The leaks still show up here, so I don't think the fact that it's been removed from the main page has "demonstrated" that the leaks don't cause a loss of income. It has, like you said, demonstrated that the exposure affects the income (unless that's coincidental) but I don't think we can conclusively know if the amount that would be gained from wiping out piracy is more than the amount gained from the exposure it generates unless the leaks here and on other sites stopped.
I tend to agree with you that piracy doesn't really hurt, but I also feel like it's not really provable. I also think the DRM hurt him a fair bit, I personally stopped supporting after my save got wiped.
Uuuugh, look, i get what you're saying but this isn't so mystically unknowable to not make educated assumptions. Sure, it's not
provable, but how fine do you want to split hairs before the choice to argue further is overwhelmed by the obvious reality?
The amount of people
discovering this game via this website is a tiny trickle now compared to before and his income growth has completely halted. Sure, the leaks still happen but the people utilising them via this website were already doing so so there is no new
hit to his potential so all you're left with is who would pay if the leaks didn't happen? A very VERY small group existing between the 'already supporting him' crowd and the 'would never support him/support him again', and just how big do you really imagine that group to be? You're describing folks who come to this website, know of this thread,
actively follow this thread despite it not appearing in 'latest updates' who are so impatient that if it's not leaked would instead decide to pay the $5 to get access to it... is it really so sensical to give
any weight to the idea that that group is significantly large? Enough to appreciably affect the up and down trends of his monthly support? Fuck no, not even remotely, that group is absolutely fucking tiny,
some will buckle and pay up but most will just go about playing other games and wait the 2 weeks.
Things may have been different when this thread was still getting promoted, you had many new eyes getting put on a leak before even having to consider paying up, not any more. Whatever effect piracy had on the game before is absolutely
nothing to what quarantining this thread has done to his growth. The knob should've just sucked it up and accepted piracy is inevitable and he'd be pulling in more than $12-14k by now based on the previous trend, possibly more, i didn't really pay attention back then.