Ka-pi96 said: Literally just for games though? Seems a bit odd doesn't it?

Well I believe the methodoloy used is actually quite important... This report is very likely based on people's feedback (based on some words they are using)... And well... Last time I checked, the majority of scums who are pirating are mostly claiming that it is helping them to "buy" the games after "testing" it; (but actually almost never buys it in reality).

So I'm not surprised by the results; I doubt this is reflecting the reality at all tho; only part where it can actually be true is for multiplayer online games.

Pirating is bad for the industry in general and especially on PC, it is a cancer for any non-online games. At least we can see some hopes on PC because of multiplayer games (like Blizzard and the server check) or Steam but in no way pirating is helping (or has helped) the game industry in any way... (not only money wise but also because of the features we cannot get because of it) 

Hey, I pirated Zelda BOTW on PC because I didn't have money at that time to buy any games on my Wii U. But now I own a Switch and Zelda so...

Nobody said anything about making a living. In fact I didn't even say movies would make a loss. it's about increasing revenue.

A music album is listened to many times resulting in tens of hours of entertainment. Each book gives you several hours of reading time. We don't even have to be talking about video games.

An average movie has 90-120 minutes of entertainment. Unless it's a very good movie or you don't have any other hobbies a movie is watched a single time, maybe twice. Even if we're generous and say that every single movie is watched 3 times we come out at around 6h per movie. Every single music album, book or video game will top that. On average every other medium will give you more time out of a single product.

The only thing that gives you less value is a shorter movie.

"Especially music and movies live from merchandise"

"Nobody said anything about making a living"

I really don't get you now :/

A bad album I only listen to once, a bad game I rarely play for more than 30 min to 1 hour, on average I probably spend 4-5 hours on a game, so about twice the time I spend on watching a movie once, yet on average a game probably cost me 5 times as much as a movie. My favorite movies I have probably watched 10+ times. But all of this is useless information, the value of a product does not necessesarily have much to do with how much time you spend on consuming it, but the quality of the experience, a 7 hour movie is not automatically more valuable than a 1 hour movie. Certain short movies have been bigger experiences for me than some books, and I don't only experience them while I watch them, the experience stays with me forever.

Probably most pirates would never buy as many games as the ones they pirate, and many of them start pirating less and buying more if their income grows or if their personal income simply start existing if they were young pirates not working yet.
I used to both buy and pirate games many years ago, but the last time I pirated a game it was just because it wasn't on sale anymore, as soon as I found a regular bargain edition copy I bought it, it was Planescape:Torment and it fully deserved my money.

Probably a very poor study...
But on the case of our friends that pirated when kids and then bought as adult... you pirated because you wouldn't even be able to play without doing it and then bought when being able. Not that because you pirated when you were children you bought later.
This study is actually pointing devs to do more games as a service model where you can't even pirate it since you have to keep paying forever to play and I dislike the model.

Yeah, I don't think so. The majority of pirates are doing it because they don't want to pay. The moment piracy is impossible, more of those people will pay. And these anecdotal evidence change nothing - people are using their own, cashless self as examples. That's not the same as an adult choosing to pirate even though they can afford it.

I exactly bought it later because I pirated it as a kid. Because if not, I would've never learned about these games in the first place. Maybe I wouldn't have become a gamer at all. I didn't even actively ask for it, other kids at school gave me the disks and said: play this!

interesting article.

i reckon you would find most people would pay for tv and films if they were not tied to a streaming service, itunes or some other software/device required to play it. If they released them same quality for small size and you could play it in plex, vlc, on phone/pc etc.. they would get many dollars

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.