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A study has claimed that games piracy has increased by 20% over the last five years.

Research firm Envisional produced these figures according to the BBC, and the company claims that the “top five games” of last year were pirated a million times, which was up a fifth presumably on a study they conducted back in 2006.

Quite what these top games were isn’t explained, however (presumably Black Ops was certainly one of them).

And exactly how the firm measured the million pirated copies isn’t explained either. Some might suggest it’s a nice headline figure which has been conveniently arrived at to help add some ammo to the justification of the current move towards the curtailment of net freedoms copyright holders favour.

Video game sales revenue has also increased over the last five years, and more hardware has been sold of course, so at any rate the increase is probably pretty much in line with what could be expected.

And not pointing to a new generation of video game pirates who are rapidly multiplying as some sources want to swiftly point fingers at.

Of course, video game piracy is never justified, but as we’ve pointed out with these sort of studies before, the losses incurred by the industry are nowhere near the full amount suggested by the number of pirated copies.

The majority of those pirates weren’t likely to buy the game anyway, even if they hadn’t been able to illegally download a copy.

Exactly how many would purchase is hugely difficult, well, impossible, to quantify, which is the problem with these sort of studies.

But firms like Envisional do little to help their credibility and detract from the suggestion of scaremongering when they provide no figures or details, or even names of the top games they studied, along with their conclusions.

Tags:  games these pirated video their million studies study presumably explained