[ArkanExplorer]

I've read the whole study.

TLDR: Correlation, not causation.

Basically, they found that Customer A spent $100 on games, and consumed 50 units worth of Piracy.

But Customer B spent only $30 on games, and consumed 10 units of piracy.

They then concluded that piracy lead to more consumption.

The obvious rebuttals are:

1. More voracious consumers of games will probably buy more and pirate more anyway

2. It sucks if you are one of the pirated games (eg. singleplayer, non-DRM), who loses out from this equation

3. Its great if you're eg. Fortnite or Steam, where pirated games serve as the enticement to join the ecosystem, and when customers do eventually spend, it comes to you given your huge size.