The facts do not reflect this viewpoint.Denamic said:But the inverse is also true.MelasZepheos said:The problem is that the figures just don't match up with this interpretation. Most people who pirate will not go on to buy the game legitmately, otherwise that figure the Witcher 2 released last week of 1 in 5 copies being pirated would have ended 'but then we sold another 4 million anyway.' Did it? No, because most people who had pirated the game then didn't go on to buy it.
If you completely remove the possibility to pirate something, a pirate who would otherwise get the game through piracy would still not buy it. In fact, you'd probably sell fewer copies due to decreased interest.
Advertisement is a powerful force. Why do people pay tens of thousands of dollars to advertise their product or service next to highways? Do all people who see the ad purchase the product or service? Do most people? In fact, only a small fraction of people who see it go on to pay for it. It is still worth it for the one who invested in the ad, since that small fraction still makes up a lot of people. A pirated game works in a similar way. It's free self-perpetuating advertisement. Again, only a small number of people will actually buy it, but some will, and that's a increase in sales for no investment. Couple that with word of mouth, and there's a significant amount of extra sales.
Again, word of mouth and advertisement is an incredibly powerful commercial force.
Piracy is both of those, for all its ills.
Since downloading became a thing, legitimate sales of music have dropped by half
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/
and PC game sales crashed at exactly the same time.
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/PC_gaming
This cannot be explained by saying 'people wouldn't have bought the game anyway' because the evidence is that they would have. This generation has somehow been brought up with the idea that Entertainment has no monetary value. Somehow creative content is becoming basically worthless, and it's not being helped by people like Randal Monroe going on about Creative Commons Distribution, but that is an entirely separate issue.
And do you know what gets really hurt? The games industry. Because they are industries that ned to turn a profit, and you can't turn a profit on a system with a game that is going to pirated no matter how cheap you make it. Remember the Humble Indie Bundle or whatever it was? All you had to pay was as little as a penny to receive it, and people still pirated it, which in my book is near conclusive proof that people are assholes.
So what do game companies do when they can't trust that the game they're making it going to make profit? Whoever is making the Witcher games will probably not be able to justify making the next game, since they've only shifted a million copies, which will convince the executives that it isn't earning the sorts of profits it should. And then they'll look at games which are making profits, and what's making the biggest profit right now because despite the millions of illegal copies it's still shifting enough legally to make profit?
Modern Warfare 3.
So, in Executive 'we need to make profit' logic, they will tell the game designers to stop working on the Witcher 3 because it only sold a million copies, and start working on Modern Battlefield, since that will be guaranteed to sell.
Next time anyone who pirates complains about games become all homogenised and shit, you are exactly the reason why they are becoming homogenised. This is of course now becoming a vicious circle, because a lot of pirates will deliberately pirate to try and hurt the companies and get them to stop making modern FPSs, but modern FPSs will thus become more desirable.
I'm personally hoping for another 1983 crash caused entirely by piracy.