I want to write a web browser game and gain revenue.  My game does not have a lot going on with the server so it could be pirated (quite easily?)  I am wondering from your all experience if the business side of this loss is negligible.  And what is the winning producers philosophy? 

I could also produce this game as a stand alone C++ game.  In the General Programming gamedev.net forum this was discussed as also being possible to pirate.  How does a game maker (perhaps on steam) deal with this possibility, do they accept it in some way, and still win?  Do they have to be clever?

How do I win against piracy when producing a game and is there a mindset to win?  

Finally if piracy Is encountered as taken web code or selling others intellectual property how is it stopped?  Is there an agency and is it speedy?

People are making games and winning, hopefully it doesn't have to be a certain kind of game to win against piracy!  How do I win?

I know people are using an obfuscator.  I think this would be effective for something very small.

Thank you,

Josheir

"I am wondering from your all experience if the business side of this loss is negligible" - if you don't provide any support to your players, then strictly speaking, piracy doesn't cause you to lose money. However, failure to prevent piracy can result in a lot of missed revenue. Various sources suggest that sometimes over 90% of a game's players have pirated it. And, if you do provide support to players, or you have infrastructure (e.g. servers) that all players use whether they paid or not, then yes, they can cost you money.

"How does a game maker deal with this possibility" - there are many strategies:

• ignore it and hope you sell enough anyway
• try to speak to pirates, and hope some will convert into paying users
• develop for platforms that are harder for pirates to exploit (i.e. closed platforms like consoles, and to a lesser extent, mobile phones)
• implement client-side copy-protection or digital rights management (aka "DRM") that makes it harder for unauthorised players to play the game
• require server-side authentication to play, perhaps enforced by moving some key functionality to the server (e.g. "always on" DRM)
• move all functionality to the server (e.g. MMOs) and require a paid account to play
• give up on charging for the game itself and instead charge for in-game content (e.g. Free-to-play models)

"if piracy Is encountered as taken web code or selling others intellectual property how is it stopped?  Is there an agency and is it speedy" - generally speaking, it's not stopped. The political will to stop copyright infringement is low in America, and virtually non-existent in Russia or China, so if your product is of any interest at all, it is going to end up on an illegal site sooner or later, and you will probably have no practical recourse to preventing that. That's why many game developers are moving to models where it doesn't matter, such as having more of the game server-side, and ensuring money changes hands in microtransactions instead of being a paywall for access to the game.

"I know people are using an obfuscator.  I think this would be effective for something very small. " - for web games an obfuscator can hide the code from a casual looker. It doesn't do much against a determined attacker and it doesn't do much to stop someone just copying the whole thing and uploading it to their own site.

17 minutes ago, Kylotan said:

It doesn't do much against a determined attacker and it doesn't do much to stop someone just copying the whole thing and uploading it to their own site.

Let alone the even more obnoxious technique of putting your game in an iframe, and selling ads around it. You still get charged for the bandwidth, and someone else makes all the revenue.