[Anti-drm] On Linux Game Piracy

[Omar Kaminski]

On Linux Game Piracy [June 24, 2008, 9:48 pm ET] - 11 Comments

A statement from Linux Game Publishing (thanks Ant and LinuxGames) explains 
that "exceptionally high levels of piracy of Linux games" is the reason they 
are implementing copy protection going forward. Here's a bit:

http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/press_releases/200806241.txt

Over the last 6 years, we have resisted adding any kind of protection system 
to our games. We believe that users are happier without them.

Unfortunately, many users have decided to ignore our polite requests to 
respect our copyright and have simply placed our games for download. They 
seem to feel that they are allowed to do so, or they just don't care. Either 
way, this kind of action, and the downloading by many people, lead to a 
significant loss of revenue, which in turn directly affects our ability to 
produce new games (we arent about growing profits, we are talking about 
lower revenue directly affecting which games can be licensed). It is 
estimated that many more pirated copies of LGP games exist, than do original 
copies. We obtained this estimate by seeding the download sites with a 
number of broken copies of our games, and monitored the number of requests 
for technical support that referenced the known bug we had inserted.

Adding copy protection will give us benefits as a company. Firstly, it will 
allow us to recover some of the lost revenue, by means of additional license 
sales, either via online vendors or direct through the copy protection 
system. Secondly, it will allow LGP to show a solid revenue protection 
system that will increase our credibility as a porting company in the eyes 
of licensors, allowing us to attempt to obtain higher profile games.