Comment by nottorp

Are you confusing the absence or presence of copy protection with how a game is supposed to make money?

> why it is so common in the best games?

What best games? It's common in design by commitee predatory crap like EA/Ubisoft titles.

Thing is, a pirated copy isn't a lost sale. It's more like free marketing. It's possible that the above assholes would make more profit if they stopped spending on copy protection and advertising and just made and sold games.

In a world where it would be impossible to pirate software, I bet they would have at best 25% more sales. No one can afford to pay for every game, especially at launch price, so they'll just make do with fewer of them.

Linky about marketing costs:

https://www.trueachievements.com/n53671/aaa-game-development...

Juicy quote:

the CMA says that "this publisher also submitted that for one of its major franchise’s development costs reached $660 million and marketing costs peaked at almost $550 million."