I think people who impulse buy will impulse buy no matter what.

About people downloading illegal copies, in TFA Notch is quoted as saying:

> “If you just make your game and keep adding to it, the people who copyright infringed would buy it the next week”

He also argues that the concept of "lost sales" itself is dodgy, or at least used carelessly. Some examples he mentions:

> “Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?”

Lack of product awareness among consumers is far more of a suppressing force to profits than converting every last bit of interest in your product to monetary value is a boost to profits.

This is likely less true for certain AAA titles, but on the whole, most people who buy things are busy and not avidly following any one brand in particularly. Fanboys (despite their clamor) are rarer than casual purchasers for most everything. In an absolute sense, there may be "lost sales" due to piracy, but that comparison misses any potential additional sales due to piracy helping to spread awareness of a product.

> Recent example: Doom Eternal was shipped with an unencrypted exe in a subfolder by mistake. Surely lots of people that would have impulse bought the hot new game didn't when it could be torrented on launch.

I don't think it counts as an example when the lost sales are an assumption and not backed by data.