Study Shows 1-In-5 Gamers Play Rip-Offs

Supposedly-closed consoles shown to be anything but in research by copy-protection company.

Despite console manufacturers' best efforts, pirates are still having a sizeable impact on the video games market, a US study has found.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was available for
download days before it officially debuted
in North America

Twenty-one per cent of PlayStation 2 and Xbox owners admitted playing pirated games, the research by copy-protection provider Macrovision revealed. The majority of these people had used the Internet to download cracked copies of games, while a smaller percentage admitted to getting their pirated software from friends.

"The prevalence of high-speed Internet and the availability of pirated games on Web sites and peer-to-peer networks have made downloading pirated games relatively easy and widespread," said Macrovision's Steve Weinstein, following the survey of 6,000 gamers. "Game piracy will increase rapidly over the coming months and years as gamers hone their downloading methods and behaviours."

Piracy has been a sore point for video game publishers over the past year. Almost every major console or PC release in 2004, including such titles as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half-Life 2 and Halo 2, was freely available on Internet sites, sometimes before the game even hit shops.

For now, it seems that the strategy will be to attack those providing the game for download. More than 70% of those who pirated games admitted that they would have bought the retail version of the game if they had not found a pirated copy within a month of release.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games