Who have to deal with piracy?

I've released a game with a publisher, my question is, who needs to take precaution against piracy, me or my publisher? Like who needs to pay for a solution?

 

I don't think there is a default for that if you didn't negotiate it in your contract. Imho neither of you should, because drm usually doesn't prevent piracy, it only annoys legitimate users, and gives you bad press. Doesn't Witcher 3 get sold drm free over gog? Last I checked that sold pretty well (and yes, it also probably has rampant piracy, but one pirated copy doesn't equate to one lost sale, that would be a fallacy) . I fully believe you can get more sales by treating your customers well, and the number of pirated copies should not matter to you, unless they are directly costing you money through use of online infrastructure. In that case you should indeed try to find a way to prevent pirated copies from using those online services.

 

LOOOOL
i remember Spore, it had some kinda "GROUNDBREAKING NEXT GEN!!" drm and it was released on pirate sites a week before official release,
and so only paying customers had to deal with the BS

you cant fight it, you gotta accept it, its part of the platform
the computer originated from the endeavor of destroying people's information protections,
that is what computers were MADE to do !!!! LOL!!!

(breaking nazi enigma code)

 

I wouldn't expect the publisher to take this on board unless your agreement with them specifically covers it.

I also wouldn't necessarily expect indie-oriented agreements to cover it, pretty much for the reasons @Martin_H gave - if big corporations can throw huge budgets at it and still be ineffective, what could we possibly do that's practical?

 

My take on it is not to bother beyond game codes.. All the best games get cracked no matter what, all you end up doing is ticking off your paying users.

 

The protections are just ineffective. I remember the new DOOM and Rise of the Tomb Raider were supposed to be uncrackable due to Denuvo, yet that has been cracked months ago. In fact, Denuvo was removed from DOOM and Rime because it became useless against piracy.

Denuvo keeps bragging how much time they keep the game safe from cracking, yet if a pirate isn't going to pay for a game, they'll have no problem waiting a few weeks or months for a crack to come out.
So just don't worry about piracy as it's going to happen and so far nothing is there that is going to stop it.

 

My favorite part about that is how quickly they went from "Denuvo keeps your game from being pirated!" to "Denuvo keeps your game from being pirated for long enough." Hilarious.

 

What does your contract say?

(otherwise, who has more to lose from piracy?)

 

But that's precisely what matters. If you look at the sales of most big games there's a huge spike at the start followed by a long wedge or tail. For copy protection to get a return on investment all it likely has to do is delay casual piracy until after the spike, so that people who want the game during that period don't have the option of getting the game from a mate's torrent or whatever. They don't need to stop piracy, all they need to do is turn some potential pirates into actual customers.

Note that the proposition is really different for a small studio than it is for a big one. For indies we might get a spike at the start of sales, but it won't be anywhere near as big as for a AAA game with a AAA marketing budget. Instead we grow an audience over time, meaning that the short period where they protection might be effective is likely to be far less useful to us.

 

This. Anyone who wants it enough that they pirated it instead of buying it, but would have also have bought if if they couldnt pirate it, are definitely those that would buy it in the first day/week.
To sum it up, as @angrypenguin says, the pirates that actually hurt sales are gonna be much more concentrated in the release window