UK interactive entertainment body UKIE has said that the domestic games industry lost at least £1.45 billion to software piracy last year.

It estimates that for every original game sold at least one is pirated, effectively halving annual revenues, which dipped for the second year running in 2010.

UKIE also believes that software piracy has resulted in there being 1,000 fewer jobs in the industry.

Director General Michael Rawlinson told the BBC: "When people play a pirated game that money goes to a criminal, not to the industry. That takes away jobs from young developers and graphic designers, so it actually stifles creativity and stops new games coming out."

He also argued that games aren't overpriced: "These big games, you get 20 to 50 hours game play, which is tremendous value for money. A game like Call of Duty could take two years to make and cost millions of pounds. So there are huge sums of money involved in individual games."

Call of Duty: Black Ops was reportedly the most pirated game of 2010.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/28 ... 2010-ukie/

When are these twats going to realise that a pirated game does not necessarily represent a lost sale!? Just because someone pirated your game it does not necessarily follow that they had the means or inclination to buy the real thing.

I've never liked "UKIE", previously known as ELSPA; they frequently talk out their arse and I was disgusted by the attitude of one of their "enforcement officers" when he gave a talk at our university, after he seriously suggested (wrongly) section 296ZB (of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988) should be used against against people who pirate on a personal basis, as even though they were not operating in the course of a business (as required by the Act), they were acting "prejudicially to the copyright owner".

Now, the actual Act states "distributes otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the copyright owner,", he seriously tried to suggest, with a straight face, this could amount to just one copy.

I do not pirate games. More through fear of downloading a trojan, virus or keylogger. That said I am very very selective of what games I do buy. I do not know any one who actually pirates games, for any device. Maybe that is rare. So I suspect that these figures are dodgy. Maybe it is think of a number time?

I've got a mate who's obsessed with downloading. He's got a cracked wii with about 200 games on it. However, he doesn't even like games and never plays it. I think he just does it because he feels like he's beaten the system in some way. Either way, if it wasn't possible, he'd never even have bought the wii, let alone bought those games.

This.

Pirates are usually either skinflints or just skint.

But skinflints could afford to buy but decide not to.

That was kinda my point.

Yes but these could buy if forced to. Maybe the industry think that we are all skinflints not poor.

Within a few months of a game being released you can probably find it for around £15-20 on The Hut, etc anyway. Because of that though I've never really understood why people say "well if games we're cheaper I wouldnt pirate". Not that not being able to afford something is a reason to steal it.

Anyway... those figures are most likely crap. As has been said by others an assumption exists that a pirate copy = a lost sale when quite clearly it does not.

I decided to check a couple of games prices. Starcraft 2 which is 5 months old is still selling on Amazon for near enough the same price I bought it on launch. Civ 5 which was released a month later is down to £15 from the initial £40 RRP. I think that Civ 5 has not be accepted as a great game so is struggling. Whereas Starcraft 2 is still selling well. The copy protection might be a factor with Starcraft 2 as well. Though as you say if the prices drop which they do inevitably then why pirate? Second hand games also reduce the market for pirate copies.