauthorized users got the game to test it out, and are encouraging people to buy it to support Stardock and its fan-friendly attitude.

In the end, though, it does seem like Stardock has set this up a bit as a "give it away and pray" setup, which we tend not to agree with as a good business model. Since a big part of the game is the mutliplayer aspect, where you have to connect to a server and play against other players, why not give away the software itself (many people are getting it this way already) and charge a nominal fee for access to the server. That access is a scarcity -- and then you can scale based on users, since more users means more money. It seems like that's a reasonable business model that aligns everything much more nicely.

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Stardock Apparently Didn't Get The Memo About Piracy Killing The PC Gaming Market

from the conventional-wisdom-is-wrong-again dept

For the past year or so, we've been hearing all this hand-wringing about how piracy was killing the PC gaming market. The only problem with that claim was that the data actually said the exact opposite. In fact, companies that bothered to embrace fans and treat them right, rather than whining about piracy and making life difficult for users, found that they could do quite well. For example, we talked about Stardock, a company that did everything "wrong" if you went by the conventional wisdom of the video gaming industry. It didn't use DRM. It sold PC games. It kept prices low. It focused on connecting with consumers and understanding what they wanted, rather than coming down off the mountaintop with the "perfect game." And it worked. Despite being easily "pirated" the company got its games into top retailers and became a top seller.

That was a few years ago, even before the more urgent warnings from the "big" video game companies about piracy killing the PC gaming industry. So what's Stardock doing? Thanks to reader Lucretious for sending in the news that Stardock is rapidly expanding and planning new PC games. Yes, some of this is due to a local stimulus package that it's taking advantage of, but if piracy were really killing off the PC gaming industry, the company wouldn't be investing so heavily in new PC games, would it? Once again, we're seeing that companies that treat consumers, fans and users as people, and not thieves, discover that there are plenty of business models that work great.

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