Study Claims $41.5 Billion In Portable Game Piracy Losses Over Five Years 316
Gamasutra reports that Japan's Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association conducted a study to estimate the total amount of money lost to piracy on portable game consoles. The figure they arrived at? $41.5 billion from 2004 to 2009. Quoting:
"CESA checked the download counts for the top 20 Japanese games at what it considers the top 114 piracy sites, recording those figures from 2004 to 2009. After calculating the total for handheld piracy in Japan with that method, the groups multiplied that number by four to reach the worldwide amount, presuming that Japan makes up 25 percent of the world's software market. CESA and Baba Lab did not take into account other popular distribution methods for pirated games like peer-to-peer sharing, so the groups admit that the actual figures for DS and PSP software piracy could be much higher than the ¥3.816 trillion amount the study found."
$45 BILLION?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that must be accurate, because I'm sure they factored in things like:
1) People downloading way more than they could ever afford to buy
2) Multiple downloads by one person
3) Downloads of games that were already legitimately purchased by the individual but unusable for some reason
Why, oh why do they do these studies (Score:5, Insightful)
This is once again one of those numbers that will be thrown around by IP holders to get attention from the politicians. And yet the study does the same idiotic assumption as all the other ones.
Saying one download is one lost sale is idiotic. It has never been true and never will be. It's probably off by at least a factor of 10. And haven't many studies already shown (well, at least with music) that the people who pirate are also the people who buy the most?
Re:$45 BILLION?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
While I also find fault with that figure, I think the 3rd one was probably not a significant contributing factor there given the scale.
I'd argue that the vast majority was 1 with a little of 4: faulty methods for calculating the amount.
Re:Losses? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, I'd call it $41.5 billion in free advertising for your games.
It's a zero sum game. (Score:5, Insightful)
No money is lost to the economy due to copyright infringement as some MAFIA groups try to argue. It is just not given to publishers for those movies/songs/games that are pirated. But it is spent on other products. This is the broken window fallacy, that a child who throws a rock through a window is stimulating the economy.
I download movies and tv shows because I don't like watching broadcast TV. Any that deserve a repeat viewing get bought on DVD (which is probably about 80%). If they shutdown illegal downloads they wouldn't get more money from me because I have little to spare, they are more likely to get less as I would just shift to other forms of entertainment or free to access media (I have started watching local legal tv streaming sites, which has dropped the amount I illegally download and later purchase).
This isn't the 1990's where the big publishers had little competition. There is so much free or cheap content out there that I don't buy before I try.
Re:$45 BILLION?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Open bar (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice how *some* people will get utterly smashed when attending an event with an open bar? They're quite eager to consume far more than they might usually have...
I still don't see how that could possibly represent a tangible "market" with any credibility. However many servings were had (for free) has no relevance to sales you could've had on a normal night.
Re:A pirated game is not always a lost sale. (Score:4, Insightful)
Buying (legit) GBA cartridges second-hand on eBay doesn't put any money into Nintendo's hands, so where does the "lost sale" argument come from? Yes, I understand that you would have otherwise gotten a legit copy, but the whole smarmy justification for attacking piracy is that the game companies and such lose money from it. If they wouldn't have gained a cent even if you'd bought a legit copy, the situation doesn't apply.
Of course, I also believe that if a copyrighted work is not being made commercially available, there should be no penalty for distributing it.
Re:A pirated game is not always a lost sale. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Losses? (Score:2, Insightful)
Free advertising to whom? Advertising to people who think of games as something you download to a flashcard isn't going to help at all.
They might as well claim eleventy gazillion (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just made up numbers and made up words, told by the princelings of lies and falsehoods.
Create! (Score:1, Insightful)
Smith: Fourty-two Hugillions lost to pirates...
Miller: But... but there isn't that much money in the whole world!
Smith: Yes, that's right. We... Create!
Re:Why, oh why do they do these studies (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Losses? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Wikipedia there's 129M DS units sold, and 60M PSP units sold.. that's $220 worth of pirated games for every handheld in the world. Keeping in mind that a lot of people bought multiple revisions of the DS, replacement units, units that aren't in use, and so on, it's probably more like $300-400 per handheld owner.
Sorry, but that number is completely ridiculous and not credible in any way whatsoever to anyone owning a calculator.
Re:Why so much disagreement with the figure? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think most slashdotters are in complete denial about how massive it is. ... or not. I don't pirate stuff, nor to I know anyone who does. I used to pirate stuff when I wass much younger, and I knew people who pirated stuff when they were students. Now I and the people I spend much of my time with are older none of us pirate any more.
Well, I got it (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that is because they gave it me.
With kind regards,
The banking and automotive industry.
Re:$45 BILLION?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
These studies never count sales that never happened because casual gamers won't spend the money for a console (or portable) if the cost of games is prohibitive. I never bought any X Box or Playstation games simply because of the cost of the console and a dozen games.
Way back in DOS days I bought a PC because stuff could be copied and thus affordable to experiment with the large world of software. I had tons of shareware, etc. If all software was locked down at over $40/title, my PC purchase would have been delayed for years. There is only just not that much interest in playing with DOS for DOS sake.
Games are always priced for the maximum profit (free market) by artificial scaracity. Only the more hard core gamers buy them. Many potential game buyers play freecell and minesweeper along with free online services such as Farmville, neopets, etc., and are content. Seriousely, if Farmville required a pre-play purchase of $40, do you think it would have any traction? Many games that are pirated enjoy this same publicity that the game is good. Some games locked down, don't get much exposure because it is reviewed as broken, slow, hard to make work.
I doubt that game manufactures are interested in attracting the Farmville players to a play platform at prices they would buy a good game. Wii has done a fair job at attracting players that normally won't buy a console.
Re:Why, oh why do they do these studies (Score:3, Insightful)
It may be possible to quantify piracy but I'm quite sure the numbers being banded around right now are complete garbage, if only because if you believe them you also have to believe that the GDP of the planet would double overnight if you were to eliminate it.
I dispute the acurracy of this study (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why, oh why do they do these studies (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Losses" by some definition... (Score:3, Insightful)
Particularly for handheld games - They are immensely popular in Japan largely due to the excess of mass transit and lack of personal-owned cars,
I think you mean "dominance" of mass-transit (in many urban areas); there's clearly not an excess of it, since it's often very crowded.
Re:$45 BILLION?!? (Score:1, Insightful)
Shouldn't that be 41.5 Billion divided by X, where X is the amount of consumers that have a use for the game? I don't see many elderly people playing games on portable systems. And somehow I doubt it's very popular in 3rd world countries.
Re:Why, oh why do they do these studies (Score:3, Insightful)
But it is an unreasonable conclusion. It presupposes that the same number of people will pay for something as will accept it for free. In short, it supposes that the Law of Demand [wikipedia.org] does not apply.
Re:Since Steam, I have pirated ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Losses? (Score:2, Insightful)
Accepting to publish such bullshit is complicity in disinformation. This is bad.
Re:Why, oh why do they do these studies (Score:2, Insightful)
This is once again one of those numbers that will be thrown around by IP holders to get attention from the politicians. And yet the study does the same idiotic assumption as all the other ones.
With some fairly common corrections (10-20% conversions; which are commonly accepted statistics), that's still roughly 4 - 8 BILLION dollars of stolen revenue. Even with some additional adjustments to the original numbers we're still talking about 2-6 BILLION dollars of stolen revenue; which is an easily believable and reasonable range of numbers.
Now think for a second if you had a small company and that directly translated into the loss of hundreds of thousands to several million dollars for you - just for your small company. That difference in revenue means lost jobs, fewer bug fixes, fewer employees, fewer bonus, lower wages, fewer benefits, no plans to expand, less customer support, and potentially even one or two fewer product launches; which in turn further negatively spirals a company and the economy. Unsurprisingly, thieves often use the problems they create to justify their stealing ways. "They provide poor support so I'm justified in stealing."
For thieves who wrongly believe no one is hurt by their theft of products, think again. For whatever reason people believe only large, monolithic, "evil" corporations charge for their products. The reality is, people who steal harm all facets of the economy and directly negatively affects small and medium size business. Stealing games potentially is the same thing as stealing from your neighbor or best friend.
Now imagine working for a year or two and when it comes time to collect your check, you're told, "don't worry man, I was just trying you out. I decided I didn't like what you had to offer." And yet, that's EXACTLY what thieves do to companies and people every day. Yes, that sucks, but that's what happens when pirates steal.
Since theft negatively affects all aspects of almost every economy in the world, its no wonder the world is working hard to cut the huge losses imposed by these social and economic criminals. They have no choice but to become ever more draconian. Think about it - they have zero options. This in turn in a reason thieves use to justify their theft. The reality is, they are the very problem they are railing against. Its like bank robbers complaining about higher taxes to pay for a larger police force which is required to combat rampant bank robberies. Most people would call this circular logic retarded - yet that's the day in a life of most thieves.
Re:Losses? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've kind of missed the point entirely, most of the people who pirate games can't afford to buy all of the games they pirate, so they never would have bought all the games they pirated. However, if these pirates interact with people who are not pirates and talk about the games they pirated and liked, they are providing free advertising.
As the iPhone study showed about 10% of iPhone owners were responsible for over 90% piracy rates on games. That means the 10% of pirates go through games voraciously, at a rate far, far beyond what non-pirates do. This means any comparison between piracy rates and money lost is going be vastly overstated.
The true cost of piracy would probably be better estimated by figuring the average purchase rate for game players and then multiplying that by the percentage of people who pirate games. It gives much lower but more accurate and realistic numbers.
But I pirate and I buy\ (Score:3, Insightful)
But I do pirate and I do buy. So where does that fit? I don't buy from companies that screw me anymore. EA, die already. Bethseda, get stuffed with your horse armor that needs a credit card. Turbine/Code Masters, same thing (latest Lotro expansion).
Sometimes I make an exception, for Bioware but I pirated Mass Effect 2 because the DLC for Dragon Age sucked donkey balls (which I did buy).
Frankly the game industry has managed to make piracy the only way to tell them that you don't like their business practices anymore. Nice game, lousy sales force. So how do you fight back? By hoping that the company goes bankrupt and the creative people start over under smarter management.
Here is a simple hint game makers everywhere: DO NOT SCREW WITH YOUR PAYING CUSTOMER OR HE WILL NOT PAY YOU.
Re:Why, oh why do they do these studies (Score:3, Insightful)
Since when has any corporation been honest or moral?