As gamers, we often make the case that piracy doesn't really affect anyone (except when it's a company we don't like, then it totally hurts and it's awesome). But despite our most avid protestations, the truth is, sometimes it hurts people. What was once viewed as the ultimate corporate take down ultimately has had more effect on the middle and lower class, enabling a system that often punishes those who do not have the resources to protect their intellectual property. One person fed up with this is Renegade Kid co-founder and game director Jools Watsham, who took to a recent blog post to discuss the issue and its impact on smaller development studios.
Reacting to news that hackers have recently started to crack into the 3DS, Watsham said Renegade Kid will be forced to drop support for the popular Nintendo handheld if the issue is not addressed, citing the infamous European DS piracy issues as a possible reason behind Dementium II's poor sales:
We’ll never know how/if Dementium II landed in as many hands as the first game, Dementium: The Ward, due to the rampant piracy at the time. Dementium: The Ward sold more than 100,000 copies worldwide, which is a great success for an original mature-rated title on the DS. Recorded sales of Dementium II are less than half that. We’ll never truly know why that was so, but many seem to believe that piracy had a lot to do with it.
If piracy gets bad on the 3DS, we will have no choice but to stop supporting the platform with new games.
I really feel for Jools. It sucks to see something you worked hard on get ripped off and go up for free on the Internet–as an artist I've been on the receiving end of that, and it's deflating. It reminds me of an interview I read recently in the Smithsonian with digital pioneer Jaron Lanier. In the article the virtual reality visionary, once the biggest defender of Internet piracy, makes the argument that we're actually shrinking the economy by creating a free information age. As an illustration, look what happens to indie developers and small scale studios. The Internet gives them a means to release material that otherwise may have struggled to find a publisher and widescale distribution, but it also allows gamers to rob them blind. Just look at the case of Project Zomboid: not only was their game stolen before release, but on top of that, they had to foot the server costs of the automatic updates sent to the stolen copies. Or World of Goo, a critically acclaimed game that has a nearly 90% piracy rate. Stealing games can come at an actual cost to developers, especially ones who don't have the resources to recover financially.
Watsham, for his part, was not all doom and gloom, pointing out:
The good news is that Nintendo has the ability to put up a good fight against pirates due to 3DS system updates and such.
Hopefully that will be enough to keep the thieves at bay. In 2010, Nintendo blamed piracy for a 50% decrease in software sales in Europe on the DS.
