Yes is the word you’re looking for! A recent news article has annoyed me. Like most of the movie industry, the gaming industry claim that copied games have cost them £1.45billion in lost sales and over 1000 lost jobs in 2010!

I have no idea how the hell they got those figures.  Do they just randomly punch numbers into a calculator and say to themselves, “ah yes, thats how much money we have lost this year!”? It’s all a complete load of rubbish.

The type of person that typically downloads things illegally is a person who wants a game, movie or application, but doesn’t like paying for something that;

1. they can get for free
2. there is no demo
3. there is a no refund policy ( ie games from steam )
4. there is DRM

These gamers will most likely also fork out the money to legally purchase the game so they can play it properly with out any restrictions. For example, multi-player games require a CD-Key but the one given with a copied game does not allow the user to play it online, therefor they are stuck playing the single player or playing on a LAN thus purchase the game to enable full functionality.

Games these days are very expensive, especially for consoles. The latest console games are £40 and upwards. The same is said for the PC. The difference there is, that the console gamer can take their back to the shop and get a refund, where as the PC gamer cannot.

New games usually use some sort of registration process, thus not allowing other users to install the game. With PC games, that usually come with no demo, cost £35 and up and offer no type of refund if there is a type of registration, for example games that use Steam or EA’s registration.

What really angers me about the article that I mentioned above, is the fact that the gaming industry thinks that they are losing money to piracy, but essentially they are gaining new customers. I say this because, with out the people downloading their games illegally, they would have no real way to test a game, if they liked it, they can then buy the game, enabling all features, such as online play.

What do you think? What’s your opinion on this matter? Are they really losing as much money as they claim, or are they just full of shit?!