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junkshot

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  1. I found this conversation while looking more into X-Plane 10. I’ve tried X-Plane 9 on my Mac, but kept using MSFS on my PC. My PC motherboard is dead now, and would like to stick with my Mac only so I am exploring that option again. I would like to add to this conversation, and give you a perspective from a software pirate; particularly flight sim related piracy. I have pirated my share of flight sim related software and I will give you my viewpoint. Business should aim to please the customer with a combination of high quality products, support, and appreciation. Making a product, such as software, frustrating for the end user is never good for business. Even if your product is of high quality, another company will come in; they will produce a product as good or better, and they will see the demand to make the product easy on the end user, and the people will gravitate towards that company. DRM is a feature in software that only hurts the end user who has legitimately purchased the software. Most DRM punishes the end user, and the one who has pirated the software never experiences the DRM. DRM is an imperfect design created by imperfect beings. Regardless of how basic or complex the DRM is; someone, or a team of people, will hack it, crack it, patch it, and have it available within a day of release. I have downloaded the MU-2 before, it was a previous version, and may have not had DRM at the time. If it did, I did not notice it at all, but your legitimate customers did. It also reminds me of the funny piracy animations I see. One starts with what a customer sees when they purchase a DVD. All of the anti piracy warnings, the anti piracy ads, along with all of the other ads for movies embedded on there before you can get to the movie. Then there is what the person sees when they have a pirated movie; which is just the movie. The customer who purchased that movie is being affected, not the pirate. I have seen some pretty creative DRM that does a good job at trying to punish the pirate and not the customer. PMDG has gone through great lengths to do this. They have hidden bombs in their addons that are set to go off if certain things trigger it. It can be by uploading paint schemes, it could even be the installation of another PMDG addon. I wonder how much time, effort, and money they waste, and the cost passed on to the consumer for this. It hasn’t worked for them, in fact, the more elaborate and complex the DRM, the more determined certain people are to crack it. There are people out there, and teams of people who do this as a hobby; they enjoy the challenge. I have downloaded a number of addons from most every developer. These developers have used a wide range of DRM and other anti-piracy measures, and I’ve had all of them install. Your time, and effort put forth in DRM will not hinder me. There is another side to piracy. That’s the cost of software, and the ability to test it. Flight sim addons are very much a niche market, but market rules still apply. When you release a product, you must accept the facts that not only are you competing with other developers, but you are also competing against your own product on a black market. Your product, your packaging of the product, and your pricing must compete with itself on another market that is essentially free. You will always have people who will just not want to spend any money on anything. That’s not the majority of software pirates. Most of them find that the cost of the product exceeds what the market demands; or the cost of the product exceeds its quality and expectations of the potential consumer. This is very true for flight sim addons. I have been burned a number of times buying addons that ended up being trash, and not meeting my expectations of realism. Many addons do not provide a trial, and the ones that do have a very limited trial of a few minutes. Therefor, I pirate all of my addons first. After using them for a few days, if I feel that it meets my demands, I purchase it. I’ve pirated all of PMDG products, and paid for the MD-11; I deleted all of the others. I pirated all of Captain Sim products; I deleted all of them. I’ve pirated Level-D 767, and paid for it. I’ve pirated many of the Aerosoft products; some I paid for, some I deleted. If I feel that the product is worth it, I will pay for it. Many addons are a huge rip off. I will no longer take the risk regardless of how well established the company is. PMDG charges 80 dollars for their MD-11. That’s a lot of money for an addon, and is cost prohibitive for many people. I wonder how many more units they would have sold if it were 30 or 40 dollars. There are many people who would love to buy that MD-11, along with some other addons, but simply can’t afford it, or won’t take the risk in case they are disappointed or not use it much. I think there are some good ways around this that I’ll get into soon. There are forums dedicated to the piracy of flight sim addons. People can pay five, or ten dollars to get access. Then often, people donate even more after they get access. The money collected through memberships and donations goes into buying addons, cracking them, and then distributing them. People are willing to pay, but how developers view market pricing and how consumers view it differs. In that situation, people get more bang for their buck. They spend 30 dollars on an MU-2 or donate 30 dollars and get ten addons in return. When I bought my first Mac, I decided I wanted to try X-Plane. I pirated it, and am glad I did. I did not like it as much as flight sim. I thought, maybe if I could find some high quality addons I might. I found your MU-2, and I pirated it. The version I pirated was an older one and did not work so well with the newer version of X-Plane. Without a full trial, I wasn’t willing to take the risk to buy your product, and X-Plane. I’ve since deleted both. Your MU-2 was hard to find, and it had nothing to do with DRM or pricing. It had everything to do with market share. Microsoft Flight Simulator and its addons are more sought after and are more distributed. If X-Plane gains in market share, and your company maintains its reputation as a quality addon maker for X-Plane; your products will be taken, stripped of their DRM, and made available on forums and torrent sites. I see two main options for providing a product like yours; payware and donationware. The way I would do it would depend on the market. Payware is obviously the most common way to provide a product. If I were providing products and using this method, I would take a different approach. First the product would use a simple serial number to activate it. Anything more is a waste of my time and provides no benefit to the consumer. Secondly, I would have a full working demo of my product that would work for at least seven days. I want the consumer to get to know my product, I want that person to use it daily like they would if they owned, I want them to fall in love with the product. When that seven days is up, I want them to be impressed, and wanting more, and ready to go to my site to purchase it. Last, I would set the price to be very competitive. I want to compete with my competition, and my product on the torrent sites. I would provide a customer experience that they can’t get from a torrent site. I think this is part of the reason why apps for the iPhone sell so well even though they can be found on torrent sites. To use pirated apps on an iPhone you have to jailbreak it, which is no big deal. Why bother though if the apps only cost a dollar to a few dollars? It’s just not worth the trouble. The other option, and my favorite, is donationware. I think donationware is a great way to determine the market value for a product. It’s interesting to see how donations work so well in many areas. Independent software, music, radio, and news is dominating right now. People are providing free content in many ways, to the point that it’s starting to hurt the traditional methods of delivering content. Podcasts are hurting talk radio, and many of them run on donations. The same goes for blogs and news sites. Some musicians have reported record sales though donations instead of a fixed price. I think it would be interesting to release two products. One that has a fixed price, and the other that is donationware, and see which one brings in more sales. People can pay what they think the product is worth to them. You put in a lot of effort and make it high quality, people will reward you. Imagine PMDG releasing their MD-11 as donationware. Some people would just get it and use it. Some people, who can’t afford the 80 dollars, but appreciate it enough to give what they can will. Some who really love it might give 80 or more willingly. I think it’s a great concept that works well in other areas, and may work well in flight sim. I think it would be awesome if you made a product like a Pilatus PC-12, and did this. See which method brings in the most money. Products beyond flightsim addons, products that I use and love, I pay for. A program that I use so often, and that has helped me in a budgeting program. I see it for download on the torrent sites, but I paid for it. I would have paid double what they were asking because it’s so good, and I use it so much. They offer a full working trial, simple serial number, excellent customer support, an excellent customer experience, my purchase buys me more than just the software, and the price is spot on. These are all things that need to be considered. This is long, and that’s my take on things. Please chime in if you like.
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