Game Piracy (Game Piracy)

Abstract:

Digital game piracy is a massive problem for the rapidly developing creative industries, with millions of illegal copies of digital game software being distributed every month on a worldwide basis and billions of DKK in potential sales revenue lost every year due to illegal copying and file sharing via piracy channels such as torrent networks and file-hosting services. There are next to no hard, independent data on game piracy, across AAA-levels to indie games, despite numerous reports about massive piracy rates reported for all types of games (as high as several hundred percent). The Digital Game Piracy project is in collaboration with international colleagues collecting extensive data about bittorrent activities for hundreds of games, correlating these with geographic-, market- and game variables to explore the patterns of game piracy across national boundaries. This research will aid the gaming industry by providing an understanding of the dynamics of the market and enable it to cater to it more effectively. For example, providing an overview of the national differences in game piracy, showing which countries constitute the biggest piracy nations (important when planning launch strategies), and whether particular types of games are heavily pirated in particular areas, will enable the industry to capitalize on these characteristics and to launch more well-informed strategies to combat piracy. The project will shed light on unresolved questions in the industry, and will provide empirical evidence on game piracy behavior and the sheer magnitude of the problem, which branch organizations and interest groups can utilize to inform policy makers in Denmark and internationally – for example the Danish Ministry for Culture, that is currently reviewing illegal file sharing towards building new policies, but does not have detailed reports on game file sharing at its disposal.