Videogames piracy - Why so much hate?

[John V]

How many times does it need to be said that piracy has absolutely NO fucking bearing on lost sales.

You can say it as many times as you want. It's not true. Some people who pirate these products would have bought them. I initially learned about piracy of music from a colleague who was making $85K annually. He went from buying 20 - 30 CDs a year to buying zero. He started by looking for a rare song he couldn't find elsewhere - an excuse some give here. It spiraled from there.

While it's ridiculous to make loss estimates assuming that every piracy represents a lost sale, it's equally ridiculous to claim that no acts of piracy result in lost sales.