[corin_]

That logic doesn't actually add up, though.

Let's say 100 people own iphones, 10 of which are jailbroken. 9 of the jailbroken phones have downloaded my game, and one of the 90 non-jailbroken phones has paid for it. Maybe, if they couldn't download illegally, none of the 9 would have bought it, meaning I have lost 0% of my sales. Or maybe all 9 would have bought it, meaning I have lost 90% of my sales.

It doesn't matter if only 10% of "potential" customers can download a game illegally, it matters what % of likely customers do it. And for some developers that will be much higher than average, for others it will be much lower.

[jeffool]

You're not wrong that "some customers are harder to sell to than others." But that's a problem anyone trying to sell something faces.

Also worth noting is that he talks about the disproportionate number of games pirated to games sold across the board. What can you take from that? That pirates are far more likely to pirate a larger number of games than customers will buy.

That's hard to prove, but if there are really that many more pirates in so many games, it certainly makes sense.