The piracy % is over-exaggerated in the gaming industry, just like it is in the music and movie industry:
It is a fallacy used by the "economists" in all fields, that want to project those imaginary clients that would never really buy the game anyways, into future growth potential - many times unrealistic.
"Yeah, we made $100M, but if can re-capture some of this 95% of sales we lose because of pirates, we can potentially make $500M or $1B...please buy our stock and trust us, we can do it"...(house market anyone?). It is the "extrenality" we are not really responsible off, and we can recycle as an excuse when we fail to provide and support our growth with actual product - we did not fail, it is the government that doesn't provide enough support. It is the pirates...it is God etc...anything but our fault to predict that a BS game or BS pricing can simply prove our predictions wrong.
People do pirate games, and apps and music etc. It is a fact. But this also spreads the word, allows people to have a 1st hand experience - something that was once possible through demo versions etc that is now almost completely abandoned by the gaming industry, and after one point is free advertising for them. Me pirating a game and being ecstatic about it, might lead to me eventually buying it out of appreciation.
I don't see why selling "half" a game's content for $50-60 and then adding cost ontop of that for downloadable content demoralizes the market less than pirating...
Face it: if I want to buy a game, I will.
People who pirate, usually do it for 10s of games "just because they can". Just like you might buy 10 games @ $4-5/ea in a Steam sale instead of 1, but end up playing that single one of them (or none).
...they likelihood of kids around the world being unable to buy even one of those dozen pirated games @ $50-60 a piece is VERY low. You make $100M today selling 2M copies, you might sell 2.01M copies to people that will get discuraged trying to pirate it but would buy it anyways...
Then again you might lose the potential mod that will take advantage of "piracy tactics/methods", that will revive your title, that will create a legend and multiply your potential player base by orders of magnitude.
If I buy a game and it is mediocre or bad, it is much more likely to stop me from buying again from the same company / studio, and that actually costs them more money in the long run than the cheap "piracy" excuse.
They have a huge loyal player base they need to cater to, and many potent clients they can win over time by properly materialized games.
They make MILLIONS with those frikkin games.
The return of investment is far superior to that the movie or music industries.
It is the classic "revolting youth that turned adult, made money and now is hard core conservative" syndrome that leads to greed.
Give power (and monies) to a man, to see his inner/real character.
Edited by dtolios - 10/31/12 at 4:13pm
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