Video Game Piracy costs the industry as much as it makes!

[LuckyTrouble]

ZhugeEX said:

LuckyTrouble said:
*sigh* Once again: piracy does not equal lost sales. Every person that pirates did not intend to buy. The vast, vast majority of them would never spend their money on the game, for one reason or another.

Demand for a product and demand for a paid product are two very different things.

Very true, but also very false. 

It's clear that piracy doesn't actually cost the industry anything in real terms. 

But it's also clear that piracy does impact total sales. 

There is absolutely no way to prove that piracy actually impacts sales in any significant way, primarily due to the fact that there is no way to figure out the sales impact unless we create a world where piracy doesn't exist for comparison. Saying piracy impacts total sales in a significant way would imply that, in fact, many people that pirate would be sales if piracy just didn't exist for that product, which is a pretty hard argument to sell since it is so ridiculously hypothetical.