How Cities: Skylines developer Paradox Interactive brilliantly battles piracy

Paradox Interactive isn't focused on hunting down video game pirates. In fact, they don't even need to. In the first 24 hours that Cities: Skylines was available it sold 250K units with absolutely no piracy. None. Zero zip. Nada.

On day two piracy was up to 16%, which is still minimal at best. Why is piracy so low? Because Paradox Interactive is focused on offering a superior paid experience to the pirated experience.

This is achieved by offering free updates and making it more convenient to use Steam instead. If the game is pirated, the pirates then have to keep pirating each update — which requires work and effort (ain't nobody got time for that). Steam's automatic update feature keeps things simple, making for a hassle-free gaming experience. It's a system that obviously works; we saw it in Magicka when the devs updated the game 14 times in 13 days…Pirates stopped posting the updates because Steam was just too damn easy.

It's a great method and it means we get better, more-supported games. What gamer would be against that?

If updates fail at keeping pirates at bay, developers can always make their own game service — you know, like Uplay and Origin. Ask yourself, which would you rather have?

[Paradox]