The expectation among rights-holders is that, in order to create a success story, you must reduce the rate of piracy—we’ve found that is not the case.
Big Champagne CEO Eric Garland, speaking to the Financial Times in a story titled “Music industry ‘should embrace illegal websites’” about a study partially funded by his company. The reseach shows that Radiohead derived strong benefits from its pay-what-you-want digital distribution of “In Rainbows,” even illegal downloads of the album far outstripped legal downloads.
This might work for musicians and record companies, but can it work for games? Lara Croft, Gordon Freeman and Marcus Fenix don’t tour, so they can’t sell merchandise and programs. They can’t do corporate gigs or birthday parties. They don’t collect fees when other developers “cover” their work. Seen in this light, piracy of videogames may be more like that of movies and TV shows, where the tangential benefits are minimal to non-existent.
