Angry Birds Boss Credits Piracy For Popularity Boost [Slashdot]

[DP ServBot]

An anonymous reader writes "Mikael Hed is the CEO of Rovio Mobile, the company behind popular mobile puzzle game Angry Birds. At the Midem conference Monday, Hed had some interesting things to say about how piracy has affected the gaming industry, and Rovio's games in particular: '"We could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy." Hed explained that Rovio sees it as "futile" to pursue pirates through the courts, except in cases where it feels the products they are selling are harmful to the Angry Birds brand, or ripping off its fans. When that's not the case, Rovio sees it as a way to attract more fans, even if it is not making money from the products. "Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day." ... "We took something from the music industry, which was to stop treating the customers as users, and start treating them as fans. We do that today: we talk about how many fans we have," he said. "If we lose that fanbase, our business is done, but if we can grow that fanbase, our business will grow."'"

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[Porksta]

Completely misleading title. I thought the Angry Birds boss was going to say that Angry Birds became extremely popular due to piracy.

[Graham Mitchell]

I don't quite understand how this guy is qualified to comment on piracy, seeing that Angry Birds is free-to-play on most platforms. You'd think that would squelch a demand for pirated software, since the company is giving it away for free (with ads, mind you, but it's Angry Birds. Who cares? If Mass Effect 3 was splattered with Coke ads I might have a problem.)

[rbudrick]

There'sa lot of angry birds ripoff games out there now where you launch birds at pigs andd similar shit. Sure, It's kind of like all the breakout clones, except birds and pigs, which is a bit more ripoffy, I say.

-Rob