What you are saying goes very well on the long tail strategy.

Yes rich countries may make 80% of the revenue (let's say nowadays it's 100%) if you use your marketing intelligence to see the right price and way to distribute your product in a way that you can untap a portion of the market in that poor country that may have enough money and willingness to buy your product.

What I mean is, are the pirated games the ones that benefit? Is it just that pirating recruits more gamers, which later buy other games legitimately, or is it that people pirate a game, try it out and buy that game later, if you understand what I mean.

And I'm not asking this to question the legitimacy of the research, I'm just curious as to how the beneficial effect works.

Damn, I am a video game saint then.

The calculation is obviously based on the whole industry. As I said, piracy benefits some games and others not. I'd think that most of the time it benefits other games rather than the exact one pirated.

@ bold: i never said that companies are to dumb, nor that those exact figures would be the correct ones for maximizing profits. I gave a clear example on a previous post of the same game being ALREADY sold upon release at different prices for different markets (Russian/Eastern europe price vs Western Europe). In some cases it's a 50% difference in price. So according to you, companies are too dumb to price their games the same in those markets as they do elsewhere.

1) there are plenty more who don't

2) BS, the bulk of pirates are in emerging markets (China, Brasil, etc). When I mention poorer countries, I don't mean dirt poor (as in not enough food to feed the family poor).

There may be some cases of 50% disparity in prices sure, even more when the launch isn't aligned. Yet you were the one claiming that you are sure that selling for 20 would have more profit than selling for 60. So if the companies aren't doing that they are dumb. Thus I still require you to show your evidence that proves that it would be better to sell for 20 and also that it would sell 10x more and that selling 10x more it would profit more considering all involved costs.

1) Still doesn't make the majority child, where is the statisc to prove your claim

2) Nope you are wrong. You could try and spin a relation between paying customer vs pirates on developed and underdeveloped to say that in percentage there are more pirates in Brazil than USA, but if you look at raw number USA have more pirates.

@ bold: stop putting words in my mouth, you've been corrected about more than once now, it's completely absurd. you're either doing it on purpose or you're lacking the understanding skills in english to know better.

it was a thought experiment, inductive reasoning if you will, which depends on certain assumptions being strong enough (lower price = increased number of sales). the proof this already happens is the price disparity that exists nowadays on the specific markets i provided as example. the main point was the following; there is a specific price that will maximize profits on a given market, and this price is different depending on the specific market being considered

1) There are several studies conducted over the years that tackle different aspects of this question, so let's put up a few:

http://www.dailytech.com/Nearly+Half+of+Americans+Pirate+Casually+But+Pirates+Purchase+More+Legal+Content/article29702.htm

Another one...

http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-piracy-survey-results-35-percent-of-pc-gamers-pirate/  

"This chart shows the percentage of people who pirate within each age range. As you might expect, younger respondents were the most likely to pirate, with that likelihood decreasing about five percent per age group between 16-20 and 51-60. More than 40 percent of teenagers said they currently pirate games, while less than 15 percent of 51-60 year olds said the same."  

2)

https://www.go-gulf.com/blog/online-piracy/

US is not even in the top 10. Now was there really a need for me to find these? I'm pretty sure 2 minutes on google would have gotten you the same results.

Your move now.

PS: I sure hope you've never watched online pr0n without paying you dirty pirate you :)

Nope you hadn't proved yourself before; and of course there is specific prices per market that maximize profit. Considering companies do their studies right then the price is about what they are doing, so it still isn't 20 USD that you claimed. I know full well of demand elasticity, still none of what you said corroborate that going 1/3 the price makes the sell of the vg games increase 10 fold, and also considering royalties, taxes and other costs that this would ensure more PROFIT.

1) This point already put USA ahead of most developing countries on pirate amount. And we were talking about gaming piracy not general piracy, so unless you want to deny the OP itself that show difference in piracy effect between media you may as well. And as far as I remember 18-29 years isn't child. And considering that childhood goes up to 12 or less, and you said Childs is the bulky of pirates the study also deny you considering that the sum of all adults pirating is bigger than the child.

2) I said to you RAW numbers not percentage. 50% of american doing piracy puts it at over 150M pirates (which is 75% of Brazil population, and we have less internet user than you have pirates), also most servers and providers of content are also on developed countries per your own numbers.

You say I lack english understand, but you seem to lack interpretation.

holy shit you're making this way more difficult than it has to be

for the final time! I never mentioned the 20/60 prices to be a factual case scenario, simply an example to illustrate the point that HIGHER PRICE DOES NOT MEAN BIGGER OVERALL PROFIT!! please make sure you understand what I wrote, it's the last time I'm going to explain it. I'm quite certain I used qualifiers like "ifs" even in that example you're strawmanning me with.

1) My original claim was the following "especially since the bulk of people who actually pirate games are 1) younger kids with no disposable income to fuel their hobby or 2) people in poorer countries or with low access to affordable gaming (or outright censorship"

So me being 34 years old, you can bet your ass that I count 16-20 as kids (not children like you pretended I said) without much disposable income (because in most countries if you're 20 or younger, you're living off your parents, not working). So do your math now... kids (young people without self sustaining capabilities) and people from poorer countries (may I add per capita for clarification?) like China, Russia, India, Brasil, etc do in fact constitute the bulk of those who resort to piracy.

2) your turn to provide some real data there. a 3rd grader would understand that China and India have a much higger population than even the US, so your claim that the US is ahead is false both in percentage as well as RAW numbers. so either back up what your saying, like you asked me to do, or just stop arguing this point

To finish my point, you seem to be arguing a strawman in some way due to your lack of english understanding. This is not a dig at you personally, but it should make you pause before getting into a more heated debate in that specific language. It's not fun if I'm sending and you're not receiving.

You never had put that 20 60 was ass pulled. The price strategy differ for each market and that was agreed by me even before I discussed with you. I asked you to pull forward the evidence of your 20 60 claim that just now you are retreating from, so ok.

1) So you consider kid on your own definition, ok, anothe goal post moving. 16-20 is much more under young adult than kid. Yet the study you showed had 18-29 as first braket and all other groups stil had over 30% pirate rate in USA (again for general piracy, not vg exclusive). So nope, it's no bulk. If you had said child/teens are more likely to pirate than older people I would agree, when you say bulk that means vast majority (like 60 or 80%) and considering all ages brakets of the study you showed and the population distribution of USA I would infer that actually the smaller part are the "kids" you defined, because basically even if someone younger than 29 is twice as more prone to pirate than someone older than 60 (as your study claim) the amount of people younger than 20 is so much smaller than from 21+ the percentage per groups doesn't make it have more population pirating under 20 than over.

At least read the report you are using and learn how to do maths.

2) USA having over 50% of its population pirating already null your claim that people in developed countries doesn't resort to piracy. Sure China and India having 90% of their online population pirating (what is the size of this population? That isn't disclosed) make a very big population, but doesn't make them the bulk, unless you define bulk as something else as you do to kid.

In case my English is very bad I'll use Webster to help out

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kid

a young person 

• kids in high school

; especially :child 

• a married couple with two kids

—often used as a generalized reference to one especially younger or less experienced 

• the kid on the pro golf tour

• you poor kid