Board 8 > I have a curious question about piracy

(+) Yeah! (+)

How much money are companies actually losing due to piracy?
Some people Download but if they did not download it they would not go buy it.

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Randomness 34 http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/317168

There's no direct statistics on money lost, but I believe they estimate only somewhere between 1-10% of games downloaded could count as "lost sales."

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Think of it as a continuum.

The easier it is to pirate, the more likely someone was willing to buy will pirate instead. Of course we have the extremes of people who will buy/pirate no matter what, but more than likely there is money being lost no matter what.

How much? That's something I can't answer.

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SuperNiceDog - 1, pjbasis - 0

The whole "I wouldn't have bought it anyway" argument doesn't really hold any water at all. But strictly hypothetically, if your asking how many people legitimately are thinking "I'd buy this if I couldn't get it for free" I really don't see how anyone would be able to measure that at all.

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The easier it is to pirate, the more likely someone was willing to buy will pirate instead. Of course we have the extremes of people who will buy/pirate no matter what, but more than likely there is money being lost no matter what.

That sounds nice, but that's not actually how it works. They're all easy to pirate and are usually cracked within the first couple days after release. Better DRM usually just ends up hurting real customers, it's removed from the pirated version altogether.

I'd say it's something more like "the more compelling your online content is the more likely people will pay to play online."

My thoughts is there is some piracy that is not lost sales and some that is. argh I don't know what to say .

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Randomness 34 http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/317168

From: MarvelousGerbil | #004
The whole "I wouldn't have bought it anyway" argument doesn't really hold any water at all.

No one is claiming "It's fine for me to pirate it since I wouldn't have paid for it" holds water. The claim is "Most of the people pirating it wouldn't have bought it anyway, therefore it's not lost sales."

If you disagree with that, I'd love to hear why.

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Ace Detective in Sir Chris' Police
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http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/piracy

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There is this issue I have with purchasing some things. I want the Value I get to be more than the cost I have to pay for it. When movie companies make movies that are complete crap and video game companies do the same it is disappointing. My tastes differ greatly from the vast majority of people out there so for me to be able to gather information on whether I would like something or not can be difficult. I also truly do believe in judging a product for myself.

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Randomness 34 http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/317168

Well, if you buy stuff, you aren't going to buy every single thing you're interested in. If you pirate stuff, you have no reason not to pirate everything you're interested in, within reason. So, less than every item pirated is lost. It's impossible to say how much because it's not only hypothetical, but in the person's mind.

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It depends entirely on the game and lots of other factors, and there are lots of theories behind it. I like to use the number which has been widely cited by a study done by Reflexive Games that is for every 1000 pirated copies you lose 1 real sale.

Actual historical evidence has shown, however, that aggressive DRM fails 100% of the time, and that it's far more profitable to treat pirates as potential customers as opposed to treating everyone as potential pirates.

Used games, however, are a totally different story. I would say upwards of 50% of used game sales constitute a loss in a real sale.

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_foolmo_
mobile computer

if we had a +1 feature I would +1 foolmo's post

That is one big problem with a lot of things. One person does this so everyone must do it.

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Randomness 34 http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/317168