Pirated games "4:1 against legitimate sales," says UKIE

UKIE has said that for one British game bought at retail, four more are being pirated.

The organisation was speaking after BBC report claimed that the British industry had lost £1.45 billion of High Street revenue to piracy in 2010.

"Based on information received from a number of publishers, we have estimates of games piracy running at between 4:1 against legitimate sales," UKIE GD Michael Rawlinson told GI.

"We took a conservative position of saying if this is only 1:1 across all titles it would have a retail equivalent value of £1.45million. We did not say this was the loss to industry.

"What is clear is people who 'share' games via P2P networks or buy illegal copies are not buying the real product, and this reduces retailer sales. It can provide the consumer with a sub-standard product and money paid to illegal traders does not flow back to the creative."

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