Reflexive has posted some numbers of piracy on one of their internal games (Ricochet Infinity) over on Gamasutra.

The short version is they found out that 92% of the games being played were pirated.  Let me state that number again - 92%.  I've said this before, but this is one of the big reasons why more and more companies are moving towards console or MMO games.  It is hard to survive when 92% of the people playing your games aren't actually paying for them.  This is only a single game, so hopefully this is really higher than the industry as a whole though.

And before anyone says that pirates aren't lost sales because they wouldn't buy the games anyways, when Reflexive put in a fix to obsolete existing exploits and keygens their sales went up 70%.  That doesn't actually cover very many of the people that were pirating the game, but getting a 70% rise in sales is huge.  This unfortunately is exactly why most companies feel that they are forced to use DRM these days. :(

Comments