Piracy Has Helped the PC, Says PC Gaming Alliance Boss

We've heard a lot about piracy in the last few months. From Nintendo highlighting the most pirate-friendly countries to the ELSPA scoring a big victory with a UK tribunal, convicting a video game pirate to one year in prison.

But although you would expect the PC Gaming Alliance, a non-profit organization created to bring more and more developers to the platform, to gravely advocate against piracy, it seems that this isn't true. The president of the organization, Randy Stude, has recently talked with Big Download about the illegal phenomenon, and how, in the early days, it helped make the PC Platform what it is today in terms of success.

“The PC Gaming Industry's history is littered with examples of startups (including Stardock and Valve) that actually benefited from widespread piracy to grow a market for their future titles,” Stude said. “Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating piracy... However, how would Quake, Doom, Starcraft, Counter-Strike, or Half-Life have been able to grow widespread brand recognition without a widespread network of gamers openly sharing these games. These titles (and many more) defined the industry. Personally, my first experience with a first person shooter was with Doom (back in the day) and I did not pay for it. Id Software turned the corner and has a very successful business built on the back of the early free/open source exchange of their games...”

Stude does have a point, as lot of titles do owe their success to the fact that a lot of people were able to try them out, by using pirated copies, and then convincing themselves about the high quality, and, in some cases, eventually buying a legitimate copy.

While this is one of the guidelines for many video game pirates, to offer a full game in order for people to see its quality, instead of just a demo with limited features, this still doesn't excuse them. Perhaps when other titles such as Sacred 2 will also let players try out the full game for a limited period of time, then pirates won't crack them.