Sadly, companies spend more on high end piracy blockers that are merely speed bumps to pirates, than they "lose" in sales to piracy...
Since the first piece of commercial software was released, people have pirated it..its a fact of life, like the wind blowing and the sun shining
Theres never been a real study done on the loss of revenue because of piracy, because theres no actual lost profit.
The fact is, if someone pirates a game, they werent going to pay for it regardless of if you can stop piracy or not.
If anything, some people are more persauded to purchase a game that uses a CD Key for multiplayer, with no safedisc or anti pirating software or "features" if they have pirated the game. And will be turned off from the "try before you buy" attitude, if theyre upset with the measures the developer took to keep them from (illegally i know) trying thier game before they purchased it.
If game designers didnt have to be the song birds for thier publishers, and didnt release games that needed several patches to work to thier maximum potential, people wouldnt need to try before they buy
If you want an example of how anti piracy hurt a game, look at Operation Flashpoint Armed Assault...or Sword of the Stars
If you want an example of how lack of anti piracy and good developer communication (and a good publisher, Stardock ftw) helped a lackluster game reach great sales numbers, look no further than Galactic Civilizations 2
edit:
And I find it silly, having worked in the industry, that any developer would point fingers at a pirate. I know for a fact most all of the major game development studios have pirated and unregistered software on thier work machines. If you think every dev for every game youve ever played, paid for Maya, or 3ds max, or wrote all thier own inhouse software, youd be sadly mistaken
Since the first piece of commercial software was released, people have pirated it..its a fact of life, like the wind blowing and the sun shining
Theres never been a real study done on the loss of revenue because of piracy, because theres no actual lost profit.
The fact is, if someone pirates a game, they werent going to pay for it regardless of if you can stop piracy or not.
If anything, some people are more persauded to purchase a game that uses a CD Key for multiplayer, with no safedisc or anti pirating software or "features" if they have pirated the game. And will be turned off from the "try before you buy" attitude, if theyre upset with the measures the developer took to keep them from (illegally i know) trying thier game before they purchased it.
If game designers didnt have to be the song birds for thier publishers, and didnt release games that needed several patches to work to thier maximum potential, people wouldnt need to try before they buy
If you want an example of how anti piracy hurt a game, look at Operation Flashpoint Armed Assault...or Sword of the Stars
If you want an example of how lack of anti piracy and good developer communication (and a good publisher, Stardock ftw) helped a lackluster game reach great sales numbers, look no further than Galactic Civilizations 2
edit:
And I find it silly, having worked in the industry, that any developer would point fingers at a pirate. I know for a fact most all of the major game development studios have pirated and unregistered software on thier work machines. If you think every dev for every game youve ever played, paid for Maya, or 3ds max, or wrote all thier own inhouse software, youd be sadly mistaken
