How much do you think piracy is affecting the PC Gaming market?

[Pray To Jesus]

I estimate that 5-10% of revenues for a game is lost because of pirates who would choose to buy otherwise.

 

[Maximilian]

How could anyone on here possibly give a reasonable answer lol, its just gonna be a whole lot of figures pulled from ass combined with people disagreeing with each-others made up figures. Oh well, lets commence

By my estimates its over 9000% of revenues

 

[SMOGZINN]

I doubt it is anywhere near that amount. I don't know a single person that pirates video games anymore. Steam has all but killed the PC video game pirates with it's sales. It is simply easier to wait and buy they game then to try to find a working pirate copy that is not infected.

 

[akugami]

Don't forget the F2P model that many games are heading towards. Hell, even Team Fortress 2 is in the F2P model now.

 

[pcslookout]

No idea I don't think a lot though.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Pirates have destroyed gaming. They've singlehandedly brought EA to it's knees. They are responsible for World War II AND World War III combined, and are responsible for the death of JFK and the fall in the value of the drakar and they raped my sister...but she's a ho.

 

[JamesV]

In the USA piracy probably has a minor effect on the market.

Outside of the USA, especially in countries like China, Korea, Russia, and so on - I'd bet piracy is about equal to actual sales. When I was in the Army in Korea, not a tenth of a mile outside the base were about 10 stores that sold nothing but pirated material (all known to the RIAA/etc; apparently its okay for troops to pirate).

 

[ImpulsE69]

In the USA piracy probably has a minor effect on the market.

Outside of the USA, especially in countries like China, Korea, Russia, and so on - I'd bet piracy is about equal to actual sales. When I was in the Army in Korea, not a tenth of a mile outside the base were about 10 stores that sold nothing but pirated material (all known to the RIAA/etc; apparently its okay for troops to pirate).

LOL yea..same when I was in Afghanistan, $1 for brand new games and movies, and that was OK.

 

[pcslookout]

In the USA piracy probably has a minor effect on the market.

Outside of the USA, especially in countries like China, Korea, Russia, and so on - I'd bet piracy is about equal to actual sales. When I was in the Army in Korea, not a tenth of a mile outside the base were about 10 stores that sold nothing but pirated material (all known to the RIAA/etc; apparently its okay for troops to pirate).

Yep exactly. Pirating is a big problem in China, Korea, Russia, and so on.

It is amazing that we support our troops when they themselves pirate.

 

[darkewaffle]

CDPR claims Witcher2 was pirated 4.5M times as of late 2011, and is reported to have sold about 1.7M copies as of mid 2012.

The problem is it's impossible to determine how many of those downloads replaced copies that would have been sold. It's pretty widespread imo.

 

[pcslookout]

CDPR claims Witcher2 was pirated 4.5M times as of late 2011, and is reported to have sold about 1.7M copies as of mid 2012.

The problem is it's impossible to determine how many of those downloads replaced copies that would have been sold. It's pretty widespread imo.

Really? Wow. How did they get these figures ?

 

[dagamer34]

CDPR claims Witcher2 was pirated 4.5M times as of late 2011, and is reported to have sold about 1.7M copies as of mid 2012.

The problem is it's impossible to determine how many of those downloads replaced copies that would have been sold. It's pretty widespread imo.

With stats like this, it's understandable why pure single-player games are on the decline and often have tacked on multiplayer.

 

[CuriousMike]

More than most gamers would want to admit.
More than the holier-than-thou 'I've never pirated a game' types,
More than the holier-than-thou I've only pirate to test it out, then i'll buy it. Maybe.'

I think the bigger issue at this point is price pressure.
Millions are now trained that $0.99 is the right price to pay for a high quality title on their phones/tablets... "I'm not spending $20 for a PC title, that's absurd!"

 

[Geosurface]

It is amazing that we support our troops when they themselves pirate.

If people knew how many illegally downloaded movies get passed around on submarines...

 

[SMOGZINN]

More than most gamers would want to admit.
More than the holier-than-thou 'I've never pirated a game' types,
More than the holier-than-thou I've only pirate to test it out, then i'll buy it. Maybe.'

I think the bigger issue at this point is price pressure.
Millions are now trained that $0.99 is the right price to pay for a high quality title on their phones/tablets... "I'm not spending $20 for a PC title, that's absurd!"

I would challenge that there is no such thing as a high quality title on a phone or tablet.

 

[Annisman*]

So long as there are people able to convince themselves that there is nothing wrong with stealing, espescially if they can get away with it, there will always be pirates.

How much does it affect the industry ? I hope not too much, but it always seems like the first excuse that companies pull out when their game has poor sales, or they are about to close the studio. So either there is a good amount of truth to it, or it's just the most convienant excuse to make because so much of the data is less than concrete.

 

[mindcycle]

I estimate that 5-10% of revenues for a game is lost because of pirates who would choose to buy otherwise.

I "estimate" it's actually 50% and all of PC gaming is doomed!

 

[BoberFett]

I wonder how many pirated copies are played for 5 minutes before being deleted?

If we're to believe the numbers about piracy, it would require every pirate in the world to have 40 hour days and 9 day weeks just watch/play/listen to all the pirated content they download.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

If people knew how many illegally downloaded movies get passed around on submarines...

I'm pretty sure if you're on an armed boat, we should all just be thankful you've taken up software&media piracy and not actual piracy.

 

[Childs]

I doubt it is anywhere near that amount. I don't know a single person that pirates video games anymore. Steam has all but killed the PC video game pirates with it's sales. It is simply easier to wait and buy they game then to try to find a working pirate copy that is not infected.

Just about every PC game has a scene release. I think a lot of younger people still pirate games. People still download movies, tv, music, apps, etc, so I do see why games would be immune.

 

[Chocu1a]

Higher prices, shorter & crappier games, poor optimization, these things have a negative effect on pc gaming.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Just about every PC game has a scene release. I think a lot of younger people still pirate games. People still download movies, tv, music, apps, etc, so I do see why games would be immune.

Yes they have scene releases but the number of people that are actually connected to the scene is minimal. So, most people are getting theirs from other sources, mostly public trackers. Those are loaded with bad hacks and infected software. You are probably right, it is mostly kids and most of them would not buy the game if they could not get a pirated copy simply because they don't have the sort of disposable income to be buying $60 games every few days.

Also, music and TV are much simpler. They are not loaded with trojans and have pretty good releases even on public trackers. Um, or at least so I've been told

 

[ImpulsE69]

I wonder how many pirated copies are played for 5 minutes before being deleted?

If we're to believe the numbers about piracy, it would require every pirate in the world to have 40 hour days and 9 day weeks just watch/play/listen to all the pirated content they download.

When I was younger, I pirated everything I could get my hands on with my 26k modem, then at some point I realized 2 things. A) I never installed/played/used 90% of what I downloaded, and B) The small portion I did actually do something with generally was an hour or so tops. The only things I actually played were the things I paid for because I had actual money invested.

If your game couldn't keep me interested for more than an hour for free, chances are if I'd bought it, I wouldn't have bought anything else from you since I couldn't get my money back.

The whole "trojans/virus'" thing revolving downloading games off the internet is a scare tactic. Unless you're completely braindead, it's not any more likely to be infected than visiting your moms quilting web page(which by the way is more likely).

 

[nightspydk]

Depends on where you get it. Limewire, Emule or bittorent etc. Where one is practically safe from viruses the other might not be depending on the setup.

On the other hand, pirating might have gotten me to actually support a game, whereas without, I might not even ever have heard of it.

 

[darkxshade]

I have like a dozen ps3 games still shrink wrapped not to mention the steam games I've bought on impulse that I probably won't get around to or will never touch simply because they were on sale.

Then I realize there's this undetermined threshold where games get to a price where I start to mull the idea of "play now, pay later". This is where it gets sticky because clearly I won't pay for every game I try out, especially those that I don't finish because they sucked.

So I think any lost revenue is the game publishers own damn fault for overvaluing what their titles are worth. If they had priced them reasonably, I would have for all intents and purposes bought their POS and end up blowing more money every which way and ending up with a larger collection of games I never played.

Now I've amassed such a backlog that I don't have any reason to pay for any game at full price simply because I have enough content to tide me over until the newer titles go into deep discount. So considering money now is worth more than money later, publishers would do well to sell them cheap now than to sell cheap later. More importantly, if a publisher knows their game is shit, it would do them good to drop the prices as soon as possible.