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EU Commission research concludes there is no correlation between piracy and sales.

J

jmga

Member
The research was entrusted to the company Ecorys Nederland BV in 2013, the report was finished by May 2015, but the EU Commission never made it available to the public.

The German politician, Julia Reda, had access to the report and the German site netzpolitik.org has published it.

https://netzpolitik.org/2017/eu-kom...ie-studie-zwei-jahre-vor-der-oeffentlichkeit/

Quote from the conclussions of the research:
In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of
displacement of sales by online copyright infringements. That does not
necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis
does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect.
Click to expand...

Link to the report: https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_study.pdf
 
S

Skel1ingt0n

I can't *believe* these lazy developers keep making file sizes so damn large. Btw, how does technology work?
The new hottness is the correlation between Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic and sales, don't ya know?

EDIT: That said, I do wonder how much subscriptions and more easy-to-use streaming services have impacted that.

Pirating Adobe's Creative Suite or MS Office used to take you ten minutes and you had a damn near perfect version. With CC and 365, that's pretty much impossible nowadays.

And on the other side - I'm way less likely to download a movie out of boredom with a darn near infinite supply of content on Netflix or Hulu or even Youtube. And if I do want to download a movie, it's way easier to turn on my Xbox, go to Amazon, and do the $2.99 rental.
 
W

weekev

Banned
I used to pirate music from torrent sites when I was poor, now I have a full time job I pay for everything I consume.

I guess this is the same for most media, if you want it but can't afford it and it's available through dubious means people will pirate it. It's not right and I don't condone it but looks like it might stack up to the majority of people wouldn't have bought it if they couldn't pirate it.
 
S

SpiceMelange

Member
That does not
necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis
does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect.
Click to expand...

So they can't prove there is an effect, that's enough for most companies to still use denuvo until proven otherwise.
 
J

Javier23

Banned
I was very confused while going into the thread. You mean loss of sales, not sales. Also, conclusion isn't that there is no correlation, but that they can't conclude that there is with their analysis.
 
J

jmga

Member
I couldn't fit a better title in that space.

The best one can be extracted directly from the conclusions, "EU Commission research concludes there is no statistical evidence of piracy affecting game sales".

I used the word correlation because correlation is indeed statistical evidence.
 
H

Huge Succeeded

Banned
Javier23 said:
I was very confused while going into the thread. You mean loss of sales, not sales. Also, conclusion isn't that there is no correlation, but that they can't conclude that there is with their analysis.
Click to expand...

also, fwiw this is not a gaming-specific study, which I didn't realize until I thumbed through it
 
H

Huge Succeeded

Banned
jmga said:
I couldn't fit a better title in that space.

The best one can be extracted directly from the conclusions, "EU Commission research concludes there is no statistical evidence of piracy affecting game sales".

I don't think that title fits, either. This isn't a study that's specific to the gaming industry. And their conclusion wasn't that there's no statistical evidence of piracy affecting sales (across multiple industries including gaming, all of which have spared no expense over the last ten years to build markets that can compete with piracy through convenience) - just that their statistical analysis didn't conclusively prove a correlation.
Click to expand...
 
J

jmga

Member
Huge Succeeded said:
That's just as bad a title. This isn't a study that's specific to the gaming industry. And their conclusion wasn't that there's no statistical evidence of piracy affecting sales (across multiple industries including gaming, all of which have spared no expense over the last ten years to build markets that can compete with piracy through convenience) - just that their statistical analysis didn't conclusively prove a correlation.
Click to expand...

The study covers all markets individually, one of them is videogames, that is why I am posting it here.

And directly stracted from the conclusions:

In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of
displacement of sales by online copyright infringements. That does not
necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis
does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect.
Click to expand...

No evidence of piracy increasing or decreasing sales means there is no evidence of piracy affecting sales.
 
prag16

prag16

Banned
It's almost as if the vast majority of pirates would never have bought the content under any circumstances in the first place. Who would have thought.
 
J

Javier23

Banned
jmga said:
No evidence of piracy increasing or decreasing sales means there is no evidence of piracy affecting sales.
Click to expand...
The results of their study didn't prove the existence of such a correlation. It's not the same, and it's not so hard to understand.
 
B

Briarios

Member
prag16 said:
It's almost as if the vast majority of pirates would never have bought the content under any circumstances in the first place. Who would have thought.
Click to expand...

That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to stop them from stealing.

I mean, people that steal jewelry wouldn't have bought what they were stealing, either - it's just that people place less value on intellectual property.
 
D

Durante

Member
That's unsurprising, but thanks for posting it, will certainly be useful for future reference.

Briarios said:
That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to stop them from stealing.

I mean, people that steal jewelry wouldn't have bought what they were stealing, either - it's just that people place less value on intellectual property.
Click to expand...
And, you know, the minor distinction of physical property being gone after being stolen.
 
C

c1d

Member
weekev said:
I used to pirate music from torrent sites when I was poor, now I have a full time job I pay for everything I consume.

I guess this is the same for most media, if you want it but can't afford it and it's available through dubious means people will pirate it. It's not right and I don't condone it but looks like it might stack up to the majority of people wouldn't have bought it if they couldn't pirate it.
Click to expand...
This 100%
 
J

John Caboose

Member
Durante said:
That's unsurprising, but thanks for posting it, will certainly be useful for future reference.

And, you know, the minor distinction of physical property being gone after being stolen.
Click to expand...

I honestly find it absurd that infinitely copyable bits are still compared so blindly to physical goods.
 
W

Weltall Zero

Member
Javier23 said:
I was very confused while going into the thread. You mean loss of sales, not sales. Also, conclusion isn't that there is no correlation, but that they can't conclude that there is with their analysis.
Click to expand...

Helacious said:
Exactly, misleading thread title.
Click to expand...

Deft Beck said:
Thread title should read "There's no correlation between piracy and loss of sales".
Click to expand...

Are you being purposely obtuse? If there is (positive) correlation between piracy and loss of sales, there is (negative) correlation between piracy and sales.
 
S

Stoop Man

Member
Briarios said:
That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to stop them from stealing.

I mean, people that steal jewelry wouldn't have bought what they were stealing, either - it's just that people place less value on intellectual property.
Click to expand...
If I were to steal a diamond necklace, that would prevent the its sale to a paying customer. Software doesn't have that issue when it comes to piracy.
 
joecanada

joecanada

Member
Briarios said:
That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to stop them from stealing.

I mean, people that steal jewelry wouldn't have bought what they were stealing, either - it's just that people place less value on intellectual property.
Click to expand...

Well it depends. If the cost of denuvo is considerably more than the cost of allowing "some" to pirate the game then you probably shouldn't waste resources on that.

But I can imagine in the real world its Denuvo Marketing Team vs non-conclusive study.... which do you think would have more sway?
 
A

Abilidebob

Member
Don't worry, stupid executives scared shitless about something they don't understand will make sure that more extreme forms of DRM will be developed!
 
W

Weltall Zero

Member
Briarios said:
That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to stop them from stealing.

I mean, people that steal jewelry wouldn't have bought what they were stealing, either - it's just that people place less value on intellectual property.
Click to expand...

And if you had a shred of honesty, your example would be about counterfeit jewelry affecting real jewelry sales, but of course you had to make a hamfisted "stealing" metaphor so that nobody can take you seriously.

Also I have to wonder where in the thread title, OP or linked article does anyone state that piracy should not try to be stopped at all.
 
L

Lionheart

Member
I always wonder: what would people do with their spare time who play video games for hours each day yet never paid anything for those video games if it just wouldn't have been possible to pirate games (I knew quite a lot of them in my high school years). And those were times where streaming services / F2P games barely existed.

Would they like actually go outside? ;) Watch tv all day?

Or perhaps actually spend at least some money on a video game now and then, because apparently they do really like playing them.

Or is that little extra money offset by the people who actually buy games after first playing a pirated copy? And if so, what brought them to buy said copy? Because not being able to play multiplayer (because of DRM) could be a reason. IMO a bigger reason than just because it 'feels right'.
 
U

UserDoesNotExist

Member
To be fair, it's been long rumored that the upper management at gaming companies know that this is the case from their market research and that DRM is primarily intended to pacify shareholders.
 
A

Abstrusity

Member
Basically, digital media has a few points of scarcity. The largest of which is its creation. Once it's created, though, the next largest point where there is scarcity is transportation. This transportation scarcity varies from person to person, region to region.

After that, it's the storage.

The latter two are so much smaller than the former that their effects would be well within an acceptable statistical range if we simply dropped them out of the running altogether once you get to a certain speed and a certain size; especially when it can safely be deleted with no appreciable loss of space once consumed(only a translation of digital space, with effectively zero loss).

As storage grows in size and declines in price, and internet speeds continue to grow, even while the creator industries trend on the line of merging with internet service providers, the only time internet speeds would really appreciably combat piracy is if the speeds were cripplingly slow so as....to... Oh, shit.

What if Comcast and Time Warner were refusing to upgrade speeds unless their services are threatened by a competitor because keeping internet service as slow as possible in the US is the best way they've found to combat digital piracy? /s
 
K

KillLaCam

Banned
Yeah I used to pirate alot of games. Because demos aren't really a thing anymore. But id end up buying most of the games that I pirated anyway. I would have bought them earlier if demos were still a thing

The games I didn't buy were ones that I didn't even like at all anyway. I wouldn't have bought those ones anyway
 
H

haveheart

Banned
The bottom line of this article and the research is, and that should go in the OP, that fair pricing and easy access to entertainment products like games, music and movies are probably far more effective for fighting piracy than upload filters and strict regulations of certain sites ultimately paving the way for comprehensive censorship.

These findings were withheld because they wouldn't support enforcing strict laws as proposed by the EU commission. They even published only selected findigs that supported their agenda.
 
H

Huge Succeeded

Banned
jmga said:
The study covers all markets individually, one of them is videogames, that is why I am posting it here.

And directly stracted from the conclusions:



No evidence of piracy increasing or decreasing sales means there is no evidence of piracy affecting sales.
Click to expand...

I can't tell if you're misunderstanding me or if you're just committed to being misleading in this thread.
 
E

Elfotografoalocado

Banned
Unsurprising. There are two types of people who pirate. Those who would like to purchase a product but can't afford it because they are either young or poor and those who wouldn't purchase it anyway out of principle.
If we focus on the first group, piracy is the way they obtain familiarity with a product that they may purchase in the future when they can afford it.
The best example anyone could use? Adobe's creative programs. Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects... are pirated to hell and back by teenagers who are starting out in their respective arts, and that's fine by Adobe. Because by the time those teenagers become working professionals, they have been using their tools for years and are used to them, and those are their programs of choice that they or their employers will duly pay.
So, yeah, in a way piracy is a gateway to buying intellectual licenses. If someone cannot afford this or that intellectual property, who am I to criticise if they want to read a book or watch a film or educate themselves?

Disclaimer: I'm not condoning piracy. I'm a broke uni student and I buy my games and books and borrow films from the uni's library, but that's because in the grand scheme of things I'm still privileged and have access to some money and an amazing library.
 
D

Datschge

Member
According to the study game sales are actually increasing with piracy. In the authors' own words (in the conclusions on page 149, bold added by me):
For games, the estimated effect of illegal online transactions on sales is positive because only free games are more likely displaced by online copyright infringements than not. The overall estimate is 24 extra legal transactions (including free games) for every 100 online copyright infringements, with an error margin of 45 per cent (two times the standard error). The positive effect of illegal downloads and streams on the sales of games may be explained by players getting hooked and then paying to play the game with extra bonuses or at extra levels.
Click to expand...
Though this study including free games seems to mostly support publishers in adding paid DLC. It would be interesting how the stats differ when excluding "free" games as well as games with paid DLC.
 
H

haveheart

Banned
Elfotografoalocado said:
Unsurprising. There are two types of people who pirate. Those who would like to purchase a product but can't afford it because they are either young or poor and those who wouldn't purchase it anyway out of principle.
If we focus on the first group, piracy is the way they obtain familiarity with a product that they may purchase in the future when they can afford it.
The best example anyone could use? Adobe's creative programs. Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects... are pirated to hell and back by teenagers who are starting out in their respective arts, and that's fine by Adobe. Because by the time those teenagers become working professionals, they have been using their tools for years and are used to them, and those are their programs of choice that they or their employers will duly pay.
So, yeah, in a way piracy is a gateway to buying intellectual licenses. If someone cannot afford this or that intellectual property, who am I to criticise if they want to read a book or watch a film or educate themselves?

Disclaimer: I'm not condoning piracy. I'm a broke uni student and I buy my games and books and borrow films from the uni's library, but that's because in the grand scheme of things I'm still privileged and have access to some money and an amazing library.
Click to expand...

Mass_Pincup said:
Of course, most people who pirate things is because they can't afford to buy those things.

The rest is a minority.
Click to expand...

This has got nothing to do with the study and the context it WASN'T published in. It's not about why there's piracy, the story here is that they withheld the study because it wasn't in favour of the EU's internet policy agenda.

This thread is a mess...
 
M

Mass_Pincup

Banned
haveheart said:
This has got nothing to do with the study and the context it WASN'T published in. It's not about why there's piracy, the story here is that they withheld the study because it wasn't in favour of the EU's internet policy agenda.

This thread is a mess...
Click to expand...

I would argue that the result of the study is relevant to the thread.
 
H

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
Basically, convenience counts for a lot.

No store can ever beat "free", but if you make it easier to get the content legally, then people will do that.
 
E

Elfotografoalocado

Banned
haveheart said:
This has got nothing to do with the study and the context it WASN'T published in. It's not about why there's piracy, the story here is that they withheld the study because it wasn't in favour of the EU's internet policy agenda.

This thread is a mess...
Click to expand...
My point is trying to formulate a hypothesis of how this happens, based on the idea that a fraction of sales lost today means gaining sales in the future because people have gained exposure to the product. If Photoshop became impossible to pirate, then maybe in the short run more people would pay the license, but in a few years it would miss prospective customers who didn't have exposure to the program because they couldn't pirate it and chose instead to invest their time learning another program.

Edit: with videogames, it could be argued that if every game was impossible to pirate less people would have acquired the taste for videogames (Especially when we think of PC games) and those people would be doing something else instead of playing games even when they could finally afford them.
 
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