@paul: Where in the heck are you getting that info? That seems ridiculous, I'd hate for that to be true.
i'm just going by my own rate of piracy and the rates of piracy of indie developers who have shared that information (often secretly) with other indie game developers. i'm curious if any formal studies have been done on it though. but anecdotally, rates of 90% do seem low to me, i've seen many many anecdotal rates of 95% or greater
but i was curious about formal studies so i looked some up:
piracy by country:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sof_pir_rat-crime-software-piracy-rate -- armenia is the highest at 93%, united states actually has the *lowest* piracy rate of any country, at 20%. the average seems to be about 60%. interestingly, japan also has a very low rate of piracy, 23% -- perhaps it's because's there's less digital distribution there?
general piracy study:
http://portal.bsa.org/globalpiracy2009/studies/globalpiracystudy2009.pdf -- the overall piracy rate increased from 41% in 2008 to 43% in 2009. north america's piracy rate remained stable at 21%, the increase was mainly from the rest of the world. russia actually has a falling piracy rate (perhaps because of steam, or perhaps because its economy is improving). piracy went down in italy, greece, and columbia greatly, after tax audits were changed to require software license compliance. but overall piracy increased if you take every country into account. the list of countries by piracy rate is similar to the one above, but armenia isn't top anymore, it's georgia (the country, not the state). the US is still dead last in piracy in this list, at 20%
but apparently this doesn't tell the whole story, because you also have to consider the *value* of pirated software. and the *value* of pirated software is actually the *highest* in the US, at 8.3 billion. china is second, russia is a distant third. so although the US has a low piracy rate, because so many people own computers, the piracy that does happen is "worth" the most money of any country
there's a lot of other interesting stuff in this study, such as a pie chart that breaks down like this: 43% of all installed software is pirated, 12-22% of all installed software is open-source or free, and 35-45% of all installed software is registered / paid-for software
anyway, what i can say is that from these studies, it appears as if indie games are pirated much more than other forms of software (including perhaps AAA games), because from the data i see with my own games and the games of other indie game developers, it appears as if we have much higher piracy rates than the average rate of 43%
it's also notable that this study doesn't break down games from other software. it's possible that games in general have much higher piracy rates than other forms of software (such as windows, or word, or autocad, or whatever)
if you want some anecdotal instances of piracy rates of indie games at or above 90%, you an probably fund a bunch of them by searching google. here's a couple i found pretty easily
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25809 -- tap-fu indie developer says there's a 90% piracy rate of their game. it's kind of sad to see comments like "And still some games have a absurd profit. So what he is complaining about?"
http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/hs5y5/my_ios_app_is_being_pirated_to_the_point_where/ -- this guy talks on reddit about a 90% piracy rate of his iphone app. again many of the comments are negative, saying he deserves it for trying to sell something, etc.
as you can see, i feel that indies are discouraged from even talking about the piracy rates of their own games, because then they're attacked and called complainers, even when the rates are 90%+. that's part of why i never wrote an article about the piracy rate of my own game; doing so would just generate controversy for no reason, and perhaps cause it to be pirated even more
anyway, i'd like to see a more detailed study that focuses on piracy rates of games specifically (rather than software in general), and sees if there is any difference between AAA pc games and indie games in piracy rate. my expectancy would be that indie games are pirated the most, because they're much easier to pirate (no DRM, and often the game is in a zip, so you don't even need a keygen program)
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