Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) – Indie gaming subscription service for PC

Re:Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) – Indie gaming subscription... by gizmo on Friday January 13, 2023 @01:14PM (#34371632)

You don't have to prematurely worry about losing subscribers when you're bottlenecked at getting new subscribers. Even if you have 10% monthly churn because of piracy that's fine because it means your service is good enough for gamers to sign up in the first place! The strategic (but not very nice) thing to do is to introduce DRM long after you've got traction. Right now, DRM is a solution for a problem you don't have.

Other than exclusives, I can't think of anything that would tempt me to join your platform.

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Re:Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) – Indie gaming subscription... by vernon99 on Friday January 13, 2023 @07:28PM (#34375879)

That’s a very good point very well put - I fully subscribe. At that stage the problem is players and catalogue - focus on those extremely hard, don’t misplace your limited efforts into solving a not yet existing issue.

Edit: typos

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Re:Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) – Indie gaming subscription... by motoxpro on Friday January 13, 2023 @09:10PM (#34376651)

I always think thoughts like this miss that the value prop right now is for "People who want to play games". Without DRM it is "People who want to pirate games" mistaking these two groups is something that many people have done.

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Re:Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) – Indie gaming subscription... by lelanthran on Saturday January 14, 2023 @03:33AM (#34378443)

> 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!

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