Jordan’s National Library Department Director General reported to the media that pirated Play Station games were the most common smuggled item from Syria into the country in 2012. After pirated video games, the popular pirated items were DVDs, music discs and software.
Due to the conflict in Syria, the smuggling of pirated goods into Jordan dropped significantly in the first three months of 2013.
Source: ”Jordanians go without their beloved pirated DVDs due to Syrian war,” AL Bawaba, April 7, 2013.
The Entertainment Software Association of Canada stated that the computer game industry in the United States and Canada loses up to $3.5 Billion a year to pirated video games. The losses to piracy is equal to about one-fifth of the total value of the video game market.
Worldwide, the hand-held video game market loses $8.1 Billion a year to piracy.
Source: Joseph de Weck and Marie Mawad, “Free Online Games Sink Pirates to Unlock Emerging-Market Growth,” Bloomberg BusinessWeek, August 27, 2012.
A report published by the United States Department of Justice stated that $2.6 Billion in Federal, state and local taxes are lost due to movie, music, software and video game piracy each year. The pirated materials also causes the loss of 373,375 jobs within the country.
Source: Jason Ryan, “Cyber Monday: Buyer Beware Counterfeit Goods,” ABC News, The Blotter, November 28, 2011.
According to the CEO of Bohemia Interactive, server access logs show that for ever three legitimate game buyers who are accessing the video game serves, there are one hundred attempts to access multiplayer games from pirated copies.
Source: Nathan Grayson, “Interview: Bohemia Interactive’s CEO on fighting piracy, creative DRM,” PC Gamer, November 17, 2011.
Between 2006 and 2011, the rate of piracy of video games in the United Kingdom increased by 20 percent.
In 2010, the top five games were estimated to be illegally downloaded from the Internet almost a million times during the year.
Source: Dan Whitworth, “Illegally downloaded games ‘up 20% in five years’,” BBC News, Newsbeat, November 11, 2011.
Up to 73 percent of global revenue for the video game industry is lost to piracy.
Source: “73pc of video gaming income lost to piracy,” Trade Arabia, May 25, 2011.
Piracy on the Internet of movies, music, video games and television shows make up to 24 percent of all Internet traffic worldwide.
Source: Gautham Nagesh, “Study: 24 percent of Web traffic involves piracy,” Hillicon Valley Blog, The Hill, February 1, 2011.
Video game piracy in the United Kingdom led to $2.3 Billion (1.45 Billion British Pounds) in losses in 2010 due to pirated games being played on modified consoles.
Source: Dan Whitworth, “Gaming industry lose ‘billions’ to chipped consoles,” BBC News, January 21, 2011.
Internet piracy in Spain cost content holders up to $7.3 Billion (5.2 Billion Euros) in revenue in the first half of 2010.
Music piracy caused $3.8 Billion (2.7 Billion Euros) in losses, with 97.8 percent of all music downloads illegally pirated.
Movie piracy caused $2.6 Billion (1.8 Billion Euros) in losses, with 77 percent of all movie downloads illegally pirated.
And video game piracy caused $369 Million (262 Million Euros) in losses, with 60 percent of all video games downloaded illegally pirated.
In comparison, $2.2 Billion (1.5 Billion Euros) were legally generated by the content industry online during the same period.
Source: Pamela Rolfe, “Report: Piracy Costs Spanish Film, Music Sectors Billions,” Hollywood Reporter, November 3, 2010.
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″, was the number one selling video game of 2009.
The game sold 11.86 million copies in stores and through legitimate vendors.
4.1 million copies of the game was illegally pirated off of bit-torrent sites in 2009.
Source: Scott Steinberg, “Video game piracy: Is it good for business?,” Special to CNN, September 9, 2010.
