Minecraft : 3 Million Sales

In any case, many games "for the masses", "unoriginal" were very original when first out : Mass Effet (yes !), Sands of Time, or even more : the Sims.

I think without piracy games would be (slightly) MORE expensive (no more "competition") but also BETTER (or more accurately, there would be more game availables, and those games would be more original).

When you take an alternative out, you increase demand for your product. When there is an increase in demand, producers tend to increase their production (here, in the number of different games offered) and to increase their price.

IMO this list just shows that gamers don't want to be watched over the shoulder all the time by clients;

Crysis 2: Securom and Origin
MW3: Steamworks
BF3: Securom and Origin
FIFA 12: Securom and Origin
Portal 2: Steamworks

Granted I think steamworks is OK, but i still think a lot of people hate the idea of having to run a client in order to play a game. Same goes for Origin but with Origin they not only have a incredibly dodgy EULA (scanning computer for info etc) but add securom activations on top of that and are expensive to boot.

Another reason could be the fact some people may not know if it runs on there computer. It's maybe a bad excuse to pirate the games but in some cases if you are firmly against downloading steam and origin and want to test the game or actually play it, it's the only thing to do.

I wish that were true, but given the cost of game production now (and the percieved need for beautiful graphics) some genres are basically dead (like my fav Space Combat - Tie Fighter/X-Wing/Freespace/I-War) and piracy has little to do with that.

I don't think so, the "worst" time of gaming were the early 80's. Not because of technical limitations, but because a lot of shovelware was simply thrown on the market and nearly killed the fledgeling videogame market.

Widespread piracy has the one good thing in that it is widespread. It bring a lot of people to gaming. Some of them later become consumers and producers. I would argue that 80% of all people who played and modded quake 1 played a pirated version. Of all my friends back then, nobody had a legit copy (well, it was indexed in Germany, which made it a whole lot more difficult to get it legally, even if we wanted).

Without piracy gaming would probably be still a niché market. The only reason I could play that many PC games as a kid was because I pirated most of them. And I do now spent a significant amount of money on games.

The cost of game production and the perceived need for beautiful graphics has I believe, little impact in the success or lack thereof of a genre in particular. In my opinion, space sim are the closest to naval sim (a lots of emptiness which a few battle/spaceship and their "fighters/bombers" laying around), and those have not disappeared. Yes, those are not the most popular, but they still sell enough for the developpers to live. Similarly, flight sim can still be found regularly. One of the reason might be that for obvious reason ("realistic" nature of those games), flight and naval sims would tend to be less pirated that shooters or sci-fi titles (in a ratio of total number of players of those games).

No piracy => More sales (NOT a 1:1 conversion, but even a 5:1 conversion would result be very significant) => Games that would not have enough customers to be "rentable" would become so. Even space sims.

Doesn't tell us anything. Certainly not worth reading into.
1. It's doubtless incomplete.
2, The numbers are too close. You'd need to see more than the top five to see where piracy stats start to drop off.
3. All the games listed are either Origin or Steam. How many of those stats are just people getting the cracks for the games they bought?
4. How much of that is from countries that can't buy those games in their region / can't really afford to / getting ripped off by shitty regional pricing, or have a society where piracy is normal?

If that's the case, then nobody would pirate $6 GOGs, or songs available for $0.89 or less. No, it's more that some folks always feel entitled to something for nothing, regardless of price, and will pirate simply because they can, with almost no risk of being caught.

I agree, however this argues against your first statement - if games are cheaper than ever, and if high prices are the driver of piracy, then illegal downloads should be decreasing. As you said later on, game piracy is not decreasing.

All that said, it's a complicated issue with the picture muddied by varying price points, varying degrees of DRM, varying laws throughout the world, the digital marketplace still trying to find its own way around the issue, and other factors.

I never said that high prices are the reason for piracy, I said piracy is a reason for lower prices.

Piracy simply "is" there is no "one reason" for it, and you could write several books about the reason for internet piracy. But the factor that piracy is in this market has several implications on it. Most Pirates won't start buying games because they are more cheap, but consumer can become pirates if they feel ripped off.

And as you can never buy "everything" you want, you might still pirate even tough you are a customer. And the possibility of piracy might keep you in the hobby, as otherwise you would abandon it altogether and focus rather on books or tabletops or booze etc.

And the constant increase of piracy is simply because how much easier it is getting with each passing year. The technologcial advance is working very well for the pirates. And the piracy of gaming increases because the number of gamers increases.

Imo, Fighting piracy is very much like pissing in the wind. Why bother? Everything can be cracked. Games sell because of mass appeal and quality, not because the DRM is working.

Really? So you never said:

?

1. What is a "good game" exactly? (I like some so called mainstream games and thought them good.) 0.o

:)

2. Filthy pirate! *Points finger and hisses ala Invasion of the Body Snatchers style*

I said high prices cause people to pirate. That doesn't mean that high prices are the reason for piracy. Piracy has many reasons. And High prices leads people towards piracy.

It's like saying "marriage causes murders" and "marriage is the reason of murder".

Edit 2: I can't get this post straight, but I don't want to "snip" your post, so this will have to do...

1. Yes but how many copies did they sell? And also how many of those "downloads" were just partial downloads or failed downloads(The numbers count both failed downloads and partial downloads btw, not just full downloads...this skews the numbers alot.)?

2. IMO they should concentrate on making their paying customers happy with less restrictions and proper price points, and not focus so much on DRM(hurts consumers) and higher price points to combat the mythical lost sales. If they did this more they'd convert more people to buying their games(as well as if they made games less shite to beging with in some cases with regards to bugs and crap gameplay). Yes some would still pirate but a small fraction of pirates would never have bought the game anyways so screw them and focus on making your customers happy.

3. This would be awesome, and would convert more pirates to paying customers.....as long as the "demos" were playable and not just interactive short cutscenes stitched together from the best bits of the game. Maybe a return to the shareware model, where you get the first portion of the game for free or maybe 5 bucks?

I love a lot of "mainstream games" too. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc. But an example for a "good game" that gets bought by enthusiasts would be Bastion. Or maybe S.P.A.Z.

Yeah, well, "guilty", I guess. ;-P

1. You just made it seem like "enthusiasts" were somehow "better" than those who like mainstream titles in your wording of that post, is all.....and as such I felt the need to don the proverbial white silk smackity gloves. I do hope you understand. :)
--------------------------------------------------------
1. AFAIK those industries are still making record profits each year....despite the moans and groans over the VCR coming out, as well as recordable audio tapes & CDs.

2. I have always wanted to say this but always held my tongue......IMHO some of it IS psychological...people mad someone got something for free, rather than it being mainly "morally wrong" to those against piracy/etc.

3. It makes me laugh when people keep spouting the piracy is killing games/causing DRM to be added to games spiel when it's really the used games market that terrifies game publishers and causes them to add such to their games.

==========================

1. Maybe they shouldn't be spending so much(50 millionish) on new game franchises then? Now i'm not saying to cut content on new titles but they can cut corners in many places....like not spending on so many bloody full page ads in gamer mags or "buying" reviews from "critics" of such mags, and perhpas using free/viral advertising channels to save costs(youtube/twitter/facebook/cheap domain hosting of viral ad sites/etc). Those are just some ways they could save and cut the costs down.

2. What about the early 3DRealms game successes and other such "garage"/small team developers that made successes from hardly nothing? Just because you're indie doesn't mean you can't make a huge hit or be ultra successful if you try.

3. Read number 2 again.

4. Cut costs then and produce a AAA title with more emphasis on gameplay and story than just graphics, and cut costs in various ways as I lined out in number 1.

PS3 exclusives were not really any better, more original, that multi-platform ones, nor did they core more "genre", and yet the console remained piracy free for several years.