acylus: Why the hell do you guys care about the piracy of this game?
GOOD GAMES SELL.
It doesn't even matter that Witcher 2 will get pirated. Some of my friends pirated the game then bought it because it was good.
See Portal 2 on ThePirateBay before? Its got a couple of thousand of downloads, yet it sold almost 1 million in a week.
PIRACY DOES NOT AFFECT SALES.
Leondres: The only game I would mention that was significantly hurt by it that I can think of offhand was world of goo. It matters, believe it or not. Certainly not as much as some companies would like people to believe but it matters.
If those were complete downloads and they actually worked, say 5000 worked for simplicity sake, if you go by portal 2 preorder price of 45 (rounded up) that would be $225,000 in lost sales. I think that would matter to valve or any company for that matter.
This is quickly turning into a witcher morality grey area choice, lol.
It's not a lost sale because most of those wouldn't have bought it in the first place.
If piracy was impossible (for the sake of argument), sure there would be those who'd buy it anyways, but it would be a small portion of the pirates. Furthermore, a year later when the game is lower in price, more than that small portion would
potentially buy it.
However, the rest simply would not buy it no matter what.
Worrying about "potential lost sales" due to the option of piracy is pointless. What companies should be doing is extolling the virtues of
not pirating and giving those who have pirated an option to come clean, perhaps at a reduced price. Or maybe, if you buy it we'll give you a thing to get the sequel or another of our games at a discount? Anything to add a sale where there wasn't one.