According to Piracy watchdog blog, Torrent freak, PSP game downloading is on the rise - despite Sony’s claims to the contrary.

Of course Sony would claim that piracy is trending downward because they are a hardware manufacturer - not a software company invested in stopping piracy. That is not to suggest that what they claim is false, but simply to point out that they probably have a vested interest in reporting downward piracy trends and reassuring software producers that they have a safe hardware platform to develop games for.

The last three months in 2008 saw a huge increase in pirated downloading activity - which is probably a reflection of the growing popularity of pirate downloading sites. In fact, as Torrentfreak makes clear:

Since September, the number of peers tracked by The Pirate Bay has nearly doubled from 14 million in early September, to 25 million now. Other BitTorrent sites such as Mininova, Torrentz and BTjunkie report an increase in downloads, searches and web traffic, ranging from 25 to 50 percent over the same time frame.

The two PSP Games which were downloaded the most (illegally) in 2008 were Final Fantasy VII

and GTA Vice City Stories - with about half a million illegal downloads each - which is an enormous amount when you consider that the average PSP game sells about 130,000 copies in total. And when you consider that Final Fantasy VII is priced at $29.99 and GTA Vice City Stories has a price tag of $19.99 - thats over 25 MILL bucks that the game developers have lost!!

If you are at all curious about the other 8 most illegally downloaded games in 2008, then you can see the results here.

Whatever the reason for the increase - what many gamers don’t realize is that if they don’t pay for games, the software companies who make them will not make them any more - because they will be out of business!!

Share