I can attest that when I was living on a few hundred dollars a month as a CS student, I pirated a very early version of the IntelliJ IDE. I don't feel bad about this, especially as I've been responsible for tens of thousands dollars worth of license sales for the same product over the years - if only a full-price version of IntelliJ was available, I'd have stuck with Netbeans/ Eclipse instead.
I question this, purely because the "Open Letter to Hobbyists" shows Microsoft as pretty hostile basically immediately.
I would bet good money the same applies to graphics people and Photoshop.
There were certainly better ways to do DRM at the time (even now) that Adobe was well within their monetary limits and interests pursuing. But of course, it was still cracked.
Also, for a hundred buck fee and some TPB/Demonoid credit, it's almost always worth it to a cracker to go after a flagship product.
There's also the running theory that Adobe was the one to release some of the cracks, namely because new releases of the Creative Suite back when it was new would be cracked nearly "instantly".
It's speculation, but the above theory would make a lot of sense - and, in my opinion, that's exactly what ended up happening, and what made Photoshop the industry leader over a pretty decent selection of alternatives at the time (though admittedly PS had already mostly established itself at the time anyway, but it could have probably been swayed).
I know some of those old friends stuck to Adobe while others looked for open source/free alternatives depending on budget/revenue. I think one even works at/with Adobe these days after trying to hack on more features more than 10 years ago. But it's the same reason Apple/Google want kids using their devices in schools. Train the next gen to want your product and let the marketing flow.
Adobe has always struck me as a company that understood software economics really well and really early on. They'd make money from proprietary stuff, then give it away before it made an opportunity for a competitor.
Actually, it's probably less the understanding, than the actual acting on it.
I can't confirm whether it's true, but I once read that Microsoft takes a similar approach to the unlicensed use of Windows in less wealthy nations. Even disregarding that it would likely be a losing battle, they'd rather it remain the norm than push people to the alternatives.
I used to work for a company that had a couple of "me too" products that they barely made any money on, but it was worth it to them to block a sale to the competition.
I've often wondered about this claim. I've heard it as well, from many different sources. I could never find a source, every time I've looked, it's a web of "I've heard".
Obviously Adobe wouldn't issue a press release to this effect, but does anyone know where this wisdom originated?
If you do business, you will study the market, those are results of the study.
Let take an art student PoV, one doing MANA in France right now (16-17 yo not eligible for free version) or at any study level before Adobe did this "free for student" stuff. If he can't pirate it, he will use GIMP, probably. Considering my CS school had 5% ex-art student (with or without a complete art degree), if those had used GIMP instead, i'd dare say GIMP would have been close to PS in GUI and ahead in functionalities.
So piracy take contributor away from GNU projects!
PaintShop Pro has always been Photoshop's little brother. It is quite capable though not as much as Photoshop. It is also much cheaper. If piracy didn't exist, I would expect a lot more people to buy it, but since for a pirate, they are both free, there is not much reason not to go with Photoshop. And pros will also go with Photoshop because even with the high price, it is worth it, especially if they learned on the cracked version...
I probably would've bought fewer DVDs. My money went to movies - harder to pirate at DVD quality back in the late 90s! - because they were better protected than a lot of the games in the late 90s. Or maybe fewer console games, same story there. But those we could rent, too...
This wasn't "ecosystem" stuff like Photoshop either, this was games we played for a few months and then moved on.
That said, Photoshop and Minecraft are completely different products and markets.
Obligatory photoshop piracy for an entire generation was the single biggest advertisement Adobe could have ever had.
This is the happy meal of the 21st century.
After years of pirating PS, I ended up paying Adobe for 6+ years for Adobe CC because PS and Illustrator didn't even compare to GIMP/other softwares.
If they had perfected the DRM, and wasn't able to pirate. I don't think I would have ever paid for it.
I have known at least a dozen people who pirate software and entertainment purely because it's cheaper than paying for it. These are other software engineers, they all make plenty of money to afford this kind of stuff. I doubt they would stop watching TV or playing video games if piracy suddenly stopped being an option.
I've seen american TV, it's unwatchable. If there's no option to actually buy the content without pop up adverts for other shows, breaks in the narative, squishing of the screen, etc, I'll go to a supplier who can do that.
If it's only to be the "good guy" then well congrats.. here's your medal.
It is better to spend on making your product better, your customers happier. Then chase tiny amount hostile users.
Imagine if Adobe, say, had come up with a way to do perfect DRM so that it was impossible to pirate Photoshop back in the days when it cost several hundred dollars.
It's probably true that a huge number of the people who pirated it back then would not have bit the bullet and coughed up the hundreds of dollars for a license, and so them pirating it did not represent a lost sale to Adobe.
But...I doubt most of them would have thrown up their hands and said "I can't pirate Photoshop...so I'm just going to give up on graphics editing!" or decided to just do their graphics editing all in MS Paint.
A lot of them almost certainly would have bought some other commercial graphics editor that is much less expensive than Photoshop, such as Pixelmator Pro for around $40.
That's where the lost sales from piracy turn up--in the sales of the less expensive alternatives that people would have turned to had they not been able to pirate what they pirated.