Game piracy linked to critic scores.
 

Link

So the better your game is, the more people will download it before they buy it. Oddly, the older games such as Bejeweled 3 still made the list. Granted, there's still some flaws in this report, such as a correlation of downloads of BT and the average review score on Metacritic, but at least better research is coming out other than the laughable 301 report and other academic studies such as The University of Ballarat’s Internet Commerce Security Laboratory (ICSL).

no, it says that games people like are pirated more then games they dont like. None of this is evidence that they actually bought the game or that piracy had any affect on sales one way or the other.

This should be obvious, people would rather steal something fun then a piece of crap

Hahahaha...

Ah... I wonder if you actually believe the words you're saying, or if you're intentionally trying to mislead. Common sense would dictate the latter, but I'm not so sure. The study says the better received a game is, the more people will download it. Don't tack "before they buy it" to make piracy sound better in polite conversation, especially when the study you linked doesn't seem to say thing about "before they buy it."

Seriously, man.

The study also says nothing on how many of these people didn't later buy the game they downloaded or how many of them thought the game was bad and didn't play it to the end.

e: That isn't to say I'm claiming that a huge number of people bought the game or never finished it. I'm just saying that we don't really know either way.

We don't know either way, but Jagos opens with pretending we do and as though that study supports his assumption, which it doesn't. If Jagos hadn't tried to mislead, I wouldn't have brought it up, because it wouldn't have mattered. If we're going make assumptions without data to back them up, that most people are downloading games illegally just to get a free demo seems like the least likely scenario.

Study: People steal a game more when it's popular.

Jagos: People try games out before buying more when they're popular.

Me: Naw, most of them are probably stealing them because it nets them a free game.

I would think the 'try it before you buy it' people would be more likely to download games that reviewed poorly. If everyone says a game is great there's not that much risk in just buying the game. If everyone says a game is average or not that good, maybe you'd want to give it a 'rental' first.

But that doesn't mean I'm surprised that games that review highly are more often pirated. If I were a video game pirate (which I am, unfortunately,* not) I'd be downloading games that I was excited about rather than choosing to get THIS AAA title today, and maybe that one when I can afford it unless something that looks better comes out.

*I know too much about the economics of video games and care too much about the industry continuing to expand to pirate games, but I could have so many more games if I did pirate.

I'm going to play the devil's advocate here.

It may still be a try before you buy thing because higher reviews and hype tend to have a peer pressure type effect toward sells, regardless if you like the game or genre. Like I bought MW2 even though the only thing I liked about MW1 was the single player game. I'm no good at fpses, and Im far worse at ones where death is so easy. Game got good reviews, I still dont like it, though I own it due to the reviews>.<

Reviews don't mean anything anyway. Transformers War for Cybertron is probably one of the best multiplayer experiences I've ever had as far as fun in a shooter and it got meager reviews(could go into the Gamespot review that had to be reedit after posting due to grievous errors in describing the game, but they just removed the errors and kept the score the same), but not what it deserved. Anywho, the sheeple tend to think review < 7 isn't even worth the time to look at and I'm sure that shows in piracy as well.

I'm a big fan of stealing anything and everything but yeah I mean we shouldn't kid ourselves.

BREAKING NEWS: Thieves tend to steal diamonds instead of logs of shit, more at 11.

Also at 11, SPECIAL REPORT: We find out why people tend to go for the more highly advertised product!