Creston wrote on Mar 29, 2011, 10:40:
Indies probably thrive because of piracy because, well, without it, nobody would know about their games. They live and die off word of mouth and their reputation. If 50,000 people pirate the game and 10% buys it because of it, that's 5000 sales they likely otherwise wouldn't have had.

Of course, big publishers never look at it this way, because they feel their 50 million dollar marketing campaigns far outweigh any benefits of word of mouth they'd get from piracy. That they could just as easily do without that stupid amount of marketing and probably still sell just as well is something nobody there ever wants to hear, especially in the marketing department. After all, it takes at least 300 marketoids to come up with "It's the new shit!"