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Hey Oh Snap...just a little follow-up on our previous conversation.

I did make up that statistic (although I'm probably somewhat close to that assumption).

You're right, I think some companies would turn around and say they failed because of piracy. Some are simply unfinished products and poor games as a whole. However, when you see an entire industry being affected by the same issue (game piracy) then you know that it is a little more than speculations. Numbers almost speak for themselves when it comes to sales. Both you and I won't be able to proove our arguments simply because we both don't have numbers to put on the table. But IMO, piracy would only be good if a particular game didn't have a demo, and only a portion of the game was cracked...leaving people who wanted more to go purchase the game. Otherwise, although piracy may help with marketing (word to mouth), it still overweights the overall piracy vs sales. Once again, IMO.

It's funny but I have to point out that the industry excludes one very important player; Blizzard. WOW is doing extremely well, in sales and in avoiding piracy issues. The company has manage to avoid the whole piracy issue by making the game online (log on to server to play - which authenticates your valid copy of the game), and I applaud them for it. I think they will use the same strategy for Starcraft II. I think online gaming is the key to avoid piracy issues anyways. Come to think about it, all the battelfield series and COD4 have done extremely well in sales...I wonder why?

I would argue that COD4 on the PC has done well not because it's hard to pirate, but because it is a very good game. You can not only pirate the single player campaign, but also play online on cracked servers with little to no effort. That is a PERFECT example of how sales will still be great when a game is made very well, even when piracy still exists. On a side note, I'm curious about how many people will be angry, along with myself, if Blizzard decides to charge by the month for Satcraft 2 instead of just offering Battle.net for free.

*Starcraft 2...no idea how I made such a horrendous spelling error.

There'd be no reason for them to do that. Though I wouldn't be offended if they offered a "league" starcraft (ladder) for a couple bucks a month that provided heavy duty security and a unique account linked to a credit card, as well as employees available to receive and review replays to ban cheaters. I think it'd be totally worth it. Battle.net has always been free, though, and quite honestly I think Blizzard wouldn't be where they are today if it wasn't for that.

Hell, don't they still support original Diablo on battle.net?

They would loose all there market in the far east if they started charging per month, and that they dont want to do.