Video Game Piracy is the unauthorized copying, selling, and distributing of licensed video games without the permission of the copyright holder.

The Electronic Software Association estimates piracy losses to entertainment software companies to be about $3.5 billion.

Source: Kristin Kalning, “Game piracy runs rampant on the Internet,” MSNBC, May 14, 2007.

Chinese knockoffs are believed to be responsible for gains of up to one-third in market share in the online game industry.

Source: “Chinese Knockoffs Pose Headaches for Korean Online Game Makers ,” Chosun Ilbo, October 17, 2009.

The AFP states that illegal downloading represents 50 to 75 percent of all Internet traffic worldwide.

Source:  AFP, ” Swedish crackdown on piracy pays off,” Google News, August 4, 2009.

The Brazilian Association for the Development of Video Games finds that up to 94 percent of all video games sold in Brazil are pirated.

Source:  Pedro Franco, “A Nation of Pirates,” Escapist, May 12, 2009.

At the World Copyright Summit in Washington, D.C., US Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) stated that piracy of movies, music, software and video games costs the US economy $58 billion a yer.

Source:  AFP, “Calls for united action at World Copyright Summit,” Google News, June 9, 2009.

The following are the estimated losses to video game piracy by countries. The numbers are the most current data regarding video game piracy released by the International Intellectual Property Alliance.

The computer game “Spore:” is the most pirated game in 2008.

From the BBC:

Will Wright’s evolutionary epic video game – Spore – has been named the most pirated PC game of 2008, according to the TorrentFreak weblog.

The site used data provided by the peer-to-peer sharing protocol, BitTorrent, to compile a list of the 10 most downloaded PC games in 2008.

The site reported 1.7m illegal downloads of Spore since the game was released in September 2008.

Electronic Arts (EA) said it sold nearly 2m copies of the game.

Will Wright’s other big-selling title – The Sims 2 – came second on the list with 1,150,000 copies downloaded.

TorrentFreak said that Spore’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) software – which came in for considerable criticism when the game was released – was one of the reasons the game was so prolifically pirated.

Read the post from TorrentFreak here.

Epicenter blog at Wired Magazine asks whether the figures surrounding piracy are bigger than the actual financial impact. 

The post offers numerous links and stories on video game piracy, movie piracy, and the recent stories on textbook piracy. 

Read the entire post here. 

A leading computer game creator is arguing for games to be released for free to combat video game piracy.

From BBC News:

Computer games experts have devised a way to beat the pirates who cost their industry a fortune.

Manufacturers plan to give away their games for free.

The scheme was revealed by one of the industry’s leading entrepreneurs, Lisburn-born David Perry.

His best-known creations include Enter the Matrix, Earthworm Jim and Messiah.

“The next big thing will be free games,” he said.

Mr Perry said the plan “sounds crazy” but it had already proved successful in Asia.

“They had so much piracy that they decided to stop charging for the games. Instead, there’ll be a charge for things you might want to use in the game,” he said.

“Your character might have a plain white T-shirt. If you wanted a nicer one you could have it for a dollar. Or perhaps you could buy a magic sword for a knight for a dollar.”

An official with Nintendo was quoted stating that Nintendo and its game developers and publishers may have lost $762 million to video game piracy in 2006.

Source: Associated Press, ” Raids in 16 States Seek to Thwart Video Game Piracy,” New York Times, August 2, 2007.