The creator of Minecraft believes piracy can't be considered theft and that smart games developers should view people who pirate games as potential customers.

“If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world,” said Markus Persson during the closing session of the Game Developer Conference's Indie Games Summit yesterday.

The independent coder - commonly known as Notch said: "You can't pirate an online account." he said.

In short, the more copies of a game being used, the more players who can be encouraged to buy services and content online. Pirates then become sales opportunities - for the extras if not the core game code.

Of course, Persson is less troubled by piracy as Minecraft is almost constantly updated. It's cheap too, and there's no huge marketing and advertising machine to maintain.

Does illegal downloading turn pirates into potential customers? Pfft, pull the wooden one. ®