Global piracy cost the US games industry more than $4bn in 2004, not including losses from net piracy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6449421.stm

I'm not much of a gamer anyway but who's to say that the people that contributed to "losses" would have bought the game in the first place?

Why doesn't the gaming industry just sell ad space in virtual cites? - like billboards and pepsi machines where the player can get a pepsi to raise his life level or something to that effect