Originally Posted by Mrrockitt
Kriss, you make valid points.

However, I'm not remotely interested in Hollywood Executives, there are very few films coming out of Hollywood that i would ever want to watch, buy or pirate.
What I am talking about and perhaps should have explained more clearly is the harm that piracy does to the smaller compnaies and individuals. Thousands copying the latest blockbuster will do little harm to a massive compnay but thousands copying a game made by an Indie develper cannot possibly encourage them to make more games!

If you can genuinely say that you pirate something, watch/play it a few times and then buy it if you like when well done you! I bet there are many others who would just think, why bother buying it now when I've already got it for free?

As for the articles, there may well be some truth to their research but what next? Do we all just pirate everything because it's OK to do so? If you make the argument that piracy can be beneficial then it follows that more and more people will do it and this will hinder creativity.

You continue to assume that piracy has the capacity to hurt anyone.
Piracy is not last sales, if someone pirates your game and doesn't buy it, he probably wasn't going to buy it in the first place. If someone pirates your game and does buy it, that's a gained sale, which would not have happened if you don't have a good demo out.

Piracy

Only

Has

The capacity

To drive

Sales

UP

I don't know if I can make it any clearer.
Yes, there will always be people who pirate because they don't want to pay at all, but that doesn't harm anyone, it's not lost sales because it wouldn't have been a sale in the first place. This is well documented, I don't understand why you're making these 2003 era arguments against piracy.

Pirating to play and get for free with no intention of buying - bad.

Pirating to test and buy if a product is good - justified as long as there is no other way to get a proper demo.

And no, we shouldn't all just pirate, unless all of "us" want to test things, people make blind purchases, that's where buyer's remorse comes from and buyer's remorse can actually hurt future sales, unlike piracy which simply lacks the capacity to impact sales negatively.

Look at The Witcher 2, a game we can all agree is really good. It got pirated a lot, initially CDPR were pretty pissed for some reason and threatened to sue. But they changed tone once they saw that a lot of the people that pirated the game went and bought it and posted about how they did just that on forums, they learned. I forget who said it, but a developer recently said something along the lines of:
"It's wonderful to see our game is one of the most seeded games on the pirate bay currently"
You know why? Because that means that people ENJOY the game, and someone who enjoys a game, will likely purchase it given the opportunity.