Piracy has so many deeper layers than just this especially in the flight sim community…
Alot of pirates in this hobby were probably once paying customers.
Payware dev to customer relationships and communications are also very important to maintain security of their products. Its very important not to leave customers feeling ripped off or more importantly in the flight sim community “completely blown off” when it comes to technical assistance/customer service. This is speaking generally and I’m in no way saying that is what has happened in this particular unfortunate situation, but it’s another layer of common piracy…scorned ex customers.
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Protect, with keys for example
I had a discussion with the CEO Magnus, founder of Navigraph, about pirate issues of their products a couple of years ago. It´s not worth the time for them to go chasing down all of the pirated products on the internet. They focus on creating products and implementing them into their own ecosystem of services so customer easily can use them and pay for them and create recurring revenue. Also focus on customer support and make the customer valued. Even piracy lead to a lot of sales at the end.
Time is money, focus on creating the best service/product and keep it updated. That will create sales and make the paying customer come back for more.
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I feel for you. It sucks to see your hard work being given away like that. But this is the Internet. Ever since computers have been available to individuals, software / digital content piracy has been a thing despite the best efforts of various companies and groups to enforce some kind of copy protection or license checking. If a piece of content is viewed as having any sort of value, pirates will figure out how to get it, defeat any copy protection, and share it.
While it’s not exactly comforting, keep in mind that while initially you may see these 700 downloads as “lost revenue”, the vast majority of those folks who downloaded it would never buy it in the first place. They either get it for free, or they go without. So while it sucks to have your hard work being shared for free, you’ve definitely lost potential revenue, it’s not the “on paper” loss that it appears. Yes, there’s definitely a loss there you shouldn’t have to suffer, but it’s not anywhere close to being what it initially appear to be.
Sadly, software piracy for digital content has to be treated as shoplifting in physical stores. Like it or not, it’s going to happen and such losses have to be factored into your business model.
EDIT:
Edited due to having been corrected for incorrect information I provided
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+1 to this
While piracy is never a good thing, since it is unstoppable, at least look at the bright side: Some people with genuine interest download it to try it and then buy it. If you keep updating and promoting your product people will buy it.
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I’m so sorry to hear about your experience. I really hope that this point above gets taken care of. They really need to step up their work on marketplace approvals as like you say - it offers DRM protection.
I’m so sorry that people are doing this. It is a darn shame that people still pirate products in 2021, and I really hope that you’re able to find some recourse.
And if anyone here participates in this garbage, shame on you, nobody wants you in the flightsim community.
Very warm regards.
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I think piracy is not good for the devs and do not agree on piracy … BUT
I never buy airports. Why … because i would check them out once … and basically only use for a few minutes of taxi and takeoff. Sometimes I dowenload freeware but often remove for not wasting diskspace.
So now one airport can be € 15 ??? Just to taxi a few mins ??? I paid € 45 euros for the CRJ …. I used that for 300 hours up to now. (Ow and i paid €45 for a lot of bugs also 
…)
Basically airports are WAY to expensive in my oppinion. When an airport would be a couple of € ( like 2.99 ) i would defenetly buy SOME … and i think devs in the end would earn more. now i do not buy them … and not illegal also. Devs are killing their own market partially.
I think the people that illagaly download airports would NEVER pay €15 anyway. So they would never have bought …. Meaning no lost sale.
But at this pricing it can feel like a ripoff for the people that did buy and perhaps even push them to illegal downloads
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Then you‘re simply not the target audience. And that‘s absolutely fine, but there are also people who enjoy addon airports, who love to fly in and out of them frequently in different westher, different approaches, etc, who build their routes between their addon airports only. To them 15€ is great value when it‘s for a nicely done airport.
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Not an excuse and simply because you don’t see value in a payware airport doesn’t mean others don’t, and certainly doesn’t excuse stealing the product.
And to say it promotes piracy is just silly. That’s like someone saying HBO promotes piracy because you need to pay to watch their material.
This is such a silly response. Nobody forces you to buy it, but not liking a price point is no excuse for stealing.
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Wait until PMDG would drop their 737 or 777 for 100 or 150 dollars. That aircraft will start a competition for “who is the fastest pirate in town”.
Did u read my post ? I am NOT approving piracy in any way !
I am just thinking out load on why i think people do it.
And for your info … games of thrones was the most illegal downloaded series …
Now the devs sell 100 copies at €15
But at €4.99 they perhaps would sell 400 copies
Thats what i am trying to say also
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I’m aware, which is why I used it as an example. Some humans are complete and total scum, plain and simple.
And yes I read the post, but you seem to be sympathizing with pirates and giving them an out by complaining about the developers price, which is sickening. A dev can set whatever price they want; nobody needs to buy it if they don’t like it, but it doesn’t give them recourse to go download it illegally because they feel a price is unfair.
I also don’t think this is the place to be telling the dev their price is unfair, either, and wasn’t the topic of this thread.
In any case, pirating of any kind is disgusting.
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Wow man ….
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Personally can’t wait for their 737 to drop. My wallet is ready.
As for pirating, PMDG has strongly hinted at marketplace distribution to lower their costs as well as reach a wider audience (Xbox) that they otherwise can’t access - which would be excellent as it would have DRM protection.
It’s too bad it takes devs so long to get approval for marketplace distribution. This needs to change.
Cheers
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In addition to what Aeluwas said and linked to - the concept of DRM is just as controversial, based on the continuous demonstration that DRM is extremely ineffective against piracy. It potentially (negatively) affects your paying customer more than the pirates, and it affects content creators negatively because it diverts resources that could have gone into improving the product.
DRM is based on the false claims that it can force people to pay even if they don’t want to pay, and that nobody would pay if there was no DRM which has been proven wrong ever since. The insane arms race against pirates increased the costs for both the companies participating and their honest customers and the only winner in this game was the DRM technology industry. The increasing complexity of the DRM schemes tends to make the software frequently unusable for the paying customer while the freeloaders are not affected at all and so far even the most extreme efforts only delayed piracy. There were even a few bizarre cases where the content was “weaponized” with malware techniques, posing a threat to both the pirates and the paying customer.
Assuming that a very little margin of people can actually be made to pay by DRM even if they don’t want to, that obviously forbids any investments exceeding this margin and makes investments within that margin questionable. Meanwhile more and more parts of the industry understood this and returned to simpler DRM schemes. I personally believe (and live off that belief) that the best way to generate honest, paying customers is not assuming everyone is a thief just waiting for an opportunity, not wasting efforts and nerves for those who actually are thieves and instead making a quality product at a fair price that makes honest people happy to pay and people on the border tip over to your side. Counting the money actually paid by customers who appreciate your work that much makes your life as a content creator much brighter than counting hypothetical money that was potentially stolen.
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The product you‘re talking about was unusable on my PC for almost 6 months after its release due to a verification error they couldn‘t resolve. It even closed the whole sim, even without selecting the airplane at all. And what did it help? The airplane has always been available for free.
Hi @NuageRaquette17
I’ve been full time on FS2020 plug-ins too since January this year, usually 14 hours a day 7 days a week. Initially it was decent quality freeware and we now have 14 products out that are all doing ok, a lot of happy customers too. The copyright breach happened with our first and only pay-ware offering, was a bit of a shock to discover, and to be blanked and ignored by the site owner.
Sorry to hear things didn’t work out. The WMKK airport is brining in a trickle, but we would need at least another 5 or 6 pay-ware products to generate enough to live on.
You‘re a new developer and from what I see in the sinmarket previews and your video there the airport looks really nice. I imagine that with the drop of proper AI traffic such as AIG that brings airports to life Kuala Lumpur will become an important scenery. Continue with good work and I think everyone will benefit from it. Sales come with reputation. I have had Imaginesim‘s WSSS in P3D and that area has always been nice to fly. WMKK is a good airport to start with as a payware.
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Keep at it. You’re still new at this. If you produce quality products, the word will get out and sales will increase accordingly. No matter what the business, starting out from scratch is always difficult and involves a lot of work and long hours. I wish you the best of luck and success in your endeavour.
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Because of some countries lackadaisical approach to piracy robust encryption is the only real cure but that doesn’t mean you can’t complain to the site hosting it.