Software Piracy: the perspective of an indie developer.

I've been developing plugins full-time since 2015 and they have been pirated more than once. Depending on when a plugin was pirated, it could kill sales altogether or just have a minor effect. Timing is everything.

Usually, when the marketing campaign is running full-blown for a new plugin, it's when most of the sales are done. If only 1 person purchases it and redistributes it on a piracy website, it'll usually mean that 90% of my sales are gone.

If it's an old plugin that is illegally redistributed, then it usually doesn't make as much difference. Not enough for me to have a clear idea if it's actually hurting my sales.

Virtual instrument development is long and tedious, it requires time and resources and it often implies buying other software and hardware in order to run tests on different machines. The value is not only in the time it takes to develop the instruments, it's also in the gear it requires to create them.

And then there's the maintenance aspect of selling software; they all need to be updated at some point due to technological evolution and OS upgrades. It adds to the cost of development.

In the early beginning, my plugins were pirated a lot. So I decided to stop selling multi-formats packages that offered everything for a single price and split everything up into different versions you can buy separately. It made a big difference!

Another aspect of piracy that is often overlooked is its impact on free software. I offer more than 20 free plugins on my website and it's being made possible thanks to people who donate and purchase my commercial instruments. Without them, there wouldn't be as many free plugins available to the general public, including schools, universities, and community centers in poor countries.

From a practical point of view, I don't really care about software piracy, but when it becomes big enough to hurt my business, I don't have much choice but to limit its reach. Otherwise, I might as well close up shop and sell common goods in a convenience store. But then, it wouldn't be as fun as creating cool virtual instruments for musicians.

Have a great day!



Recent email I received from SampleScience.

I actually believe some of the points the dev brought up to make a lot of sense, such as timing of releases, the impact piracy has to their free releases and so on. That's a nice way of addressing the issue without actually propagating a witch hunt on their own clients.

 

Last edited: Mar 16, 2022

Hi Djord, we have discussed this theme many times on this forum.
What is your stance on the matter?

I believe when some guy says "piracy kills sales" it's complete non sense. I was not going to buy your plugin IN THE FIRST PLACE, and piracy is giving me (well, the TEAMS!) the option to try it in its full version, with no retarded iLok or stupid protections (which shouldn't exist in the first place).
In fact, piracy can help a plugin IMHO, as it gives more options for users to try it and have a clear idea.
Now, are there people who just want to leech and make money with your pirated plugins? Probably, yes, like in EVERY FIELD OF THE WORLD there are thieves and people who don't care about others.

But piracy killing sales it's nonsense to me. But apparently this guy has some STATS that declare the contrary. I don't know, I don't make money with music so I'm not qualified enough to talk on the matter, but this is what I believe. As I said somewhere else, if it weren't for piracy I wouldn't have bought my DAW

 

Speaking from a pirate perspective, my broke ass can wait.

 

So from his numbers, he is saying 90% of people who buy his products would rather not pay for them?

Looking on the website linked, I would speculate it is actually higher than that after the fact.

 

My stance is simply that I found the statement to be interesting and quite sober. Of course no dev is supposed to like piracy as it's often times an activity beyond their reach and power, and as with everything in this world it can do good and do bad. I think it's a good idea to read what an actual long term dev has to say about it, no judgement nor drama (like we've seen here before), just their honest assessment of this topic.

Regarding the numbers, I think they know their business well enough to make such types of evaluations. It's reasonable to think that they get most of their income during hype over new plugins sales and that simultaneous pirated releases can actually damage their sales to a certain point that isn't usual for the company.

Piracy isn't a simple thing, it's frivolous, in my opinion, to think that its solely GOOD FOR THE DEVELOPERS or an HORRENDOUS ACT, PLEASE ARREST THIS YOUNG MAN.

It should be noticed that the dev isn't scolding anyone there, in fact right after the text they link a few webpages for a sale they're currently holding on their website. (I should have linked that)

 

Last edited: Mar 17, 2022

Manuel from Vengeance mentioned once that when Nexus was first cracked, they lost 90% of the sales. Probably the marketing also has an impact (and probably not the same impact for all products, depends on each dev how it markets): they have these polished videos and nice melodies and literally any beginner will be fooled into believing that once they have the expansion, they will make music as good as the demo. Of course that never happens but the purchase remains. So they have this endless stream of naive people buying their crack.

We won't be truly be able to find out the real impact and how marketing, dev notoriety (and who knows how many other factors) affect the final outcome

 

it's not like this stuff is a surprise to anyone that they only find out about after they have setup shop.

You want to sell encrypted files for a living? Well, your competition is right there, telling you how shitty your protection was after they break it in their .nfo files. You knew precisely what you would be up against.

My hardware will still make beautiful sounds long after you go back to night manager at Taco Bell.

 

I think it's more a matter of logistic/marketing/business strategy than a "who can encrypt harder" competiton. I'm sure many companies would disagree, specially those that don't give a damn for the consumers with all their bs DRM methods.

I also don't think devs are surprised by piracy the same way I think most people wouldn't get surprised to discover they're sick, that's part of living... but regardless, it's not just because one expects something that it stops being a nuisance. It isn't a simple thing to deal with, if it were we wouldn't be having such conversations. There are no perfect role models.

 

I think it's a reasonable post, and totally understandable and relatable. Similar to how piracy of games affect the developers in the very early days of a release.

If this is the case as he describes it, I think it would generally be a good idea for pirates to wait a bit before releasing stuff. Doesn't hurt anyone and if it helps the developers to minimize the damage done by piracy then I think it would be entirely acceptable for everyone.

 

Years and years ago, I posted this simple message, and to my big surprise, I realized it could very well be still pertinent todays. So allow me to repost it here, secretly I always have the hope that software and hardware manufacturers will hear these humble suggestions, and will start to think and see their market and their role differently, will start to open doors in their heads, and will feel inside them this very special period of our History as an opportunity for big changes.

Spoiler: >= Click here if you have a very little time = >

Pirating is unavoidable, warez is a reality, a fact. Perhaps, instead of fighting against windmills, waste their precious energy in useless, CPU-hogging, performance-crashing and aggressive protections, companies should do more musical philanthropy. I explain:

When i was young, I dreamed that someday a gal/guy from a hardware (instruments) or software company watches me playing guitar and sing and decides to believe in me, in my potential.

The deal could be something like that: you have a project, a good song, a venue? We lend you (almost) anything you need to achieve your goal, even if your goal is modest, non-ambitious, local-only.

It could take the form of micro-credit: helping modest people to develop themselves, gain self-assurance, express themselves and (why not?) acquire a certain form of economic independence, if they decide to work hard on their Art and become (more) professional.

And, at the end, the company could be beneficial: in term of image (helping poor musicians and artists), but also in financial terms: the micro-credits have to be repaid one day, one way or another, with interests.

It's very different from sponsoring: what i'm talking about is a far, far larger scaled action, not based on commercial relationship, but more focused on (personal, cultural, artistic, economic) development.

One last benefit, still from the company point of view: create a real artistic, cultural, enthusiast community all around the world, community that will talk freely (not constraint by a commercial contract, but spontaneously) about you (company) everywhere, that will vehicle your values and philosophy, all of that in sincerely positive terms.

At the end, you will sell more, convince more, and for longtime.

 

Last edited: Mar 16, 2022

yes, except for the small fact that crackers are often racing with each other to release first. Sometimes they are even working on the same things

 

Exactly, so keep your useless opinion to yourself. You have no clue what you're talking about.

 

Most brainless comment I've read in 2022. The creativity in self-righteous pseudo arguments people come up with to justify why they use warzes is ridiculous. This dev doesn't even use any of the copy prodections you are referring to.

Who are you to decide if these "stupid protections" should exist? Do you even spent like 5 minutes thinking about why they exist?

Do you own a car? Do you lock it? Why do you lock it? I think locks on cars are stupip protections which shouldn't exist in the first place, so I can ride one if I need to… or not? Why shouldn't I be able to drive a Ferrari if I feel like it, or your car for that matter…

 

A car? I can barely afford to eat and I made countless sacrifices to buy a functioning PC. I don't want to justify myself or anybody else using warez, I have been using them for the last 20 years and I will keep doing so. I was not referring to this particular developer,
Your comparison with cars is laughable, as is the rest of your post with your free insults.

 

Whatever side of the warez fence you sit on, you will find arguments and counter-arguments to defend your position.

If you use something a lot, you should buy it eventually. Regardless of whether it makes you feel good or not, practically it helps the developer stay in business and continue developing and releasing.

The bigger issue is that warez, whos original mantra was "free music for the masses" has come true.

However, it has been a double edged sword that has killed the professional music industry and the quality standards and rewards system that was the standard, and replaced it with an oversubscribed, highly amateur, largely uncreative and devoid of any orignality system with little reward on offer. (the knockon effect being that live music is now overpriced and bordering on exploitation).

People will find whatever arguments to justify whatever they want to justify.

All we can really agree on is, warez changed the entire musical landscape for everyone.

 

It's a valid point. Something often lost in discussions about the impact of piracy is the unseen impact on cheaper software, and especially free, open-source alternatives.

People often make the point that piracy is useful for market-leading software, as it allows things like Photoshop to become industry standards that everyone learns how to use and will go on to pay a subscription for when they're on the job.

This is true! But think what it implies: when everyone has free access to cracked Photoshop, the things that suffer are the likes of Affinity Photo and GIMP.

If there were no cracked DAWs, imagine how many people would be using REAPER, not to mention Cakewalk and the open-source DAWs like Ardour, which would have a renaissance.

This isn't an argument about smaller devs and open source projects losing money due to piracy of the bigger players. The open source alternatives don't even make money! But it definitely has a hard-to-quantify effect on innovation, since there's less impetus for people to seek out alternatives to the big players, so people will still use a cracked copy of Serum instead of Vital, or Surge XT, and then you get Serum tutorials, and preset packs, and a feedback loop that makes it harder for new entrants to make a splash.

It's just human nature that when the costs are unseen, hypothetical and intangible, like "There would have been an cheaper/better/open-source Kontakt but using cracked Kontakt was too easy", then it's hard to really grok the consequences (sorry Decent Sampler/Sforzando it's not you).

 

There was an interview with Schwa (REAPER co-developer) a few days ago and he talked about finding out his teenage son had installed a cracked copy of FL studio to make beats, and he said he advised him not to do that and set him up with with REAPER. Asked if his son had a paid license of REAPER yet, Schwa laughed and said it would probably never even occur to him to ever do anything but click 'ask me later on the nag screen. Piracy of more expensive DAWs is a much greater threat to REAPER than piracy of REAPER.

Piracy adds lots of value to the world that isn't captured in lost sales or simplistic copyright industry 'would you download a car?' tropes, value to people enjoying media, learning and creating.

But it also has a negative impact on flourishing ecosystems that don't yet exist, and get strangled at birth, and unborn ecosystems don't tend to have expensive lobby groups to make their case.

 

In your first post, your argument for using warez was for "demoing" stuff. Now you pull the "I am poor" card to justify using warez. So which one is it now: demoing or just having stuff you can't afford otherwise? It's either or – it can't be both!

And since you and others obviously missed the point: the car comparison wasn't about the car. It was about the KEY as an allegory to protecting intellectual property rights so Devs can earn some money with their products. And I am not talking about huge conglomerates live UA, Waves or PA. I am talking about one man businesses so they can eat!

I don't give a sing eff what you do. Just stop with the hypocrital pseudo arguments to justify your behavior! They are an insult to intelligent people!

@arbuckle What "value" are you refering to? We are not talking about adding cultural value here. This is about putting real food on the table. There's no room for culture to bloom if you're starving.

 

Why can't it be "both"? You check the thing out and then uninstall it/not use it. Noone could buy or demo all the products that come out. good or bad.

 

Last edited: Mar 17, 2022

How can he calculate what percentage he has losses ?
I rather think that the real losses are not 90%, but more like 50% or less.

There are a lot of buyers who don't want to have anything to do with illegal plugins. The Internet has created a worldwide market, so he has access to the world's buyers. Before the Internet, the software manufacturer could only advertise his product in magazines.
There are many illegal downloaders who download but rarely or never use the plugin.

Every software developer knows beforehand that they can be hacked. You can also price the loss. With shoplifting, by the way, in the millions, the loss is already included in the prices. There are also brand counterfeiters, where the loss is also high.

It is time that the software manufacturers, sit down together and tinker together on other new business ideas. But since everyone is playing against everyone else, that won't happen.

Many companies have gone out of business because there was not enough demand for their product. Some that were on the brink have either massively lowered their prices or have been bought out. At some point it must occur to you that the system is flawed.

Every day we users are overwhelmed with offers and emails - whole blogs are only there to bring your products to the man or woman. How long should this go, if many people continue to be poor, how should they buy your products.