Why Video Game Piracy is good business for the PC Gaming Industry

Sounds strange, doesn’t it? ”Pirating Video Games is Good Business for the PC Gaming Industry”. How in the world could ripping off someone else’s Intellectual Property and receiving digital content (a game…or two or three) for free rather than paying for it be a good thing for the PC Gaming Industry? I’m glad your inquisitive young mind is seeking answers to such deep questions in life, let me explain.

[Faelan]

LOL... the article claims there are no facts which clearly states that piracy is hurting the industry, yet he delivers no facts other than his own -personal- experience to back up his claim that piracy is good for the industry. What a complete and utter joke.

Pirate if you must for whatever reason you choose, if any. Just don't go claim it's good for the entire industry unless you can put some hard evidence down on the table with lots of solid numbers involving a lot of people that clearly shows it's good for the industry. Until then, I will believe neither side and follow my own moral compass which works entirely in shades of gray.

[Hicken]

It's not definitively good. There are PLENTY of people who pirate games because they want to play a game without paying. This is likely the reasoning of the majority of gaming pirates.

It's not ALL bad, though. Some people pirate as a way to test a game and decide whether or not to buy it. Some also pirate to show that, while they are interested in a game, they're not interested in supporting the related publisher or developer, for whatever reasons.

Both of these groups, however, make up a rather small minority of pirates. So it's safe to say that, by and large, piracy is NOT good for business.

[Christopher]

This argument is just as false as the argument that piracy reduces game sales.

Because you buy games when you pirate does not mean that if you didn't pirate that you wouldn't buy the same games, doesn't mean you don't pirate games that you don't end up buying, nor does it mean that the majority (let alone a noticeable percentage) of people who do pirate do it for the same reasons.

Both sides of this argument just don't have the information needed to make their claims. It's a grey area that just can't be identified in a single light or as a single cause to the overall effect.

[EL Lanf]

I don't know, I agree with some of the articles points, but I wouldn't necessarily say it brings in more money to the industry, but it might divert where the money is going, especially if piracy is putting people off buying poor games and encouraging purchasing others - if that is true then it is a positive force - one that rewards quality.

People have a finite of disposable income, I reckon most gamers will spend most of it on that hobby, pirate or not. If someone buys all the games they can afford, and pirates those they can't, the industry as a whole doesn't suffer for it.

Besides, I think Steam has proven if a quality title is launched on a platform with low prices and good service with reasonable advertisement, it shifts units like hotcakes - just like any other industry. Blaming sheerly piracy for failure is just masking bad business.

[Tomonobu Itagaki]

See piracy like this:
Developers develop games, publishers give them money according to the game sales.
If no sales, no money.

I guess most pirates are jobless, but just imagine: you have a job, so you have a salary. Piracy is the equivalent of your boss saying "I'm sorry but I'm not going to pay you this month".

This is very exaggerated, but also close to reality. A video game is not just an entertainment for kids, it's the fruit of a labor, something that many people worked on for several years. Every work deserves salary, no matter how good or bad this job is done.

Developers are just workers like everyone else, they need money to live, and pirating a game is a way to not reward the people that worked on it.

[Ogygian]

Look at this guy's sample size. One. I know people who swear they will never buy a legitimate game and many more who just don't see the point. I buy ALL my games, as I like to support the industry.
Steam sales have turned piracy from being frowned upon to being morally abhorrent. The movie industry has the box office, music is mega cheap to make and musicians are overpaid anyway; while video games cost as much as movies to produce yet don't get box office receipts.

I personally hope that the industry finds a non-intrusive way to completely block piracy. If you don't pay for it then you have no right to play it.

[InTheLab]

I f**king hate pirates. Not all pirates, mind you. Only the ones with a pile of excuses. I don't mind the guy that says.."Yeah...I illegally downloaded the game. Ya see, I don't pay for games...." I don't mind that guy one bit.

The "I need a demo", "f**k Ubi", and the "I'll buy it next month" pirates can all eat a dick.

I like my dishonest pirates to be honest about their dishonesty...

[brich233]

I am not a pirate :)

[Unztayble]

Yea, so he bought Fallout and Crysis. What about all the other games you've pirated?

[drizzom]

Don't take me the wrong way here, I agree wholeheartedly that any person on a salary deserves to be paid for their work. But looking at all this I wonder, could public image play a role as well in this? It seems that when you throw a variable like piracy into the mix, the only sure way to profit is if people like the game enough to WANT to support it. Though its said that their are no clear definitive links to piracy causing a loss of sales, would creating a proper safeguard from it be having a good game and public relations with customers?

Maybe this is what Valve meant by "Piracy is a service problem." If customers have the ability to pirate AND the ability to purchase, the only thing that would make them lean more towards purchasing is seeing a game that they feel is worth supporting. So there has to be some sort of service be it great PR work or some feature in a game that will win them over enough to feel that the game is worth purchasing.

I dunno, is anything of what I'm trying to say here making sense?

[ninjahunter]

Download game for free, do not buy game, good for industry... This is a worse argument than "The wii has good graphics"

[Somebody]

I used to pirate games in my early gaming years thanks to the lack of actual shops selling legit games in my place. I have the money and commitment to buy them but no means to acquire them legally. I even boasted to my friends that I'll be buying legit games regularly if given the chance but it took years before I can actually do so.

Online purchase? I've only got my first credit card this year and I merely got it to verify my Paypal account. The fear of overspending and online fraud made me avoid credit cards for a good decade.

Thanks to a local shop handling legit games I finally got to buy games several years back. Even then I was too far away to actually purchase them regularly. Now that I've moved to a town with a proper postal and internet service I've in a spending spree. And with Paypal and online distribution, I have more ways to buy games.

Not saying that pirating games is a good thing but some of us actually don't have the means to get games properly/legally until several years ago. Even if there is a way, social pressure made it a difficult choice. Being a legit gamer in a piracy ridden society was hard early on. I've always been greeted with great astonishment whenever I told people how I spend on games every month. A co worker even chastised me for "wasting" money when I bought a legit copy of Windows 7 for a new PC I was building.

I'm honest about my dishonesty.

[hazelamy]

now i don't think piracy is as bad as the publishers claim, but i don't think there's actually anything good about it either.