UKIE: Pirated games outnumber purchased games 4:1 - Polidicks

[img]http://bulk8.destructoid.com/images/lite/destructoid-name.gif[/img] [url=http://www.destructoid.com/ukie-pirated-games-outnumber-purchased-games-4-1-192433.phtml]Source[/url] [release]British software organization UKIE has claimed that for every game legitimately purchased at a retailer, another four copies have been stolen. The group states that in Britain alone, the industry lost at least £1.45 billion to software pirates in 2010. “Based on information received from a number of publishers, we have estimates of games piracy running at between 4:1 against legitimate sales," claimed UKIE GD Michael Rawlinson. "We took a conservative position of saying if this is only 1:1 across all titles it would have a retail equivalent value of £1.45million. We did not say this was the loss to industry. "What is clear is people who ’share’ games via P2P networks or buy illegal copies are not buying the real product, and this reduces retailer sales. It can provide the consumer with a sub-standard product and money paid to illegal traders does not flow back to the creative." It's a pretty brutal situation. While I've never hardline condemned all piracy, I really do wish pirates could think about the long-term consequences of mass-downloads. There's a reason why publishers decide to mostly put crap like Let's Imagine Smoking Babiez on the DS, for example. At least the "casual" gamers don't pirate. Think about that the next time the PC gets shafted on a release. [/release]

I can't say that I'm surprised.

They can make that kind of math. The math they can't seem to be able to do, is that games are generally overpriced, and no one wants to buy overpriced crap that was shat out a year after announcement, meaning a badly done game (bugged, seemingly unfinished, that doesn't seems to give a good enough reason to be bought) Sales with discounts usually give them LOTS of sales. Why don't they set their prices lower? Not at 50% discounts, but, just LOWER. And give us games with good enough reasons to buy. GOOD GAMES!

Where did they get the idea that if piracy weren't around pirates would buy the same quantities they download? :confused:

Obviously publishers would inflate the 4:1 figure to drive their point across, it's most likely a much less ratio.

A lot of games that are pirated are ones that are much harder to find in the shops/ have long delivery times if bought online/ plus that only considers games bought at a retailer and doesn't take into account digital purchases over steam and the like. The actual ratio is probably closer to 1:1 than 1:4

Maybe if editors weren't so greedy on the retail price (which is not worth its price very often) and didn't kill the possibility of selling games, maybe this shit wouldn't happen at all and who dl and play "Let's Imagine Smoking Babiez" anyway?

Like you can't pirate games on a console :rolleyes:

[Quote=UKIE]British software organization UKIE has claimed that for every game legitimately purchased at a retailer, another four copies[B] have been stolen.[/B][/quote] [IMG]http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj95/teddi_orange/2akae82.png[/IMG]

And 95% of the pirated games would never been bought in the first place. Nothing lost nothing gained.

[QUOTE=Teddi Orange;27667601][img_thumb]snip[/img_thumb][/QUOTE] I got a 3 day ban for "Advocating warez" when I posted an image defending piracy. Just so you know.

Well if they sold the games for £0 they could increase sales by 400% then! :downs:

[QUOTE=SilverHedgehog;27667625]I got a 3 day ban for "Advocating warez" when I posted an image defending piracy. Just so you know.[/QUOTE] Apart from I'm not advocating piracy, I'm just showing that the statement that is said is technically incorrect. Publishers need to get out of the mindset of one illegal download is a sale lost which is not the case. The same thing applies to saying pirating is theft because on a technical term it isn't as you're not removing the original.

[QUOTE=imadaman;27666203] [release]British software organization UKIE has claimed that for every game legitimately purchased at a retailer, another four copies have been stolen. The group states that in Britain alone, the industry lost at least £1.45 billion to software pirates in 2010. “Based on information received from a number of publishers, we have estimates of games piracy running at between 4:1 against legitimate sales," claimed UKIE GD Michael Rawlinson. "We took a conservative position of saying if this is only 1:1 across all titles it would have a retail equivalent value of £1.45million. We did not say this was the loss to industry. "What is clear is people who ’share’ games via P2P networks or buy illegal copies are not buying the real product, and this reduces retailer sales. It can provide the consumer with a sub-standard product and money paid to illegal traders does not flow back to the creative." It's a pretty brutal situation. While I've never hardline condemned all piracy, I really do wish pirates could think about the long-term consequences of mass-downloads. There's a reason why publishers decide to mostly put crap like Let's Imagine Smoking Babiez on the DS, for example. At least the "casual" gamers don't pirate. Think about that the next time the PC gets shafted on a release. [/release][/QUOTE] So, there's suddenly money going to those who share games online? What?

[QUOTE=dass;27666245]They can make that kind of math. The math they can't seem to be able to do, is that games are generally overpriced, and no one wants to buy overpriced crap that was shat out a year after announcement, meaning a badly done game (bugged, seemingly unfinished, that doesn't seems to give a good enough reason to be bought) Sales with discounts usually give them LOTS of sales. Why don't they set their prices lower? Not at 50% discounts, but, just LOWER. And give us games with good enough reasons to buy. GOOD GAMES![/QUOTE] I quite agree with you. [QUOTE=Teddi Orange;27667601][img_thumb]http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj95/teddi_orange/2akae82.png[/img_thumb][/QUOTE] [url]http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2653-Piracy[/url] Raises quite a few good points.

I think the reason why publishers say that a pirated copy = a lost sale is because a pirated copy is still a show of interest for the game, which in a piracy free world would result in a sale or a download of the demo. The 4:1 number is for Black Ops, if people are wondering. It got pirated 4.3 million times and sold about 1 million copies on PC. [editline]26th January 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=dass;27666245]They can make that kind of math. The math they can't seem to be able to do, is that games are generally overpriced, and no one wants to buy overpriced crap that was shat out a year after announcement, meaning a badly done game (bugged, seemingly unfinished, that doesn't seems to give a good enough reason to be bought) Sales with discounts usually give them LOTS of sales. Why don't they set their prices lower? Not at 50% discounts, but, just LOWER. And give us games with good enough reasons to buy. GOOD GAMES![/QUOTE] A more effective way to show publishers that this shit isn't acceptable is to NOT buy the game or show interest in it by pirating it. Bobby Kotik and the other CEOs for the huge publishers are not stupid, they know when they need to adapt to a changing market.

the article looks like it's talking about console games.

Most pirates are poor as fuck and wouldn't buy the game anyway. Not to mention many of these pirated games are later bought legally by the same pirate. Or if one pirate downloads the game many times, it counts as more than one lost sale even if it's not. Statistics like these pop up all the time but they're all wrong. It's like counting birth rate in a country but you include only one race for example.

[QUOTE=johan_sm;27667869]Most pirates are poor as fuck and wouldn't buy the game anyway. Not to mention many of these pirated games are later bought legally by the same pirate. Or if one pirate downloads the game many times, it counts as more than one lost sale even if it's not. Statistics like these pop up all the time but they're all wrong. It's like counting birth rate in a country but you include only one race for example.[/QUOTE] How would you know that the statistics are wrong? The conclusion the companies come to might be wrong however.

[QUOTE=johan_sm;27667869]Most pirates are poor as fuck and wouldn't buy the game anyway. Not to mention many of these pirated games are later bought legally by the same pirate. Or if one pirate downloads the game many times, it counts as more than one lost sale even if it's not. Statistics like these pop up all the time but they're all wrong. It's like counting birth rate in a country but you include only one race for example.[/QUOTE] Most pirates are just lazy people who can't get a job/parents won't give them money, or they just draw up the "lol, why should I pay for it when I can get it for free :smug:".

[QUOTE=clanratc;27667986]How would you know that the statistics are wrong? The conclusion the companies come to might be wrong however.[/QUOTE] Statistics about piracy are never right. There is no place where you can just view total downloads of games. Just because you go to tpb and check how many times the torrent was downloaded doesn't really mean much. [editline]26th January 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=Carne;27668035]Most pirates are just lazy people who can't get a job/parents won't give them money, or they just draw up the "lol, why should I pay for it when I can get it for free :smug:".[/QUOTE] Depends on country I guess, but where I live it's nearly impossible to get a job and 50 euro is quite a lot of cash.

[QUOTE=Carne;27668035]Most pirates are just lazy people who can't get a job/parents won't give them money, or they just draw up the "lol, why should I pay for it when I can get it for free :smug:".[/QUOTE] Someone's already forgotten about the recession most of the world is still suffering from.

Make better games Lower prices Get game journalists who will actually play a lot of games and can actually say 'not my kind of game but you might like it' Remove Michael Pachter and anyone else who does his 'job' Make more demos Make actual expansions and not tiny DLC packs Don't franchise big name games Remove peripherals I think industry is having growing pains right now. Hopefully they will get rid of 3d/peripherals in the next 2 years.

For real they need to lower costs. I refuse to buy a MW game when it is more than 20 bucks a pop. They are all essentially expansions anyways, not drastically improving gameplay but adding a little content. The only games I would be willing to spend more than 30 bucks on: Garry's Mod Minecraft Morrowind And ironically those games are all cheaper than 30 bucks.

They don't lose anything if they sell the games "Alot" cheaper. 69 € for a fucking game. Now this is just too much. Anyway, this year i will be bankrubt because of the awesome games that are going to be released.

[QUOTE=yawmwen;27668743]For real they need to lower costs. I refuse to buy a MW game when it is more than 20 bucks a pop. They are all essentially expansions anyways, not drastically improving gameplay but adding a little content. The only games I would be willing to spend more than 30 bucks on: Garry's Mod Minecraft Morrowind And ironically those games are all cheaper than 30 bucks.[/QUOTE] It's funny because the most mainstream games are the least affected by piracy. Sure they are pirated more, but their profits are huge, especially cod series.

I'm rather dubious of results from a site that compares piracy to stealing. It's about as much stealing as lending a game to a friend. Maybe if companies stopped massively over charging for their games (games are not worth £40, especially in the case of the cod franchise) people would be more inclined to buy them.

The fact that you can't just go to a store, pick up a videogame and have fun really makes videogame retailers near pointless nowadays.

[QUOTE=carcarcargo;27668896]I'm rather dubious of results from a site that compares piracy to stealing. It's about as much stealing as lending a game to a friend. Maybe if companies stopped massively over charging for their games (games are not worth £40, especially in the case of the cod franchise) people would be more inclined to buy them.[/QUOTE] Not buying games hurts the videogame industry as much as pirating them

[QUOTE=Zezibesh;27668983]Not buying games hurts the videogame industry as much as pirating them[/QUOTE] How is not buying them hurtful when they weren't going to buy it in the first place.