Which means that your money has gone for example to research & development of computers.

Then, the remaining $19 200 (if you really had the purchasing power) has gone to other industries, such as to shoemakers or food or whatever you’ve bought.

Nowhere I said that “hardware balances software” – the purchasing power you have & use balances among several industries, hardware being one.

Had you not pirated stuff, you might have not spend that money into computer. I know pirates who buy huge tv screens. Screens are used also in computer industry. Thus, if there’s billion pirates buying tvs… that means my computer screen price will go down.

This still doesn’t make piracy ok. Just pointing out economical effects of piracy.

I have pirated over $20k in software and media.

Hmm. Equation doesn’t quite balance.

It might not be as good as if they’d buy our stuff directly… but shows that piracy is not black & white issue.

I do not think this stuff justifies piracy (aka “consuming someone’s creation without giving chap any credit” or “giving money to the distributor who makes it easy to share stuff between each others (aka certain torrent/tracker places which get ad revenue and don’t give a dime to creators)” but, I don’t think it’s so black & white issue hat stopping piracy is the way to go.

Bottom line still remains, that if nobody buys your game… and your game is distributed by some folks who earn ad revenue from your game, then profitwise it becomes bit tricky (especially for those folks who don’t like the idea of producing more t-shirts & mugs in this planet).

Anyway, pirates do have some ways of contributing to the industry as a whole, so industrywise getting rid of them might actually have bad effect on total profits (when looked at nation level).

Thanks for taking time to read and comment.

I can assure you that modern day video games are *MUCH* better quality than games 20 years ago 8)

If I was to pirate a million dollars worth of software, movies and music, those industries *in no way* lost a million dollars in sales, because I never had a million dollars to give them in the first place.

Piracy is not a good thing, but it is no where near as bad as some try to make it out to be.

And, like most humans, they’ll get in all kinds of familial trouble if they burn a disc of pirated software for their loved ones for Christmas – so they buy the DVD’s, Gift Steam games and pick up EB Gift Cards just like the rest of us.

You may not get cash from them directly right away, but they’ll introduce you to all kinds of people who do prefer to buy their content both for comfort of clean bug free entertainment and the warm fuzzies of supporting creative peeps. And you’ve got a pretty good chance of converting them to paying members eventually as well.

Turning parrot lovers into a support network takes a totally different perspective as a business developer. You have to trust that even if they don’t support your business right now directly, they’ll support you eventually or support you indirectly. That kind of trust is scary.

Awesome article Juuso, and full of great examples! Thanks for taking the time to write it 8)

The whole economic system is something to question: even when you look at the numbers where a lot of the money is going to the ones with big marketing budgets, are they really creating enhancements in the quality of the products they serve us? At least for me , quality can be much more than prettier graphics or, say, realistic simulation of a sports game. (Go play outside, duh?)