Jereel, another big flaw in your general assertations - is the fact that the sales data covers specific regions, while piracy reports are tracking piracy worldwide. Also consider that there are many parts of the world that have many people playing PC games, yet no law enforcement that would bother with PC piracy, or jurisdiction for US or EU courts and even an active dislike of the US gov't. This is actually , much of the world TBH.

what? I didn't? So the articles I linked with developer estimates don't count? Or the article where Ubisoft sued because they verified that 700k copies of Assassins creed were DLed via torrents prior to it's release don't count as anything(despite that number being vastly more than the game even sold on PC)? The only person not backing in their claims is you.

I'd like to make sure we're on the same page. My only assertation is that piracy of games generally outweighs their sales. I feel like your statement only confirms this. In many parts of the world there is no penalty for pirating PC games. Very true! That contributes to the vast number of pirated copies. Thus the developers only recourse is not legal action - but rather making their games harder to pirate. Do you disagree?

ASSASSIN'S CREED WAS A POS GAME ON THE PCs. NO ONE GAVE A FUCK ABOUT IT! It had a frikken 79 on metacritic. It's a shit game, shit games get pirated. Ok I'll give you that... So make a good game then?

You are stating an opinion, which justifies nothing, and is, in fact, contradicted by your own statement. 79 is hardly "POS". it's simply "good". And there's absolutely nothing, nowhere, ever, that indicated that bad games get pirated and good games get purchased. Yes, Good games sell more, and *GASP* good games get pirated more as well. Many excellent games are VERY widely pirated. The difference being that good games sell enough in ADDITION to also still turn a nice profit.

When an opinoin is held by most of the majority of a populationn it transcends into fact, Star War Holiday Special was cra, that's a fact, Assassin's Creed was crap, that's also a fact. Good games get pirated, however they aren't pirated more than they are sold, which is what YOU are saying and that's just bullshit. Also notice AC didn't even sell well on the PC.

If you are gonna cherry pick I want you to explain why Valve and Blizzard games aren't there, with their millions sold. Huh? Failing at cherry picking? Thought so...

Hey Chief, guess what? Most of the "majority of the population" that called AC crap, had, in fact, based that opinion off an unfinished pirated build of the game. AC's reputation (and sales) got wrecked by the pirated build that got heavily circulated before it's release.

As for your cherry picking argument... *sigh* if we were in person I would speak slower so you could understand, but I'll just have to hope you read my words more carefully(as I did respond to that). What games have blizzard released in the last 5 years? WoW, WoW expansions and... WC3? You expect to see a 3-4 year old game like WC3 on the top 10 pirated games list? If there was an accurate list, it CERTAINLY would have included WC3 for the 2 years after it's release. Even today, alternate servers like Garena are huge - every day tens of thousands of people play a 5 year old game on these servers, most of which use a pirated copy. (How do I know? Every time a new patch releases, the majority of the community must remain on the old version, and the handful of us with real copies have noone to play with until the cracked copies get updated) On a side note, blizzard wanted to remove LAN capability from SC2 for JUST THIS REASON. There were many discussions about it on this very site... So clearly, even blizzard realizes that making a quality product doesn't solve the piracy problem.

As for WoW and expansions, clearly even you must realize that you can't just download a MMORPG illegally and have it work just like any other game. MMORPGs are loved by developers both because of their subscription fees, and also the fact that pirating them requires an immense amount of effort, too much to be worthwhile, generally speaking.

As for Valve, I don't know why there games weren't on that list you posted. Then again, I don't know what games they released in that period for comparison.

Actually it was a finished copy and its reputation got wrecked because it was a shitty, repetative game. That shit doesnn't fly with PC gamers.

Fine, how about Orange Box which hit in right before 2008? It had ALL of 2008 to get pirated, yet it didn't even make a top 10. Also WoW does have pirated servers just fine, yet that isn't in the top10 either, nor are its expansions.... weird? Isn't it weird that WoW and WC3 are STILL on the top 10 sales PC lists yet they aren't on the pirating lists? Surely that means more people are buying than pirating. Your argument would have been valid if WC wasn't on the top sellers lists even after so much time. Sadly it is, and you sir are still failing to prove good games get pirated mre than bought.

Edit: Even friken Starcraft Batle Chest makes sales charts even TODAY. Please, start showing me statistics or stfu with your bullshit of people pirating more then buying.

For a game of its nature, Killing Floor seems to be doing very well as well - I looked around a few trackers, and barely saw any torrents for it.

Ultimately, it would be nice if more reliable data on PC games was available - and if Valve would release sales data too.

Yeah, I still don't get why there's so much secrecy over the sales data of the gaming sector. We don't get that level of secrecy in any other entertainment media that I can think of.