TorrentFreak Reveals Top Pirated Games of 2011

[saregos]

Sue one pirate for a million dollars. You now have a million dollars to fund further lawsuits. The industry doesn't lose money in these lawsuits, that's why they launch them.

Not going to debate any of your other points here. I disagree with them, but others (and myself) have tried pretty much every conceivable argument. Not worth trying anymore.

As to the "industry not losing money in these lawsuits" argument, that's easily false.

http://www.dailytech.com/RIAA+Likely+Paid+Over+3M+to+Sue+Jammie+ThomasRasset+Only+Gets+54K+in+the+End/article22247.htm

is an example (from the music industry). Even had they been given their 1.9 mill reward, 2 facts remain:
They spent 3mill to litigate the case (i.e. a 1.1 mill loss)
Jammie Thomas-Rasset, like pretty much all pirates, doesn't have 1.9 million.

The only way that these lawsuits could be even remotely profitable is in cases like USCG/Righthaven/ACS:Law, where the lawsuit is used only as a tool to identify and then blackmail downloaders. The legality of these schemes is, to put it mildly, questionable. The morality of them is considerably worse than the "piracy" they seek to profit from. And the consequences in terms of goodwill (i.e. universal disgust amongst those who pay any attention) are dire, if you have any desire to continue making money through traditional means (like, say, actually selling your game).

 

[Treblaine]

One thing that would be more interesting than raw downloads is to look for pirate servers. 3 of those top-5 on PC have major online multiplayer components, and in fact you could say BF3 and MW3 the online is the ONLY worth-while part, so where are all these pirated copies online? How many of these are idle downloads that they cannot use online without genuine authentication in a sense then this piracy has been thwarted!

Remember, a pirated version can only be a lost sale if PLAYING that pirated copy satisfies them. If they cannot get online to a reasonably full extent of what the experience offers, then they cannot really say the legit version is worthless to them.

That would not really work. People dont really run pirate servers because they dont need to. If you can find a torrent for a game then you should be able to find an crack that will allow you to play online on that games servers. Especially if the game in question is Call of Duty or Battlefield. Pirate servers are really only ever really used for things like mmos these days.

So, if they play in the same servers... and Steam Stats says there are only 64'000 people playing MW3 right now... that is a huge disparity between the 3.5 million pirated copies.

MW3 is 100% steamworks based, you cannot join a COD server without Steam authentication and if a crack can spoof that well not many people are using it.

I don't see how MW3 (or any of the COD games since they started using Steamworks on PC) could you play the pirated version online without custom servers. All evidence points to the 3.5 million pirate downloads of MW3 they only have the shitty single player.

COD4 (pre-steamworks) I heard the servers were filled with pirated copies (allegedly) and the devs/publishers couldn't do anything to stop it. But all the servers are rented conditionally now, pirates get detected in short time and banned.

 

[triggrhappy94]

So the WII has more piracy than the Xbox is it me or is that bit odd

It's you. The Wii is (probably) easier to mod. It's also less regulated as far as I can tell. But the biggest reason is because Wii Live or whatever it's called isn't as big as Xbox Live or the PSN, and connecting to their network is how Nintendo detects whether or not a Wii is legit. By not going online, because there's no real benefit to with their Wii, pirates can mod their Wii consequence free.
I imagine that the 360 numbers were a lot higher before Microsoft went on their banning spree.

 

[Shim3d]

I buy legit serial codes online then torrent the game due to the ungodly videogame prices where I live, that's not piracy, yet they'd include my download. It's no different from borrowing the CD off a friend and using a nocd patch.

 

[legendp]

did any of those games have playable demos. (I think portal 2 might have).

as someone else has stated these downloads could be a result of people just testing there PC's or wanting to know what the game is like. it may be no excuse for pirating but at least it's an explanation. and battlefield 3 is partly up there because of origin and people not wanting to install spyware on there computers, it may have still been up there but an actual demo (not Beta) with single player and multiplayer as well as removal of origin would have helped lower those numbers

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

Kinda surprised at the volume of people who so "valiantly" defend their thievery. How you guys think enjoying content people have worked long and hard to create for free is fair is beyond me.

 

[ResonanceSD]

did any of those games have playable demos. (I think portal 2 might have).

as someone else has stated these downloads could be a result of people just testing there PC's or wanting to know what the game is like. it may be no excuse for pirating but at least it's an explanation. and battlefield 3 is partly up there because of origin and people not wanting to install spyware on there computers, it may have still been up there but an actual demo (not Beta) with single player and multiplayer as well as removal of origin would have helped lower those numbers

If only people could read system reqs or do some of their own research. Otherwise they wouldn't resort to piracy. If you won't buy something till it has a demo, contact the developer, don't pirate it.

 

[Stormz]

In an industry that's increasingly making it more and more inconvenient to actually support the developers (DRM, online pass) I can really see why so many people resort to pirating. I'm not condoning it, but I do understand it.

 

[Onegigapwn]

Why pirate bf3? The campaign is so bad that without the multiplayer it's not even worth the download times.

 

[comando0110]

ever noticed that Activision and EA made millions of dollars of their recent games and they still complain about piracy? people still buy games. sure the most popular games tend to lose alot of money but they still make alot of freaking cash. i dont know about them. but i'd be happy to rack that much in with an idea i started.

 

[comando0110]

Ever notice that no matter how much money EA and Activision makes they are never satisfied? They moth made millions of dollars off their last games, and I believe they both directly supported SOPA at one point (I only know that Activision did. Not sure about EA).

I dont know about them but I'd be pretty happy about racking in that much money with my product.

Also the way you stop people from pirating your game is to provide some of the features pirates add in.

Also, why the F*CK do you have to type in a code to play battlefield 3?!?!!!!!! On ONE XBOX!!!

Wort wort wort.