You realize, most of those threats are fake. They've tried arresting individual pirates before and it often does not end well...

Also, interesting statistic:

Top Ten Most Seeded Games on The Pirate Bay

10. Plants Vs. Zombies

9. Need For Speed Shift

8. Pro Evolution Soccer 2010

7. Football Manager 2010

6. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

5. Mass Effect 2

4. The Sims 3

3. James Cameron's Avatar, The Game

2. Dragon Age: Origins

1. Counter Strike 1.6

Notice a correlation? These are all popular best-selling games...

Which is relevant how? Oh, its not. You are just trying to justify you're actions.

Regardless, MW2 sold over 6 million copies on the 360 and PS3 - and well less than 500,000 on the PC (only ~170,000 retail). And that is a major game. Piracy *hurts* gamers.

Counter-Strike is a game?!

I know longer have a computer to use and I got a ps3 insted of pc so I really can't pirate anymore, and I won't because quality of pirated movies is not the greatest, and I plan on buying the blu-ray copy most of the time. Once I get a pc and a blu-ray drive I will buy a converter for either iPod or PSP formats and I will be good to go.

What gets pirated doesn't affect sales, sales affect what gets pirated. That's the point I tried to make.

Except it doesn't.

The stats I post clearly illustrate it does.

It depends on what is being pirated. If it's music it doesn't, but if it's games, videos, or software it does.

Correlation does not imply causation.

Correlation is the basis of all science.

Give up; you fail at statistics.
Causation can only be determined through experimentation. Their correlation could also be a common response to an outside factor; if one is causing the other, you have no means to determine which one based on their correlation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

true, correlation does not ensure causation, but it's the only observation based method available to humans for "determining" Anything about the universe around us. that being said it isnt a very trustworthy method and thus the user must be very cautious about its usage. in this case, because of prior experiences, i find it far more likely that those games being bought often is not sufficient evidence that being seeded often has no detrimental effect, but rather that both stem from some inherent value seen in them by the buyers/seeders. good games tend to be bought and seeded often while bad games tend to do the opposite

That was exactly what I was getting at. Games don't fail because of piracy, as piracy only effects games that are already doing well.

No it doesn't. Piracy affects ALL games. The more popular a game is, the more likely it is to be pirated, sure, but that is simply due to demand for the game. You're only evidence for your claim is a top 10 list for a single week. There are a shitload more than just 10 highly pirated games, and one weeks top 10 doesn't prove squat.

But that still doesn't matter. It doesn't matter *at all* if piracy only affected games that sold well (and it doesn't), there is still an element of lost sales. Period.

Let me clarify. Piracy does effect all games to an extent, but because better-selling games get pirated more, it isn't piracy that's responsible for the flopping of games that don't sell well. Those games were already not selling well to begin with. Sales are lost, as they are in any industry that's affected by piracy, including music. However, sales are lost the most where there are already plenty of sales to begin with. Games that aren't selling well aren't getting pirated much either, so their sales losses to piracy are proportional to those of a best-seller, and have just as little effect. Piracy is not the root cause for a given game not selling well, and ending it completely isn't gonna magically make bad games sell.

No, you're missing the point. Best selling games are the ones least affected by piracy, yes, but that is irrelevant. It is the niche market games that have thus far paid the price. Sim games, turn based strategy, etc... Great games in great PC-centric genres are all but gone entirely, in no small part to piracy.

Prove it. Prove it's piracy and not a generational shift in interests, like we've seen with music and movies(we no longer have a lot of *new* classical music, or *new* silent movies.). Give me one bit of evidence.

guys calm down. every time you two take opposing views you end up at one another's necks. if you want to fight, choose a place and get some plane tickets. and as an aside: for some people, piracy is a way to get around buying a game, but for most people i know it is either a way of testing the game before committing moneys to it or simply a method of trying something they wouldnt or couldnt buy anyways. a decent argument could be made for either case, and unless you have more evidence than has been presented in this shouting match, we can come to no definitive conclusion (in my opinion, i mean, and im probably totally wrong http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1650)

If I point you to links of developers blaming piracy for their financial problems, you'll call BS and say they are over exaggerating or something.

Hell, one developer even came out and said that 90% of the people playing their game online was using a pirated copy.

EDIT: But again, this is irrelevant because pirating games is simply wrong. There is no justified reason to pirate a game.

That would be a matter of opinion, which can differ depending on one's position. Also, developers lose sales when someone rents or buys their game used, is Blockbuster then wrong? Developers lose sales when another developer's game overshadows there own, is that wrong? There are many many reasons why a given game or genre might not sell well, you can't blame even half of it on piracy, but again, I don't know of any studies that would confirm or deny this.