How do I put this... if you don't think retail content being free and easily accessible doesn't hurt sales, you're in complete denial. You must know people who didn't buy something because they can get it for free. No point in going in circles and you have nothing to back up what you're saying.

A) It helps the economy in the sense you still gotta pay for something to pirate. The internet, video cards, storage devices, discs, etc. It would help the economy as if people bought the actual content as well, its all taxed. More importantly it would help the industries that actually produce the content!

B) Many people don't buy something they can get for free. I don't know anybody that really pays for music anymore digitally or physically. Now how do you put that on a chart?

C) It doesn't matter if they think a game is worth $60 bucks. If they weren't able to get it for free many would either wait for price cuts or just pay the $60 bucks. If there is a free option they'll go that route and they do in massive numbers. Your logic is, I don't wanna pay $60 so I'm entitled to have it free.

This is hilarious by the way, "being somewhat pirated." Understatement of the year! PC games are often pirated in the hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions. They are pirated more then they sell. You can't even keep track of all the content pirated and shared offline. But for you, there are no accurate statistics of piracy therefore its not an issue. Brilliant logic!

you have no idea how to piracy helps the pc. yes it hurts it, but in some cases it helps it more then it hurts.

lets look at asia, high game prices, finding an affordable and high speced pc is extremly hard, and people play lots of games together. now in asia we have lots of gaming cafes(you pay to play an hour, and most people come to play lan games). now at those networks people can buy pirated copies of the game for one dollar, it comes with a cd and a plastic cover.

what does that do? well it keeps pc gaming relevant in that area, it creates a love for those games, which would result in those people buying the game if it has an online against piracy, or if it sequal does. then it makes the game popular and by the means of the internet and word of mouth that would make the game popular in europe and the americas and that could result in sales(since people their pirate much less then asians).and over the years that would cause the pc gaming community to grow, giving a bigger focus on pc gaming, and that would make people buy pcs, and buy games.

what are real life examples of that effect? well 2 that made 2 mods one of the most popular franchises in the world, counter strike and dota. when it comes to counterstrike everyone plays it here, most of its sales are pirated, but look at what created, cs tournaments over the world, and a huge following in the states and in europe. now lets look at dota, it expanded the chinese gaming market( it has a 7-11 million base their) which will help generate sales for everything gaming related. other then that it created 2 games, league of legends, and heroes of newearth, and it created dota tournaments over the world keeping the pc scene relative in some countries. and now you have dota 2 coming out and god knows how much that will sell.

now its starcraft time. it sold a shit load in korea, and like my past examples, im 100% certain that piracy helped it, especially considering the important of networks(gaming cafes) in asia.

now weight that against all the bad piracy bad. and it outweights it by a lot. also lets not forget that networks helpgames like wow grow, by providing easy access to all players wherever they are, and by making the interaction between friends very easy.

yes i have no sources. but i live in asia and i spend more then 10 hours a week in networks and ive ben doing that since i was 7.

Its a shame that the gaming industry can't really thrive in Asia due to high prices and massive piracy. I presume the goverment has a lot to do with that. But I'm not an expert on the subject.

If piracy wasn't such an issue in Asia I think free MMOs and other low cost games would thrive even more so. Perhaps even Asian developers would be doing much better. Sorry, but I disagree with you. I fail to see how piracy is genuinely helping developers and publishers of the software.

free mmos areant popular because of brand. like i said before people here mostly play games like cs, dota, sc, a.k.a huge franchises.

you have to understand how gaming in asia works to understand it so before moving on re-read my above post.

if it wasnt for piracy asians woudnt even know of games such as counter strike and dota. every pirated copy does not mean a lost sale, because people dont have powerful systems, and because of game prices. also considering life is more expensive here then in the west the average kid has less money.

so because piracy doesnt result in a lost sale, it helps pc gaming because of the reasons posted in my above post.

improving a games popularity and keeping pc gaming relevant as well as paving the path for future purchases> pirating a game, without hurting the dev because it would never be a lost sale.

now how does that help the world wide scene? it helped create huge franchises which keep the pc gaming scene relevant in the west. and its paving the path  towards a more emphasis on gaming in places such as china, which will eventually result in sales.

Not only does piracy hurt potential sales, but it hurts competition.

There aren't just free MMOs. There are free shooters, racers, RTS, etc. There are tons of low cost options that could potentially be thriving in Asia even more so. But they compete with top tier games being easily accessible for like a dollar on the street.

Gaming would still be very relevant in Asia without massive piracy. People would just play other low cost games, allowing the industry to thrive there. The quality of free games would likely be even better. God forbid Asian developers not have to compete with illegally distributed games.

like i said before in asia their is no such thing as a potential sale. and like as i explained before, the help piracy does in asia, outweighs the bad things it does in the west where it could take a potential sale.

people here dont know shit about free games, they dont know they exist, they only play popular games like cs/dota/sc which also happen to be better by miles then those free games. also those games have high skill caps.

gaming is relevant in asia, consoles are actually having software sales here, and thats thanks the ps3, since it just got cracked shops started selling games, decreasing prices, sellind used games, and using the trade in system. other then that i can buy a wii with 15 games for 250$ and so on. and piracy is decreasing in places such as china because of the competivie scene of games such as dota which create a community based on online play, and considering most released pc games dont allow pirates to play online that results in sales. since they can try the whole singleplayer experience for a dollar, and if they like the game they can purchase it so they could play it for years to come.

from what i know their are no asians developers, and the current ones hack a game and build another game from it. i can list a couple of games built in the middle east from other games. two of them are made using command and conquer generals: zero hour.

download garena and go look at the number of people in the asian rooms of dota rpgs(dota), if dota 2 is a good game with good lan features, and anti piracy online system, all of those numbers can result in sales.

edit: their are no such thing as low cost games, when da: awakenings released it cost as much as a full price game. games dont get price cuts here, and some gams have higher price for no reason.(i bought oblivion at 100 bucks). so lets say company x releases a game for 10 bucks, all over asia it would cost the same price as a full retail game(give or take 5 to 20 dollars depending on the store). low cost gaming would not thrive because retailers are theaves and all shops are illegal. and because of taxes hardware would also be very expensive. thats why piracy helps, people can actually play games, and considering the most played games are also the most played ps games(wow,dota,cs) they dont require expensive hardware and people can take the home.

nice!

how about T vs SF?

You are, as seems to be the pattern around here, just plain wrong. Psychologists have done studies that show that people are willing to pay for content when the value that is asked of them is the value they see in the product. In fact they prefer to pay that. Really, did you link that whole "cause of piracy" link I showed you before or are you illiterate or is your brian just trying to guard your fragile ego that much?

Also, I have provided many, many links that prove my point. In fact they were in a reply to you not a week ago. If I remember correctly, a week ago you also couldn't show me ANYTHING that shows that piracy causes lost sales. GO look in the previous thread I owned you in. I have provided my links to valid studies. You have provided me with nothing other than your flawed, inferior, opinion. But, here another link to a study, on top of the previous ones, proving your foolishness:

http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-boosts-cd-sales-071103/

If top tier illegal software wasn't so easily accessible then maybe people take notice to the free or low cost options availble. I don't care if they aren't as good, perhaps they would get better if demand grew.

Imagine being a developer for an Asian studio and your biggest competition is high quality illegal software. That's horrible, its extremely difficult to compete.

That's not what I mean by a low cost option. I meant a game you can either play for free or for little money. For example, don't you get to play hours of WoW for just a dollar?

These studies you show me are crap. And obviously its coming from a bias source that helps pirates sleep at night. They have studies that can prove ANYTHING...

http://budfacts.com/243/new-study-proves-that-marijuana-increases-brain-cell-formation/

Find me some statisics that show piracy never hurt potential sales. Because I've shown you a bunch of developers and publishers that think they do.