piracy
i have a confession to make. joe and i have this little game company,
delta tao. it's been around since the 90s. back then piracy was a huge issue. a lot like today. the solution then came from the technology sector - copy protection. this was basically chunks of the software that was supposed to allow legitimate copies to run but disallow stolen copies. for the most part, it was a miserable failure. it was either so laughably weak that it was easy to circumvent. which was annoying. or it was so strong that it made the product seriously irritating to use. after a few years, the technology companies realized treating their customers like criminals was self destructive. today, it's rare to find products that are copy protected that way. it's cheaper to accept piracy than to prevent it. lesson learned. we went further. and made piracy work for us instead of against us. i explain. we were small. we had no money. no budget for advertising. it doesn't matter how great spaceward ho! is, no one will buy if they never heard of it. the only currency we had was product. which found its way to the pirate boards where word spread about this great little company that makes awesome products.