Miguel_Zorro said:
Rath said:
specialops787 said:
Rath said:
specialops787 said:
of course piracy decreases sales. they don't need to prove that fact. |
Yes you do =/ studies have shown that piracy doesn't decrease sales...
Also I wonder how long before companies realise that PC gamers can get around any of these measures eventually and that all this will do is fuck off the people who legitimately buy the game.
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If I go out and pirate Spore instead of buying it, I just decreased their sales. I stole it instead of buying it.
Now if you want to argue that the people pirating would never have bought the game, then file. It doesn't decrease sales in that respect. It is, however, still illegal. If the game companies don't do anything about it, then the government should.
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You may think its that simple but its not. Piracy has positive impacts on the level of sales through diffusion of information, this along with the fact that pirates are also generally the people who purchase the most games/music/movies overall (pirate before purchase seems to be a fairly significant thing) seems to balance out the amount of sales lost through piracy. There have been massive studies done on the effect of piracy on the music industry and they mostly reach the same conclusion.
Just saying that logically it should cause impacts on sales doesn't mean it does. But yes, it is still illegal and morally wrong to pirate - I'm not disputing that.
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Do you have links to any of these studies that you can share? Thanks.
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I know you weren't talking to me, but here are three sources that back up the claim he makes, none of which are the same (and the one from the Post actually mentions multiple studies):
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=243454&start=0
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/99958-toc-piracy-may-boost-sales-research-suggests.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34300-2004Mar29?language=printer
These were all really easy to find on Google, the Internet's simplest of tools.
Essay Pro