There’s been a lot of talk about how the gaming industry has surpassed the likes of the world’s recession; how the video game market is still posting record profits in sales; how the industry is thriving. In some respects, that kind of thinking is somewhat true. Yes, the gaming industry has been posting record profits in each sector, including the online gaming scene, despite dire Wall Street times, as reported by Chinastakes.com. But there's also a downside to the gaming industry in this recession that many people overlook.

Articles from places like Pocket Gamer, opine that gaming is recession proof, and as renown analyst Michael Pachter pointed out, the gaming industry will “weather the economic storm”. True enough, games are selling more than ever and are hotter than ever. They also happen to be more expensive than ever. In result, piracy has skyrocketed to unseen heights.

Just recently Electronic Arts lost millions when 500,000 copies of Will Wright’s latest creation, Spore, was illegally downloaded in record breaking numbers. The project took an approximate $80 million to produce and sells for $49.99. But with piracy on the rise, production cost and price means little or nothing during these times.

As reported by GameSpy, piracy is at an all time high, worldwide. While many reporters within the industry look at the recession as a non-affecting element within the gaming industry based on monthly sales, no one seems to notice that the recession for gaming comes in the form of piracy.

VideoGamer.com had an interesting editorial about the subject, with different members and professionals within the industry providing their feedback on the necessity of security. However, the one thing a lot companies have been missing when it comes to the issue of piracy is simply that: greater forms of security does not reduce piracy. Spore was the perfect example of this.

So long as gamers are hard up for cash they will find any alternative to play the latest game, even if it means pirating. This excludes the pirates who will pirate regardless. But during tough times you can bet that even with the surge of sales in the industry, there are also equal surges on the opposing platform of pirated software. This problem was a $3 billion dollar pang for companies back in 1999 on a global scale, but it’s now a much uglier picture that puts the figure approximately $1 billion in losses for this year, according to an article on Forefront, for the US market alone. Ouch.

The thing that makes this topic so interesting, is how video games continue to become more mainstream, and make more money, while the industry loses equal amounts of the money invested into these projects due to piracy. It will be interesting to see what the final figures are regarding video game piracy for 2008. In the meantime, be sure to stay tuned in with Blend Games for more news and info regarding the latest news on all your favorite titles.