EU Commission Says Piracy Increases Legitimate Game Sales

[Zkuq]

Makes sense. Obviously some games are going to suffer from piracy, but some are also going to benefit from it. Single-player-only games will more likely suffer from piracy because there might not be much incentive to buy it later, but games with a strong multiplayer component or other online functionality (even in the form of continued updates) can probably benefit from piracy. That's because the there's only a very low barrier to pirate a game, so even people that might otherwise not have been interested in a game can pirate it, but when they notice they like the game after pirating it, they go on to buy it to get access to the rest of the features. Obviously not everyone's going to do it, but according to this study, it seems that enough people do to make the overall effect positive. Also, I'm guessing that the rise of digital distribution and online sales has made buying games more appealing than before, so people are more willing to pay for their games instead of pirating.