Piracy Irony

Well, isn’t this interesting. Let’s take a blurb from Michael Russell's blog and see what he has to say about software piracy:

“For the last five weeks, support requests for the pirated version of the game outnumbered support requests from legitimate purchasers. Last week, the pirates outnumbered the true customers by almost five to one. It takes time and resources to track down solutions to people's problems. I spent seven hours searching for answers to one guy's problem just to find out that when I asked him a question regarding a setting, he was checking on his friend's machine for the "right" answer and then on his machine and if the two didn't match, he was reporting the "right" answer so I wouldn't know he had a pirated version.”

He continues:

“Mind you, I'm one guy that's been handling support for what could be called a niche product. Since release, I've spent more time handling customer service than I have handling the responsibilities that I have in my department. If I'm getting overwhelmed by the freeloaders, can you imagine what it's like for other companies with more pervasive products?”

Feel free to hear more complaints and explanations here in an interview with Shacknews. Beware the multitude of softball questions.

Now, thanks to our friends at SomethingAwful, we have the well-deserved smack down (it begins with a direct response about Michael’s claim that software piracy has lost homes and jobs across the industry):

“Who lost their homes? Which studios were shut down? Were they shut down because of piracy, or because they made terrible games? Remo asks none of these questions. And then there's the most important question of all. Why the hell are you not asking for legit Steam IDs when someone requests support? Oh poor me, I spent seven hours helping a dude who had a pirated copy of Sin! I've got a simple solution for you.

STOP SUPPORTING THEM.

No shirt, no shoes, no Steam ID, no service. It's that simple. When I call my cable company they ask for my driver license. When I call my ISP they ask for my account number. There's no need to get up on your angry Internet soapbox and write about how the PC industry is going to collapse because you're unable to manage your time correctly. It's a blatant cry for attention about an issue that could have been handled quietly.

Russell doesn't want to put up any barriers between him and the customer. Well, buddy, you might have to put up some of those barriers. You want people to log onto a server just to play your fucking game. But God forbid they verify their copy of Sin to figure out why it's screwed up. “

And that’s the most interesting thing I’ve read today.

And it’s hard to say, who you are these days
But you run on anyway, don’t you baby?