Comment by mindcandy

1 day ago

> especially if you are willing to wait for some days or weeks after launch (an important sales window for the publishers).

“Important” is an understatement. Even for long-term success stories, the first three or four months often accounts for half of a game’s revenue.

And, despite so many people theorizing that “pirates don’t have money and wouldn’t pay anyway”, in practice big publishers wait in dread of “Crack Day” because the moment the crackers release the DRMless version, the drop in sales is instant and dramatic.

Do you have a source for sales data when a crack becomes available? If so, that seems like definitive proof that piracy does affect sales.

  • When the Nintendo Switch became hackable, ie can play any game, Nintendo saw a massive decrease in sales in Spain. Btw people in Spain pirate the most games in Europe. The decrease was at least 40%. The idea that this is a service issue and piracy doesn’t affect sales is just PR speak. If the game is offline, it’ll be pirated a lot.

    • > Btw people in Spain pirate the most games in Europe.

      They have very high unemployment among young people, might be related.

    • Both you and GGP make concrete claims but fail to provide evidence. Can anyone cite published sales data or is this all mere conjecture?

      We've been exposed to what seems like FUD about piracy killing sales since approximately forever - you wouldn't dOwnLoAd a cAR - but seemingly zero actual evidence to date.

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