Correction: a member from one of the institutions of the EU (the Commission) hid the results of the study, and another member from another of the European institutions (the Parliament) fought to reveal them. Would you wish the United States to "rot in hell" if one member from the federal government did something wrong and one Senator exposed it?

Thanks to the EU, the European countries have a very advanced legislation regarding consumer righs (antitrust laws, 2-year legal guarantee, no cellphone roaming, and so on).

And about the results of the study: it's not really a surprise that people pirating media were not likeky to buy it in the first place (especially when the pirated product is often superior to the purchased one).

This has to be the most harmless of all things, that EU does hide. Interesting choice of words, especially in the beginning... Sadly, though, there are far more dire and serious reasons, in order to justify such desires/statements up, other than research on piracy and digital goods... By the way, not EU as the E or region, but rather, as the "U" and its malpractices, bad decisions...

And your point of view can be debatable. Even i myself (before i discovered DRM free gaming), was a pirate, because i hated DRM and wanted to back up my stuff. First time i discovered GOG, amazed by the absence of DRM and all other features (digital extras and lots more), i immediately abandoned piracy and started buying like crazy! Even full price, outside sales and giving away for free the occasional game, even! On the other hand, others use cheap excuses to steal their way into building a niche game library... Or even worse, upload the games they bought here and even pester the leechers to donate (so as "they can buy more games to torrent away at them").

P.S. Where you are horribly mistaken, though, is your strong claim that all European locales have the same (economic) prosperity going and ready access to pricey goods; i can name you at least 2 places that currently are like, or even worse, than some third world countries. And yet, even from there, people spend grand bucks to buy things.

It helps to remember that companies, despite how they wish to appear, are not rational actors. Regardless of how big a problem piracy truly is in reality, what informs their policies is their belief that it is a huge threat to their profits and must be combated at every opportunity. That these counter-measures can be much more harmful to their profits in practice doesn't matter, because they're more intent on satisfying a feeling than rationally looking at what makes them the most money. They're more fearful than they are malicious, in part because they don't understand the problem well enough to act maliciously. Deus Ex cosplay?

While I agree with out access to a parallel universe, there is no way to know with absolute certainty. However, I think the success of Denuvo in stopping piracy for a significant period has shown the piracy has a no or negligible affect on sales.

There are some ludicrous figures regarding piracy. A quick search shows 4 pirated copies for every legitimate sale.

So something like the Denuvo protected Rise of the Tomb raider should have sold 3 times (guestimating in Franchise Fatigue) as many copies of TR2013. But it didn't, in spite (in my opinion) being better than the previous game, it sold about 80% as many copies.

No Denuvo protected game has achieved any kind of sales figures that would even remotely hint towards addition sales from converted pirates.

Agreed, this is the exact sort of misinformation that led to brexit *shiver*. Anyway I'm not here to get into politics (he says).

It's easier to blame the man below you than the man above you; it's a survival mechanism. The man below you can't squash you like a bug.

No, but the sand worm below you can swallow your harvester.

That's why we need to walk without rythm. Like Christopher Walken.

What we need......is more cowbell!

Perfect example of "Do as I say, not what I do".

He danced in rhythm. The worms would have eaten him. Maybe that's why he was bouncing off the walls.

But if you walk without rhythm, you never learn.

How though? No one is seriously expecting a game to have double sales compared to other games in their genre 'because of no piracy', how do you think it has shown it has no or negligible effect?

You've had USSR before, learn history sometimes.

Fixed your lack of history.

Never tried it.

I'm damned if I can find the figures, but from what I remember RotTR sold about 80% of the PC copies the TR2013 did in its initial lauch window.

Now, most sequels do sell less (about the 80% mark). Which means either RotTR sold really bad and denuvo made up the difference or it sold as expected and denvuo had no effect.

Just cause 3, also followed a similar patern.

As I said, a search for piracy figures has some claims of 4 pirated copies for 1 legitimate copy. If that equated to lost sales then RotTR would have outsold TR2013, it didn't.

I'm sure a few people did buy RotTR because they could not pirate it, but the amounts are to small to have significant statisitcal effect.