Last I looked into it video game piracy actually had a net benefit on sales. Any advantage DRM has from a sales point of view is null after about 3 months post launch anyway. It can and does kill small indie devs but any big boy in the industry, piracy usually benefits sales.
GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Piracy never has a benefit on sales. Where are you getting that from?
edible_funk@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Don’t be so sure. Apparently they publishers don’t make hard numbers publicly available anymore so there’s no good data but there was a survey of denuvo games.
arstechnica.com/…/the-true-cost-of-game-piracy-20…
Unfortunately that still doesn’t answer the question but until publishers post honest numbers we’ll never have the proper metrics to measure the actual impact piracy has. But in the day freeware like Doom basically relied entirely on piracy for sales so it’s not an out of pocket take that piracy could benefit sales. It is an old take though. I’m old.
GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That right there says that piracy hurts gaming. A game with drm cracked in the first week can expect to lose 20% of total revenue. That’s a gigantic loss.
edible_funk@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Cyberpunk sold well. Kingdom Come Deliverance sold well. Launching without DRM does not absolutely annihilate sales.
edible_funk@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That’s not exactly what it’s saying. It’s specific to denuvo games which generally means AAA publishers, it’s a small sample size, and it’s about the impact DRM has on sales, not piracy. It’s not an arbitrary distinction. I’ll grant it definitely implies piracy has a net negative effect on sales but that’s not at all what it’s actually saying.