Quote:
Originally Posted by Skullcowboy
The talk about loss of revenue only really works if you believe, as the industry would have you believe, that each pirated download=1 lost sale.
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Also, revenue lost is misleading as it is not the amount of money the developer would have lost in profit, which is a much smaller amount, as revenue is before costs are deducted and doesn't take into account the large slices that each company down the chain takes. If a game is pirated, then Software Company X will say it cost them $40 in lost revenue, as that's the box price, but that doesn't mean to say they are $40 out of pocket.
It's equally as misleading to say that the pirates have 'saved' the distributor millions of dollars in distribution costs, as they didn't have to ship the physical products, or burden their download servers.
Avatar just became the biggest grossing film of all time, yet the internet is killing the film industry. Just goes to show that if you give the public what they want, they will buy it and lots of it. Games companies are always trying to shave costs and release buggy or incomplete products, sometimes making them unplayable out of the box. Maybe piracy is the symptom, not the disease?