Naughty Dog co-founder: “We’ve lost millions to Piracy”

[binary solo]

superchunk said:

haxxiy said:
You can't lose what you never owned in first place, so...

God, I hate that rebuttal. Its just stupid, childish, and plainly ignorant of basic logic.

Would 100% of those pirating pay for what they pirate if there were no way to pirate? No, of course not. But, to assume that none would is also just as idiotic.

ANY item being pirated is losing income as a good % of those stealing a copy would have paid for it. There is money lost on the part of the content creators.

Well the example in the article was the ND dude buying a CD with Crash games on it for $1. So people are paying already. If there was no piracy these people would not buy new games, they would buy used, the vast amjority of them anyway. So I think companies are blowing smoke by claiming any substational loss in sales from piracy. Their loss in sales might amount to about 1%, if that, of the number of pirated games distributed.

I also know people who, with movies, rationalise that studios are making money off them because they are seeing movies in the cinema, and they by some movies legitimately on DVD/Blu-ray. But they figure the legit spending they do is more than enough money going to the studions, actors, writers etc etc, so they also obtain a certain proportion of their movies through piracy. No doubt there are gamers like that too. They know developers need to get some of their money, so they buy some games new, and they pirate others. Again, if there was no piracy they'd buy used, or rent.