Game publishers have that data, very precise data iirc. It was a long time ago but I recall one of the smaller publishers did a long blog post on this topic. T

Game publishers have that data, very precise data iirc. It was a long time ago but I recall one of the smaller publishers did a long blog post on this topic. They showed sales graphs for one of their games. The graph showed a big spike in the first few days followed by a slow decline. It also showed huge chunks missing (drop followed by an identical sized increase a few weeks later). Those chunks were when cracks came out and the increase was when the cracks were broken by multi-player patching. It's simple enough maths to calculate the area of the graph that was missing - that's your lost sales. Apps use DRM because most pirates will in fact buy the game if they can't crack it. They are big into gaming, they want to play the newest games NOW when they are fresh and their friends are talking about it, and they want to play online with others. So as long as cost of DRM < cost of lost sales, games will use it. As DRM has been a feature of gaming for as long as there have been video games, it always baffles me how many people on forums like HN seem to believe only irrational developers would use it.