Loyd Case writes on the ExtremeTech site about rampant piracy in the PC games space. This longish article is well worth a read.
Among other data, Case offers selective quotes from an article by Michael Fitch on the shutdown of Iron Lore Entertainment, for reasons that include piracy:
...the numbers on piracy are really astonishing. The research I've seen pegs the piracy rate at between 70-85% on PC in the US, 90%+ in Europe, off the charts in Asia. I didn't believe it at first. It seemed way too high. Then I saw that Bioshock was selling 5 to 1 on console vs. PC. And Call of Duty 4 was selling 10 to 1. These are hardcore games, shooters, classic PC audience stuff. Given the difference in install base, I can't believe that there's that big of a difference in who played these games, but I guess there can be in who actually paid for them.
Let's dig a little deeper there. So, if 90% of your audience is stealing your game, even if you got a little bit more, say 10% of that audience to change their ways and pony up, what's the difference in income? Just about double. That's right, double. That's easily the difference between commercial failure and success. That's definitely the difference between doing okay and founding a lasting franchise. Even if you cut that down to 1% - 1 out of every hundred people who are pirating the game - who would actually buy the game, that's still a 10% increase in revenue. Again, that's big enough to make the difference between breaking even and making a profit.
There are many anti-piracy solutions out there. Case mentions a few of them. In addition, game producers might want to have a look at anti-priacy solutions from ByteShield, which among other benefits, enables a simple form of superdistribution, in which consumers become distributors.
