Since Xellos took care of of your post, I will address what I still find outlying.

1) "(Or downplaying piracy)" did not exist as one of the original tenets, and you also have no proof piracy is being downplayed in posts as some posters are under the impression you are exaggerating.

Obviously this tenet was referring to drasically downplaying piracy. The statement was a clear exaggeration. Noone denies the existence of piracy. This was a reference to downplaying it's significance.

As for piracy being downplayed, it was mainly a reference to Vlad, who's argument seems to be 'if you don't want to get pirated, make a better game, because good games don't get stolen.' No, good games get stolen even more (see Xellos' post above talking about WoW), it's simply that they ALSO sell more.

2) Conceded, that post falls perfectly in that tenet.

3) That post has nothing to do with it, "If you try to protect your game" is not the same as removing dedicated servers as dedicated servers don't only deter pirates (my last couple of posts have repeated this).  Find me a post that says they are pirating the game purely because of an anti-piracy measure, something that does not effect anything else.

That post clearly falls into the tenet, if you disagree, I don't know what to tell you, other than it would be tough to find someone word for word stating what was mentioned - however that was pretty close.

So you have one post, as an example for only one of those tenets.  Oh, and no, cracking steam games is harder then other games.  Which makes it much less likely for a casual pirate to attempt it (or would likely give up after seeing the procedures).

Well, that's good - hopefully more developers will take advantage of this.

You also repeated "many players don't need it" even though I just said that a vast number of TF2 servers are modded (and regularly full of players) to increase the amount of players or respawn times.  This is a steam game in which dedicates servers are used so the example is very valid.

Simple things like number of players and respawn times should be included in custom game settings, whether or not there are custom servers. Granted, limiting functionality is a problem developers should curtail, however many options like these can be included, without including the functionality that makes things easier for pirates.

You agree it's a loss for a number of people, but blame the people who choose to pirate?  TF2 and Left 4 Dead are steam games, they allow dedicated servers.  To sum up, if those game can do it without apparant problem with piracy, why can't MW2?

Well, bear in mind that WF2 and L4D are primarily PC games. MW2 is a console focussed game also ported to the PC. Maybe it takes a lot more effort/money to integrate both this protection and custom server functionality? And since PC gaming sales are a fraction of what they used to be (largely due to piracy) it's probably not really worth their effort to do it.

I am still waiting for you to, just once, read my post before responding to it. You only posted a single piracy report from bittorrent referring ONLY to 2008. And yet, that qualifies as WC3 "doesn't make piracy charts" when it was 5 years old in that year. No. Just like you won't see StarCraft at the top of piracy charts anymore, because it's 10 years old. Clearly piracy is a bigger issue for newer games. When people buy an old game it's often because they want a bargain. Pirates have no reason to wait years to steal a game, because it's the same price. Naturally piracy would taper off earlier than sales on a game with massive legs(like all blizzard titles).

So you just agreed sales copes are predominant over pirated copies. My job is done.

(Still waiting)

5 or 10 years after the fact, sure, why not. Up front or LTD? Not so much. Pirates get the game for free, they have no reason to not get it early. So yes, games sales may tend to go on longer than the game tops piracy charts - that says nothing about how much a game gets pirated in total.

Obviosuly it's not LTD if the game still sells so much so the game gets bought well more than it gets pirated.

It's sales are a trickle of what they were - but that doesn't mean it's sold more. SC sold what... 11 million copies? Chances are it sold most of that, at least 8 or 9 million of them.. in the first 3 years. It could have easily had twice that number in pirated copies, especially considering how big it is outside the US. Even though it has since sold up to 11 million, if it had 16-18 million pirated copies early on in its lifespan, its sales will never exceed that. The point is, there's no financial advantage for pirates to wait on games, so clearly even if piracy numbers are huge in the beginning, they may not have the same "legs."

Same with WC3. These were games that are still largely played today - legitimately and pirated.

It's sales are a trickle of what they were - but that doesn't mean it's sold more. SC sold what... 11 million copies? Chances are it sold most of that, at least 8 or 9 million of them.. in the first 3 years. It could have easily had twice that number in pirated copies, especially considering how big it is outside the US. Even though it has since sold up to 11 million, if it had 16-18 million pirated copies early on in its lifespan, its sales will never exceed that. The point is, there's no financial advantage for pirates to wait on games, so clearly even if piracy numbers are huge in the beginning, they may not have the same "legs."

Same with WC3. These were games that are still largely played today - legitimately and pirated.

I've been reading your posts in this thread, and I must say that you are completely ignorant about PC gaming and PC games.

I threw out an estimate regarding sales, and granted the timing of the sales was more based on console sales as I don't generally track PC sales. However I don't believe you've actually read most of my posts, as most of my comments have been posts on piracy - not the games themselves.

Starcraft sold only 1.5 million in it's first year, less than 15% of it's total sales. It must've sold even less in it's second and third years. Starcraft probably sold about 4 million in it's first 3 years, only a third of it's lifetime sales. Between May 2007 and February 2009 it sold another million units, which is even more amazing considering it wasn't even sold in DD services. So, a decade old game sold 1 million copies recently, in less than 2 years (21 months to be exact).

You are way off.

All I said was "chances are" the sales were primarily in the first 3 years. Yes, SC was an epic phenomenon with incredible legs - and while PC games generally have longer legs than console games, you can't say that legs anywhere near those of SC are standard.

PC games are defined by huge legs, it seems you don't even know that. Let me show you another example, Sins of a Solar Empire, which released February 2008:
- Sold 200k in it's first month.
- Reached 500k in 7 months, September 2008.
- As of now it has almost 1 million sales.

Sins of a Solar Empire WILL keep selling for years, and it could even reach 2 millions sales, which is amazing for a game that had a budget less than $1 million.

PC games have about 50 long legs each. Get it thru your skull.

Yes, thank you, you've showed two examples, both with incredibly devoted fan bases and raved about by critics. The same could be said for some console games (i.e.) Halo:CE. Aside from which, I'm not sure how this contradicts my point at all? I believe the point I made was that PC games with long legs don't necessarily get pirated at the same rates that they sell, because pirates have no advantage of late adoption.

Well... if my grandmother was a male I wouldn't exist. True. Also if consoles hadn't come along gaming wuld be better.This statement can only be considered deeply subjective, or downright false. Early gaming consoles are why we have PC games today. And to think that consoles are inferior for gaming is to assume that everyone prefers a mouse and keyboard to a controller, a more expensive peice of equiment for equivalent graphics, and a relatively small monitor instead of a TV. If The moon was made of cheese....

Point being, stop talking out of your ass and give statistics or stfu.

You first. Oh wait, I used a lot more stats than you, you just refused to read them.

P.S. Making top 10 PC sales charts, such as WC3 or SC battle chest isn't what's called a "trickle."

Granted, I underestimated the steadiness of the sales of those, assuming they were more frontloaded - however that does NOTHING to diminish my point that piracy is frontloaded, since there's no advantage to waiting for a cheap battlechest when you're paying $0 regardless. I'm not looking to dimished what blizzard has done - I love WC3 and still play it (mostly for DOTA these days). But playing it, particularly on alternate servers, has helped me to appreciate the SHEER VOLUME of illegal copies out there. And a note: for ages before SC/WC3 were patched to not require the CD, they had "No CD Loaders" readily available. You didn't need to torrent these games to have an illegal copy... install it at a friend's house, drop a no CD loader, and they're good to go to play on an alternate server. These stats are impossible to track, but easy enough to see by players.