It is clear that 43.5% of potential customers believe that PC games are too expensive, which seems counter intuitive when they are often much cheaper than Console versions of the same game. However, Console games from the customer's point of view are better value, as it is possible to trade in and recoup some cost from the retail shops. Retail shops do not accept trade in PC games due to restrictive DRMs. This limits customer choice and makes buying PC games less attractive.

Illegal downloading has affected the perceived worth of a game and driven the price down. If people are constantly bombarded with free choice, it makes it hard for products to be noticed and also drives down the worth of the product. Also there are regional issues, as games are sold at a very similar price regardless of the economic factor in that country.

From the graph we see that the negative aspects score very low, of why people illegally download, with the highest "Its Free" at 16.3%. The negative aspect being things that cannot be resolved or show that it will not generate revenue. It's Free, I pirate everything and to lesser extents I like sharing, I hate DRMs, and Easy and Convenient. This goes some way in showing that illegal downloaders can be potential and loyal customers.

There were many answers but the majority of them fell in to these categories
• To try before buying.
• Very assessable, easy to do.
• Unlimited installs.
• Games are too expensive.
• Do not have the money, not enough disposable income.
• DRM issues, technical problems with getting games to work.

"Its popular because it became easy to do."

"In some parts of the world, typically Eastern Europe, it's because (PC) games are too expensive compared to people's salaries. Also, DRM methods become more and more obtrusive, which frustrate people without having the desired effect of making more people pay for the product. Other than that, reasons vary."

"Game price differences even in digital media just because of location. No if games are good enough then they will be purchased. It will not stop until the big corps adjust their models."

"Não gostaria que fosse ilegal. Mas sim mais barato, os lancamentos são muito caros, e eu não tenho condicao de comprar todos que eu jogo. (Do not want to be illegal. But launches are very expensive, and I cannot buy all that I play.)" [Translation altered to read correctly.]

"Online purchasing without DRM is the key, GOG.com, but for new games... Convenience of a simple download, no DRM, no proprietary download-managers and a well-designed clutter-free website..."

"No. Piracy will never stop. Evrybody have own reason "Why?" do they do what they do. BTW. I buy games from small game development studios to make'em "spin"."

"I acutaly wouldn't condone it, yet i do it."

"i dont give a fuck about these rich gaming companies they dont care about us either they only want money and im not gonna give it to them"

You can see that the most popular public torrent sites are BtJunkie (23.7%) and The Pirate Bay (19.6%). The next two most popular are IsoHunt and Kickasstorrents (both at 13.4%).

These are similar to the Torrentfreak report, Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2011. While Torrentfreak deals with all illegal downloaders, our questionnaire specifically targets ones that mainly download PC games. We missed Demonoid and Torrentz, though strictly speaking torrentz is only an index site.

The most popular Private torrent sites are IPTorrents (14%), RevolutionTT (11.4%), and BitGamer (11.3%).

What this suggests is that downloaders of PC games prefer to use a bittorrent client when downloading. However, when file hosting services are used, the most popular are MegaUpload (21.3%), RapidShare (19.2%), MediaFire (16.4%), and FileServe (16.3%).

We believe that downloaders will use this distribution system sparingly as it requires a lot more user input. Possible reasons for using file hosting services are downloaders have access to a high speed network, they are just downloading updates for a game, or they might need quick access to a small file.

20% of downloaders only download a comparatively small volume of data per month, between 1 and 5 GB which is equivalent to a ripped PC game. ("Ripped" game, means non-essential data has been removed normally the language packs. This reduces the size but varies by considerable amounts, the end file averages between 2 GB to 6 GB.)

As you move further up the download amounts, the numbers decrease, suggesting that only a few are able to download vast amounts. This further suggests that the amount people download is dependent on the money they spend, and the bandwidth they possess.

It is hard to know what conclusion to draw from this! We were expecting 1-5 GB to be a low amount, because it is not quite enough for a full game. This suggests that people are not sure of how much they download, or a very low amount of games are downloaded within a year.

Does this mean that people are careful in what they download? Or are illegal downloaders of PC games restricted in other ways such as download capacity?

Our Questionnaire was specifically targeted at illegal downloaders who downloaded the PC version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. This explains the high number of PC ISO Games (52.9%) and PC Ripped Games (25.1%).

What we can draw from this is that illegal downloaders, who download PC games, also download Music (25.1%), Anime (24.4%), Movies (23.7%), TV Shows (20.2%), and Applications (20.2%)

The clear majority of illegal downloaders will download 1 to 3 (50.7%) PC games per month. While this is not surprising as very few PC Games are release every month, when counting throughout a year. What is surprising, when comparing with the data from Question 5, it the suggestion that most illegal downloaders only download a small number of PC games, and nothing else.

What we can see is the suggestion that most illegal downloaders of PC games do not use any torrent protection service when they are downloading. The reason could be a mixture of ineffective legal cases, gaming software companies do not actively sue, or downloaders just don't feel the need.