The spread of pirated video games has contributed to a 24% increase in sales of legal copies, according to experts of the European Commission.
These data were presented in a report carried out by the Ecorys research firm commissioned by the European Commission. It is dedicated to the illegal consumption of games, movies, TV series, books and music in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Poland and Sweden in 2014.
The gaming industry has proved capable of turning fans of pirated content into legitimate buyers with the help of exclusive features available only in legal versions of games.
The European Commission also stated that illegal downloads of digital content do not statistically reduce official sales.
“Overall, the results do not provide convincing statistics that pirated downloads are displacing legitimate purchases,” the report says.
This does not mean that piracy does not affect the consumption of legal content at all. It only indicates that its impact on license purchases is not enough to be reflected in statistical analysis.
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