I've recently come across a sure fire way of determining which games are amassing consumer support, and which remain somewhat out of the loop: monitoring Twitter spam bots.

Yes, scanning the various charts on app stores or looking out for press releases from studios may be a more accurate science, but I've noticed some games I tweet about – an inevitability when linking to news stories on either PG.biz or sister site Pocket Gamer - unleash a rush of spam in reply.

I can only conclude that those throwing fake Amazon gift vouchers, free iPad competitions and – most recently – discounted Big Macs at my local McDonalds in my direction deem said games to be 'popular' and, as such, adding their names to their list of triggers is likely to prove fruitful.

Do the maths

It all puts me in mind of Will Luton's take on the news My Star's top in-app purchase is being hit by a 93% piracy rate thanks to a new shady tool dubbed iAP Cracker.

In his view – a correct one, in my opinion – those going to the effort of illegally equipping IAPs in Mobile Pie's flagship are unlikely to have paid for such perks if iAP Cracker didn't exist.

It's far too simplistic to equate the number of pirated copies of a game or IAPs to the amount they would have costed had the player actually paid for them. As such, those developers that eagerly publish figures of 'lost revenue from piracy' figures are kidding themselves.

In years gone by, I had countless friends who, thanks to a chipped Xbox, regularly pirated games. Some even picked up as many as four or five a week.

Naturally, the chip they soldered onto Microsoft's black behemoth obviously enabled them to pick up the odd game they would have otherwise paid for – convenience usually the most common excuse - but the vast majority of games they downloaded were sought out of little more than idle curiosity.

They might have read a positive review or two, or heard about it from a friend, but very few were games they'd have taken the risk on purchasing without the chip equipped.

No such thing as bad publicity

As a result, only a tiny number of titles ever sat in the disc tray for any real length of time.

Most ended up in a dusty cupboard somewhere, played for 15 minutes before the person in question determined that, surprise surprise, the game wasn't to their taste after all.

Saying this doesn't mean piracy should ever be tolerated, of course; there has long been an entire industry founded on delivering pirated goods to consumers, whether in terms of films, music, or most recently, games. Developers should always do whatever is physcially – or financially – possible to protect their library.

But I simply don't buy the argument that those pirating games, or even in-app purchases, equate to lost sales. If anything, the fact the users in question have targeted their titles suggests to me that there's something of a positive buzz around the game in question – that people are talking about it.

Developers should never court piracy, but by the same token, that's no reason to dismiss its lighter side.