That is not what I am saying. I am saying what if a new studio was formed and created a game that wasn't that good. But hey it is their first time, next time they are sure that they will make the next half-Life 2. They have learned from their mistakes and and have figured out how to do it. They are gearing up for their AAA title, but then they get a notice from their publisher. Since their first game didn't sell well and was heavily pirated  they are going to drop the newer dev. And since the dev lost their publisher and their funding they have to close down. No more new AAA ip 

I guess reading comprehension and/or cherry pcking are your forte:

http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-research-p2p-filesharing-no-barrier-to-music-sales/

I dare you to try and argue against this. I foresee a whole lot of insulting and very few points, so basically a general lack of thought/intelligence in your response.

P.S. It doesn't have to be Valve/Blizzard, plenty of indie games also make money, as I said before, look at World of Goo, Portal, Machinarium. I'd settle for those types of things.

That might be a bit controversial, but the only thing I hate about pirates is that they haven't yet successfully hacked the PS3 for general gaming use. I know a lot of my friends only have a wii and a 360 simply because they cannot buy pirated games on the PS3. An original new PS3 game is the equivalent of about 1/2 the monthly salary($100 for uncharted 2) of some people here while the pirated discs are about 1/30th of their monthly salary.

Western people might disagree but I suppose that when your hourly wage is about 10 times more than the average hourly wage of people in poor countries, it also entitles you to having your own opinion... :)

I didn't say I pirated it. My brother bought it off whatever Stardock's platform is, and I went behind him and downloaded it to my computer as well :)

Yes, and if it's a bad game tough luck. I should have made something else. I don't feel entitled to people's money for my shitty product (as most developers feel like) if it is indeed shitty.

For the link--

• So 26% say they buy music as a result, what about the other 74%?  That's still a lot of lost sales.
• So 93% of the 33% say they've paid for music in the past year?  Whoop-dee-do?  That means almost nothing since it doesn't imply they paid for most of the things they pirate or nearly none.  It just says something.
• Also, what about the 47% that buy the same?  You could say then nothing has changed, I say they are still getting nothing for free.  I would never buy Forza 3 or GT5 but if you offered them to me for free no strings attached I would try them and get some sort of enjoyment out of them.  Why should that be free?

What it comes down to is every time I find a random study can I just assume that means it's automatically true?  If I felt like taking the effort I could find all sorts of studies relating video game violence to murders.  Are all of those true too?

And read my above response as to indie developers.  You listed three that have done well for themselves and managed to work themselves out of one of their parents basement, meanwhile, another 150 are still stuck going nowhere.

Ah, but the problem is that there are a lot of good games out there that don't make money because they can't make money because people aren't buying them for any one of 100 reaons.

I'm not sure if you realize this, but even good games are heavily pirated.  I know your definition of good in the last five years is apparently Portal, Dragon Age, World of Goo, and nothing else, but there's actually a very large range of good games out there of all budgets.  Those games lose out on a large chunk of well deserved money because of piracy.

Furthermore, even your bad games that don't get a metacritic of 90+ still deserve compensation for their efforts.  As I said, when you actually manage to break in and make games, you'll see all the effort that goes into even "bad" games that only rate an 80.

So now you are just cherry picking the link, given the fact that the overall effect is that pirates contribute more to the industry than non-pirates as a whole. Ultimately there is a positive change, not a negative, as you would have people believe.

That is the 2nd study done. The first was done before, but record labels called bullshit, this one was then done by a record company, so if anything the stats are biased against the pirates, and still shows the same results. How many studies have to be made for you to realize  that your stance on piracy is bullshit?

Here's the other study:

http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-p2p-freeloaders-also-ten-times-as-likely-to-buy-music/

Apparently pirates are 10 times more likely to buy legally than those who don't pirate at all. As I said, how many studies do you want? If anything I get the feeling you are either feeling a huge cognitive dissonance right now or you are just too close-minded, stubborn, or stupid (i doubt this one, but it's a possibility) to change your view on this piracy issue when faced with overwhelming evidence. Probably the latter.

As for indie games, as I said, if the game is shitty it's my fault. I don't feel entitled to anyone's money of it's a shitty game.

I agree that even thegames which are not 90+ deserve compensation, however they do NOT deserve the same compensation as those that are 90+. They should be priced at $30, not $50. Worse/smaller games should hen be priced at 10-15, not $50.

Also I haven't heard of too many good games that have come out that have gone under and where the developers and heir families haave starved or gone bankrupt. An example or two would be nice, preferably of games that are actually popular, and whose unfortunate fate can be directly linked to piracy.

I admit I skimmed the article because I don't care that much.  I don't believe for a second that pirates contribute more to the industry than non-pirates.  That's just some of the most skewed thinking I've ever heard.

And as I said, most of those studies don't prove anything.  I can find random studies all day that tell all sorts of things because people make random connections or find the wrong group of people or any number of reasons that just make the studies not mean anything.

And as I said, even good indie games don't generally make money.  I'm not talking your shitty little flash games on newgrounds, I'm talking actual games.  Small indie studios open and close all the time that you've never even heard of.

-edit-

Oh, and those links appear to be talking about digital music only and isn't even considering CD sales.