Empire using Steam; Gamespot interview/preview

[Monk]

And so ?
In all countries you can download the said game for zero dollar. It's even cheaper than pennies paid to a street vendor. What's your point ?

It served as an example of how developers are being, in some cases, completely cut out of the picture. It's happening on a bigger scale than you're willing to admit, and that is one example of it.

So the true impact is that people who would not have paid for it, will not pay for it ?
Either I missed something in your reasoning, either you make absolutely no sense.

Bob wants to buy a game, Bob decides from what he reads online the game sounds bad, but he decides to get it anyway. He doesn't buy it so he pirates it. Goods are acquired without the exchange of anything at all, under any other method the definition is stealing. You can go ones tep further anda ssume that Bob will continue to pirate games now that he's done it already.

If he were the only one in the world to take this attitude then there would be no harm, but he's not. I know people here in the states who don't buy a single game. All they do is pirate things. They don't care about supporting a developer, they just want the game.

No, it's to take into account that, while piracy has incredibly increased in raw numbers, sales also have incredibly increased in raw numbers.
I don't think the proportion of piracy has really increased. Heck, I'm even pretty sure it has actually proportionnaly DEcreased, simply because there is now a LOT of "casual gamers" who buy all their games, while there was simply no "casual" people in the computer world twenty years ago - we were all somehow nerds/passionnates/technicians and the like. And non-casual people tends to "know the ropes", and as such have a much higher tendency to know how to get their games for free - and as such, much higher proportion to GET them for free.

You'd be surprised with how little "know-how" is required to actually pirate a game. It's not like it's a rubix cube and only a select few know where to go and what to do to get what they want. Google can find you pretty much anything, and a stumbling search with terms that don't completely apply would get you to a site that will let you do a lot.

I've read a few articles in the past year (and one in 07 that was predicting it) that state PC game sales are actually slowing. I can't sit here and tell you piracy is cause number one concretely, but its my opinion that it has a big part in it.

Of course, if this is truly how this conversation intends to go we'll have to agree to disagree about Piracy's effects on the market (which is aiding in going further and further OT). Neither of us seems closer to convincing the other.