90% seems to the rate everyone comes up with when they actually measure it, judging from various independent games blogs and feedback from acquaintances in mobile gaming. I wouldn't be surprised if the rate holds for AAA titles as well.
On the flip side, I recall at least one set of statistics showing that most pirates don't run a game more than once. Presumably most pirates pirate huge numbers of games and simply don't have the time to play them all in depth -- which certainly supports the idea that they wouldn't pay for them if piracy weren't an option.
I've known a number of people through the years that would pirate hundred of movies, and only ever watch a handful of them. I've definitely seen the odd sort of compulsive hording you're describing.
It's not that odd, it's basically building a huge on-demand video library. Since videos take such a long time to download, you have to decide to get them long before you decide to watch them. Thus it makes sense to batch DL them all and then decide later.
Well, I've heard that rationalization, but the people I'm talking about tend to have literally hundreds of movies on hand, most of which they'll never actually watch. Actually watching them seems to be far less important than just accumulating as much as possible.
Sounds like the downloaders are treating the game as a demo. If I get a game for free I'm more willing to stop playing if it sucks. If I pay I'm going to see if I can get into it.
On the flip side, I recall at least one set of statistics showing that most pirates don't run a game more than once. Presumably most pirates pirate huge numbers of games and simply don't have the time to play them all in depth -- which certainly supports the idea that they wouldn't pay for them if piracy weren't an option.