Pirated game downloads almost reached 10 million in December, says ESA

According to a new research report from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), about 9.78 million pirated games were downloaded in December, although the trade group says its numbers are skewed, to the lower side.

Only 200 of the most popular games were part of the survey, and downloads were only counted from P2P services and torrent trackers. One-click hosts such as Megaupload and Hotfile were not included.

"These figures under-represent the true magnitude of online game piracy," says the ESA, via GI.biz. "They address only downloads of a small selection of ESA member titles. And while they account for illegal downloads that occur over select P2P platforms, they do not account for downloads that occur from 'cyberlockers' or 'one-click' hosting sites, which continue to account for high volumes of infringing downloads."

Somewhat surprisingly, the heaviest pirates "by volume" came from Italy and Spain, with China a distant 5th.

"ESA�s reporting demonstrates a strong correlation between countries that lack sufficient protections for technological protection measures and countries where online piracy levels for entertainment software are high," said the trade group.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 20 Feb 2010 0:39

Advertisement - News comments available below the ad

4 comments

llongtheD

It never ceases to amaze me, as to what these "anti piracy" groups go through to provide "credible" evidence to elected officials. Thats exactly what this so called study is designed to do. If no one disputes this figure, it will become truth. Its really funny that they under-represented the true crime involed isn't it? I guess that makes the figure more believable huh? What do you think this statement is designed to do?

"ESA�s reporting demonstrates a strong correlation between countries that lack sufficient protections for technological protection measures and countries where online piracy levels for entertainment software are high,"

More laws to further restrict consumers rights. If you believed these statements, you'll also believe that media and software companies are going broke, and that their bottom lines are so hindered that they have to spend millions on lobbying, and piracy research.

With the right technology in place, the wet dream of the media companies is not far behind. The pay per use model.

If your fish seems sick, put it back in the water.

20.2.2010 01:41 #1

av_verbal

They lumber as much restrictive DRM onto titles as possible & wonder why their once customers turn to cracked DRM free content freely available on the web.

A cynic would say that it was the the goal from the start to allow them to manipulate governments & have more restrictive licensing, as these huge corporations love patents & copywrite.

They are using the "fear tactic" of piracy to remove our rights to resale of software by lumbering downloaded content locked to users thus changing the definition of the titles and allowing the publishers (EA, Sony, edios, MS) to define the games as computer software that falls inside the "1984 and 1990 exclusions" to the first sale doctrine allowing them to block or charge for the resale.

This is it folks, you have funded this by happily giving up your rights & purchasing restrictive licences, well done.

20.2.2010 04:37 #2

xtago

Piracy download rates are high.

But what is the combined amount of sales for all 200 games and you'll probably find the piracy % is below 1%, which they are failing to say.

It's a bit like the crash stats you know 10 people died around xmas day which sounds like heaps to some people, yet overall the total amount of crashes was probably around 1000 which makes 10 people died out of 1000 crashes very small amount.

27.2.2010 02:16 #3

peluynati

funny thing is that number is presented after the big firmware changes on all systems, whats that say for the security they are applying?

27.2.2010 15:06 #4

AfterDawn: News