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Yes they are losing out in sales, but no where near the guestimate they like to claim to have been investigated.
I think someone linked a post by someone who said along the lines: Of the number of consumers a publisher has, say only 10% pirate games. Now their paying customers will only buy around 10 games a year. The pirate on the other hand may download 100 games a year.
So yes you can claim for every game sold, 10 copies are pirated. But does that means that that implies a definite loss of 10 sales?
The answer is obviously no. as stated those 100 copies were downloaded by the same person, not 100 individuals. So even if that person was to buy the games, they would definitely never buy all 100 games, especially if they are $50 a pop!
In fact many pirate use the "try before you buy" method, so from the 100 downloaded games they may in fact end up buying 15 games they really like. So the pirate actually end up paying these publishers more than a normal customer does!
So really, as these companies have even boasted, they are making more and more profit per year. The fact is that like all other companies they are greedy and want more. By throwing a tonne of jargon, half truths, misleading figures and lies, they hope that courts will see things their way. Just like we are currently seeing in this case, they have fabricated evidence, created unfair T&Cs, made false accusations, all in the hope that the court sees what sony wants them to see in order to place a ruling over the things the court didnt see. e.g they have added piracy as a charge whilst quoting so many ways to pirate, whilst geohot did not include any method of piracy with his release. It's like charging the owner of a gun store for having a gun for sale which is the same type of gun used in a crime 100 miles away. The gun in question has never been used, but the same make of gun was used in another crime and so all owners of that gun will be charged for the crime.
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