Minecraft Creator: Piracy Is Not Theft!

Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Persson has stated, categorically, that he does not consider piracy to be theft. Speaking at GDC, Persson said: 'If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world.' Persson also says he doesn't buy the idea of a 'lost sale'. 'Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?' he asked. Persson suggested that developers treat pirates not as bad people, but as potential customers that they have yet to win over. Games as services seems a good way to do this, he said. 'Make a game last longer than a week. You can’t pirate an online account.'

Speaking during the closing session yesterday at the Independent Games Summit, Notch dismissed the notion that piracy is the same as stealing, or ‘looting’ as incoming MPAA chief Chris Dodd framed it this week.
“Piracy is not theft,” he said to those gathered in San Francisco. “If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world.”
With this kind of reasoning one could be forgiven for thinking that Notch has pirate sympathies but since he’s a self-confessed member of the Pirate Party, that stance comes as no surprise.
“There is no such thing as a ‘lost sale’,” he added with a philosophy so Pirate-aligned it could be happily transcribed directly into any of their press releases. “Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?”
Notch was expected to talk about piracy for 5 minutes at GDC but in the event only managed about 3 minutes, describing the experience as “the scariest thing in a long time.” But while he may have only utilized 60% of his available time, he appears to have packed in value and left people wanting more, which coincidentally is his game developers philosophy too.
“If you just make your game and keep adding to it, the people who copyright infringed would buy it the next week,” he told those in attendance.
While anti-piracy zealots would insist that Minecraft has a 70% piracy or “lost sale” rate, Notch steadfastly sees his cup as rather more full than the raw percentages of his sales data may suggest, particularly by those viewing them from the perspective of an outdated business model. Indeed, despite this ‘pro-piracy’ stance, Minecraft’s position continues to improve