A report from US trade body the Entertainment Software Association suggests 33 countries fail to adequately protect intellectual property rights.
The worst offenders are said to be Italy, China, Spain, Brazil and France, which reportedly accounted for 54 percent of global peer-to-peer game file sharing in 2010.
Last year, ESA vendors detected more than 144 million connections by peers participating in unauthorised file sharing across more than 200 countries, with the top five (Italy, China, Spain, Brazil and France) accounting for more than 78 million detections.
ESA president Michael Gallagher said: "Our industry continues to grow in the US, but epidemic levels of online piracy stunt sales and growth in a number of countries, including Italy, China, Spain, Brazil and France, where we see crushing volumes of infringing peer-to-peer activity involving leading game titles.
"Game publishers lose opportunities for export sales, and the US loses opportunities to expand our export economy, and consumers in those countries lose local benefits of having a thriving game market."
UK interactive entertainment body UKIE has said that the domestic games industry lost at least £1.45 billion to software piracy last year.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/28 ... me-piracy/No, no they didn't...
