PC Piracy Going Down Despite Crysis 2 Leak, PC Gaming Alliance Says

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Although Crysis 2 got leaked BP-style on the Internet before release, which led to the obligatory “piracy is the cancer/virus/plague that is destroying the game industry” rant from the developer, that’s just what people who do science (can’t wait for Portal 2, but you can probably tell) call an anecdote. Statistics seem to be telling a very different story.

“What’s really interesting [according to PCGA research,] is piracy was largely, historically rampant when you had an optical drive or a piece of physical media. And people would go and download the crack for it,” according to Matt Ployhar, president of PC Gaming Alliance. “In some cases the crack was done days before the game ever even hit retail shelves. Now what’s happening is piracy was so bad in other geographies – it’s kind of bad everywhere but there are certain places where it spikes – that it was an equation of survival of the fittest.” So the bottom line is that piracy is on the wane because of free to play, MMO-style shenanigans and the implementation of badges and achievements and any such developer efforts (or lack thereof)  should curb it (or help it) even further. Sorted.