If 90% of players pirate and if your statistics for how many players there are for a given game usually come in the form of "number of sold copies", then you co

If 90% of players pirate and if your statistics for how many players there are for a given game usually come in the form of "number of sold copies", then you could be severely underestimating the size of the potential userbase; feeling that you are getting a small piece of a small pie, while in fact you're getting a small piece of a much larger pie. Statistics on pirate behaviour are sort of hard to come by anyway -- if you buy games at all, you're not really a pirate, you're someone who downloaded a game they didn't know if they'd like, or you didn't have money at that moment and wanted to check it out, or any other explanation. Over the years, me and my friends, have basically bought every game we've played. On the other hand, if you habitually pirate and never buy, game developers aren't interested in talking to you; in fact you're basically a criminal in their eyes, stealing their profits. I really wish to see some sort of study disentangling these two groups and finding a way to talk to and understand the latter group. Why they do what they do, what motivates them and so on. Once you know that, you can start addressing the issues that drive such behaviour.