Another Look At Piracy

[vlad321]

jammy2211 said:
I think theres one key stat in the article - while it's true that piracy is very much predominant in a small minority of users downloading more games then they have lifetime income - which leads to them suggesting the 10% accounting for 90% type statistics...

They've not accounted for how much PC is suffering from ' the average consumer' downloading a few games a year but not filling their hard drive with stuff they don't need. This is a back of the envelope calculation, but the average Xbox 360 owner buys less then 3 games a year. Until we know how many '3 games a year' type consumers are simply pirating 3 games a year instead of spending $150 we'll never know how much money is lost to piracy.

The problem is a game company will see a HUGE % of their total sales being pirated so will simply spout the 80% of our games potential sales were pirated. The other side will go on about the stats being spiked by a small minority. When the truth is the figure is somewhere in the middle and no one seems impartial enough to do a study on it.

That's my take anyway on the 'stats' behind it all...

The US and Netherlands did a study, the governments I mean, and said that they cannot tell in any way that piracy hurts the industry. They however saw that piracy spikes sales in other markets and even dared to say that piracy is better for the economy as a whole.