How to earn money with game development?

Question

Game development is a fantastic and fun job, but how to earn money with a so big level of piracy?

Do you owns or works on a profitable game development company?

Answer 1

Make games worth buying.

Answer 2

Two possible ways are:

• Develop an online game that requires online authentication, that is: only allow one instance (unique key) to access your online services at the same time.
• Develop a subscription-based online game.

I believe both of these will be the future for PC gaming, as avoiding piracy for offline games is pretty much an impossible task. There is a possibility to license 3rd party protection/obfuscation tools but these just delay the inevitable.

Answer 3

I have nothing to add to the first answer, but there are many gamers which pays for box versions of their favourite games. There are also many of commercial MMORPG (with month payments, premium accounts etc.). On my opinion, it's the best way to make money with your game - you don't need publisher (just hosting to distribute your game over net), you receive feedback more often and can refresh players interest to game easily by adding new items, locations, monsters etc. For me, I prefer to be MMORPG developer.

Answer 4

Read Gamasutra "Casual Games and Piracy: The Truth"