We have a crashing bug in the software at work. Well, actually this particular crash isn’t caused by us, but if you pirate it, there’s a good chance that the crack you used will expose an problem that would normally not occur and the application will crash. And then you will send us a crash report.
When that happens, we respond with a polite email saying that we know what’s gone wrong and if they purchase the software, it will all work as expected. Usually we never hear from them again. Occasionally we get an email saying “thanks for letting me know”, and they go and purchase the software (usually they ran into this because someone copied it for them, rather than out of malicious intent).
My favourite response is when you don’t hear back directly, but in the next day or so you get another crash report from the same person. Only this time it comes from a much earlier version of the software, as they’ve rolled back to try and get around the crash. Of course then I get to say “we’ve fixed this crash, to get the fix update to the latest version”. Which will, of course, result in another crash if they update and continue to try using the pirated version.
I love it, and it makes me smile.
Every.
Single.
Time.
