Ron Carmel, co-founder of 2D Boy, speaking at this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco said that the best solution to piracy is to not bother with digital-rights management (DRM) altogether.
Carmel, who spoke about the business decisions made with World of Goo said that there is little reason to use DRM especially when a cracked version of the game will be created anyway. "Don't bother with DRM--it's a waste of time. You just end up giving the DRM provider money. Anything that is of interest gets cracked, and the cracked version ends up having a better user experience than the legit version because you don't have to input in some 32-character serial number. Anybody who wants the game is likely to find it on BitTorrent sites. It's going to get cracked even with DRM, it's going to be available very quickly, so we don't see the point in having DRM. Piracy rates have been released before, and there's no difference between World of Goo and other games."
He continued by saying that developers of other independent video games are better off not getting involved with publishers and sticking to digital distribution. "Retail distribution--which is what publishers are good at--doesn't generate many sales for indie games. Go with digital distribution--you won't need a publisher for this. Self-fund your game--and when you get to retail, go for per-country flat-fee deals."
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