Piracy Numbers

[Karmond]

An interesting article poped up on Kotaku (http://kotaku.com/364440/pc-gamings-piracy-sales-charts) (via Rock, Paper, Shotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1263)) today containg numbers of illegally downloaded games over the course of a single day from one Bittorrent site. The top 20 are as follows:

Assassin's Creed - 25734
Frontlines: Fuel of War - 12688
Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat - 8792
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic - 8402
Lost: Via Domus - 5883
Turning Point: Fall of Liberty - 5183
Sims 2 - 4026
The Club - 3672
Bioshock - 3489
The Witcher - 3121
Need for Speed ProStreet - 3061
Crysis - 2847
Conflict: Denied Ops - 2085
Neverwinter Nights 2 - 1893
Hellgate: London - 1750
World in Conflict - 1531
Stranglehold - 1459
The Orange Box - 1341
Age of Empires - 1099
Flat Out 2 - 1074

Another interesting quote from the article.

Thirdly, let's try a little really rough - if conservative - maths. Call of Duty 4 has been on sale for 113 days, assuming day zero piracy. A seven gig torrent, assuming a 100k download speed, takes just under a day to download. Assuming that the rate of downloads now is constant across those whole three and a bit months - which is incredibly conservative, of course, as it'd have been much higher upon release - that means 993496 copies will have been illegally downloaded via Mininova alone.

Those numbers are just amazing to me but not really surprising. I don't support piracy which is kinda why I don't go in the Handheld forum anymore, it's almost as though people expect you to pirate in there. Even some of the arguments people come up with to support piracy (take a read of some of the responses to that Kotaku article) makes my head hurt just knowing that you can't reason with these people. They say that it's their god given right to steal because it's not a physical object and that they're 'recreating' it at no loss to the manufacturer... I'm not sure if they actually believe that or just something they tell themselves to make it seem okay but it's pointless trying to argue with them in their own little world.

What are your thoughts?

[AceAussie]

I wouldn't download games, Because unlike Music i want the Hard copy.

I don't see why some people Pirate, In know I won't.

[Capt Spaz]

I wouldn't download games, Because unlike Music i want the Hard copy.

I don't see why some people Pirate, In know I won't.

You don't see why people pirate? You yourself just said you pirate music. Why do you do that? Because you want it without having to pay for it. Game Pirates have the same reasoning.

[BoonMcNougat]

I hate all piracy.

Game prices can go up if this piracy gets way out of hand, leaving the law abiding citizens to take the punsihment that the pirates deserve.

Pay for a game if its obviously worth it.

I'd say about half of those games are definitely worth their money, and its astonishing to see how much people steal games.

[Prosper]

Game prices in Australia if anything will go down, not up. The U.S. market should be concerned though.

[Scott]

I don't really have a problem with it, the prices that is. Games aren't too expensive for me, because I am pretty distinct with what I like, I don't end up getting more then 15 per console, over its entire lifespan. I have really no need to pirate games.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Yeah, lots of people pirate games. We knew that. The numbers make for a nice show, but they don't really illustrate anything meaningful.

[S2333]

I don't pirate games but that's pretty amazing for games, that that many people download those games.

I only pirate to see if I enjoy the content, if I do then I will purchase the artists work.

[Boo!]

I wouldn't download games, Because unlike Music i want the Hard copy.

I don't see why some people Pirate, In know I won't.

Hypocrite.

I download music, yes, but does that mean I won't buy physical copies of the album's I download? No. I have downloaded many albums via the interwebs, and been so thrilled with the audial (~160kbs...) pleasure, I go out and buy the album. I know many people who are like this, and certain music aficondos (a particular group of indie lovers I have in mind), who may pirate quite a number of albums per year, will also BUY the most number of albums per yer. Yes, this doesn't apply to everyone, but any true music fan will agree with me here, physical copies of music (whether it be CD, 12", whatever), packaged with real artwork,will always win out over digital music.

Hey, I went off topic. Shit. Anyway, I don't pirate games, yadayada, although I can see (and this is a generalisation) that people who download games don't go out and buy them, because they can be 2 - 3 times the price of a CD/12". Just my view.

[Hyper the Mewtroid]

I wouldn't download games, Because unlike Music i want the Hard copy.

I don't see why some people Pirate, In know I won't.

For two reasons. For enjoyment of a product without having to pay for it and in some cases, profit. Many people sell pirated games, movies and CDs all the time.

I wouldn't download games, Because unlike Music i want the Hard copy.

I don't see why some people Pirate, In know I won't.

You don't see why people pirate? You yourself just said you pirate music. Why do you do that? Because you want it without having to pay for it. Game Pirates have the same reasoning.

You never know, he may be legally downloading songs from iTunes.

[Fazzle]

I pretty much pirate everything but console games. I RARELY pirate GBA roms but I have about 4 of them. I'm not the biggest ARRRR ever though.

This number IS surprising to me however considering I thought some of those games would be too big to download :S

[Smoko]

This number IS surprising to me however considering I thought some of those games would be too big to download :S

Why would you ever consider that?

[Nitros]

Mmm I'm just enjoying my pirated copy of CoD4.

EDIT: Whoops wrong thread and forum.

[TryMe]

When people know they can get something free, they go for it.

[nephilim]

would be better to go buy age of empires for 2bucks at cash convertors

[Nitros]

would be better to go buy age of empires for 2bucks at cash convertors

lol

[tanka]

I download music, yes, but does that mean I won't buy physical copies of the album's I download? No. I have downloaded many albums via the interwebs, and been so thrilled with the audial (~160kbs...) pleasure, I go out and buy the album. I know many people who are like this, and certain music aficondos (a particular group of indie lovers I have in mind), who may pirate quite a number of albums per year, will also BUY the most number of albums per yer. Yes, this doesn't apply to everyone, but any true music fan will agree with me here, physical copies of music (whether it be CD, 12", whatever), packaged with real artwork,will always win out over digital music.

I'm alot like you, pretty much every artist I like today was discovered via the internet, and I have bought their albums.

I have a theory on downloading music, which many will disagree with.. Downloading a song from an album is like watching a movie clip of a tv show/movie on youtube.. It's only a snippet of the album.. If you like the song, and others you've heard, then you go and buy the album. Downloading whole albums, much like downloading whole movies is wrong. You might disagree with this theory, but alot of my favourite artists would be down a fan who buys their music if I thought differently.

People downloading games and movies really angers me though. Ask my friends lol.