What can we learn from videogames?
STEAM
I read a piece on TechCrunch today about an anon source saying since Steam, they have stopped pirating PC games. Interesting stuff, fo’ sho’ Damian, but what the hell has it got to do with porn and the marketing thereof?
Good question, reader. Let me explain.
So, everyone in the porn industry seems to be convinced those Evil Pirates are why they are not making as much cash as they used to. I challenge this as you can see on previous posts here. Maybe looking at how another industry combated the exact same problem would be A Good Idea.
So, video games were heavily pirated all their lives. I remember dreadful copy protection attempts on cassettes for my Spectrum 48k back in 1983. They were hacked. And every single attempt at protecting games from piracy has failed since then.
So what did they do? Made online play an essential part of the game and worked out how to check the people playing had bought the game.
Now, what we could do is somehow package a live, online brilliant experience with a monthly membership. People would need a discreet app to access their smut. (As a bonus this removes any need for people to worry about partners and browser histories etc). This app would check that a current active subscription was tied to that IP and off they go watching the porn. Loads of different options. Could be free monthly usage of the system, and then pay for content. Could be per scene, per minute, whatever. Could be low monthly price with free cams included (have to compete with myfreecams). Etc. I am not saying I have the answers for the pricing. Testing and measuring would be the only way to move on that. Experiment. There is no right answer yet.
To stop piracy we have to make something BETTER than piracy. And something unpirateable (live cams, personalised interaction). The price has to be attractively low (see iTunes) and it has to be VERY VERY SIMPLE to use.
Now, one company like Braincash or NSCash could do this, but how much better would it be of there could be a massive colab where several large companies all put their content on the same platform and delivered SteamPorn or the iPorn Store to the world? A lot better is the answer.
Marketed well, priced aggressively, this could turn around the slump the industry is in.
Thoughts?