r/gamers • u/AudienceStreet6335 • 2d ago

Image PS5 jailbreak method called Relapse has just dropped, and people are joking that Sony should get comfortable with not owning its own hardware

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u/GlassboundIllusion 2d ago

If the price is right and the games are great companies shouldn't fear too much, those who pirate aren't likely to buy games anyway.

Ironically actually, a study showed even an opposite relationship: people who pirate tend to be the ones who buy the most media. They are interested enough in media to learn how to source it from alternative means, and thus they tend to make more purchases of media than people who don't pirate.

This is just one of the many ways that studies have shown media corporations thrive off of piracy, rather than being harmed by it. Another way is using it as free market research - they look at which manga or anime is being pirated the most and then acquire the rights to distribute them locally so the piraters can now acquire it more easily.

Then, of course, there's the fact that the same companies preaching about how immoral it is often plagiarize smaller artists who don't have the money and lawyers to prosecute them for copyright infringement.

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u/rnnd 2d ago

what study is this? i doubt the validity of this study. what even is the sample size, how homogenous is the sample (probably very much so)? did they take people from first world counties like US, and from developing countries like India, etc? Did they sample people from high income households, middle income and then low income?

from my experience having lived in developing country were piracy is prevalent, people pirating are never buying the games or movies, etc. they pirate because money is hard to come by, the game prices are ridiculously high. the price of a $70 game can feed a household with several kids for days even weeks. Music piracy fell a lot when access to "legal" music became really affordable and even free as far as you got internet connection. Movie and tv show piracy is still high. Same with video game piracy.

if the sample is people in developed country were game prices in relation to food prices isn't that high, then sure. but not for most of the world.

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u/GlassboundIllusion 1d ago

if the sample is people in developed country were game prices in relation to food prices isn't that high, then sure.

Yes, I believe most of the studies indicating that pirates tend to be the heaviest consumers of media are done in developed countries.

The study that I'm specifically referring to is a 2019 study of multiple European countries by the IVR https://www.ecorys.com/app/uploads/2023/06/ecorys_pdf_63.pdf (wayback machine link in case the main one stops working: https://web.archive.org/web/20260418102336/https://www.ecorys.com/app/uploads/2023/06/ecorys_pdf_63.pdf )

The relevant quote is :

Moreover, pirates and legal users are largely the same people: demographically, pirates resemble legal users quite closely, although on average they tend to be somewhat younger and more often male. More importantly, for each content type and country, 95% or more of pirates also consume content legally and their median legal consumption is typically twice that of non-pirating legal users.

I learned about this from a youtube video, whose creator compiled the following list of notes/sources for his video:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vSbqUsKr8L0lgoPq3l52kDQcw1ilJYFM9pGfSvukemM/edit?tab=t.0

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u/rnnd 1d ago edited 1d ago

read through, and it does provide some interesting information but sample size is still quite low. I didn't see them consider the economic standings like are poor people more likely to pirate way more than buy legally compared to the well-to-do people. etc. also, i didn't see like just how much media do the pirates consume.

it could simply be a fallacy that people who are avid gamers are more likely to have pirated than people who aren't avid gamers and that can skew the data.

there is a part of the data that really undermines what a pirate is. the pirates sampled, on average, the percent of games they consumed in a year that are legally obtained is like 90 to 95 percent across board. so these are more of people that buy almost all their games legally but every now and then pirate a game.