Just spotted this on the Puzzle Quest forum.

http://forums.infinite-interactive.com/showpost.php?p=13921&postcount=5

Is anyone else getting sick and tired of this argument yet? When are devs and publishers going to realize that pirated copies and downloads DO NOT EQUAL lost sales? Sorry, they don't. The vast, VAST majority of people who pirate games have no intention of buying the games in the first place. I pirated Puzzle Quest. And for the first 5 hours, I felt guilty because it seemed like a great game. Then it got very old, very quickly and I didn't play it anymore. I would have been annoyed if I paid for that. As I've said before, there have been times when I pirated surprisingly amazing games, and then rushed out and bought them. If it weren't for piracy, those developers would have never gotten my gaming dollar. I've done this about a dozen times. That's a dozen games I would have otherwise never purchased.

I mean, listen. There may have been a day where piracy was an actual issue (I can only refer to America here), but the fact is, the gaming audience has grown older, gotten jobs, and can easily afford video games. We're no longer at that stage when all the pirates are just 13 year old's who are leeching the latest warez via IRC Fserves so they can avoid begging their mommies to buy the game for them.

I'm also tired of the PC being specifically targeted as such an easily pirate-able medium. Who started this? These people clearly haven't played a PC game in the last 15 years. We no longer are asked to simply recite lines from the manual texts. Let's see the average PC user pirate a modern game. Try to explain what disc images, image mounters, virtual drives, drive maskers, sub-channel data and the like are. I dare you. The average PC user can't find the fucking MP3s I send them because they don't know what a "My Documents" is.

Console piracy on the other hand generally involves nothing more than installing the mod or exploit in the console for the average joe, and showing him what the "Copy Disc" button looks like in Nero. That's all there is to it. From that point on, he's got the hang of it. I'm not trying to promote console piracy, but honestly guys, it's not hard, and its not some super secret cult-like society. They're called soldering irons, and a lot of fucktards wield them.

I'm just angry because I also recently saw Capcom blame piracy for bad sales of the PC version of DMC4 as well. Ya know what might have helped sales, Capcom? If your legal demo actually booted on my machine. Instead it gives some complicated Direct X error and dies. Capcom didn't care, and ignored the issue many of us had, and guess what? A piracy group fixed their game for them. Lo and behold, after installing the cracked exe, TADAH! It runs. Hilarious. So no, you lost my sale. Tough luck. The pirated copy works better for me.