Many of you may know that Russia has the highest piracy rate in all of the world. So great is the piracy market that most people don’t even consider the country a market anymore. Last year, in 2010, Central and Eastern Europe have a Piracy rate of %64 percent according to BSA’s (Business Software Alliance) Global Software Piracy Study .Well, why is that?
Is it just because Russians are a bunch of “cheap slobs”?
Valve seems to think quite the opposite of the rest of the crowd (even their games show it). They believe that the piracy rate is due to the convenience, as opposed to the actual price.
Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, recently spoke about this subject at the North to Innovation conference in Seattle. He pointed out that ”Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market.” He also added that the people who were generally demonizing the Russians were the people withholding releases from Russia for six months.
Earlier this year, Valve released Team Fortress 2 as a free-to-play game, supported by micro-transactions. With this free, full release, TF2′s user base increased five times over, and the profits from the transactions are doing pretty well according to Newell. Even in Russia, the conversion rate between players and transactions is 20-30%.
Now what does this have to do with piracy? Through this micro-trxansaction support, Valve has effectively eliminated the convenience of piracy by offering a better experience if they don’t pirate. Newell believes that ”the easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” Looks like this stands true for Valve’s TF2, as profits off the F2P game climb ever higher.
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Very interesting, comrade.
*in thick Russian accent*