Regardless of whether the stats were correct or not (or even exist!), cases have been recorded where pirates have been stopped by copy protection methods and then purchased the game because they couldn't get around it.
The question is, would they have purchased the game anyway
after they had pirated it? Dubious as it may sound, that can happen. I know because I do it myself.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm sure there are cases where a pirate is too impatient to wait for a game to be cracked so they go out and buy it. However, I'm also sure that there are cases where a pirate
wouldn't have bought a game had it not been pirated first. I myself make a point of not buying any game unless I've played it. It's mandatory for games without demos and even for games with demos. Hell, if I had judged Hitman: Blood Money based on the demo, I would have never bought the full version.
Oh, I think I found the statistics you mentioned:
http://kotaku.com/tag/reflexive-arcade/Apparently, for every 1000 pirated copies eliminated, they created 1 sale. Of course, they don't know how many sales they lost. As the reaction to Mass Effect's DRM and the now-buried Starforce can attest to, copy-protection can result in lost sales as well.
This comment was edited on May 7, 04:31.