- Nov 2, 2022
- 220
- 504
I used to work for a AAA game studio many years back. Our games were constantly getting pirated, so the marketing department did some research, crunched some numbers, and engaged with the pirate community. The end result was that piracy was actually boosting our sales by over 20%, at zero advertising cost. This effect is particularly strong for indie developers, and especially porn game developers, who can't exactly run massive ad campaigns, or even buy ad space on mainstream platforms.Yes, it does make a difference. It's easy for you to say otherwise when you're not de dev... :-/
The bottom line is that people who pirate games, and never pay for them, were almost never going to buy the game anyway. However, many people that pirate games just think of it as a free demo, and end up buying the game if they enjoy playing it. This site provides massive free advertising, and exposes the game to many players that would otherwise never know it existed. Some of those players will subscribe/donate to the developers, giving them income that wouldn't exist otherwise.
Basically, nobody that comes to this site, pirates a game, and doesn't pay, was ever going to pay for the game to begin with. Thus, the developers aren't losing any money, and instead are gaining money they wouldn't have without piracy.