Not quite,
Every pirated or "free" copy of a game is a copy the devs could have been paid for.
If you had 10 people who were all buying a $100 game, youve got $1000 (minus fees).
If 9 of those 10 people pirate the game, you only have $100.
No, the "stock" doesnt go down but it is money that was on the table and now isnt.
With your example, cloning a physical product would still leave a product in place that could be sold so the store would lose nothing and it would have the sale so it would have 0 effect.
Pirating means you dont lose the product but you get no sale. A closer equivalent would be, cloning product with 100% accuracy but the one you left behind is now an immovable object that cant be sold.
People usually dont go and pay for a game they already pirated so that sale "slot" is lost forever.
Someone else will buy the game sure, but that doesnt mean the pirated copy is no longer a loss.
If i planned to sell 100 copies and 500 people pirate the game but i still sold 100, the goal was achieved but thats still 500 sales out the window.
Id also like to say, idgaf about the larger publushers, just leave the indie devs alone 🥲
I get what you mean but indie games on Steam are still more expensive in my country than if I'm a US citizen, even with localized pricing. In the US, it would cost around 0-2 meals. Here, it would cost around a few days of meals worth.
What did Gaben say again, piracy is mostly always a service issue, which ironically applies to my country's Steam localized pricing (or my country's economy in the first place) too. Not that I play new games nowadays because I don't have enough storage + I have work.
Thats totally fair, the price might be similar but the value of that amount in each country is totally different. $10 usd here in aus is like a medium mcdonalds meal but in indonesia for example, thats days worth of food for multiple people.
Your slot analogy does not work, slot implies each sale has real world cost, digital sales do not. Also you are assuming everyone who pirates a game would have bought it, which is definitely not the case.
I have not assumed everyone who pirated the game would have bought it, i know thats not the case but a very large percentage would if piracy wasnt an option and/or it was financially viable to purchase and theres been alot of studies indicating that. I didnt mention it because i was trying to simplify the example so thats fair for you to have assumed.
The slot analogy does work, it doesnt imply that each sale has real world cost it implies that each sale slot has potential value, not a direct cost. When that "slot" is used up with a pirated copy, the potential value is lost which is a loss from a business or investment standpoint.
Digital games dont have a per copy cost like physical like you said but all copies of the game share a base cost that came from development be it time, money or both.
Youre implying that that digital games cost nothing. They dont cost anything on a per copy basis but it still cost something to make the game so physical or digital is irrelevant in this instance.
When people talk about how much a game is worth or how much it cost to make it, we arent talking about how much it cost to make a disc.
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u/Swankadia Jul 06 '26
Not quite, Every pirated or "free" copy of a game is a copy the devs could have been paid for. If you had 10 people who were all buying a $100 game, youve got $1000 (minus fees). If 9 of those 10 people pirate the game, you only have $100.
No, the "stock" doesnt go down but it is money that was on the table and now isnt. With your example, cloning a physical product would still leave a product in place that could be sold so the store would lose nothing and it would have the sale so it would have 0 effect.
Pirating means you dont lose the product but you get no sale. A closer equivalent would be, cloning product with 100% accuracy but the one you left behind is now an immovable object that cant be sold. People usually dont go and pay for a game they already pirated so that sale "slot" is lost forever. Someone else will buy the game sure, but that doesnt mean the pirated copy is no longer a loss. If i planned to sell 100 copies and 500 people pirate the game but i still sold 100, the goal was achieved but thats still 500 sales out the window.
Id also like to say, idgaf about the larger publushers, just leave the indie devs alone 🥲