I've seen the other side of too many of these stories not to be skeptical, if not outright cynical. Let me explain. 1. There are no absolute sales figures here

I've seen the other side of too many of these stories not to be skeptical, if not outright cynical. Let me explain. 1. There are no absolute sales figures here. It may be that the game sold dismally and a story about piracy might have gotten them developer a ton more PR than the game ever would've; 2. The issue in this particular case is not number of copies (pirated vs non-pirated) but the amount of hours spent from pirated vs non-pirated. Even that doesn't tell the whole story. Perhaps this game required a critical mass of users (some do)? If so, pirated users might ultimately be beneficial. Also, when it comes to piracy there are a lot of people who download a lot of pirated content and then never look at it or they might try it once. Just getting the pirated content itself becomes a game; 3. How expensive is it to maintain a server on a per user or per user hour basis anyway? It seems quite likely a single machine can serve thousands if not tens of thousands of users as a conservative estimate; and 4. Are they shuttering the game or just overhauling the authentication model? If they plan on rereleasing it then the publicity of (1) becomes even more likely. Like I said, I've seen a number of one-sided stories now where I've known something about the other side and as sympathetic as someone can make their case, believe me--generally speaking--there is a lot they don't tell you. Also, don't discount the possibility of internal politics. It's a lot easier for a product lead to say "we had to pull this because of piracy" to his or her boss or board than it is to say "we made a game that no one bought". I'm just saying.