I dont even think thats the right way to put it, Not just kickstarter BTW but other sites alike.

I just noticed anyway, a dev wants 1m to make there game, They will probably promote
DRM FREE to get more sales (yeah come 5 years from now we may be paying a extra $10 for DRM Free versions of games :/ ) No problem.

Now i would say about 85% of people that helped fund the game own the game, As there may be a few people page jumping and think "$5 why not looks cool" and they will most likely get over %15 of what they need in most cases anyway

But anyway, So The devs get there money for creating the game, Then when release comes they get new people buying the game right? So they possibly doubled there money and well the pirates are just going to pirate it anyway right?

But does this mean a Win-Win situation for everyone? I mean if the games DRM Free and is what we asked for anyway the PC gamer is not going to get shafted right? As x Game would be made on the PC and not ported for starters, It most likely costs the Devs less as they dont need a publisher for anything among other stuff. And the Devs would of made money after the games release right?

I dont know if im missing something here but i find this a good way at looking at this stuff.

Piracy is mostly just a bullshit smokescreen excuse for publishers to exert greater control (through DRM) over their paying customers. That's why DRM only ever affects paying customers and publishers don't see a damn thing wrong with that.

Smaller companies, such as those that need Kickstarter funding to stand a chance of getting their project off the ground, aren't really in a position to have that kind of control, even if they wanted it. So for most of them DRM is useless.

They'll probably care a bit but it's for the backers, so to speak. You know some backers are going to be pretty sour if they paid for it (to be made) and others are pirating it (aka. getting it for free) and the devs are just like "meh, piracy, it's all goood", and in their sourness the backers of yore might feel disinclined to give money to the next project (because people are silly like that). Someone might even start a petition.

You can see a similar effect whenever the price of something drops, there's a sale, or something goes freeware/f2p.

...but yeah, other than maintaining PR with a bunch of sour pants, they probably don't have a reason to care all that much.

They care about piracy just as before.

They do see the whole DRM-free sex party as a marketing tool, though.

Can I ask is this:

Would publishers still do this DRM bullshit even if Piracy was not that big or no piracy at all?

Especially when PC gaming used to be very DRM free aside from CD Keys

That's an insightful question. I'd speculate a "yes, but they'd need another smokescreen".

Of course, there's always the exception...

But why would they want more "control" they are still making lots of money in this hypothetical theory

Yes they would have, since DRM was intended to stop/deter used sales, not piracy?

Piracy was the first reason and the used sales excuse seems to have died down a bit

Yeah i wonder how crowd sourced funding affects developers views of DRM. i too wonder if piracy becomes of less concern when development costs are covered before development even begins. Then sales are for profit and the funding of other projects and staff additions, resource acquisitions, etc.

No, Piracy was always the excuse, stopping it was never a realistic objective, but repeat a lie often enough...

Is piracy the reason they want control in the first place? That's the question this hypothetical scenario is examining. If "no" then they want control for whatever reason they want it in real life. That's the assumption made in my speculation - i.e. that they find certain used game sales practices threatening but that appearing to attack a something perfectly legal is bad PR compared to appearing to target people who overstep civil laws. The alternative assumption would lead to the possibilities that they would either have no reason for DRM or that they'd find another reason.

Kickstarter devs realize that people who want to pay for their products don't need to be saddled with DRM.