EU Commission Says Piracy Increases Legitimate Game Sales

[DonFerrari]

Aeolus451 said:

setsunatenshi said:

@bold

it's irrelevant for the argument that x games were pirated. the argument is: does piracy increase or not the legitimate game sales, so please, argue this point.

 

again, you push assertions with nothing to back them up: "a good portion of those 80 games, you'd probably would have bought if you had no option to pirate."

So yeah, i need to ask again, from where are you pulling that exactly? when a person is afluent enough to be able to afford this hobby, their time is not spend in mental gymnastics on how to circumvent the rules. they will take the easy path to get their pleasure. it's just how humans work.

 

My conclusion here is this, you're arguing from a moral standpoint. It means you are not even ready to concede that a net positive is possible from an action you deemed immoral from the start.

I am arguing from a practical standpoint. I can see how this action can have a positive effect to the industry. I can see that the long term "investment" on new gamers does pay off by fostering 1 more person that will take gaming as their main hobby even if at some point of their life they couldn't afford it. 

 

So look back at what your main point, look at my point, and then determine which one exactly is addressing the main question of the OP.

It's not irrelevant because that's how many games were pirated and some of those games would have been bought if the person didn't have the option to pirate them in the first place.  How many games would have been bought, rented, resold then bought as used by someone else and dlc purchased any time the game switched hands compared to what is gained with pirates deciding that they like a game enough (out of the hundreds they steal) that they choose to purchase it? if That's just you trying to invalidate the biggest weakness in your argument. 

My argument is not really a moral one but rather a mathematical one. Video game companies lose money when potential consumers pirate their games in bulk. Pirates have no sound arguement to justify the thievery of hundreds of games each one likely does. I'm fine with someone sneaking a few games that they really wanted when their country prohibits the games themselves due to censorship or high taxes or politics but not alot of games because it's detrimental to the video game industry.

I'm addressing the whole of it while you're only addressing the uptink in game sales due to pirating. If you simply just look at how many possible sales they lose compared to how many they'll gain in sales, you'll see the faults in your points.

If 100 games have to be pirated in order to get 20 legit sales from one person who pirates, how is that an increase in legit sales or profit? They are losing a lot more than they gain. How does that make any sense to a company from a financal standpoint? It does no good to the industry if a person takes a liking to gaming through pirating games when that person becomes a lifelong pirate of their games. 

Because the argument will turn in either the pirate wouldn't buy anything (so the 20 is a gain that we have to thank the pirates for) or that they wouldn't buy more than those 20 (so the industry isn't losing money because that person wouldn't buy it anyway).

It's funny to see the justification that what they do is good.