"The common industry assumption is that developers are losing 90% of their revenue. That is, pirates would have bought every single game that they downloaded."<p>As a long time game industry veteran, allow me to tell you that this is simply not true. In fact, that is actually the internet's straw man counter argument, which is fueled by a couple poor PR incidents where a few people have made it seem that way.<p>But the reality is that there are a lot of lost sales, and if you can prevent someone from pirating it, there is a nonzero chance that they will go out and buy it instead of waiting.<p>What is that number? Who knows! But it's certainly greater than zero, and there's certainly enough impact of piracy to make it worth it to explore methods of minimizing that impact.<p>I have other issues with the article, such as the assertion that most pirates can't afford the games. Well, my counter anecdote is that I have a bunch of friends who pirate, who make plenty of money and could easily afford the games. They pirate them because they can.<p>I would expect that everyone knows pirates, and I would expect that everyone knows pirates who make enough money to pay for (most of) the games they play.<p>(These are my own personal opinions and not necessarily those of my employer)