May DRM free novels sell more

[meru]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash MG. I love what they're doing and I buy from them as often as possible. I also sincerely believe visual novels can become popular in the West, and as such I'm thinking of the longterm. I'm also trying to look at things from a customer perspective. Not every customer cares that a company doesn't have the resources to provide a top-notch experience, and I can see those customers who aren't already diehard vn fans needing a bit more to really hook them. (As an aside, I can't even comprehend how a mainly digital-based sales operation doesn't have a dedicated web designer. I don't know much about how MG is run, what staff they have etc, but I'd like to learn more about it.)

And yes ideally they will be able to sell through other platforms in the future, but I have no idea how those kinds of negotiations work.

[sanahtlig]

I believe MG only has like 2 full-time staff (Kouryuu and Evospace).  JAST has 1 (Makoto).  Everyone else is contract-based.  Even the full-time people work multiple jobs.  Forum moderation on MG forums is generally left to volunteers.

[Intrinsic]

I think the answer might depend on the quality and type of title. I'd bet stuff that is pure porn people are more likely to not see a problem pirating, and DRM would be required to get any type of decent sales. Before you call me crazy, how many people have looked at porn on the web? Nearly everyone has probably looked at images that have a copyright on then, and did you feel the need to sign up with the site that image came from? Has anyone here signed up somewhere and paid for on-line porn? There might be a few, but a bet most people are probably like "pfft, that's silly, there is porn all over the net why pay for it?" and the ratio between people consuming and people paying is probably 99 to 1.

 

Anything with good substance that isn't pure porn will likely sell as good or better without DRM, and even if a game doesn't sell as good right away long term sales will likely increase as the game will get passed around and becomes more popular with a larger audience in the end.

 

The cost of DRM, plus the loss of sales because DRM puts more hassle on paying customers, and simply because the game is less out there and passed around, is likely not worthwhile for most non-nukige titles.

 

I strongly believe convenience is a large driving factor in many purchases, and overly restrictive DRM can remove one of the largest incentives to actually buy a game \ music \ anything digital