this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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They have telemetry. They probably know when a game is downloaded. They probably don't know if it's legitimate. They just auto bill based on telemetry and leave devs to dispute or suck the big one. Only effort needs to go into disputes. Big clients will obviously get quicker resolution.
No company would trust devs to be honest about downloads and it would be too expensive to verify.
They don't need to audit much, just need a steam, epic, and itch total downloads figures.
They'd have to do best effort against charging devs for pirated copies.
Telemetry is also easily blocked. As a business, I'd trust that a lot less. It's why many enterprise licenses are simply self reported. The punishment isn't worth lying enough to make a difference.
Most companies would trust devs as the devs are not big enough to survive a legal fight they'd certainly lose with prejudice, meaning they'd pay court costs as well.