Conversely I know a number of music software (VST) developers who simply gave up because piracy nuked their income.
There are specific niches and specific relationship models where piracy won't do this. But there are far more where it will.
Ultimately it comes down to the ridiculous notion that because cost-of-copying is effectively zero then so is product value.
This handily ignores the hours/days/weeks/years of development effort that can go into a product, and the use value - which may translate into income - that it offers users.
As a creator you certainly have the option to decide on the relationship model you want with your customers. Piracy removes that right.
VST developers also exist in a space where their $100+ USD products are one of dozens that a person wants use, in a relatively small market, where many people are hobbyists who don't make money off their music. DAW entry costs are already high, with two of the most popular being Ableton Live Standard at $450 and FL Studio Producer at $199. They don't expect amateur Joe to license thousands of dollars worth of software just so he can post to his 15 followers on Soundcloud.
I think you're understating the size of the studio production world who are as much extensive consumers of comparatively inexpensive VST plugins as they are consumers of multi-hundred dollar workstations.
But that right is entirely artificial in the first place. It was given in order to encourage more creation. Saying that some creations would have been encouraged had that right been enforced (not even that is a given - a pirated copy does not equate a lost sale 1:1) is not enough to justify copyright without weighing that against all the negative effects of copyright - overhead to licensing, enforcement costs paid by society, people prevented from creating derivativees, etc.
> Piracy may matter to big companies that have lots of employees who try to extract every possible cent from their audience.
I don't necessarily think AAA game studios are trying to extract every cent. But they do exist in a pretty unique situation in software. Since they invest a ton of money up-front to produce a game, and something like 85% of their sales occur in the first month or so. And those profits are invested back into the creation of the next game.
Piracy is very much an issue in this situation. Delaying a crack by one week is probably the difference between solvency for studios.
It is absolutely the case that some game studios might not be effected by piracy. Either because they don't make their money from the game, but instead from selling in-game items, their product needs online support for maximum fun, or some other reason. But the industry is definitely big enough for piracy to be both a problem, and not a problem for different players.
> I don't necessarily think AAA game studios are trying to extract every cent.
While this is true, the ones who don't tend to get eaten by the ones that do, eventually. Fantastic game studios are one flop away from closing their doors most of the time, so attrition is high, and the allure of recurring revenue via predatory microtransactions is hard to ignore.
macOS software automatically excludes >95% of the human population from its user base, and the remaining bit is incredibly wealthy and used to the macOS tradition of high quality botique software for a price.
The PC and Android gaming markets are slightly different beasts.
> If you just want to make a living from your software
This mindset is not compatible with creating multi-billion dollar software like Windows or GTA 5. The only way to do that involves financial structures that are more complicated than just making a living.
That's not to say I think such software is necessarily a good thing, just that it wouldn't exist without aggressive profit optimization.
This goes back to the same point made earlier in the thought experiment about copyrighted recipes. It really resonated with me and has proof that we can see. I wonder how much all these women with recipe blogs are making? Their sites are usually ad spam but people are finding recipes through them. They created the recipes or modified someone else's but they do not control them.
My app is practically almost free except for a nag dialog, and I still make a living from it.
Piracy may matter to big companies that have lots of employees who try to extract every possible cent from their audience.
If you just want to make a living from your software, you should not waste time worrying about piracy.