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Four games are pirated for every single copy bought at retail, video games trade body UK Interactive Entertainment has told GamesIndustry.biz.
The comment from UKIE director general Michael Rawlinson comes in response to a BBC report that stated retail lost £1.45 billion last year due to piracy.
“Based on information received from a number of publishers we have estimates of games piracy running at between 4:1 against legitimate sales,” said Rawlinson.
“What is clear is people who ‘share’ games via P2P networks or buy illegal copies are not buying the real product, and this reduces retailer sales. It can provide the consumer with a sub-standard product and money paid to illegal traders does not flow back to the creative.”
In terms of what’s happening in the future, Rawlinson and UKIE are planning to carry out more research into working out how much piracy is having an effect on the industry.
“We intend to commission research that will endeavour to measure what is happening in the download/illegal sales arena in a more scientific way, but it will always be difficult to translate illegal sharing and downloads and pirate sales to a loss of legitimate sales and therefore the real effect on industry – how much would these people have bought and paid for.”
The age old argument from pirates is that they wouldn’t have bought the game so it doesn’t cost the publisher any money. That argument seems a little bit like a way to ease a guilty conscience to us – hopefully future research from the UKIE will work out exactly what impact pirates like this have.
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