Meh, they'd have to prove you distributed it.

If I felt like being particularly evil I would "leak" a version of my game a week before it released that sometime between 5 minutes and 2 hours it starts flipping random bits in your hard drive.  I imagine the people bitching would be a good indicator of how many times it was pirated.

When confronted it, all I would say is that it was a bug introduced during normal development and I didn't release the software that did it.

There are effective means at hiding your IP on these things, correct? I would assume the real problem is out of reach, and you're only leeching in the casual pirates that way...

I don't think it's a can or worms you want to open. Even if you can stop 100 illegals but damage 1 legit consumer. That's a no-no.

Piracy is not the reason you game fail.  You game failed because it's not appealing.

Those that download illegally are not going to buy your game anyways.

Instead of trying to fight the invisible, why not try to make your product more appealing giving people more reasons to buy?

The damage done by piracy is largely way overblown.

company a need x sales to break even, you dont make x sales because customer group y mostly priated the game when they could of bought it. company a goes under, the games sucessor or future content is finished and company a former employees become another statitic to the unemployment list. 

An the gaming industry has no other alternative root like the software industry for other souces of income. Sales is the only way they can get money and while sales are increasing, so is priacy and that doesn't run well with the even faster growth in the cost of games. So Priacy is bad. 

I never said it isn't bad. The problem is that, instead of focusing on those that don't buy  your product, why not try focusing on getting your product more appealing to get more people to buy?

You need to separate the good pirates from the bad. The "Good" pirates are the ones that pirate things that they wouldn't pay for if piracy wasn't an option (that is to say, they are complete non-customers and wouldn't buy your product as it is if they couldn't get it free). The "bad" pirates are the ones that are customers, that would pay for things if they couldn't steal them. They create lost revenue (though to chalk it up to theft as the entertainment industry does is grossly misleading)

The theory is that the good pirates outnumber the bad by a significant margin, and thus what you mostly have are just non-customers not giving you money just like they wouldn't anyway, though you do have a chunk of customers who aren't giving you money that they otherwise would have

Being a pirate you get free stuff. Most pirates download their data to a flash drive then put it in a chest after putting about 500 flash drives filled with music,movies and games they bury that chest in that backyard X mark the spot! Reason for that so they don't get caught with it.

Do I have to break out the countless links that show that piracy is due to a person's product not being worth the asking price? Or that pirates spend more money than non-pirates? Or really anything that shows that piracy is just a scapegoat for people who make shit music/movies/games. THe problem is the product sucks for the amount of money that people ask for it.

You couldn't sue them you uploaded/offered the game for them to download..

I'm sorry but i dont get how anyone can sit there and say piracy is fine. Its stealing plain and simple. I cant stroll into a grocery store pick up some coco puffs go grab some milk and stroll over to the bowls and make myself some cereal, why? Because i didnt pay for it. Whether its digital, physical, or any form of property it doesnt matter there is enough ways to try something out, via samples, demos, trials, or any other form of testing something to figure out if you like a product or not. Everything else is just trying to rationalize stealing something im sorry. If it was mine property your damn right id do everything within my power to find you and punish or just make you stop, i mean your seriously taking money from someones family, its not right.