Angry Birds Boss Credits Piracy For Popularity Boost

An anonymous reader writes "Mikael Hed is the CEO of Rovio Mobile, the company behind popular mobile puzzle game Angry Birds. At the Midem conference Monday, Hed had some interesting things to say about how piracy has affected the gaming industry, and Rovio's games in particular: '"We could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy." Hed explained that Rovio sees it as "futile" to pursue pirates through the courts, except in cases where it feels the products they are selling are harmful to the Angry Birds brand, or ripping off its fans. When that's not the case, Rovio sees it as a way to attract more fans, even if it is not making money from the products. "Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day." ... "We took something from the music industry, which was to stop treating the customers as users, and start treating them as fans. We do that today: we talk about how many fans we have," he said. "If we lose that fanbase, our business is done, but if we can grow that fanbase, our business will grow."'"

Comments

Re:Piracy: Free Advertising

[adolf]

Piracy is one of the greatest forms of advertising. In some businesses, it's called "word of mouth". Growing up, many of the products I was introduced to, and subsequently became loyal customers of, was thanks to "piracy" of one sort or another. Back then, nobody saw it as a bad thing. The rule of thumb was copy all that you want as long as you don't try to make a profit from it or pass it off as your own.

Indeed. Way, way back when, I had a pirated copy of Aldus Photostyler. I liked it a lot, and when Adobe bought Aldus and folded (some of) the features of Photostyler into Photoshop, I pirated that instead.

Today, I still pirate Photoshop.

This, clearly, is good for Adobe. (Unless, more likely, it's not...)