Comment by jamespo
1 day ago
No, paying nothing is very compelling for a lot of consumers, you can see this in many other areas of content as well.
1 day ago
No, paying nothing is very compelling for a lot of consumers, you can see this in many other areas of content as well.
Consumers will pay for convenience and value. You simply cannot price a game at $80 and hope to sell it in India. You can't expect consumers to have half a dozen monthly streaming subs to enjoy their favorite content.
When a product is providing value, and it's easier and more convenient to buy than pirating it, then people will buy it.
Netflix killed piracy until the platform fragmented and now you need half a dozen subs to watch everything. Expectedly, free streaming sites are now better than ever.
Yeah. Where piracy really hurts is when games get cracked and released before the official release date. That actually devastates sales; unlike a teenager with no money pirating a game (who they can’t afford to buy anyway).
There used to be (maybe still is?) a period where a small number of publishers had DRM for the first few weeks, and removed it once it was cracked.
Research from the University of Amsterdam’s IViR “Global Online Piracy Study” (survey of nearly 35,000 respondents across 13 countries) found that for each content type and country, 95% or more of pirates also consume content legally, and their median legal consumption is typically twice that of non‑pirating legal users.
Fun fact, this study was financed by YouTube to create a legal shield.
In 2017/2018, they were in the position where MPAA and RIAA were saying: "Piracy costs us billions; Google must pay" + they had European Parliament on their ass.
Google financed that 'independent' study to support the view "Piracy is not harmful and encourages legal spend".
So the credibility of "independent" studies, is something to consider very carefully.
My real world observations agree with the direction of the study, so I don’t entirely dismiss it as fake based on its funding source.
I am cautious about the conclusion, though. It seems clear there is a spectrum from “unscrupulously pirate everything” to “consume legitimately after pirated discovery”, and quantification is necessary.
Doesn't make it false.
Why do you think this contradicts anything? Heavy users hit a budget limit and continue consuming more via pirating.
You really need something way better than some shoddy survey to counter the obvious fact that price matters
Yeah but if a pirate would have not paid the full price why care? It is by definition not a lost sale, the most likely outcome is just an increase by one the player count
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It contradicts the post it was replying to, which was saying, effectively, that people don't want to spend any money on stuff.
I don't think it's required to be making some universal point when you clearly respond to the argument put forward in the post you reply to, do you?
2 replies →
Before it was really expensive and difficult to get access to movies or music. Then came Netflix or Spotify. So money is the primary discriminator now, not access. And users without money would not bring revenue anyway