Globally speaking, I believe the number.
I have family/friends in Europe, and whenever I visited them, I didn't see a single copy of anything legitimately purchased...
But who knows, maybe there was a copy of something somewhere in their closet that they had bought.
And these are people that can afford to buy their software.
Then consider that most of the world doesn't have much money to spare...
(Although, I suspect that much of this piracy is easy-come-easy-go. Someone is bored, downloads a game, mucks around for 10 minutes, goes 'meh', and never plays it again. Which is the case with the vast vast vast majority of piracy I've known of.)
Personally, 'having a decent job' + 'steam' + 'fast internet' has essentially eliminated any inclination I could have to pirate.
Why bother hunting for a [decent] torrent [that I trust isn't infested with spyware], when I can tell steam to download a game, go make a sandwich, come back and start playing.
Today, piracy is a chore. The only people I can imagining pirating something are kids with no money.
...Which globally speaking is still a crap-ton of people - albeit people who wouldn't/couldn't buy the software anyways.
I would be more interested in the stats on : % of people who pirated that could afford to not pirate. And % piracy by region/continent.
-scheherazade
This comment was edited on Aug 22, 2012, 18:36.