Sugestion regarding piracy

[Adeno]

The idea might work on a tech support system that relies on phone calls. On the internet, not so. The difference is this. When calling a company for tech support on a product, say your copy of Autodesk 3DS Max has a glitch or something and you have an assignment for the company that you have to finish before a nearing deadline, you are personally in touch with the other guy whose job is to provide quick and precise answers in dealing with your solution. They'll check your account information and license, and then get on with helping you. Even though a lot of companies still employ this call for support system, they have also expanded into having forums that everybody else can join in, with or without a license. Why would they open up a forum with tech support where anybody can just join in, whether they be pirates or actual customers, and seek help? The answer lies in the next part, the reality of customer service in a highly globalized interconnected world.

We now have the internet where people can share information of all sorts. Whether you're a PC user or a MAC user, everyone can share their knowledge about certain matters. People have different types of machines and of course, configurations. Ideally, a company's tech support group should be able to answer all questions and provide answers to problems to the customers who bought their products. They made the product, they should know what makes or breaks it right? Wrong. Because of the reality that a lot of people have different hardware, software, and many more variables involved in their computer system, it is very hard to narrow down as to what causes a problem for a person, when another customer is not having the same problem on a similar computer set up. This is where knowledge from everyone who decides to try to help come into play.

A tech support group has a limited budget in finding out and providing solutions to customers with all sorts of computer setups. Trying to simulate each and every setup that a customer has for his system is just very costly and sometimes ineffective. There are problems that cannot be solved simply by uninstalling and reinstalling the product and updating to the latest drivers of the hardware and programs that you have. With the help of random people who have the same interest with your product, there is a higher chance that the problem will eventually be solved by some ingenious method proposed by one of the forum users. Sometimes, people will discover problems with your software that you wouldn't have otherwise found. By discovering and reporting the problems, you will have an idea as to where your software fails and where you can improve it.

Having an open tech support forum is not only beneficial to the real customers (and the occasional pirate), but it actually helps the developers and tech support group themselves by getting FREE bug reports as well as solutions to what could have otherwise cost them thousands of dollars just to solve for one customer with a unique problem.

That's my take on the matter

Oh yeah, whenever I'm reading forums about a game I'm interested in buying and someone has a problem that I've encountered with another game, sometimes I pop in to suggest a solution that worked for me. Sometimes it works for them, too.