[fxtentacle]

Well in this case, we're talking about a industry espionage and modchip crew that has been around since the first Xbox. I personally know people who used their products and (as the result) never ever purchased a game that they played. So my experience would suggest that Xecutor modchips were really popular. I'm pretty sure $65m is a rather conservative estimate of the lost sales that they caused.

[p1necone]

There have been periods of my life where I pirated almost every game I played. If it wasn't for piracy... I wouldn't have bought any games, because I didn't have any money to spend on them.

Then Steam and Actually Having a Job happened and I didn't do that any more.

I still pirate games, but it's only ones that aren't being sold any more, so I don't see who's missing out there.

[indrora]

Gabe Newell was absolutely right when he made it clear that piracy was a demand being unmet.

I suspect part of the Steam Summer Sales being as deep as they are is to give a chance for people who can't afford AAA games normally to have a way to snag them at 80-90% off. A big AAA title makes the majority of its money in the first few months of sale, then fucks off for the rest of its lifetime, so doing deep cuts in the summer makes it profitable through volume.

[johnwalkr]

I like to buy them at about 50% off, and forget about them until I try to buy them again at 90% and remember that I already own it and haven’t even downloaded it yet.

[RajT88]

I will say, I knew many who were similar.

If they pirated 100 games, maybe they would have bought a handful at retail price, even given unlimited funds. A few more on discount.

Anecdata, sure. But it speaks to the point that game pirates don't really play the vast majority of what they pirate, they try them out a bit and move on mainly because the time cost is virtually nil.

[shakes_mcjunkie]

If the chips didn't exist though would they have actually bought every one of those games? Would they have bought the console? I doubt this is information that could actually be gathered and calculated accurately as damages.

[fxtentacle]

There's likely millions of people in a situation like me. If each of them only didn't buy one single $60 game because of the modchip, then that sums up to $60 mio.

I agree that pirated copy != lost sale. But if you play 20+ games and buy 0, I'm pretty sure without modchip it would even out at maybe buy+play 5 games. Plus there's games like the Zelda series that every hardcore fan will play. So for those games, I think it is fair to assume 50% of piracy would have been a lost sale.

And lastly, how do you know that people didn't "buy" their cracked games? When I was traveling Asia, you could buy a modchipped Switch and bootlegged games in the same store. So then you still pay $5 for a new Switch game, it's just that the money goes to some Chinese counterfeit group, not to Nintendo.

[BiteCode_dev]

> There's likely millions of people in a situation like me

Unlikely. Most console users don't even know what modding mean, and among the few that do, fewer even make the step to do it. It's not trivial.

It's very niche, at least in the occidental markets.

[gowld]

> But if you play 20+ games and buy 0, I'm pretty sure without modchip it would even out at maybe buy+play 5 games.

This is absolutely absurd.

Look at the modern internet. "Free" is consumed at rates far more than 4x of "paid equivalents that existed before the free option".

[AussieWog93]

>This is absolutely absurd.

Really?

It sounds pretty much right to me. Consoles have a typical tie ratio of around 8-10 games, and people who mod their systems (who, if anything, would skew towards people who would otherwise buy _more_ games) typically buy zero.

[waffleiron]

But people who mod their system might never have bought the system if that option wasn't available.

[Phrodo_00]

> I personally know people who used their products and (as the result) never ever purchased a game that they played.

On the other hand, in some markets, consoles only become an option after they're unlocked and can't get any penetration without that.