And even if the figure you just pulled out your ass is correct, it's still 0.0125% too much.

You are also missing the link between causality and correlation. You have no proof at all that the decline of music sales is due to piracy. As I said if you can provide statistical evidence through a major study that piracy causes a loss in software sale then I'll listen with interest.

Also people who pirate do tend to buy more music, they also tend to diffuse information more. You really do have to explain how it is flawed to come to the conclusion that piracy causes higher sales. Its what the data definitely suggests.

This is the most retarded plan I have ever heard. They just made pirated copies infinitely more appealing then any product they release just because of this stuff.

@anyone who complains about piracy here's a few links:

http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/693342/Live-Blog-DICE-2009-Keynote---Gabe-Newell-Valve-Software.html

http://www.incgamers.com/Interviews/204/starcraft-ii-developers-talk-single-player/2

5th question down.


http://torrentfreak.com/pirates-are-the-music-industrys-most-valuable-customers-100122/

So what you have is people who are buying far more games legally (to address irstupid, I bought about 60 games last year, and I do pirate) when they are good games, since none of Valve nor Blizzard's games seem to be having piracy issues, or Civilization for that matter, or Total War, or any good PC game. In other words, you all are spouting FUD and what you have been fed down your throats by the groups like the RIAA.

Here are the 2009 charts:
http://torrentfreak.com/the-most-pirated-games-of-2009-091227/

With the exception for the Sims 3 (the entire franchise has sold well over 100 million so 1% of piracy is pretty damn good I'd think), all those games blow the big one, HARD. They are however good on the 360, so if anything the 360 demographics is the morally corrupt one here. Games which weren't listed as being pirated too much: Dawn of War 2, Empire: Total War, Dragon Age: Origins, Left 4 Dead 2, Borderlands, Torchlight, Machinarium, Demigod, Plants vs Zombies, Tales of Monkey Island.

Here is 2008:
http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-games-of-2008-081204/

What do we see, the only passable games here are the following: Fallout 3, C&C3, and PES2009. Everything else was pretty bad, and again The Sims 2 is obvious, it sells millions anyhow. What games DON'T we see on there? Dead Space, Left 4 Dead, Sins of a Solar Empire, World of Goo, World of Warcraft: WOTLK, Warhammer, Dawn of War: Soulstorm. Also many more I can't think up off the top of my head which were good.


There have been no statistics for previous years that I could find.

So how do you explain the low piracy rates on the listed titles? Why are the only ones which get pirated shitty beyond belief? Maybe, just MAYBE, pirates are people who don't deem a game is too shitty for its price tag. Put those figures on top of the fact that Blizzard AND Valve know exactly how to handle such piracy quite effectively, by making good games, and with the fact that pirates spend far more money than non-pirates on the industry and you get the fact that pirates are far less of a burden then legal buyers of games, and we have good taste too. So if everyone was a pirate, we'd see far far less shitty games, for far cheaper, and the industry would still be booming. Anyone else who cant see it is just blind, ignorant, or naive.

Good post, Vlad. It's telling that piracy has existed since forever and was particularly prevalent in the 8 and 16 bit eras- I recall tapes and discs being passed around with dozens of games on them- and yet the games industry, including the PC games industry, has never been healthier.

However, to reiterate, as it can't be said enough- these measures are nothing to do with piracy. They're an attempt to shut down the second hand sale market, something which I would imagine costs the industry a damn sight more than piracy does. The companies are trialling this on the PC, and you can bet your ass they'll implement similar schemes on the consoles if they think it's viable. That's why I find it risible that console owners aren't joining in with the protests and telling companies like Ubisoft that their schemes are not wanted.

On the music sales. While the physical sales have been on decline year over year, the opposite the also true for digital downloads.

Sales are still there, just not in the arcane form that the big corps are used to do and they are afraid of change.

1999 was a record year for the music industry ofcourse they wouldnt be beating that, did you expect them to be breaking records every year?

So to make a comparison to a record year ofcourse any study will show decline.

Heres the data with a couple of years earlier added on (the most I can find) and it paints a somewhat different picture.

It shows a few flat years before what appears to be a peak, not a constant growth. Would be very cool if somebody could find earlier data though.

Personally I think the '99/'00 boom might have been due to the cultural phonemons at the time, it was the peak of N'sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and Eminem. Pop music hasn't been quite so hot since then.

As he said before up until then it was a pretty big phenomena culturally. Going by your evidence the same is true for the NBA. It was huge up until the late 90s, when people like Jordan and Magic Johnson left. I hope you are smart enough to realize that there are such things as peaks and troughs, especially depending on the times. Hell up until earlu 2000s, the dotcom businesses were booming too! Did piracy fuck that up too? I think you are forgetting one VERY important thing correlation does not show causation.

P.S. Piracy has existed since before even digital media existed.

comparing to the best year ever will always show decline with or without your so called blame on piracy.

Piracy has been around since way before 1999 and it wasnt a problem then so its hardly a problem now.

Back in the 80´s u got whole tapes of games at once instead of getting them one at a time now and the industry still managed to grow and they will continue to grow if they actually try and change with the times.

You need to stop being breastfead with the RIAA brest milk and actaully learn from the real world, those fucker lie and cheat all the time and the companies the industry hire are suing every one they can even innocent people. Just look at what happens in the UK with ACS and Davenport lyons.

They need to stop blaming piracy and change with the times or they will suffer and thats what happening here, as shown to you with several studies alot of the downloaders (not pirates cause pirates are the ones selling the software another term that the RIAA has brainwasshed you guys with) are the industries best costumers.

Dpwnloading is the ultimate consumer tool, you get to see what you want to buy before paying for it and if it holds up you have a sure buy but if its worthless it gets deleted and you save yourself the money wasted.

Haha, how stupid can they get? I love that they are hurting their paying custoners, and thereby taking an active part in killing PC gaming.

You know, pirates isn't the real problem, stupidity and corporate culture is.