I always think thoughts like this miss that the value prop right now is for "People who want to play games". By not having DRM, you're getting more customers, but you're also expanding your TAM to include "People who want to pirate games."
The reason "add DRM later" is problematic is that you hit product market fit with the a lot of the second group, meaning they will be upset when you add it.
> I always think thoughts like this miss that the value prop right now is for "People who want to play games". By not having DRM, you're getting more customers, but you're also expanding your TAM to include "People who want to pirate games."
That's valid if the target market is "people who want to play games". It's not in this case, it's "people who want to play indie games", which is a different target. By removing DRM, it's expanded to include "people who want pirate indie games" which is a ridiculously tiny segment.
> The reason "add DRM later" is problematic is that you hit product market fit with the a lot of the second group, meaning they will be upset when you add it.
So? These are gamers we are talking about. Bugginess, poor quality and everything else that they claim upsets them still doesn't stop them from buying the game!
The reason "add DRM later" is problematic is that you hit product market fit with the a lot of the second group, meaning they will be upset when you add it.