I think for most indie developers piracy is free word of mouth advertising, similar to the shareware model. Hopefully when their work is widely pirated developers can turn the attention into sales. I agree it would be very tragic if people lost their jobs due to rampant piracy.
To ask a difficult question though, are there actually any contemporary indie PC games that have been massively pirated to the point where the developer had to fire an intern?
To ask a difficult question though, are there actually any contemporary indie PC games that have been massively pirated to the point where the developer had to fire an intern?