According to the ISDA (the Interactive Digital Software Association), videogames in the United States racked up $6.35 billion in sales in 2001. This is a pretty big amount by any standard, so you wouldn't think piracy would be a huge factor, right?

You'd be dead wrong. In 2001, piracy as a whole cost the United States $1.9 billion. (Yes, that's billion, with a B.) That's an amazing 30% of sales lost to illegally reproduced games in the form of straight copied disks to ROMs changing hands on the internet.

Obviously, most of the blame for this is from Korea and China, where piracy is the most rampant. At least one billion dollars of lost sales are to blame on these areas, where any sort of market for legitimate games is non-existant.